« Road Body Count | Main | MyStreetParty »

Moziah

FROM: Tony Ageh

What NEED does this meet?
People lose instruction books and maintenance materials. Whenever you move into a new home you inherit sytems and machinery without the manuals. Moziah (so called because its an E-MANUAL!) will be a universal database of manuals for every electronic device ever made. Users will be able to access at low or no cost as well as upload in order to allow others to share. Manufacturers will be able to reduce the cost of producing or replacing manuals and most importantly obsolete-but-still-functional machines can be put back into use rather than be scrapped, saving money and precious resources.

What is the APPROACH?
Dunno. I guess we contact hardware manufacturers to kick-start the database and pay £5 for every ORIGINAL manual we recieve until we have 1,000 (£5,000) at this point we have something approaching critical mass. Then we charge £1 or one new manual per download to users as well as having a second trawl around the manufacturers. Will require some form of security or identity tagging to stop theives making use of the system to operate goods stolen without instructions for use etc.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
Reusable devises, repaired rather than replaced. Hours saved, mistakes avoided. A great boon to professionals called out to repair or service old and obsolete boilers, cars, typewriters, computers, printers, toilet cisterns, dishwashers and stairlifts.

What is the COMPETITION?
Olde worlde printed manuals + photocopier + postman. Will solve the problem of out of print or very difficult to find manuals.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
The most expensive part is the compilation and digitising of the manuals themselves. I don\'t know how much the second part of that would cost!

October 30, 2003 in Empowering Consumers, Static Information Site | Permalink

Comments

This sounds like a good idea, if only people would repair and re-use rather than throw away. I have heard of an online manual site already though. I couldn't find the one I was thinking of which has pdf's of manuals available online. but did find this to add to the competition.

http://www.livemanuals.com

Posted by: Dave at Oct 30, 2003 11:59:47 AM

I went to that livemanuals.com site and tried to actually see their manuals. I got this

"your Netscape 6 browser is not yet supported by our LivePlayer".

Can I make a suggestion that, if this project takes off, choose a format that is more or less universally accessible? Scan them all into pdf or something. At least that supports non-IE.

Posted by: Larry at Oct 30, 2003 9:01:28 PM

The name Moziah is a copywritten and a registered trademark of Moziah LLC, of NYC.

Please cease and decist all use of this name. Thank you.

Posted by: Moziah at Jan 25, 2004 3:13:37 PM

Sorry. Consider it ceased.

Posted by: Tony Ageh at Jan 29, 2004 5:35:06 PM

http://www.scharfesex.com/

Posted by: poppen at Aug 31, 2008 12:06:26 PM