Ideas
Topic: The Invention Corner
A couple of ideas I had that I'd like to see implemented; one for simple home use, one with sweeping applications.

The first addresses a problem about which I've heard many people complain. They're upset because when they pour butter on their home-made popcorn, it makes some kernels soggy, others don't get any butter. Buttering popcorn requires a technique that not everyone can grasp, apparently.

Enter the Spidorcorp Popcorn Butterer. It's basically a water mister, like you use for your plants, or to discipline your cat. However, it's made of ceramic coated metal, including the inner tube. The reservoir is heated by an electrical, rechargeable battery powered heating element set in the base, and gets just hot enough to keep the butter melted, but not scorch it. All you have to do is spritz the butter on the popcorn, mixing the popcorn as you do so, until you've got it buttered evenly. It's also useful for buttering fry pans for cooking, or buttering corn-on-the-cob, or just about any situation in which you feel a need to spritz warm, oily substances.

The other invention started as a thought on how to make a tattoo better. A method of making a tattoo that you could change quickly and easily, allowing you to have a different tattoo, change the name of the ex-girlfriend to the incumbent, or completely remove prior to that big job interview with the Accounting Dept.

So, I looked to squids. Squids have cells called chromatophores, which they can make larger or smaller. They have them in a variety of colors. When they want to look red, they contract all the colors that aren't red, and expand the ones that are. Likewise if they want to look blue. And they can do so in a pattern as well.
So the tattoo could be made of a chromatophore emulating sub-dermal layer, connected to a small data port placed in an out-of-sight place on the skin. You can connect it to the controller console, which would have a variety of images that you could change in about 30 seconds' time.
Other applications? What if you had paint or cloth that had the same ability? Change your house, room, or car color by turning a dial. Someone at the party wearing the same dress? Well, now yours is a different color, even plaid or pin-striped. Military applications range from hiding soldiers to hiding tanks. It doesn't stop there. Imagine if the sides of trucks became animated, moving bill-boards. If the resolution could be made tight and responsive enough, televisions and computer monitors could be placed on a thin sheet, or your entire wall could be the screen.

I'd like to develop these ideas further into the physical world, but I'm more of an idea person, meaning I can't afford the patents or the research or the prototype.