Ideas come in all shapes and sizes, disruptive and not-so disruptive. Take the iPhone and iPad; disruptive because so many other apps and startups based on making apps have been developed. Not-so disruptive are the apps themselves; do you want to share photos? there are many, many apps for that. If you're looking for one idea, here is one that no one has really captured and the reasons for this will become clear throughout my post.

Why is it that our greatest idea hasn't really been capitalized or used to its fullest. I am referring to the internet. We keep touting ourselves as "being connected"; we really are not, but can we become more connected? We are effective in Tweeting for a flash mob to occur in central station at time X, but why is it that we cannot issue an Amber alert of a missing child by the same means?; most of us now use mobile devices more than ever. Perhaps, because incidents like the NBC Twitter account being hacked and posting a bogus tweet on 9/11, just doesn't instill a lot of confidence in such a system. Nonetheless, it seems silly to me that we have to issue an Amber alert on highways for maximum exposure when we have the internet and mobile devices.

I'm really talking about our inter-connectivity and maximizing it to its full potential. Forums come close to making my point. For example, when was the last time you searched for a medical condition using Google. You often have to filter through a lot of pages to get the answer that you are looking for. The problem with forums is that the anonymity of the internet doesn't really afford the luxury of trusting Dr. Quack on the other side of the post. Wouldn't it be nice to just get more than a 2nd medical opinion? What about 1000 or 10000 medical opinions in a forum-like setting? It is unlikely in the current infrastructure because 1) we cannot verify whether the people posting are indeed professionals, 2) legal and liability issues, 3) compensation? (just listing it here because it's inevitable that people might want to be $ for their advice). Disregarding #1 and #3 for the moment, we could negate #2 if we could get an aggregate graph or pie chart of the responses. For example, "My son has this disease and he exhibits x, y, z, symptoms. What could it be?" Imagine how much more confident the parent would feel if he/she had an aggregate result of 80% respondents said disease x and 10% said disease y - from 1000 or 10000 medical professionals. Too far fetch of an idea? Perhaps, if we had a private and secure network along side the current internet, I can see it working. Social media forums, like FB, could take this on. Unfortunately, they exist as part of the current fabric of the internet and, by default, anonymity is rampant, and users in this forum I described would be less likely to submit their professional information to be stored in a server ‘out there’ with the risk of it being misused. Mistrust is the underlying issue; remember, the internet was built for 'trusted' parties - that is a rare commodity in this commercialized internet.

Forums (of all shapes and sizes) from legitimate people/professionals existing in this so-called private network could take on a whole new life of their own; and if you still want to post things anonymously, just go back to the old internet. But imagine the power of the 'many' -it clearly outweighs the 'few' and we aren’t really maximizing it; the internet has become a dumping ground for data...

Be my guest on taking on this idea, otherwise, we could use more apps =)