We like to display flags on our front porch that reflect the season or a special occasion. I was trying to think of what flag would be appropriate right now and then it hit me: a drought flag! Imagine a nice applique flag with a burning sun on top, a bleached-white steer skull in the foreground and a dry cracked lakebed in the background. Maybe a withered cactus or two, for effect.

Is it any wonder that I’m destined to be a millionaire?

Wouldn’t it be great if the next time you were stuck in a highway traffic jam, the highway patrol came out and announced:

“We’re sorry, ladies and gentlemen. We’re overbooked: we just have too many travelers on our road today. We’re now looking for volunteers to give up their space and travel first thing in the morning. You’ll get a $200 trip voucher and a complimentary stay in a local hotel.”

Yeah, that’d be great.

People are rarely outside of walking distance to their cars.

A watched inbox never boils.

Unemployment: It’s like working from home, but without the work!

Once again we’re faced with a pile of paper receipts from our purchases, and once again we’re facing tedious and error-prone data entry as we reconcile our checkbook.

It’s 2007. Why are we still dealing in paper receipts? Mechanical cash registers are so 1870s. Computerized ones have taken their place. Why not take advantage of these computers?

A digital receipt could be provided on a customer’s USB flash drive. Or it could go on their smartchip-enabled “customer appreciation card.” The customer would take home a full, digital inventory of their purchases which could be direcly imported into their favorite checkbook application. No more poring over receipts at the end of the month, trying to figure out what’s what.

The receipts also be fed into a shopping list application, providing an easy way of keeping track of your fridge’s contents and when you’re likely to need more.

Coupons could be copied to the drive as well and redeemed the same way.

You’d never again have to wait in line while the cashier fumbled with a new roll of paper for the printer. You’d never wait for the impossibly-long paper receipt to print something you’re likely to throw away anyway.

What’s better, the digital receipt could be cryptographically signed by the store, verifying that the purchases were legitimate. In this way, these receipts would be even more secure than the paper ones, which are more susceptible to forgery.

It wouldn’t take much to make this happen. Any system would have to be backwards-compatible with existing systems (at least, to begin with). This means a terminal would have a serial or parallel port in addition to a USB port (or smartcard reader). If some modern registers use USB printers, that makes things even easier. The terminal app would take the output from the register, sign it, and copy it to the USB drive, perhaps in a CSV, XML, or some other open format. The register would never know it didn’t print to paper.

Who knows? Someday USB drives or smartcards may one day take the place of credit cards entirely. Anything would be more secure than a flimsy piece of plastic with no inherent security features.

I think I’ll take a closer look at registers in the next few days and figure out how this might work.

Doc tipped me off about checkbox news, Dave Winer’s dream of being able to fine-tune the news that gets delivered to him. Checkbox news lets you tailor the stories you are presented according to your likes, and perhaps more importantly, your dislikes.

I find it interesting that this isn’t already being done. Its the future of broadcasting, or to be more precise – its proof there is no future for broadcasting. The idea that everyone will be watching the same thing was mortally wounded with the invention of the Tivo and this idea may finish it off.

I see “checkbox news” taking shape as a Tivo-like set-top box collecting snippets of news. The typical network news show consists of multiple stories lasting around 60 to 90 seconds, with plenty of commercial padding. You’ll soon be able to pick which stories you want to follow, perhaps even mixing in another network’s coverage of a particular story if you like their angle better.

Overnight, the media is freed from the iron grip of so few companies. Networks no longer matter. Anchors no longer matter. News is broken up into the essential element:the story. A news session can be assembled any way the viewer wishes, with stories selected in the same way newspaper editors select wire stories to mix with their locally-produced news. The idea of a television “consumer,” one who takes only what is given, goes the way of black and white TV. Individual stories compete for viewers in an online marketplace: the free market at its best.

News would be judged on the basis of the stories alone. In the same manner that the World Wide Web acts as a great equalizer for anyone with something to say, checkbox news could provide the platform for anyone willing to provide a report. Offer more compelling reporting, and you as an independent journalist could speak to millions. Anyone with a story could have an equal shot of getting heard.

Sites like YouTube specialize in short video clips. Tools like bittorrent can distribute news clips. Konspire is like BitTorrent with a remote control – designed for customized IPTV channels that anyone can create. Its dormant now but still offers as much promise as when I wrote about it earlier. Maybe even more.

All one needs is to create the story marketplace – the economic engine for this whole scheme – and news will never be the same. Ah, to have access to a few million bucks right now…