A link to an idea by [21Quest] on a current idea led me to a comment I made way back when.
I don't believe anybody's yet taken me up on the suggestion (Hah! Just wait, I'll be shown wrong by somebody!) so I'm going to post this brief description of the concept.
Before you post and boast about a "new" Halfbakery idea, you write a summary of the concept.
You share that summary with a software tool which cross-references your idea with a database of commonly known science fiction / speculative fiction storylines and the summaries of the best-known writers works.
The tool returns either a finding of "I don't know, doesn't look like it's been done before to me" or a "Are you kidding? Have you been reading Samuel Delaney, Stars in my Pockets Like Grains of Sand"-- normzone, Nov 30 2011 Been there, don't do that Been_20There_2c_20Don_27t_20Do_20That [theircompetitor, Nov 30 2011] + No search engine however smart, and no algorithm however deep, will ever be able to exceed the findings of a single halfbaker determined to prove there's no way it can work and besides its been baked. Twice.
And both by Chuck Noris, the first in the 1920's the second, just last week (but patented a month ago).-- pashute, Sep 01 2014 / a database of commonly known science fiction / speculative fiction storylines/
The idea here being this database?
Maybe the database could be set up wiki style, counting on enthusiasts to contribute ideas by their favorite authors, and battle one another surlyly over issues of precedence and true originality.-- bungston, Sep 02 2014 I'd forgotten about this one. So did everybody else, apparently, since it dropped like a stone with no annos back in '11, and only now was revived by [pashute]'s curiosity.
[bungston], the idea is the database coupled with the intelligent search agent, which agent might put this in the realm of magic. I'm not sure that a search tool could adequately recognize some uses of baked or preheated ideas.-- normzone, Sep 02 2014 The database is called "The Internet" … just a hashing of IMDB, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc.
The search tool just involves feeding the right keywords into Google.
Easy enough to jot down all the keywords from the idea, the write a script to send them to a browser singly and then in combinations; cpature the first 100 results from each search, then rank them.-- 8th of 7, Sep 02 2014 Yes, and it works so well that all of the ideas posted here are original.-- normzone, Sep 02 2014 Just a database of science fiction inventions is an excellent idea.-- 4and20, Sep 05 2014 ^ !!!-- FlyingToaster, Sep 05 2014 Deja vu: I was going to give this idea a bun just now, but found out that I already did. Then I found out that I am the first on the list of annotations, (starting 3 years after the idea was posted)-- pashute, Oct 13 2015 Hey, this idea is trying to take a nap - you kids quit bothering it !-- normzone, Oct 14 2015 Been here, [+] that.-- absterge, Oct 21 2015 random, halfbakery