I have two problems with chocolate bars:

• They are irresistible and I end up eating lots of them, which makes me gain extra weight.
• Despite all the efforts of manufacturers, the packaging has never been user friendly enough for me: I have no control over unwrapping process and often the bar just falls out of it before I start eating.

I think that solving the second problem could also help solve both of them!

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ZIP and RAR are two most popular archive formats on the Windows side of the planet. They are used to compress data like word documents and excel tables to take much less space.

This, in turn, is useful for generating efficient backups and sending one-year Microsoft financial reports by email.

People who are not very familiar with computers can understand the idea behind data compression rather easily. What I found almost impossible to explain to such people is why a file compressed by one archiver can be further compressed by another archiver.

Here is an idea how to illustrate the process of double compression.

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There is nothing better than a cold drink on a hot summer day. Out of the fridge, nice little bottle of water or a fizzy beverage… can be very hard to open!

Indeed, if you hands are sweaty and the bottle is cold enough, there is not enough friction between fingers and the lid to open the bottle. Especially true for small kids and my wife!

Here is how this problem could be easily solved.

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If you are a driver, you possibly agree that all pedestrians are slow, stupid and usually have no idea what they are doing. Imagine a pedestrian who just left a supermarket with five bags of stuff and trying to cross a road at about 6.30 pm.

This pedestrian is twice as slow (five bags of stuff, remember?) and stupid (after a long day at work) than usual. Therefore he is more dangerous and should be easier to spot to make up for it.

Here is an idea how to make this happen.

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Ever wondered why your proposal always ends up at the bottom of the pile on your boss’ desk? Here is an idea how to make your paper documents stand up from the crowd with minimum investment.

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I often use browser bookmarks to store my search results for a project, like a list of vacuum equipment manufacturers. It is very useful when I need to come back to it in a couple of month: with one click I have all the information I need.

The problem is, web pages are often updated, moved or deleted. I am always worried if I can trust my lists which were made a while ago.

It would be nice for my browser could help me out with this problem.

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Boys will always be boys and when it comes to radio controlled (RC) cars or boats it is never enough. Having quite a number of RC toys (and a remote for each one of them) myself I often find matching the remote with the car difficult. Oh how I wish I had one remote for all of them!

And then it struck me that we all have a universal remote in our pocket!

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French fried potatoes (or “chips” in UK) is a popular snack available anywhere. Often served in a small paper or plastic bag, which is held in one hand whilst eating with the other.

How clean are our hands:

• before reaching for a pack of french fries and
• after we finished eating?

Here is simple solution on how to have clean hands after having a pack of french fired potatoes.

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We all know KIA motors, Korean motor company, and Finnish mobile company NOKIA. I couldn’t help but notice that the latter reads like “no KIA” and makes it sound like an anti-global warming campaign, especially when both KIA and NOKIA ads appear in a magazine or a website next to each other.

It got me thinking and here is how this unfortunate coincidence can be turned into a new ad.

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Wikipedia defines a smiley as a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form. They’ve flooded forums and personal messengers and one can’t imagine a conversation without a these days.

Confectionery industry used the idea of putting all sort of symbols, including smileys, on sweets long time ago. However, there is still room for improvement!

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