5 ms·
Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
I'm looking to solve a problem that is really bugging you/your business. Really bugging you in the sense that you'd be comfortable paying for it.
- roel_v 17y agoHow ebooks that are distributed in pdf are so hard to read on small screens, and the lack of properly working pdf->reflowable format (epub) tools. This is a hard problem and I'd pay for a 80% solution. It would have to recognize and properly fix/insert chapter titles, initial caps, tables of content, other leader/footer material, ... It would have to properly insert images in a sensible spot yet remove background images. Also it needs to properly recognize and format paragraphs. Columns would be nice but those are in the 20% I can live without.
- benwerd 17y agoFunnily enough, I was going to talk about ePub as well. A lot is now resting on it, but the format is in desperate need of an overhaul. I'm running a BarCamp in London next month and hoping to get both geeks and publishers along to discuss the issues.
- gizmo 17y agoI agree it's annoying, and I agree it's a hard problem... but I don't think there's any money in solving it. The target audience is HN readers... and we still make for bad consumers.
- keefe 17y agoThis task is on my TODO list. Why does http://calibre-ebook.com/ http://calibre-ebook.com/ fail?
- roel_v 17y agoBecause it is basically a glorified frontend (as far as pdf to other formats conversion is concerned) for pdftohtml. It treats every line as a paragraph, can't intelligently decide on what is a chapter heading etc. The problem I'm describing is AI hard, it can't be done be some rule based matching. I know that Calibre has some regex based rules for finding chapters etc. but that is way too hard and only solves part of the problem, besides many book don't use the 'Chapter 1: xxx' format anyway.
- keefe 17y agoWe may have different goals in mind... I have a bunch of PDFs I need to get to my sony reader, for example academic papers. I want them to look basically OK, which I don't "think" is an AI hard problem. Detecting any text that represents a chapter certainly is... but I'm OK with writing regex to get my data out. I'll be posting in the mobileread forums about this at some point in the coming weeks if you're interested in whatever solution I hack out.
- roel_v 17y agoAcademic papers especially are a PITA, at least those formatted in columns, so it depends on the journal I guess. Plus you need detection of paragraphs to get line breaks at the proper locations. If it's not in columns and if you are willing to tweak the algorithm parameters to each conversion (paper), then it won't be that hard (just detect increased line spacing, or indented first line), but a commercial application would have to work almost automatically. or otherwise have a very quick feedback cycle (preview/edit settings/redo conversion). That's another one of my gripes with Calibre, the epub/fb2 preview application is so so slow that it's almost unusable. Yeah let me know if you find a working solution, although I do have dozens of hours worth of scripts laying about to do custom conversions, so real one-off hackjobs I have so many of that I don't need any more :)
- tomh- 17y agoI would pay to outsource the risk of being a PayPal merchant. I want to be able to serve my users with the option of paying with PayPal, but PayPal for merchants is totally unreliable. Especially in the virtual good/currency industry they seem to have the tendency to lock your account for no reasons at all, and you can be without money for over 180 days.
- mstevens 17y agoAn obvious alternative is to pay to be with another payment service provider who sucks less.
- tomh- 17y agoUnfortunately thats not an option, if you don't offer paypal, it will cost you users..
- mstevens 17y agoI was cheating a little, clearly a payment provider who sucks less will be just as popular with users as paypal, or they wouldn't suck less!
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago"Better the devil you know... " or so the aphorism goes. We've a burger kiosk very close to and far better than McDonalds (IMO) but everyone still goes to McDonalds. Brand loyalty, advertising, etc..
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- thomaspaine 17y agoI want a personal assistant for 5-10 hours a week. Not a virtual one because most of the things I want done are in meat space. Stuff like filling out forms, doing my laundry, waiting in line for me at the DMV, and dropping off my netflix returns in the mail. It sounds petty, but I really hate running errands and filling out forms. I'm considering hiring someone off craigslist.
- mstevens 17y agoRelated, there are various indian companies that offer the virtual equivalent, but I've never signed up because of: a) worries about cultural fit b) they all seem to make the signup process that little bit too painful c) there's always a slightly offline feel about the process, I want something more web 2.0, on the level of raising a bugzilla ticket for someone to book me a holiday.
- Robin_Message 17y agoI think most people would like this, if they trusted the person. This is the kind of role a equerry/butler fulfilled in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 20th century, you could expect a secretary to do this kind of thing (maybe not laundry!), even if it was not strictly company related. I think this made sense for businesses since secretaries were cheaper than you, and some things you have to do on work time - e.g. banking, government interaction, mail. Now, personal secretaries are all but gone and personal assistants are only really available at board level. So although companies are paying less for payroll, they are losing out since I know phone the bank at work, on work time. I also hate forms and errands, so the company is further disadvantaged by the ego-depletion doing such things causes. (N.B. I have nothing to back this stuff up, just seems like the way things used to be vs now)
- rguzman 17y agoI've often wanted the same. The main problem seems to be that it is probably hard to make a living as a personal assistant at the prices you and I are willing to pay. There is also the trust issue: would you really trust a stranger enough to do sensitive things?
- 17y ago
- roundsquare 17y agoThe fact that people vote for their leaders based on superficial stupidity and not based on issues.
- limist 17y ago"Ain't we got all the fools on our side? and ain't that a majority in any town?" - Twain
- Aegean 17y agoHere's what you can't find among a plethora of web design consultancies, cms systems, off-the-shelf website design services, html templates... A small business/startup website solution that is compact, editable, live and clearly describes the product and company. No, its not vague or different every time. It should: 1) Clearly describe the product 2) Clearly describe the company and what it does. 3) Does not look mediocre. (E.g. those static html sites based on those usual narrow rectangular templates with links at the side or top). 4) Easily changeable. (i.e. updates on parts of it without much html tweaking) Extra: 5) An easy-to-update company blog, ability to upload multimedia content such as embed product videos. A startup is changing quick, and so should the website. Do the first 4, I'll buy it. Then add 5. Examples: http://www.rethinkdb.com/ http://www.rethinkdb.com/ http://pivotallabs.com/ http://pivotallabs.com/ I have researched and both have spent considerable amount of time building theirs, and they have all 5. Why not do it off the shelf?
- ErrantX 17y agoI tried this a few years ago (for businesses). It never really worked out because you have to sell it to people. In the end it filled with affiliate marketers (it seems it was useful for them :P) so I had to scrap it.
- Tichy 17y agoHow to make money, or rather, how to survive and support a family.
- maxklein 17y agoI have all this data that I collect and it's very difficult to make sense of it or to break it down into a form that tells me what steps I should be taking next to improve my bottom line.
- mstevens 17y agoWe have similar problems. For example, I'm fairly certain some sort of bayesian model could tell me valuable things about my data. Someone who could run with that provide me an automated way to extract probabilities of desirable outcomes from my data would get money very quickly.
- mnemonicsloth 17y agoIt's kind of hard to put Bayesian Data Analysis into boxes and sell it :-) Even so, email me if you want to talk about it. You too, Max.
- keefe 17y agohttp://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning ?
- corruption 17y agoI have the product you need sitting in version control. We never released it to market because when we went to start marketing it, it seemed too difficult to go up against the big guys so we scrapped it and integrated it into a product where it's in use to this day. How would you market a product like this?
- maxklein 17y agoThe difficulty in this market is that each business has a different need. Each business has different data and requires different information. So I'd break this up into individual plugins that just work, and that handle a specific problem. So I send my data into your system, and you have different pipelines I can send the data into that provide me with different intelligence things. And then afterwards, just approach all the business in the niche directly.
- mstevens 17y agoThought from last night - we need a HN "problem registry". Not that new software ideas are hard to come by, but it'd be interesting to build up a list of specific pain points with eg) email.
- wlievens 17y agoThere's a google spreadsheet somewhere that circulated a few weeks ago.
- mstevens 17y agoCan't find it on a quick look at searchyc, do you remember any more details?
- limist 17y agoI think this is what you're referring to: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag-R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWRkbjNyUGRxS2JIV3NxYVdiaXc&hl=en http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag-R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWRk...
- Luc 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190974 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190974
- nosse 17y agoI would need a decent 2D CAD for linux. 3D even sweeter. problem is that dudes who usually code and dudes who usually draw with CAD are two totally different breeds. And that's why we don't allready have a good CAD for linux. I would be possibly willing to pay 200eur for a copy(but I want to see a proper demo first), and I don't think I'm alone. And I don't need anything fancy like Autodesk's "AutoCAD revit architechture visual suite", just basic "draw lines and circles" kind of functionality.
- jacquesm 17y agoHave you looked at varicad ?
- froo 17y agoYou can do CAD in blender. http://www.blender3darchitect.com/2009/07/blender-3d-as-a-cad-tool-using-the-procad-script/ http://www.blender3darchitect.com/2009/07/blender-3d-as-a-ca...
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y agoIsn't there a version of Alibre 3D CAD for Linux? I've used the free Windows version and it's sweet!
- netcan 17y agoTeeth.
- mstevens 17y agoMany existing suppliers are available.
- mstevens 17y agoSomething I was looking for recently (slightly UK specific). I like to buy FSF-level free hardware and software - ie no binary blobs, free software bios if you can get it, no binary only video drivers. I couldn't find a store clearly focussed on selling this to me in the UK. Existing linux related online vendors often provide software that requires binary drivers, and don't clearly indicate the details of this sort of thing. Existing stores like kd85.com are in the direction of what I'm thinking of.
- zackattack 17y agoWhy is your target demographic HN users? Try to maximize # of customers * $ revenue per customer
- tomh- 17y agoI would like a linux distro which runs photoshop, as good as windows with equal performance, out of the box
- keefe 17y agoI don't think this will happen, because of : 1) create user X 2) sux X 3) Install PhotoShop Trial 4) In 30 days, GoTo 1 Yes, I learned programming with GoTo. I am old.
- nudge 17y agoRight question, wrong place. Ask teachers, dentists, gardeners, councillors, vets (both the animal-doctor and the ex-military kind), fish owners, fish eaters, mechanics, little old ladies who don't know whether to trust their mechanic, landlords, concierges... You're more likely to get responses you would never even have considered. Look at it this way. It is often said that the best teams / startups are formed of people with different backgrounds, different thinking styles, different worldviews. So you're not going to add much to yourself by asking people (broadly speaking) similar to yourself. Find people totally unlike you. Think of a business you've never even encountered. Does it suck to own a fast food franchise and be totally at the mercy of the brand? Who knows? Maybe it does. Maybe you can help a little. Is it tough to be a guitar teacher nowadays when I can sort-of learn from youtube? I bet it does. Can you help them stand out? Ask your friends about their friends. Who do they know who is in a weird business or industry you're unlikely to know anything about? Maybe they do something hardly anyone knows anything about? I met someone who told me about a friend of theirs who works as a food arranger. For photographing food for cookbooks. She's not the photographer. Or the cook. She's just really good at arranging the food. I had no idea that even existed as a job. So step outside HN and the other places you might frequent online. You might just be able to fix a problem no-one capable of fixing has ever even heard of.
- mstevens 17y agoI half-agree. Clearly the people you describe often have problems for which they would appreciate solutions for which they would be willing to exchange money. On the other hand, news.yc users ALSO tend to have both money and problems, and the best tools are generally ones where the creator had the problems themselves. I guess my point is we could possibly have an interesting conversation about which market is most profitable, but you can't deny the people here are a market you might want to target.
- nudge 17y agoYes, you're absolutely right. It's good if you have some experience of your market. But it is a bit of a problem when your market (say, HNers / web/tech types) are the obvious market for anyone in that market seeking to start a business. Hence the incredible variety of programming text editors, for example. My point is that the intersection of sets of problems had by HNers could be a set of problems that has already been explored, or is at least targeted, by huge numbers of people, simply because it is their first imagined market (i.e. themselves). And in quite a few cases you will be going up against incredibly talented people (or teams) willing to give away their work for free because they believe in free/open source software. Which is a great thing, obviously, but it makes it hard to compete. So yes, you are right. But sometimes it can be good to look outside.
- mstevens 17y agoAnother problem I'd be very tempted to pay money to solve right now: I'm taking lessons in French. It's pretty cool. I'd like to find ways to improve my French at home. I'd love a site that would make it easy to find someone to video chat with eg skype with some (possibly minimal) teaching skills so I could practice conversation.
- laxk 17y agoYou can try to use http://www.language-exchanges.org/ http://www.language-exchanges.org/ This is what you're talking about.
- mstevens 17y agoThanks, that looks worth a closer look.
- limist 17y agoHave you tried/seen LiveMocha? http://www.livemocha.com http://www.livemocha.com It's social networking for language learners, mixing and matching native speakers (I have no affiliation with them).
- clintavo 17y agoI need a way to add a simple white label site search feature for my customers. We run a service that hosts thousands of websites. We would like a service with an api that allows to have a site indexed and add a search box. Sort of like a google custom search engine but all with api access for each site. We looked a Lijit, but they don't allow searches without advertising (our customers don't want that). And with all that my team has their plate we really don't want to try to run our own search (ala Solr) ourselves.
- 1Place 17y agoI need a software solution to model best legal outcomes and other options for people to help become aware of their options: (i) If law is based on Acts of Parliament which are written in a tree structure; (ii) Then Information can be placed into software complying with the tree structure in (i), so we can dynamically model the outcomes possible? Else (iii) Information is missing to complete the modelling of outcomes. What information is missing? This would aid with the understanding of the law and clients/individuals would be more knowledgeable and prepared for the options available. My preference would be in the area of IP law such as copyright, patents, trademarks etc since we can model these areas of law more easily with yes/know answers. I place this need on my blog recently: http://1place.com.au/wptest.php http://1place.com.au/wptest.php
- ig1 17y agoBetter online take-away service, I used justeat at the moment but it leaves a lot to be desired (have to enter credit card everytime, lack of details, poor search, food reviews, etc.) Instant online quotes/price comparison for taxi services
- jcnnghm 17y agoQuickbooks. Quickbooks is the single worst piece of software that I have ever had to deal with on a regular basis. I want to be able to reliably pull in all the financial transactions that occur for my company, and categorize them as quickly as possible. Quickbooks does this, but it fails on the reliably, all, and quickly aspects. I also need to be able to import invoicing information from my billing software, and match that to bank deposits and credit card settlements.
- froo 17y agoI know this might sound odd, but I'd like a "privacy policy" and "terms and conditions" generator that doesn't suck. I'd be willing to part with cash for something where I just tick off the various things I want and it would generate those documents for my site. Better yet, it would be nice if it was able to make these documents be localised to be legal in whatever jurisdiction (of my choosing) at creation time.
- Hume 17y agoI don't have a business, just an office drone; but I have to find out about legal ownership of companies all the time, when our customers issue purchase orders we have to make sure that the names on the invoices we generate match them. Changing the names in our CRM/ERP systems is a laborious process and we have to get the customer to sign legal documents confirming that all the software licenses owned by the previous company are now owned by the acquirer/new merger. I think that a website containing all the name change documents, press releases and possibly a service that tracks legal ownership (though this could be hard to scale) could be worth pursuing, along the lines of a Duns and Bradstreet ( http://www.dnb.com http://www.dnb.com ) type company. It could be something like a more focused docstoc or perhaps a legal wolfram alpha.