Free Business Ideas

Entrepreneurs always need more—more help, more time, more insight. So we asked: What's the one product you wish someone would create to help your business? Now maybe someone will make it.

1 ASSISTANT UPGRADE

"I'm going to call it 'Siri for business'. Imagine if there were an app that would let you ask for business advice 24 hours a day, for free.Having a digital mentor at your fingertips to evaluate multiple situations and consolidate everything into one perfect answer would be a dream. You could ask anything, from scaling advice to HR recommendations and beyond."

Lana Hansen, chief growth officer, Ban.do

2 HAPPINESS TRACKER

"Are people happy? Satisfied with their work? As leaders, we manage by walking around, launch surveys, and look to our HR team for some measure of employee morale, but I wish we had a better sense of spirits in real time. The Smart Empathy App, as I'd call it, would give an instant read on how people are feeling.If we detected a problem, we would be able to respond more quickly."

Harry West, CEO, Frog

3 SOCIAL GROUPS

"Instagram are so large now, the social media message—delivery system is inundated with content. I want to inspire people visually, in an industry—focused way. On Instagram, you can follow a hashtag, but people can post anything, whether it's related or not. We need a new social platform with image recognition technology to group content in a meaningful way.

Christiane Lemieux, founder and CEO, The Inside

Small Wonders

ITEM: Accelerometer

INVENTED: 18th Century

USE: Sensing Movement

Developed in the 18th century by English physicist George Atwood, the first accelerometer— a device to measure acceleration— was taller than a full—grown man. Today's micro electromechanical sensors are as small as 3 mm square by 0.9 mm thick. When movement flips an electrode forward, it completes a circuit, indicating a change in acceleration force or direction. These tiny measurers of movement help ensure images on our phones and tablets stay upright, keep planes on course and missiles on target, and, in a lifesaving moment, signal airbags to inflate when cars crash. According to federal highway safety figures, this function had saved, when last counted, an estimated 44, 866 lives in the U.S. alone between 1980 and 2015.

ITEM: Eyeglasses Screw (螺丝)

INVENTED: 20th Century

USE: Joining Hinges

London optician Edward Scarlett was among the first to advertise temple arms for eyeglasses around 1730. Later appendages featured a door—like hinge that lets users fold their specs for travel. The first models used metal posts to attach frames to arms. But, as the refinement of industrial threading machines like lathes continued into the 20th century, tiny stainless—steel screws took that job. Over time, the fit has become standardized: Most frames now require fasteners with a shaft diameter of 1.4 mm, while some thin wire frames use ones as small as 1.2 mm. Consider that two-thirds of American adults—about 159 million people— wear prescription glasses. That's a lot of screws that could go loose. Fortunately, you can find a repair kit at nearly any drugstore.

ITEM: Mesh

INVENTED: 25,000 B.C.

USE: Stopping bugs

Weaving dates back to some 27,000 years ago, preceding the domestication of plants and animals and farming. Hungry humans may have used nets to get their preys. Since then, mesh has played an essential part in our comfort and survival. One of its most prominent current tools is the mosquito net, a protective covering in some countries. Thanks to machines that churn out cotton, polyester, polypropylene, and nylon weaves as fine as 0.6 mm, the air—permeable shields are a key tool in preventing the spread of malaria and other bug—borne illnesses. Insecticide— treated skeeter—stoppers helped prevent more than 600 million cases of malaria and saved 6.8 million lives between 2000 and 2015.

Arming your home with smart tech is a great idea for added security, saving energy and making your house feel, well, more homely. But we're glad to see a1in the range of connected cleaning products designed to take the stress out of housework, as this gives you time to put your feet up.

Robot vacuum cleaners have been2for a while now, but they've come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. Many of the major robot brands have3their robots with great cleaning skills to make them effective ,hard—working household companions that don't4furniture.

The Neato D7 Botvac D7 Connected is one of our favourite robot vacuums, thanks to its laser technology system used to scan,5and clean your whole home. As it is6via an app on your phone, you can also tell the Botvac D7 to give certain areas a more thorough clean, or to avoid areas7.

iRobot creates a great range of smart cleaning robots too,8the Roomba980, which has an easy—to—use app for scheduling cleans. It's also a great vacuum for giving carpets a deep clean, for9up pet hair, and for cleaning hard floors.

iRobot also has the Braava 390t, a floor—mopping robot that's specially10to clean hard floors, both dry or damp. It's capable of tracking where it's been and where it needs to go and once cleaning is finished, it returns to where it started and powers11automatically. Its cleaning pad is12continually during the cleaning process.

Smart cleaning tech isn't just13in vacuums, either. There are a number of14that provide automated cleans. This includes the Emperor of Gadgets Toilet Sanitizer, which starts a six—minute cleaning15every time you close your toilet lid.

Smart Security

Smart home tech isn't just about making your home more comfortable or the lighting. There are plenty of connected devices that add an extra level of security to your house, helping you feel safer, year—round.

Among them,sensors are perhaps the easiest of these to get started with. They're simple to install and enhance the security of anywindows and doors. Elsewhere, indoor and outdoor cameras keep entrances and gardens safer, enabling you to view what's going on, day or night. Smart doorlocks and video doorbells ensure security further by keeping tabs on who's at your door, and who can gain and when.

You might already own smart devices that could double as security tech. For example, you could program a detector to tell your smart lights to switch on if movement is . Just by getting your various devices talking to one another, you can create a rathersmart security system that is controllable from your phone.

And intelligent security cameras have been a popular choice. The following are some clever home cameras, which will keep a very watch for unwanted visitors.

NEST CAM IQ

This small indoor security camera from Nest packs a punch with an 8MP 4K camera sensor and 12x digital zoom. With its Nest Awaretechnologyfamiliar faces, there'll be no false alarms. It has Google Assistant baked in as well as a very speaker to scare off intruders.

NEST CAM IQ OUTDOOR

Both weatherproof and indestructible, Nest's outdoor security cam records video up to 1080p and takes snapshots throughout the day. The Cam IQ can  people from up to 15 meters away and alert you with a photo.

He Created an Eye—Saving App

Like almost every set of new parents, Bryan and Elizabeth Shaw started taking pictures of their son, Noah, practically from the moment he was born. When he was about three months old, Elizabeth noticed something strange when she took his picture. The flash on their digital camera created the typical red dot in the center of Noah's left eye, but the right eye had a white spot at the center, almost the flash was being reflected back at the camera by something. When Elizabeth mentioned the strange phenomenon to their doctor, she shined a light Noah's eye, saw the same white reflection and immediately sent the family to a specialist. A white reflection instead of a red one is a sign of cancer, and that is exactly Noah had. After months of treatment, doctors ultimately told the couple that if Noah had been sent to doctor earlier, they  (can save) his eye.

Retinoblastoma, the scientific name of Noah's disease, is treatable if (catch) early. Bryan Shaw couldn't help but wonder whether there were signs he (miss). He went back over every baby picture of Noah he could find—thousands of them— and discovered the first white spot in a photo (take) when Noah was 12 days old. As time went on, it appeared  (frequently). "By the time he was four months old, it was showing up in 25 percent of the pictures taken of him per month," Bryan, a professor at Baylor University in Texas, said.

It was too late for Noah's eye, but Bryan was determined to put his hard—won insights to good use. He worked with colleagues in Baylor s computer science department to develop a smartphone app that can scan the photos in the user's camera roll to search for white eye. Called White Eye Detector, it is now available for free. "I just kept telling that I really need to do this, "Bryan said." This disease is tough to detect.can this software save vision, but it can

save lives."