I had an idea for a new startup website yesterday which I thought I would share here. I've got to many projects lined up to do it myself, so maybe the idea can be of use to someone else.

Satellite images of the earth at night can convey a lot more information than one would expect. The light that radiates from built-up urban areas can show more than just the expansion of city lights, it can also indicate economic expansion, infrastructure build-out, and energy consumption around the world. This light information could be used as a good proxy for information not readily available from around the world.

The idea is to build a website that would mashup night time satellite images with other information. Perhaps a multinational company could overlay their sales revenue data on a world-wide view of the globe. They could then analyse and see which markets they are underserving or missing completely. Light intensity increases in certain developing countries or cities could indicate economic expansion that they should be addressing.

Of course the real power of a mash-up like this would be if the website could automatically interpret the annual change in light intensity and then relate this back to the information that it's being mashed up with.

Other applications could be environmental organizations looking to track urban expansion, energy companies looking to track growing energy demands, or perhaps commodities traders looking for another piece of information around future inventory levels. I think the applications are endless.

So, hope some clever person out there builds it. If you do, drop me a message and let me know about.