10 ms·

Take my app ideas

112 points by jermaustin1 4y ago

seanlinehan 4y ago
For idea #2, check out Attention: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1574914307 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1574914307
ben_w 4y ago
“TODO/did do” is also on my, ah, to-do list. And, likewise, has been for years now. In the meantime, I’m using Apple Notes and copying the result into a Markdown file whenever it gets long enough to start noticeably confusing the Notes.app scroll bar (about once a month).
- jagged-chisel 4y ago
  Geekbot does this on Slack. Granted, it’s a standup meeting replacement, not a journal input bot.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  It seems to me that a particularly formatted Markdown or LaTeX file would be a totally reasonable way to implement TODO/did do. Just have space for "TODO" and space for "did do." What else would an app add? Maybe a reminder (but a phone alarm could be a perfectly decent reminder).
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Reminders yes, also recurrent tasks.
floucky 4y ago
Guys, I have the best (but also the worst) idea: an application where you can rent toilets !
- __del__ 4y ago
  i've given it a bit of thought over the years, and a reputation system that accurately represents the stinking realities of letting someone use your toilet, and can identify creeps who'll listen at the door or video the entire event, seems to be the most difficult thing to solve. it seems like such a service would work well in civilized countries like mexico, and be an absolute shit show in the united states.
joeatwork 4y ago
The Glide app, which takes spreadsheets and makes them into full featured apps and websites, fits the bill of one of these ideas. https://www.glideapps.com/ https://www.glideapps.com/
spencerchubb 4y ago
The first one is basically notion
- joegahona 4y ago
  This was my first thought too. I use this all the time for this reason.
jacknews 4y ago
lol, only 5 fairly crappy/generic/obvious ideas, one of which is presumably too good (or way too crappy) to share? Sorry to be harsh, but you can keep them. I always maintain that ideas can be valuable in themselves, against the repeated VC argument that 'ideas are worthless', but this is an example where the VCs are right.
- kanonieer 4y ago
  At first, this comment comes off as harsh but then considering the author's tone which essentially feels like him gracing the readers with a sprinkle of what he presumably considers a worthy charity. Some people are so full of themselves that they don't even realize how crass they might come across.
  - bryans 4y ago
    > Some people are so full of themselves that they don't even realize how crass they might come across. An appropriately ironic comment, given that you just arrogantly belittled someone while also accusing them of narcissism, despite the author plainly writing that they don't claim any of the ideas are good. Next time RTFA before spouting inflammatory nonsense. "I'd rather give my ideas away than let them go to waste. Who knows if they are even good? The hard part is the execution anyway."
    - kanonieer 4y ago
      It's my take on how the author comes off as. You're free to disagree, even if the crux of your argument is as silly as chanting "RTFA". It's good that you're passionate about your defense of the author but unfortunately you haven't convinced me.
      - bryans 4y ago
        You didn't offer a take on what the author said, as evidenced by the fact that the author made zero claims of grandeur or even goodness, and the entire premise of the article wasn't the ideas themselves, but to encourage other people to explore and share their old ideas whether they're good or not. So in this case, RTFA becomes really important and not some "silly chant." Because instead of reacting to what they actually wrote, you've instead concocted a story about this person in your head, and then attempted to belittle them for it. I challenge you to quote any line from the article where the author says anything remotely "full of themselves" or "crass." You won't be able to do it, because it doesn't exist, and you're just being shamefully inflammatory for no reason.
bentossell 4y ago
The first idea on the list: “ Create an auto-updating website from a Google Doc or Sheet” can be done pretty easily already, without writing code. (I’m the founder of a company, Makerpad[*], that teaches people no-code) Glide[1] - lets you create apps from a google sheet. Set up the template connected to your data and as it updates, your app will too. Stacker[2] - build web-apps without code. Supports Airtable and most recently, Sheets. Softr[3] - similar for websites but using Airtable as the data source. I think Sheets support will come soon. Sheets2Site [4] - website builder with google sheets. For GoogleDocs you can use parameters in the doc that change using something like Zapier (disclaimer: they acquired my company last year). I haven’t explored it the other way around eg. Data into a google doc updating something elsewhere. [0] https://www.makerpad.co/ https://www.makerpad.co/ [1] https://www.glideapps.com/ https://www.glideapps.com/ [2] https://www.stackerhq.com/ https://www.stackerhq.com/ [3] https://www.softr.io/ https://www.softr.io/ [4] https://www.sheet2site.com/ https://www.sheet2site.com/
- behnamoh 4y ago
  just a quick feedback: your logo is very similar to Medium’s. in fact, at first I thought you used Medium, in line with the company’s mission to avoid code!
  - Vladimof 4y ago
    His logo is an M and Medium's logo is a globe?
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      One of mediums old logos was an M like this https://www.creativebloq.com/news/medium-reveals-a-new-logo-again https://www.creativebloq.com/news/medium-reveals-a-new-logo-...
      - Vladimof 4y ago
        Also, maybe the M logo was already common before Medium came along... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/how-77-metro-agencies-design-the-letter-m-for-their-transit-logo https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/how-77-me...
monkin 4y ago
All of your ideas already exists. It’s not about having ideas or sharing them, because there’s thousands of people who have the same thought. What actually makes a difference is building them.
- ntoskrnl 4y ago
  I'd say what actually makes a difference is sharing/marketing projects after you build them. If other people don't know your project exists, you'll end up with no users and you'll see your idea on various "stuff I wish existed" lists. Then one day you see a clone of your project and think someone ripped you off, when in reality they never heard of you and they were just better at selling themselves.
  - monkin 4y ago
    That’s the whole process of building them.
- MathCodeLove 4y ago
  Comments like your express an unfortunately common, yet incredibly reductive, sentiment. Execution of course matters. But the innate value of an idea is also extremely important. A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well executed bad idea.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well executed bad idea. That'd be something I've never seen. Any examples?
  - monkin 4y ago
    There’s nothing reductive in my comment. I didn’t mention the quality of execution, yet you have to build something to learn from it, even if it’s a bad idea. Having just ideas bring nothing to the table, no matter how good they are. Here we come to another interesting fact: companies will pivot many times after building the initial idea.
ivanmontillam 4y ago
For the 2nd one, if Twitter is really a "protocol" one could tweet special crafted links and make a Twitter client app that parsed these links and Twitter threads and using something like ffmpeg to compile a single audio stream. If more replies are added to the conversation, one can rebuild the ffmpeg audio file locally. This could be awesome for blind people, and a big win for accessibility. Please note I'm not talking about text-to-speech systems, I'm talking about the autors speaking in specially crafted tweets (that results in audio files saved in some server and them some app parsing them as a single file). The 3rd one already exists. Windows can track the Clipboard history, at the Clipboard settings, just enable it and start using the "Windows logo key + V" key combo to open the clipboard context menu and select any of the latest copied items (including images). The Samsung keyboard at Android also does this as well. Maybe there's something like this for Linux and Apple equipment, I don't know. The 4rth one I tried using the Web Archive to retrieve it, but it wasn't available. haha. The 5th one exists as an app called Chklsty[0]. What you're needing is checklists for repeated processes. It's not for single-use to-do lists. -- [0]: https://hello.chklsty.com/ https://hello.chklsty.com/
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >Windows can track the Clipboard history They aren't asking for a generic clipboard manager (that are numerous) but one that can log only URLs. A more flexible implementation will be for the manager to include filter functionality for what it logs. Afaik none has this.
belkarx 4y ago
The clipboard history idea can be done in ... around 5 minutes in Linux (using clipnotify, parcellite, echo, and grep). Ironically this is the project the author claimed would take far longer than 2 hours.
- ivanmontillam 4y ago
  5 minutes in execution, but more than 2 hours in preparation (knowledge gathering, etc.) The hidden cost of execution is preparedness.
  - belkarx 4y ago
    ... https://gist.github.com/belkarx/299b6d83a85beee2c2559c1b42f96c1d https://gist.github.com/belkarx/299b6d83a85beee2c2559c1b42f9... I will admit that I'm using almost exclusively external tools and had I wrangled the X library myself, this would have taken longer. And while it's technically a working product, it's not exactly polished. But it proves my point. Not a difficult project
    - ivanmontillam 4y ago
      Great, I bet you hacked that script in 5 minutes or less, which I don't dispute. However, you cannot claim that you learned bash scripting within those 5 minutes. Or that you knew in seconds that these were the libraries to use for that little but valuable script. All costs considered, time to learn what to do is included. So, it was far more than 5 minutes, though your execution was less than that. This topic is part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle.
      - mecsred 4y ago
        Next time anyone asks me for a time estimate on building something, I'm going to hit them with "well its been about 15 years since I started tinkering, so let's start there"
bilater 4y ago
1st is Sheet2Site 2nd is Twitter Spaces 3rd is one of a million premium clipboard chrome extensions
kodablah 4y ago
Take mine too: https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues
- woojoo666 4y ago
  These are way better than the ones in the post imo
thenerdhead 4y ago
The ironic part about free ideas is that there’s many people who have productized ideas as a newsletter you pay for. Ideas are dime a dozen. Execution is what matters. Hardly anyone will even embark on an idea let alone do it well.
- hardwaresofton 4y ago
  Guilty as charged https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io Though my reasoning is more that I know I’ll never get to executing on all the ideas I have so I hope someone else can validate and execute
  - codazoda 4y ago
    How do you monitize this, since it’s free to sub?
    - thenerdhead 4y ago
      I assume by selling sponsorships or products like everyone else.
      - hardwaresofton 4y ago
        You’re right! I do think a premium tier could work though. Kind of hard because ideas are somewhat worthless without execution!
    - hardwaresofton 4y ago
      Hey sorry getting to this late but two routes I laid out in the first issue: - premium tier (released 3 days early, higher Idea tier/grade average) - advertising blurb next to the tl;dr Will probably do one or the other — that’s all I can think of right now! I mentioned this in the first issue as well!
pie_flavor 4y ago
For the clipboard one, I use ClipboardFusion. Some of the most intuitive software I think I've ever used, second only to Microsoft Office.
motohagiography 4y ago
Whenever I see twitter/social clone ideas I think of a bar game from my snarky too-clever-by-half friends and I used to play in the 90s, we called "pitch it," where you had to express a tv show or movie as the pitch the writer made. Some gems included: - A guy and a sass-talking car fight crime together. - Seven Samurai meets the Equalizer, but with american war criminals. - Screwball comedy but with homages and tropes instead of sight gags and jokes, with an ensamble cast of has beens doing swan song performances. When I hear about twitter clones, the pitches for platforms become the jokes we make about them: - a way for old people to yell at each other. - bully safari, where you can go to antagonize people without conseqences. - a way for people to share pictures of their butts. - Orwell's 'two minutes of hate' - a fame simulator where robots flatter you - a place for smart people to act stupid - warcraft for passive aggression These are mostly empty snark, but some of them can be funny, and they take us out of thinking that we should re-make something we have today with some minor augmentation, independent of the original context it was created, and start looking at what something genuinely new might be.
- loxias 4y ago
  I'm curious about the last 4! (penultimate one: "HN comment section"?) ;-)
  - motohagiography 4y ago
    I'm a bit earnest about HN, but if I were to roast it by back-pitching it as a startup, I would say something like: - a place to be wrong on the internet - reddit, but with hope - well.com/../actually but finally, - something to appreciate
- scubbo 4y ago
  My guesses: - Knight Rider - Maybe "The Expendables"? - No idea, but I feel like I want to watch it!
  - helm33 4y ago
    - Maybe "The Expendables"? -> Pretty sure this is "The A Team"
garrickvanburen 4y ago
“Wouldn’t it be cool if” ideas are far less valuable than “here’s a daily frustration I have and I’ve yet to found a satisfactory solution”
bartaxyz 4y ago
I've started building something like the last idea. I call it very simply Daily Tasks[0]. It's by no means finished yet, but it does feel good to have an idea validated by reading about it from this blog post. [0] https://ondrejbarta.com/pet-projects/daily-tasks https://ondrejbarta.com/pet-projects/daily-tasks
6510 4y ago
I never share the good ideas. Reasonable ones I share but only with the right person. The response is often moaning. Not very useful. The list is not very good but if we all post one of those mythical "easy to come by" good ideas that everyone is having simultaneously.... (hah) My idea would be "take my ideas app" an app where people can share their startup ideas. Nice categories, each topic is an idea. Replies are either 1) text 2) a link to a similar service 3) a link to a product or service useful for implementation of the idea with a text explaining how 4) useful contact details that can be accessed if you attempt to build the idea.
ricardobeat 4y ago
Pretty sure the “REDACTED” one is just for effect. The way back machine has the page archived from two days ago and doesn’t show any changes.
- azhenley 4y ago
  The post is nearly a month old.
mentos 4y ago
I know ideas are a dime a dozen but can anyone recommend what the best market for ideas is?
corobo 4y ago
> <p>4. Good try.</p> Haha. Someone had to try looking at the git history, figured I had nothing better to do
errantmind 4y ago
Thinking app ideas are worth anything is naive. The nuance encountered while 'executing' dwarfs their significance. Anyone who has built anything knows this. The faster we collectively realize this, the faster we'll be able to reign in the excesses of IP law.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >Thinking app ideas are worth anything is naive. lots of people are saying this here, I agree, pretty much, almost all the time, because almost all ideas are ideas that people have had. Especially when they are product ideas. But on the other hand, whenever I hear this ideas are worthless, I do get a reflexive kick in my gut against conventional bullshit that everyone has agreed to believe in to fight against the old fashioned bullshit people used to believe, which was that ideas were valuable in themselves. And when I get that little reflexive kick in my gut I think, amazingly these people have never heard about pagerank. I mean sure, without a good execution they wouldn't have anything, but the idea was definitely worth quite a bit more than "hey what if we made Yahoo, but improved the execution a bit?"
sprior 4y ago
Someone proposed the second idea to me once. My immediate thought was of all the careers that would be ended as a result of it being too easy to share that random thought that went through your mind.
LaputanMachine 4y ago
Some app ideas from Krzysztof Kowalczyk (author of Sumatra PDF): https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d8158c803ad1/ideas.html https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815...
xuding 4y ago
Create an auto-updating website from a Google Doc or Sheet: I created https://sitefast.live https://sitefast.live to solve that problem. The main difference between SiteFast and the other solutions is that it separate design from data clearly, so you do not mess you data(google sheets) with the site design.
spoonjim 4y ago
LOL. None of these ideas are significantly better than a “Jump to Conclusions” mat.

112 points by jermaustin1 4y ago

For idea #2, check out Attention: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1574914307 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1574914307

“TODO/did do” is also on my, ah, to-do list. And, likewise, has been for years now. In the meantime, I’m using Apple Notes and copying the result into a Markdown file whenever it gets long enough to start noticeably confusing the Notes.app scroll bar (about once a month).

jagged-chisel 4y ago
Geekbot does this on Slack. Granted, it’s a standup meeting replacement, not a journal input bot.
bee_rider 4y ago
It seems to me that a particularly formatted Markdown or LaTeX file would be a totally reasonable way to implement TODO/did do. Just have space for "TODO" and space for "did do." What else would an app add? Maybe a reminder (but a phone alarm could be a perfectly decent reminder).
- ben_w 4y ago
  Reminders yes, also recurrent tasks.

floucky 4y ago

Guys, I have the best (but also the worst) idea: an application where you can rent toilets !

__del__ 4y ago
i've given it a bit of thought over the years, and a reputation system that accurately represents the stinking realities of letting someone use your toilet, and can identify creeps who'll listen at the door or video the entire event, seems to be the most difficult thing to solve. it seems like such a service would work well in civilized countries like mexico, and be an absolute shit show in the united states.

joeatwork 4y ago

The Glide app, which takes spreadsheets and makes them into full featured apps and websites, fits the bill of one of these ideas. https://www.glideapps.com/ https://www.glideapps.com/

spencerchubb 4y ago

The first one is basically notion

joegahona 4y ago
This was my first thought too. I use this all the time for this reason.

jacknews 4y ago

lol, only 5 fairly crappy/generic/obvious ideas, one of which is presumably too good (or way too crappy) to share? Sorry to be harsh, but you can keep them. I always maintain that ideas can be valuable in themselves, against the repeated VC argument that 'ideas are worthless', but this is an example where the VCs are right.

kanonieer 4y ago
At first, this comment comes off as harsh but then considering the author's tone which essentially feels like him gracing the readers with a sprinkle of what he presumably considers a worthy charity. Some people are so full of themselves that they don't even realize how crass they might come across.
- bryans 4y ago
  > Some people are so full of themselves that they don't even realize how crass they might come across. An appropriately ironic comment, given that you just arrogantly belittled someone while also accusing them of narcissism, despite the author plainly writing that they don't claim any of the ideas are good. Next time RTFA before spouting inflammatory nonsense. "I'd rather give my ideas away than let them go to waste. Who knows if they are even good? The hard part is the execution anyway."
  - kanonieer 4y ago
    It's my take on how the author comes off as. You're free to disagree, even if the crux of your argument is as silly as chanting "RTFA". It's good that you're passionate about your defense of the author but unfortunately you haven't convinced me.
    - bryans 4y ago
      You didn't offer a take on what the author said, as evidenced by the fact that the author made zero claims of grandeur or even goodness, and the entire premise of the article wasn't the ideas themselves, but to encourage other people to explore and share their old ideas whether they're good or not. So in this case, RTFA becomes really important and not some "silly chant." Because instead of reacting to what they actually wrote, you've instead concocted a story about this person in your head, and then attempted to belittle them for it. I challenge you to quote any line from the article where the author says anything remotely "full of themselves" or "crass." You won't be able to do it, because it doesn't exist, and you're just being shamefully inflammatory for no reason.

bentossell 4y ago

The first idea on the list: “ Create an auto-updating website from a Google Doc or Sheet” can be done pretty easily already, without writing code. (I’m the founder of a company, Makerpad[*], that teaches people no-code) Glide[1] - lets you create apps from a google sheet. Set up the template connected to your data and as it updates, your app will too. Stacker[2] - build web-apps without code. Supports Airtable and most recently, Sheets. Softr[3] - similar for websites but using Airtable as the data source. I think Sheets support will come soon. Sheets2Site [4] - website builder with google sheets. For GoogleDocs you can use parameters in the doc that change using something like Zapier (disclaimer: they acquired my company last year). I haven’t explored it the other way around eg. Data into a google doc updating something elsewhere. [0] https://www.makerpad.co/ https://www.makerpad.co/ [1] https://www.glideapps.com/ https://www.glideapps.com/ [2] https://www.stackerhq.com/ https://www.stackerhq.com/ [3] https://www.softr.io/ https://www.softr.io/ [4] https://www.sheet2site.com/ https://www.sheet2site.com/

behnamoh 4y ago
just a quick feedback: your logo is very similar to Medium’s. in fact, at first I thought you used Medium, in line with the company’s mission to avoid code!
- Vladimof 4y ago
  His logo is an M and Medium's logo is a globe?
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    One of mediums old logos was an M like this https://www.creativebloq.com/news/medium-reveals-a-new-logo-again https://www.creativebloq.com/news/medium-reveals-a-new-logo-...
    - Vladimof 4y ago
      Also, maybe the M logo was already common before Medium came along... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/how-77-metro-agencies-design-the-letter-m-for-their-transit-logo https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/how-77-me...

monkin 4y ago

All of your ideas already exists. It’s not about having ideas or sharing them, because there’s thousands of people who have the same thought. What actually makes a difference is building them.

ntoskrnl 4y ago
I'd say what actually makes a difference is sharing/marketing projects after you build them. If other people don't know your project exists, you'll end up with no users and you'll see your idea on various "stuff I wish existed" lists. Then one day you see a clone of your project and think someone ripped you off, when in reality they never heard of you and they were just better at selling themselves.
- monkin 4y ago
  That’s the whole process of building them.
MathCodeLove 4y ago
Comments like your express an unfortunately common, yet incredibly reductive, sentiment. Execution of course matters. But the innate value of an idea is also extremely important. A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well executed bad idea.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well executed bad idea. That'd be something I've never seen. Any examples?
- monkin 4y ago
  There’s nothing reductive in my comment. I didn’t mention the quality of execution, yet you have to build something to learn from it, even if it’s a bad idea. Having just ideas bring nothing to the table, no matter how good they are. Here we come to another interesting fact: companies will pivot many times after building the initial idea.

ivanmontillam 4y ago

For the 2nd one, if Twitter is really a "protocol" one could tweet special crafted links and make a Twitter client app that parsed these links and Twitter threads and using something like ffmpeg to compile a single audio stream. If more replies are added to the conversation, one can rebuild the ffmpeg audio file locally. This could be awesome for blind people, and a big win for accessibility. Please note I'm not talking about text-to-speech systems, I'm talking about the autors speaking in specially crafted tweets (that results in audio files saved in some server and them some app parsing them as a single file). The 3rd one already exists. Windows can track the Clipboard history, at the Clipboard settings, just enable it and start using the "Windows logo key + V" key combo to open the clipboard context menu and select any of the latest copied items (including images). The Samsung keyboard at Android also does this as well. Maybe there's something like this for Linux and Apple equipment, I don't know. The 4rth one I tried using the Web Archive to retrieve it, but it wasn't available. haha. The 5th one exists as an app called Chklsty[0]. What you're needing is checklists for repeated processes. It's not for single-use to-do lists. -- [0]: https://hello.chklsty.com/ https://hello.chklsty.com/

forgotpwd16 4y ago
>Windows can track the Clipboard history They aren't asking for a generic clipboard manager (that are numerous) but one that can log only URLs. A more flexible implementation will be for the manager to include filter functionality for what it logs. Afaik none has this.

belkarx 4y ago

The clipboard history idea can be done in ... around 5 minutes in Linux (using clipnotify, parcellite, echo, and grep). Ironically this is the project the author claimed would take far longer than 2 hours.

ivanmontillam 4y ago
5 minutes in execution, but more than 2 hours in preparation (knowledge gathering, etc.) The hidden cost of execution is preparedness.
- belkarx 4y ago
  ... https://gist.github.com/belkarx/299b6d83a85beee2c2559c1b42f96c1d https://gist.github.com/belkarx/299b6d83a85beee2c2559c1b42f9... I will admit that I'm using almost exclusively external tools and had I wrangled the X library myself, this would have taken longer. And while it's technically a working product, it's not exactly polished. But it proves my point. Not a difficult project
  - ivanmontillam 4y ago
    Great, I bet you hacked that script in 5 minutes or less, which I don't dispute. However, you cannot claim that you learned bash scripting within those 5 minutes. Or that you knew in seconds that these were the libraries to use for that little but valuable script. All costs considered, time to learn what to do is included. So, it was far more than 5 minutes, though your execution was less than that. This topic is part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle.
    - mecsred 4y ago
      Next time anyone asks me for a time estimate on building something, I'm going to hit them with "well its been about 15 years since I started tinkering, so let's start there"

bilater 4y ago

1st is Sheet2Site 2nd is Twitter Spaces 3rd is one of a million premium clipboard chrome extensions

kodablah 4y ago

Take mine too: https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues

woojoo666 4y ago
These are way better than the ones in the post imo

thenerdhead 4y ago

The ironic part about free ideas is that there’s many people who have productized ideas as a newsletter you pay for. Ideas are dime a dozen. Execution is what matters. Hardly anyone will even embark on an idea let alone do it well.

hardwaresofton 4y ago
Guilty as charged https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io Though my reasoning is more that I know I’ll never get to executing on all the ideas I have so I hope someone else can validate and execute
- codazoda 4y ago
  How do you monitize this, since it’s free to sub?
  - thenerdhead 4y ago
    I assume by selling sponsorships or products like everyone else.
    - hardwaresofton 4y ago
      You’re right! I do think a premium tier could work though. Kind of hard because ideas are somewhat worthless without execution!
  - hardwaresofton 4y ago
    Hey sorry getting to this late but two routes I laid out in the first issue: - premium tier (released 3 days early, higher Idea tier/grade average) - advertising blurb next to the tl;dr Will probably do one or the other — that’s all I can think of right now! I mentioned this in the first issue as well!

pie_flavor 4y ago

For the clipboard one, I use ClipboardFusion. Some of the most intuitive software I think I've ever used, second only to Microsoft Office.

motohagiography 4y ago

Whenever I see twitter/social clone ideas I think of a bar game from my snarky too-clever-by-half friends and I used to play in the 90s, we called "pitch it," where you had to express a tv show or movie as the pitch the writer made. Some gems included: - A guy and a sass-talking car fight crime together. - Seven Samurai meets the Equalizer, but with american war criminals. - Screwball comedy but with homages and tropes instead of sight gags and jokes, with an ensamble cast of has beens doing swan song performances. When I hear about twitter clones, the pitches for platforms become the jokes we make about them: - a way for old people to yell at each other. - bully safari, where you can go to antagonize people without conseqences. - a way for people to share pictures of their butts. - Orwell's 'two minutes of hate' - a fame simulator where robots flatter you - a place for smart people to act stupid - warcraft for passive aggression These are mostly empty snark, but some of them can be funny, and they take us out of thinking that we should re-make something we have today with some minor augmentation, independent of the original context it was created, and start looking at what something genuinely new might be.

loxias 4y ago
I'm curious about the last 4! (penultimate one: "HN comment section"?) ;-)
- motohagiography 4y ago
  I'm a bit earnest about HN, but if I were to roast it by back-pitching it as a startup, I would say something like: - a place to be wrong on the internet - reddit, but with hope - well.com/../actually but finally, - something to appreciate
scubbo 4y ago
My guesses: - Knight Rider - Maybe "The Expendables"? - No idea, but I feel like I want to watch it!
- helm33 4y ago
  - Maybe "The Expendables"? -> Pretty sure this is "The A Team"

garrickvanburen 4y ago

“Wouldn’t it be cool if” ideas are far less valuable than “here’s a daily frustration I have and I’ve yet to found a satisfactory solution”

bartaxyz 4y ago

I've started building something like the last idea. I call it very simply Daily Tasks[0]. It's by no means finished yet, but it does feel good to have an idea validated by reading about it from this blog post. [0] https://ondrejbarta.com/pet-projects/daily-tasks https://ondrejbarta.com/pet-projects/daily-tasks

6510 4y ago

I never share the good ideas. Reasonable ones I share but only with the right person. The response is often moaning. Not very useful. The list is not very good but if we all post one of those mythical "easy to come by" good ideas that everyone is having simultaneously.... (hah) My idea would be "take my ideas app" an app where people can share their startup ideas. Nice categories, each topic is an idea. Replies are either 1) text 2) a link to a similar service 3) a link to a product or service useful for implementation of the idea with a text explaining how 4) useful contact details that can be accessed if you attempt to build the idea.

ricardobeat 4y ago

Pretty sure the “REDACTED” one is just for effect. The way back machine has the page archived from two days ago and doesn’t show any changes.

azhenley 4y ago
The post is nearly a month old.

mentos 4y ago

I know ideas are a dime a dozen but can anyone recommend what the best market for ideas is?

corobo 4y ago

> <p>4. Good try.</p> Haha. Someone had to try looking at the git history, figured I had nothing better to do

errantmind 4y ago

Thinking app ideas are worth anything is naive. The nuance encountered while 'executing' dwarfs their significance. Anyone who has built anything knows this. The faster we collectively realize this, the faster we'll be able to reign in the excesses of IP law.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>Thinking app ideas are worth anything is naive. lots of people are saying this here, I agree, pretty much, almost all the time, because almost all ideas are ideas that people have had. Especially when they are product ideas. But on the other hand, whenever I hear this ideas are worthless, I do get a reflexive kick in my gut against conventional bullshit that everyone has agreed to believe in to fight against the old fashioned bullshit people used to believe, which was that ideas were valuable in themselves. And when I get that little reflexive kick in my gut I think, amazingly these people have never heard about pagerank. I mean sure, without a good execution they wouldn't have anything, but the idea was definitely worth quite a bit more than "hey what if we made Yahoo, but improved the execution a bit?"

sprior 4y ago

Someone proposed the second idea to me once. My immediate thought was of all the careers that would be ended as a result of it being too easy to share that random thought that went through your mind.

LaputanMachine 4y ago

Some app ideas from Krzysztof Kowalczyk (author of Sumatra PDF): https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d8158c803ad1/ideas.html https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815...

xuding 4y ago

Create an auto-updating website from a Google Doc or Sheet: I created https://sitefast.live https://sitefast.live to solve that problem. The main difference between SiteFast and the other solutions is that it separate design from data clearly, so you do not mess you data(google sheets) with the site design.

spoonjim 4y ago

LOL. None of these ideas are significantly better than a “Jump to Conclusions” mat.