An OkCupid engineer read Ticketmaster's queue data and built a place-in-line extension
During the Eras Tour presale, Ruben Martinez Jr. found exact queue numbers in browser dev tools and shipped a Chrome extension in 40 minutes.
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300 RECENT CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDSnap shut its 99-cent Lens Store after two months and made Lenses free to sell ads on them
Selling Lenses at 99 cents added friction to self-expression; once Snap made them free, users made more Snaps, and advertisers paid for Sponsored Lenses.
Read the caseSharrow tested quiet drone blades in water and found tipless propellers cut cavitation
Greg Sharrow, chasing a quiet drone, prototyped tipless blades in water because it was cheaper, and discovered they sharply reduced cavitation.
Read the caseSeishoku pressed off-spec dyed fabric into NUNOUS, a new stone-like material
Japan's 1880-founded dyer pressed flawed fabric between biopolymer film so the colours became the material's selling point.
Read the caseSchiphol plowed 150 ridges into a park to bounce plane noise back up into the sky
After noticing fields got quieter once plowed, Schiphol had a landscape artist shape ridges spaced to deflect low-frequency noise skyward.
Read the casePrato de Rua used a sticker to turn Rio dumpsters into leftover-food handoff points
Brazil's Makers Society put stickers on Rio dumpsters inviting people to hang leftovers beside them, sparing scavengers the dig.
Read the casePenn put a doctor at the front of its ER so triage happens during the first exam
Before opening its $1.6 billion Pavilion, Penn reversed ER flow: a doctor sees each arrival while triage runs, freeing exam rooms for about three more hours.
Read the casePax's Session Control app cuts off the Era vape once a set quota is reached
Vaping has no throat burn to tell users to stop, so Pax let them set a quota in the app and cut off vapor for 30 seconds once reached.
Read the caseOpenreach found a village's 7am DSL outage by walking it at 6am with a spectrum analyzer
After replacing cables failed, Openreach engineers traced 18 months of daily outages in Aberhosan to one resident's old TV.
Read the caseNYC's Blue Highways moves parcels by passenger ferry and cargo bike, not truck
New York's Blue Highways pilot moves up to 800 parcels a day from Brooklyn to Manhattan by ferry and cargo bike, not truck.
Read the caseFlorida Keys scientists shaded corals with shade-cloth umbrellas that cut light by 60%
A Nova Southeastern University test floated farm shade cloths above corals to cut light stress during record heat, and they lost less color.
Read the caseNorthumbrian Water put a spiked 'Barbarian' in sewers to catch wipes and trace flushers
A spiky metal sewer tool snags wet wipes in fast-flowing pipes so the utility can pinpoint which households flush them.
Read the caseA Milwaukee NICU renamed babies on wristbands and cut wrong-patient orders 36%
Swapping 'Babygirl Jackson' for 'Wendysgirl Jackson' made newborns easier to tell apart, at the cost of retyping a label.
Read the caseNetflix bought Disney and Sony streaming rights from Starz instead of from the studios
A contractual loophole let Netflix get Disney and Sony films from Starz for about $30 million a year; by 2012 Disney's content cost an estimated $300 million.
Read the caseLink trialled no-purchase cashback so corner shops could stand in for closed ATMs
UK cash-machine network Link let small shops hand out cash against a card for no purchase, giving towns without banks free access to cash.
Read the caseLesotho trial: lottery tickets for staying STI-free cut HIV infections 21.4%
Volunteers who tested negative for curable infections got a lottery ticket instead of a small stipend, and HIV infections fell 21.4% over two years.
Read the caseKroll Ontrack turned a Lego bulldozer kit into a tape cleaner to win a $600,000 job
Short of staff to hand-clean 5,200 damaged tapes, an engineer turned a Lego kit's motor into a tape cleaner, and the job brought in over $600,000.
Read the caseKing's Mill's Fit2Sit seats some A&E patients in chairs, cutting waits 40 minutes
A staff idea funded by a Dragon's Den pitch set aside a 19-person chair room so assessed patients stop filling the majors area.
Read the caseKadeya's vending machine hides a one-bottle-shape dishwasher so bottles refill in place
Kadeya's machine sells water in reusable glass bottles, takes the empty back, and washes it in a dishwasher built for one bottle shape.
Read the caseIKEA's wedge dowel swaps screws for a threaded peg that snaps into a milled slot
A threaded dowel that snaps into a milled slot let IKEA build sturdier furniture that, by its own estimate, assembles in 50% to 80% less time.
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