I have been using the Internet a long time now, and working on it for a living since 1995, so there are few things that I am surprised no one has done yet. I am sure this is not going to be an earth shaking list, and you might find it tedious, but here it is.

Idea Number One: User Tagging

Every now and then I catch myself wondering why we don’t have some very simple tags that we can use ourself when reading a site. For instance, when I am reading an article on Slashdot I might find a bit of information that would make my life better somehow, and want to keep it, right? But bookmarks are messy, and even sites that allow me to bookmark pages or share them are sometimes tedious; so my idea is this: build in a tagging mechanism in to the browser and let me highlight or otherwise mark pages or parts of sites and then tag them and store that information, both, in my browser and also in a site for portability. I envision selecting a couple of paragraphs and then tagging it as ‘something’ and then all of the ‘something’ tags would be grouped together in my browser and available on the site that holds all of that for me. Almost like taking notes, but more fluid, more… hypertext.

Idea Number Two: Arrow Key Navigation

If you take a moment and look down at your keyboard, I bet you have four arrow keys. (OK, I am assuming you are on a laptop or desktop, I know, but odds are with me here.) If this page you are reading now was coded with a simple mechanism to move to the next logical page, and also to move to the last logical page or section, then you could use the right and left arrow keys in a logical manner for navigation.

‘But wait’ you say, ‘most pages don’t have a last or next page to move to.’ OK, true, a lot of pages are really stand-alone data here on this information highway, but even they deserve good navigation right? Every page on a news site could be coded to move to the latest news in a particular category. Every article on Wikipedia could have a logical ‘next’ and ‘last’ even if was only the last editor setting that information. Surely web applications could take full advantage of this technology though. How many times have you been on your bank’s website looking at your checking account and wished you could just hit the right arrow key to move to the next check or transaction? Oh, you haven’t? Well, I wish it.

Idea Number Three: Browsers That Help Me

I love web browsers. I do, really. I use a lot of them too; Ie7, Firefox, Safari, Opera and even Lynx. But one addition I would like to see is this. When I am on a site, say, TechnologyStory.com, I wish the search tool that all of the browsers now have on the top right of the application would also search the search engines within that particular site. All of the major search engines allow you to focus your search down to the site level, which is great, but not everyone knows how to do this. So, take the mystery away from the masses, just provide a nice pulldown menu to search this site from Google or Ask or what ever you like.

Idea Number Four: Upgrade My Television

It is 2008 and most of us have digital television in the home. That means that there is bandwidth out there just begging to be gobbled up by some kind of data that could make your life better, or at least give you more information than you can handle. So try this one: I want my T.V. to have information that the Internet has already, just make it available on the screen. I was watching a movie a bit ago and I wondered what else an actor had done. I grabbed the laptop and hit IMDB and had my information in a couple of seconds. Now if that had been available on the T.V. screen with the click of a button on my remote, well then, angelic choirs would have sung and clouds would have let the sun shine through.

Maybe the whole angelic choir thing is a bit much, but still… try these scenarios:

• Watching CNN and you see another debate. Perhaps the television just opens up a browser on my laptop and starts to feed in pertinent data streams about the issue that the candidates are talking about. That is doable.
• Watching Nature and the browser window is showing maps to coincide with the episode or building a list of pages that expound upon the subject matter. Again, doable.
• This is my favorite. Watching reruns of Logan’s Run and I wonder if any other movie or book has the same theme, so I click that same button from earlier to explore a dataset that is preloaded to only encompass information about Logan’s Run. Doable.

By the way, this whole T.V. idea here, it is a money maker, and it is mine. I am calling my patent attorney right now.

Matt