4 Online services that are desperately needed in real life

Sometimes we go about our daily business online, blissfully oblivious to the many services that make our lives easier. Services that make us realise that there are many aspects of our real lives that we don’t have similar innovations to help us with. Here are a few of the things that we take for granted online and that would really enrich our lives offline. Inventors of technology, I hope you’re reading this. We need all of the ideas below implemented as soon as possible. The world is depending on you. Make it happen!

1. Real Life Reputation Management
Online Reputation Management helps big brands avoid making mistakes online, the kind of online behaviour that makes them look bad. Unfortunately, there is no-one to stop individuals from ruining their reputation in real life.

What I’m looking for is someone who can follow me around when I’m drunk and stop me from doing anything that makes me look bad. Which happens to be almost everything I typically do when I’m drunk.

The person would also have to track any time someone else makes any comments about me, and tell me if the comments are positive, negative or neutral. Contact me on Twitter if you’re interested in applying.

2. Crowded Bar Optimization
Search Engine Optimization helps your website come up first on Google. There are so many websites that offer the same service as yours, and only through proper SEO can yours rise to the top and come up first. Or at least on the first page, for as the often quoted bit of online wisdom goes “the best place to hide a dead body is on page 2 of Google”. For single people, standing around at a bar, looking sexy and waiting to be noticed by the opposite sex can be challenging.

The question is, how can you stand out in the crowd? Crowed Bar Optimization allows you to stand out at and get picked first at the bar. Those standing at the bar will be lined up according to who has the best CBO, and those looking for someone to chat up will start at the front of the queue, working their way down.

3. Follow the Leader
Having followers on Twitter is all well and good, but all it takes is one mouse click to follow someone online. It’s too easy, and my fragile ego wants more. What I’m looking for is the same amount of people who follow me on Twitter to follow me around at all times in real life, thereby enabling to feel like a cult leader or A-List Hollywood celebrity.

Then, every time I say something witty, I want several of my followers to repeat it out loud, while literally laughing out loud, rolling on the floor laughing or laughing and crying simultaneously. Or, if they’re not feeling up to it, they can simply stick a gold star onto my forehead.

4. Real life spam filters
Email spam is a problem we’ve all encountered, but with the right spam filters in place it’s possible for you not to have to deal with constant adverts for things you don’t need, notifications that you’ve won gazillion willion pounds in the UK lottery or the emails telling you where you can get cheap, generic alternatives to Viagra that you start getting after logging into too many dodgy porn sites (or maybe it’s just me).

The problem is that there is no way of filtering the real life equivalent of spam. Real life spam is a problem, whether it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses arriving at your front door, those people in malls who try to sell you Dead Sea skin products or the people at intersections who try to convince you that in the middle of a busy road during rush hour is the perfect place to do some relaxing shopping. Imagine if just by marking these people as spam they were no longer able to communicate with you. And there would be nothing stopping you from marking your mother in law or the next-door neighbour’s crying baby as spam either.

Real life spam filters wouldn’t make these people go away, but they would render them completely invisible, so you can go about your day in peace and quiet.