5 ms·

Ask HN: Help me pick out a weekend project.

17 points by whitepoplar 10y ago

I would like to build a web app as a weekend project, and I would like for it to be useful to others, too. Is there any product you wish existed, but doesn't? Here are some ideas I'm thinking of: 1) A hosted email service to email a list of people, but without any of the fancy formatting features. Plain text with maybe a few visual sprinkles. 2) A super-simple scheduling tool. Select a date, and the email and/or phone number of participating members. The day of, the tool would send reminders to people. If anything changes, the leader can send an update to the group. Any other ideas? Suggestions? I'd love to talk shop!

olegkikin 10y ago
Both of your ideas exist. Pretty much every mailing service will let you send plain text emails. Google calendar allows email notification on events. You can also do Facebook group email notifications. There are many other services that have that. Here's a free idea for you: Deleted Wikipedia. Show me the stuff that got deleted (as in edited out) from a given article.
- whitepoplar 10y ago
  That's true; they both exist. I just think it could be fun to build a better mousetrap. Are there any other product ideas you'd find personally useful?
  - detaro 10y ago
    a variation on 2 could be integration with various messengers.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
taprun 10y ago
Here's a project for you: Let me input a list of small companies' career pages. Send me a daily email when a new job is added to one of those pages.
- whitepoplar 10y ago
  Wow, what a great idea! That would certainly be useful.
- devbug 10y ago
  The other side also has a dearth of no-BS talent sourcing tools. There's https://sourcing.io https://sourcing.io, but it's rather neglected. Recently, I was running a hiring campaign to grow our team. It sucked. Most of my workflow to identify talent and to manage outreach could have been automated. I also did research on competitors and other companies to figure out how to position our job ads. What I really needed was: 1. A central, searchable database that aggregated as much data as possible about the talent out there; 2. a central, searchable database that aggregated as much data as possible about other positions out there; 3. a tool that used the aforementioned databases to automatically identify and suggest fixes to my weaknesses; 4. finally, a tool that automated outreach. On #1 and #2, tell me who's out there. Tell me who has interesting profiles. Tell me who I am within N-degrees of. Based on who gets hired, tell me who is hot. Tell me who's looking for work via Hacker News. I don't mind searching for this myself, but I need a crap tonne of data points to filter on. I did this manually (repurposing our database at Walter) to yank out ~20 outbounds that made the most sense. For #3, tell me how to improve my job ad based on what works. I had to rely on my intuition, and the feedback of my peers. It generated a lot of inbounds (~50 per position), but it also took a lot of time. Help me find relevant job boards. For #4, give me a central place to manage 80% of my outreach. Post to the variety of job boards. When I fill the position, help me fan out let downs and schedule calls, and cancel the job ads. Most importantly, do all the above without turning it into a enterprisey nightmare. That's the hardest part. Oh, and don't take inspiration from AngelList's offerings. They suck. If they spent another 12 months working on data, they would eliminate a lot of the noise. /rant I could go on and on about all the crazy pains I dealt with. I hated it. I budgeted ~2 weeks (knowing I had intense focus). It took about ~4 weeks. 5 if you count closing. It should be at most 14 days to closing.
  - whitepoplar 10y ago
    Hey, thanks for the thorough reply! I just signed up for a sourcing.io trial. I've never used a sourcing tool of any sort--any chance you can elaborate how sourcing.io is neglected?
hug_h 10y ago
An app to remember any longtime bet : I bet à dîner in a French restaurant than in 2020 the Russian team will have more golds medals than Usa . Then on august 2020 an email reminder is sent to the participant
jlgaddis 10y ago
How about a basic CRUD application to manage virtual domains, virtual users, and virtual aliases for Dovecot/Postfix in a MySQL|PostgreSQL database? I could use something like this. :)
- fny 10y ago
  I think Ajenti or Webmin might suit your needs perfectly.
richerlariviere 10y ago
A CLI to manage Apache VirtualHosts inside Vagrant. I would use it.
besselheim 10y ago
An online hex editor. Probably could do this fully in the browser.
bbcbasic 10y ago
Drag and drop BaaS
shiftoutbox 10y ago
Sort your socks faster .

17 points by whitepoplar 10y ago

olegkikin 10y ago

Both of your ideas exist. Pretty much every mailing service will let you send plain text emails. Google calendar allows email notification on events. You can also do Facebook group email notifications. There are many other services that have that. Here's a free idea for you: Deleted Wikipedia. Show me the stuff that got deleted (as in edited out) from a given article.

whitepoplar 10y ago
That's true; they both exist. I just think it could be fun to build a better mousetrap. Are there any other product ideas you'd find personally useful?
- detaro 10y ago
  a variation on 2 could be integration with various messengers.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

taprun 10y ago

Here's a project for you: Let me input a list of small companies' career pages. Send me a daily email when a new job is added to one of those pages.

whitepoplar 10y ago
Wow, what a great idea! That would certainly be useful.
devbug 10y ago
The other side also has a dearth of no-BS talent sourcing tools. There's https://sourcing.io https://sourcing.io, but it's rather neglected. Recently, I was running a hiring campaign to grow our team. It sucked. Most of my workflow to identify talent and to manage outreach could have been automated. I also did research on competitors and other companies to figure out how to position our job ads. What I really needed was: 1. A central, searchable database that aggregated as much data as possible about the talent out there; 2. a central, searchable database that aggregated as much data as possible about other positions out there; 3. a tool that used the aforementioned databases to automatically identify and suggest fixes to my weaknesses; 4. finally, a tool that automated outreach. On #1 and #2, tell me who's out there. Tell me who has interesting profiles. Tell me who I am within N-degrees of. Based on who gets hired, tell me who is hot. Tell me who's looking for work via Hacker News. I don't mind searching for this myself, but I need a crap tonne of data points to filter on. I did this manually (repurposing our database at Walter) to yank out ~20 outbounds that made the most sense. For #3, tell me how to improve my job ad based on what works. I had to rely on my intuition, and the feedback of my peers. It generated a lot of inbounds (~50 per position), but it also took a lot of time. Help me find relevant job boards. For #4, give me a central place to manage 80% of my outreach. Post to the variety of job boards. When I fill the position, help me fan out let downs and schedule calls, and cancel the job ads. Most importantly, do all the above without turning it into a enterprisey nightmare. That's the hardest part. Oh, and don't take inspiration from AngelList's offerings. They suck. If they spent another 12 months working on data, they would eliminate a lot of the noise. /rant I could go on and on about all the crazy pains I dealt with. I hated it. I budgeted ~2 weeks (knowing I had intense focus). It took about ~4 weeks. 5 if you count closing. It should be at most 14 days to closing.
- whitepoplar 10y ago
  Hey, thanks for the thorough reply! I just signed up for a sourcing.io trial. I've never used a sourcing tool of any sort--any chance you can elaborate how sourcing.io is neglected?

hug_h 10y ago

An app to remember any longtime bet : I bet à dîner in a French restaurant than in 2020 the Russian team will have more golds medals than Usa . Then on august 2020 an email reminder is sent to the participant

jlgaddis 10y ago

How about a basic CRUD application to manage virtual domains, virtual users, and virtual aliases for Dovecot/Postfix in a MySQL|PostgreSQL database? I could use something like this. :)

fny 10y ago
I think Ajenti or Webmin might suit your needs perfectly.

richerlariviere 10y ago

A CLI to manage Apache VirtualHosts inside Vagrant. I would use it.

besselheim 10y ago

An online hex editor. Probably could do this fully in the browser.

bbcbasic 10y ago

Drag and drop BaaS

shiftoutbox 10y ago

Sort your socks faster .