Got An Idea to Help the World? Here's $10 Million!

We bet plenty of SCUPers have ideas that would do well in what is essentially a design contest:

Got an idea that could change the world, or at least help a lot of people? Google wants to hear from you -- and it will pay as much as $10 million to make your idea a reality.

Google Inc. will award $10 million to solicit ideas it believes could benefit the world.

To help celebrate its 10th birthday, the ambitious Internet giant is launching an initiative to solicit, and bankroll, fresh ideas that it believes could have broad and beneficial impact on people's lives.

Called Project 10^100 (pronounced "10 to the 100th"), Google's initiative will seek input from the public and a panel of judges in choosing up to five winning ideas, to be announced in February.

Google announced the project live on CNN on Wednesday morning.

"These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple -- but they need to have impact," Google said in a news release. "We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition."

Those are ideas such as the Hippo Water Roller, which Google cited as the kind of concept the company would be interested in rewarding. Developed in Africa, where it is most used, the Hippo Water Roller is a barrel-shaped container, attached to a handle, that holds 24 gallons of water and can be rolled with little effort like a wheelbarrow, making it easier for villagers on foot to transport critically needed fresh water to their homes.

The Back-of-the-Envelope Bush Library Design Contest

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, with a deadline for entries of February 1, 2008: "George W. Bush might not have been much of a book reader when he was at Yale University, but like any modern president, he will have a presidential library—likely at Southern Methodist University. Robert A.M. Stern, celebrity architect and dean of the Yale School of Architecture, has been picked to design it. But we are certain that Chronicle readers have their own ideas of what the George W. Bush Presidential Library should look like. We're asking for your back-of-the-envelope designs, as if you'd sat down next to the president and sketched out your idea on a scrap piece of White House stationery. We want designs that are serious, humorous, adventurous, or all of the above. You could win a sleek iPod Touch."