6 ms·

Startup idea list

• jpalacio486 19y ago
  Are you trying to get us to give you ideas so you can apply to YC?
• deltapoint 19y ago
  No. I just like ideas. I have my own ideas, I just think it would be cool to get a list of ideas that people have but know they won't be able to work on. To prove this I'll start by listing some of my own. PG says one point of this site is to make you look like a desirable candidate for a start up so if you can list some good ideas or critique others it makes you look good. Ideas alone have very little intrinsic value on their own. The best ones are ones that can make things just not suck. 1. An online radio site that lets you select station by what mood you want to feel. 2. A website like 43things but with a timeline for each goals that tries to hold you accountable for them through social pressure. 3. An online video website that are like demo conferences where people can share their ideas. 4. A social network (or app) where users could do market research and product development for companies and get paid for their work and ideas and it would turn it into a competition.
  • jpalacio486 19y ago
    I was just bustin your balls. Can you elaborate on your 43things-like idea?
    • deltapoint 19y ago
      read this http://paulgraham.com/die.html http://paulgraham.com/die.html Paul Graham argues the fear of looking bad is what motivates people. Based off of that concept I thought of the idea of a social network kind of like 43things with the major differences being: - you can set a timeline of when you want to accomplish the goals -people could rate the difficulty of the goals and you have a reputation based on how many goals you complete and the difficulty of them - could be public or private -could be more individualized, ie finish essay for English before Friday
      • jpalacio486 19y ago
        I have to say i like the idea. Have you applied to YC?
        • deltapoint 19y ago
          No, I don't have a team of hackers and I am just now learning to "hack" myself. If someone wants to collaborate email me at abiek13 (at) aol (dot) com
  • rms 19y ago
    Easy to use operating system for older computer users.
    • falsestprophet 19y ago
      An easy to use operating system for computer users in general would be nice.
      • rms 19y ago
        Agreed, an easier to use operating system would be great for most power-users too. I'd start by eliminating the desktop and completely abstracting away the file system, instead letting you browse all of your media files at once, all of your documents, etc. I'd do it with a dynamic start page that would let you accomplish everything from within Ubuntu/Firefox in kiosk mode. The design's the hard part, but I have the beginnings of a workable design.
        • mpc 19y ago
          It's called OSX. What could be better than a powerful unix machine with a beautiful and intuitive GUI? And also "just works" out of the box.
          • rms 19y ago
            Sit your grandfather (or person of similar age) in front of OSX by himself after only an hour of instructions and see what happens. It's intuitive to those of us who grew up with computing. To everyone else, it isn't.
            • mpc 19y ago
              There is a learning curve no matter what. Otherwise you have a tutorial and not an OS.
              • rms 19y ago
  • joe 19y ago
    Re: #1 http://www.musicovery.com/ http://www.musicovery.com/
  • yters 19y ago
    As #4 lite, it'd be cool to have a subreddit here for people to submit ideas. Then all us slackers can feel useful, and maybe make some money.
    • Tichy 19y ago
      I think Cambrian House and others do that.
      • yters 19y ago
        That's pretty cool. Do you know whether it's been effective?
        • Tichy 19y ago
          I only just started using it. It is definitely an interesting community. There are other projects like it, but CambrianHouse seems the nicest from what I have remember. It seems if nobody else cares to comment on your ideas, they might even throw in their own employees to do so.
• cellis 19y ago
  1) a money machine 2) a nano particle assembler that encrypts the dna of its creations with a quantum computer. (does that make sense?) by the way,did you know that My last startup idea was facebook?
  • blored 19y ago
    me too.
• yaacovtp 19y ago
  go play on cambrianhouse.com
  • rbitar 19y ago
    or Cofoundr.com (yeah, shameless plug)
• henning 19y ago
  i don't know. find a way to take away some of the pain I feel as a computer user: having to have like 30 different logins for all the sites and communities that interest me where i inevitably wind up using the same password for all of them and a similar username for most of them feeling paranoid when i browse the internet on a windows machine even when i use firefox, run windows update, and avoid leet juarez d00d sites being frustrated that the extension language in excel is fine for quick, minor things but doesn't scale up to real software development efforts while the users i develop solutions for have no appreciation of how craptacular VBA is you can probably think of more.
  • bls 19y ago
    See Microsoft CardSpaces (InfoCard). I don't know if it will catch on but it is very sound technically.
• Goladus 19y ago
  I'm writing a practice app, which was my second idea but I think I have a better chance of getting a version 1 done quickly. (Not planning on applying to YC this round. I may be ready by next summer though) Basically, it's something about MMORPGs that's never been done quite right. I'm sick of trying to explain how it should work, and want to show people instead.
  • alex_c 19y ago
    Well, I'm curious. Want to try explaining anyway? :)
    • Goladus 19y ago
      'Tradeskill' engines don't really reward creativity. With some minor exceptions here and there, they all follow the model of: (combine X Y Z) -> ItemXYZ, where X, Y, and Z are constants and ItemXYZ is an element in a (relatively small) finite set of predetermined items. Instead of adventuring to obtain ItemXYZ, you adventure to obtain X, Y, and Z component pieces that you combine to get ItemXYZ, assuming you have enough skill. It feels sort of silly that way. The actual artisan, the guy who combines X, Y, and Z to get ItemXYZ, is not really creative. All he's doing is following a predetermined recipe and applying the skill he got by doing hundreds of mindless combines. Blizzard's answer to this problem was to shift the focus from item creation to collecting ingredients. They made sure it was fun to gather X, Y, and Z, without just making X, Y, and Z exclusively monster loot. Compared to some other games, WoW's engine was also simpler. Blizzard's solution worked, but only because they sidestepped the core problem. Tradeskilling appeals to people because it's a creative activity. Players want to be able to feel pride in the stuff they can make. The result is disappointing. Imagination picks up the slack, the novelty wears off after a few hundred clicks, and unless you're addicted to gaining the next level; you aren't going to bother. The way it works now, it winds up only really appealing to people who enjoy organizing things. From what I've read, Second Life is the opposite. Gamers don't like Second Life, because there's no consistent, professionally-crafted fantasy world to give meaning to anything. It's completely open-ended, allowing for lots of creativity, but what's the point? Obviously plenty of people find a point to SL, I'm just saying this what the typical WoW or EQ or FFXI or DAoC player thinks when they see second life. I've only heard of two other games with interesting tradeskill engines. I wasn't able to play either of them, so I don't know how similar they are to what I'm going for. One was Horizons, which tanked almost immediately; the other was Star Wars Galaxies, which suffered from being inappropriate for the mainstream Star Wars audience. I say 'suffered' because even though the game was actually doing quite well, it never came near its potential given the franchise name. But whatever the reason, the game was overhauled and the original SWG is no longer available.
• amichail 19y ago
  I have some ideas on my blog: http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/ http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/ See for example this discussion on using lifecasting to encourage good behavior in a world where few people are genuinely religious (you could also combine this method with a traditional religion): http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/2007/07/justintv-vs-god_07.html http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/2007/07/justintv-vs-god_07.ht... http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_general;action=display;num=1183768425 http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board...
  • Tichy 19y ago
    Well the problem with the good behaviour idea is that governments are not waiting for volunteers to start lifecasting. They simply put their surveillance cameras everywhere. This is already happening in Europe, don't know about the US. Big Brother is growing... Another interesting question is what kind of good behavior would social pressure evoke? Would people use the same yardsticks for themselves as for other people? Or would they just try to hold society in check, so that they themselves could roam free?
  • Dalgar 19y ago
    "in a world where few people are genuinely religious" I would argue the vast majority of the world is genuinely religious.
    • gwenhwyfaer 19y ago
      I'd contend that the vast majority of the world pretends to be genuinely religious, and is genuinely superstitious.
  • deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
• staunch 19y ago
  Here's one I wish someone would take from me and spend lots of time perfecting. I've been trying to get around to it, but have other stuff to do. It's on my "fun weekend hacks" list. I have a commute that's about 30 minutes each way and 1 hour lunch every day. That's two hours I want to fill by reading printouts of interesting text and listening to interesting audio on my iPod. For me PG essays would be the ultimate example of texts I want to read and Venture Voice (podcast) would be the ultimate example of what I want to listen to (others would obviously have different taste). I've gone through that stuff repeatedly and tons of other similar content, making it difficult to find enough new stuff to keep me entertained. A site that let me assemble text-printout "playlists" and iPod playlists for a week or more in advance would be great. It requires measuring or guessing how long a given text (or book) is to see how long it would last and organizing the audio into chunks that are optimal for my given time allotments. It seems kind of a weird maybe or niche, but it arose from a real problem I have and I think it could be pretty big. There has to be more people like me that want really targeted text and audio content to consume on their commute.
  • greendestiny 19y ago
    Check out http://dailylit.com http://dailylit.com it does a little of that for a fairly small amount of books.
  • mikesabat 19y ago
    Man, This is exactly what I am building - a website to create On-Demand Magazines from Internet content, like PG essays. The splash page will be up in a day or 2 and I'll be collecting email addresses and feedback for the beta test. The name of the site is ShelfMade.net. As soon as I have ANYTHING up I will get the link to YC. BTW if you can do this in a weekend, please get in touch.
• DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  A program that scours the obituaries to reverse-engineer email addresses and online identities so that people that you've met online can find out you've croaked.
  • ivankirigin 19y ago
    the list would be more valuable to those looking to steal identities. How do you think I win all my elections?
    • DanielBMarkham 19y ago
      Hey -- if the money's there, it's a business :) Seriously. That what makes this exercise a little dubious. It's never version 1.0 of the idea. Sometimes it might be version 23 For example, here's v2.0 of my idea. Identity Life Insurance. For a fee, either use the internet and/or a physical inspection of people's computers after death to shut down online accounts and notify correspondents that you are deceased (and perhaps what to do about sending flowers, etc) This would give the insured privacy in their final online affairs and also make sure the people you chat with daily know what happened to you. Sales would be to traditional insurance companies (which could offer it as a rider) and funeral homes. Now does that sound better? The fun of this game isn't necessarily in the idea, it's in the evolution of the idea in response to market forces. Cool stuff!
      • cosmin 19y ago
        So this would work for people with no relatives, close friends or at least a lawyer? I imagine for most folks someone must know when they died and having some instructions for what to do when you pass away shouldn't be too difficult.
        • DanielBMarkham 19y ago
          Yes. Of course. But there are many problems with your assertion that it's just knowing someone who will follow directions: 1) Many people do not know enough technology to be able to track all the accounts a user might have. 2) Many users don't want their families going through their accounts when they die (ie, cybersex and online fantasy issues) 3) Some people may die unexpectedly, with insurance but no directions as far as online presence 4) The average family memeber when left with an unexpected death, even with a list of online associates, will not know how to approach these people (what were their roles in the deceased life?) or what to say 5) It's just a hassle and is easier to have someone else do it and 6) It's not something people think about a lot, but with the wired-up X Generation and tail-end-of-the-boomers getting older, it will become a more pronounced issue.
• paulgb 19y ago
  Try looking for places where there is quality content and people who would enjoy that content if only they could find it. Where this occurs, there should be lots of potential to generate value, by matching people with content they might like. For example, last.fm does this for music, del.icio.us/digg/reddit/news.yc for content, and I'm sure there are lots of other examples of services like this. Here are two areas where such services, to my knowledge, don't exist: web comics and blogs.
• nextmoveone 19y ago
  id like to see an extension to expensr.com's app, to text message my expenses in!
  • nfriedly 19y ago
    check out http://buxfer.com http://buxfer.com I think they let you text in expenses.
    • nextmoveone 19y ago
      thanks...thinking about signing up for it.
    • nextmoveone 19y ago
      oh...I found mint.com instead.
• nextmoveone 19y ago
  I'd also like to see visual voicemail integrated into gmail or yahoo mail or aol or any client, but real visual voicemail...with voice-to-text technology for the message to be right in your inbox and a click to call back link or button.
  • danw 19y ago
    GrandCantral or spinvox
• mdemare 19y ago
  Location based gaming: playing games while moving around in your town with an iphone-like device (and having your location matter in-game.) You could port any kind of game to this concept: counterstrike, racing, even monopoly. Or pac-man, chasing your friends around the block. Or Sokoban, pushing giant boulders through Fifth Avenue. I had this idea six years ago. I'm appalled that it still hasn't happened. Of course, very few devices have GPS chips, and operators are wary of sharing the location of their customers with random companies. But still! Anyway, Loopt is a step in the right direction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_game
  • cellis 19y ago
    very intensive operations, not sure if you could get enough subscribers to justify the costs?
  • jasonm 19y ago
    Check out http://developer.where.com/jin/devprogramfaq.jin http://developer.where.com/jin/devprogramfaq.jin
  • chaostheory 19y ago
    already has multiple implementations: http://www.in-duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_games.php http://www.in-duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_g... there's one not listed, that's a variant of pokemon; pretty fun I forget the name (when I saw it, it was only available in japan - though the company is French)
    • mdemare 19y ago
      Well, I know people are experimenting. But who will come up with the first big hit? I'd buy a compatible phone just to play.
      • chaostheory 19y ago
        there are already location based hit games... just not in the US. This will probably stay the same for at least a few more years. This is due to a dif in culture. In most places in the US (aside from NY), most people have room and time to relax at home ( = using wii, 360, or PC for games). Until iphone and treo (and even now) most people don't really use their mobile phones for much... the reasons go on and on...
• mdemare 19y ago
  A social music site / including music client and music store for classical music. Both last.fm and iTunes suck for classical music, which has a completely different set of concepts from pop music. Composers, conductors, orchestras, choirs, movements, etc. It's a smaller market, and the people are less technically inclined, but they're richer and less likely to pirate music.
  • mdemare 19y ago
    Oh, why a social music site? Because discovering new (to you) music is a harder problem than playing, organizing or buying music.
    • dyu 19y ago
      I was thinking of something like that, but I am not familiar with the copyright laws etc even for test listening music. How does last.fm deal with that? Loyalty fees to the big four?
      • greendestiny 19y ago
        I believe playing a 30 second clip is considered fair use.
    • omouse 19y ago
      This is a fantastic idea. I may try and implement it in the next few months (depending on how much work there is to do for my college classes) :D
  • rms 19y ago
    How is Pandora for classical music?
    • sabat 19y ago
      Almost non-existent. The problem isn't licensing (any more than the current licensing issues they're having). The problem is access to all the CDs. You read that right: I know for a fact that Pandora gets its music by ripping CDs. No, really. I've been there and seen it happen. Crazy. You'd assume the record companies would send over the digitized files -- no such luck. They have one person dedicated to ripping CDs, full-time. Anyway, last I knew, Pandora was trying to work out a deal with some guy who owned thousands of classical CDs. So as long as the company can manage to stay in business, Classical is probably coming.
• mdemare 19y ago
  A social fashion site. Categorize your entire wardrobe with photos, favorite brand, sizes, date of purchase, photos of you wearing combinations, links to friends, that kind of stuff. If girls would program, such a site would have been invented around 1997 - instead we got slashdot.
  • rms 19y ago
    I think there is a YC funded company doing this already, I'm sure someone here will remember the name. My fashion idea involves you being presented with a bunch of different outfits and picking which ones you like to train a recommendation engine. Then, the site recommends complete in-season outfits (with affiliate links)
    • alaskamiller 19y ago
      shoutfit
      • ericb 19y ago
        Shoutfit, based on its site being down, seems to have possibly failed to heed PG's "don't die" message." I like the name shoutfit, though... Catchy.
        • SwellJoe 19y ago
          The Shoutfit guys were, last I heard, working on BuyThisLook, but it's also non-existent. So they died twice, I guess.
          • altay 19y ago
            eric, one of the shoutfit guys, recently changed his occupation on linkedin to Hiker at Appalachian Trail (Health, Wellness and Fitness industry). sounds like pretty much the coolest job ever. =)
    • iamwil 19y ago
• adsyoung 19y ago
  Macro news. I get the news in my RSS feeds and its damn near useless. These events tell me almost nothing about the world. The signal to noise ratio is not good. I don't want to know that another 6 people in iraq have been killed in some incident, I want to know whether the situation there is getting better or worse, is it happening in a new area than before, does it involve a new group of people...big picture stuff. This is the kind of info you typically get from reading feature length editorials but I don't have the time. I want big picture news and global trends, complete with graphs and visualisations to give me perspective on an issue, delivered to me in an RSS feed. Also I want to be able to subscribe and unsubscribe to different issues that I wish to follow from start to end. Already exist?
  • mdemare 19y ago
    For big picture news I find nothing beats The Economist. No more kidnapped babies or small plane crashes! I've stopped reading (online) newspapers, and I don't miss them at all. For subscribing to different issues - interesting! I'd like that too. In theory, you could subscribe to the RSS of the history page of wikinews/wikipedia. You'd get all the updates, but I'm not sure how useful or reader-friendly that is in practice.
    • adsyoung 19y ago
      Yeah, I'm mainly ranting at my feeds. To some degree I'm wishing for a new style of journalism. Or at the least journalists actually learning to write headlines that make any sense and are useful. The startup ideas there are: - Subscribing to specific issues that you want to keep track of over time is something I want to see way more of. - Sites that use data visualisations to increase understanding and perspective of...anything really, is something I've been thinking about. Think the world would be a better place if people had perspective and we have access to a lot of data now to play with.
      • far33d 19y ago
        A gripe... Journalists don't write headlines. Editors do.
• mdemare 19y ago
  Oh, one more! A web consultancy that advises start-ups about i18n, translation, local laws, cultural differences, etc, so they wouldn't think: "Foreign countries are scary, let's conquer the domestic market first." Then we, the Dutch, could actually have used great sites like Amazon, Facebook, Ebay, and Craigslist instead of the terrible knock-offs that won here, solely because they were available earlier. Seriously, Europe is a huge market, and if you wait until you're big in the U.S., you'll be too late. It's the internet - the rest of the world is just one hop away!
  • falsestprophet 19y ago
    what are the dutch knockoffs? (so we can have a look)
    • deleted 19y ago
      [deleted]
    • JohnnyRainbow 19y ago
      Amazon: www.bol.com EBay: www.marktplaats.nl Facebook: www.hyves.nl
      • mdemare 19y ago
        We don't have a craigslist competitor, and craigslist covers Amsterdam, but only in English.
        • sabat 19y ago
          Oh, like you guys don't all speak English anyway. :-) C'mon, admit it: you only speak Dutch for sport.
  • dlesscheni 19y ago
    T E E N W A G Teen Wag was formed from ideas here
  • axod 19y ago
• Hexayurt 19y ago
  A really good quality standard CSS layout. I don't mean the stylesheets - no, those come later - no, I mean a really good, one size genuinely does fit all, semantic HTML layout. Does blogs, does galleries, does comments, does discussions, in a single well thought out semantic HTML format. Then you have a library of CSS templates that people can use. And people can upload new templates. And each template gets checked, to make sure that it represents each element properly, and works across browsers (yep, that's a validator). The business model is this: advertising on the template inspection pages, so that the "greek" text on the layout pages is all advertising. Advertising is split with the authors of the pages which are downloaded - you copy the CSS to yer drive (downloading the zip file of the CSS + images) and the author of the template gets a cut. How do you prevent fake downloads distorting the figures? Up to you, but I think you can filter based on IPs. But the real key is that semantic HTML on the front end, because once you have that, it's easy to do the rest. But that part is a genuine hardness. Or you could, you know, write the software for this: http://disastr.org http://disastr.org
  • joshwa 19y ago
    http://code.google.com/p/blueprintcss/ http://code.google.com/p/blueprintcss/ ?
  • chaostheory 19y ago
    http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
• samwise 19y ago
  wow. Glad to know most of the ideas suck. why is everyone working on a "social network" get some original ideas.
  • deltapoint 19y ago
    A social network is just a platform for an idea, their is still room for original social networks.
    • jpalacio486 19y ago
      I second that.
    • fauigerzigerk 19y ago
      Sure there is room. It's just that if "social networking" appears in the project title there's a high probability that they haven't figured out what that room is. I'm sure there are a lot of great new ideas that include some kind of social network, but have something more interesting to say about it than that it is a social network.
  • gwenhwyfaer 19y ago
    Because "asocial networks" tend to be kinda small?
• deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
• joe 19y ago
  What you want is something that capitalizes on a basic human need, whether that means validation of existence or sex or facilitation of work, etc. For me, it was dealing with frustration (http://ventations.com/ http://ventations.com/), although that site's not really a startup. More of an almost-joke.
• samwise 19y ago
  What would be great is a way to subscribe to torrents as you do on tivo. So that my shows can be downloaded with out me having to search, Like a virtual tivo, but better. yes, that would be sweet.
  • danw 19y ago
    TVRss + Miro (formerly democracy) or utorrent, tutorial here http://lifehacker.com/software/bittorrent/hack-attack-get-your-tv-season-pass-with-democracy-204057.php http://lifehacker.com/software/bittorrent/hack-attack-get-yo.... You might also want to check out TV-links.co.uk if you prefer convenience over quality. As for a legal option, no idea, joost?
    • sbraford 19y ago
      Yes but the UIs are still horrible. Someone needs to make something so easy a retarted monkey could use the thing and probably not even realize "torrents" were powering the thing.
      • danw 19y ago
        TV-links is far from horrible, click the show you want and start watching. Torrents are a non-starter for regular users. Download a .torrent file from one of many tracker sites and open it with the client on your computer is simply too many steps and it's too different from the experience on limewire etc.
        • dcurtis 19y ago
          tv-links isn't a horrible experience, but the quality is horrible compared to the dvd-rip and hd-rips that are available abundantly on torrent sites.
• deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
• mstevens 19y ago
  A better email client - automatic classification of incoming mail, understanding mailing list headers, reminding me to add attachments if I've said "see attached", understanding bounce messages and tracking them against that address in my contacts list ("You're trying to email <foo>. I see that didn't work last time. Please check the address is correct."). etc.
  • mdemare 19y ago
    If you make a better webmail-client, make switching easy! Allow me to give your site a try with my current archive of (gmail) messages and contacts, and keep gmail up-to-date, so I can switch back if I decide (and I'm a pessimist) that your service isn't good enough.
• mpfefferle 19y ago
  This may be more of a pipe dream than a viable idea, but I'd like to see someone come up with a new model for an insurance company where everyone's interests are more aligned. For example, a health insurance company that paid doctors a dividend on the long term health of their patients minus costs instead of per procedure. If it worked, doctors and patients would be the ones balancing the effectiveness of treatments vs costs rather than an insurance bureaucracy. Note that to prevent doctors from working with only healthy patients, they'd be paid out for improvements in health rather than absolute health.
  • euccastro 19y ago
    I think I read somewhere that in China doctors's salaries are, or used to be, linked to the healthy days per year of their 'customers'.
    • mdemare 19y ago
      Measuring performance doesn't work, Joel says: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/July2002.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/July2002.html
      • iamwil 19y ago
        I think it's both Joe Krause and Max Levin that both quote the HP founder that, "You make what you measure" The problem is that sometimes it's not obvious what you measure, since what you might be interested is something vague like "effectiveness" or "progress". And, like all pattern classification problems, if you pick features that don't give a good signal to noise ratio, your assessment could be way off. Even worse when that being measured knows what's being measured. A feedback loop, if you will. And thus, the fact that you observed something changes it, which sways the results from if you didn't measure it. Sounds a little bit like photons in physics, but I'm guessing photons work off of different principles. Joel is merely saying that you should be careful of what you measure, because some metrics (lines of code, hours work) aren't indicative of what you're really trying to figure out (progress, effectiveness).
• andyn 19y ago
  These have been floating about in my head for a while. Mostly social web sites but with a twist: mmmbop: A Hanson based social networking site. Haven't quite worked out how this would work. pandr: A social networking site for bears. prson: A social networking site for like-minded people to organise crimes. Feel free to use them yourself.
  • altay 19y ago
    prson is like my friend's idea -- an online marketplace for the contract killing industry. connect hits and hitmen. =P
    • sbraford 19y ago
      an illicit social network / market could be huge. host it in Sweden / Amsterdam / offshore (or wherever it's legal). not worth the hassle from the feds though =)
      • altay 19y ago
        definitely. another friend suggested a facebook app that helps you find drugs. i have some sketchy friends.
        • chengmi 19y ago
          Too bad you can't use Google Maps for that: http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html Read the last bullet point...
      • sabat 19y ago
        HEY -- how about drugr.com, to hook up dealers and users? Talk about a $billion idea ...
  • SwellJoe 19y ago
    "pandr: A social networking site for bears." Or politicians. They can get their campaign manager to help them use the Internet.
• german 19y ago
  I would love to see someone creating a RPL programming language, like HP calculators. I love that language.
  • ayc 19y ago
    FORTH is programming language with RPL. Look forth.org
• steveplace 19y ago
  Location based creations/addons to social and dating sites. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137254-c,webservices/article.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137254-c,webservices/artic...
• zeke 19y ago
  A temporary phone forwarding service where you can give a number out freely but say "It will only work for seven days." Same idea as the onetime email address but for phones.
  • sbarbour 19y ago
    Handy service. http://numbr.com/ http://numbr.com/ Highly recommended.
• peterarmstrong 19y ago
  "The iPod of water coolers, producing flat and bubbly water from tap water." details here: http://peterarmstrong.com/articles/2007/08/19/company-1-turn-tap-water-into-premium-flat-and-bubbly-water-via-the-ipod-of-water-coolers http://peterarmstrong.com/articles/2007/08/19/company-1-turn...
• altay 19y ago
  this isn't a startup, but i want it: a flashlight on my cell phone. i'm always using my phone's screen as a flashlight in the dark, but it's not very bright and drains the battery. they've got those tiny, efficient, mega-powerful LED flashlight keychains -- can't be THAT hard to integrate one into a phone.
  • rms 19y ago
    good idea.
  • btbytes 19y ago
    Its called Nokia 1100. Its an incredibly popular phone in India. Its cheap, sturdy, comes with a flashlight that you can operate by clicking one button. Very useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1100#Features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1100#Features
    • altay 19y ago
      wow, according to that page, the nokia 1100 is the world best-selling handset. 200 million sold. (cf. 50M razrs, 110M ipods, 115M ps2s) i'm guessing it's cause of the flashlight. ;)
• altay 19y ago
  a social network for couples. my married friends complain that they feel like hermits, because it's hard to meet other couples to hang out with. you'd have a shared profile, which is matched with other local couples with similar tastes in movies, music, food, whatever.
  • danw 19y ago
    Could work for singles too. Instead of a dating site that matches people to each other, it matches people to fun activities and events. Send a bunch of singles or couples to Cocktail-making or salsa dancing class and they've got a common ground to talk about and can still enjoy even if they don't find someone.
    • yubrew 19y ago
      I thought this was the basic premise for meetup.com ?
    • altay 19y ago
      that's definitely true. though part of what i like about it is the idea of two people using a computer together. the internet is so bizarre in that it connects you to others who are far away, but simultaneously isolates you from folks who are nearby.
  • gwenhwyfaer 19y ago
    > my married friends complain that they feel like hermits I'm a hermit, and I never feel married. There's something fundamentally unfair about that. :)
• yters 19y ago
  Hijack that google image labelling game idea and apply it to something like WoW. Basically, make an open platform that encodes computer AI hard problems humans can solve easily into a MMOPRG format.
  • rms 19y ago
    Interesting, but do you have any examples of something that would be useful and fun?
    • yters 19y ago
      The google game was kind of fun. Another unoriginal example would be using RTS games for real wargaming. I haven't come up with a good characterization for the general case though.
• yters 19y ago
  Generic combiner of web 2.0 apps. Not the same as a personalized homepage, e.g. google's homepage. The system would work with any web 2.0 app that provided an API, and would either give users an easy plug and play method of combining the apps to create something new, with easy app discovery; or use AI to resolve general goals. Basically, SOA on a global scale.
  • sbraford 19y ago
    Yahoo Pipes?
    • yters 19y ago
      Isn't yahoo pipes just rss feeds?
• yters 19y ago
  autodidact - state the subject area you want to learn and it presents the best resources for learning the subject.
  • ecuzzillo 19y ago
    wikipedia
    • ntoshev 19y ago
      Learning guides for Wikipedia
    • yters 19y ago
      oh right, duh
• sbraford 19y ago
  Problem Scenario: I'm a hacker. That's just how I roll. Last night I built a "digg/reddit for pictures" type of site. No sweat. But now I need someone to maintain/market/add content / etc. It's a huge pain, and I'd much rather stick to coding. What would be nice: Some kind of site/forum/network/etc that connects hacktrepreneurs with talented and/or cheap marketing people. (sometimes you get what you pay for; sometimes the work is just not that hard)
  • mpc 19y ago
    Interesting, basically the opposite of rent-a-coder type sites
    • dpapathanasiou 19y ago
      FindaBusinessModel.com ? GetMeClients.com ? HowCanIMakeMoney.com ?
• npotter 19y ago
  -a real estate aggregator to provide people with historical price trends on given property. Eliminate the information asymmetry between the real estate agent and the buyer. -public and uploadable data warehouse, a la Many Eyes and Swivel, but with better graphic capability, something along the lines of trendalyzer. Design it in a way that rewards contributors with points to build resident 'data experts' and to enable referencing and storing of different people's analysis. -web-based statistical software like SAS. allow sharing of programs through repository as well as collaborative editing.
• breck 19y ago
  SocialNotwork.com A social network for all the people building social networks. It's perfect--now they can talk about how they are building the next Facebook to people that actually believe it can be done! It will also allow you to import all of your existing social networking profiles into one place. Widgets. Video. Wikis.
• chubbard 19y ago
  I know this topic is really already past, but what about a fully up to date web browser. Full CSS standards compliance, JIT javascript, nice developer tools, memory models, full garbage collection, just the web browser we all want right. Pay attention because here is the interesting part. Sell it to Microsoft. This is not a web browser where you are trying to capture the market. No just sell it to Microsoft because they aren't going to fix their browser anytime soon. I imagine they can't. It's too old, and maintenance has become a nightmare. That's why their browser is so behind the times. So, they got a problem, a big one, so someone should fix it for them.
• bsc 19y ago
  Solve whether P=NP, but keep it a secret. Slowly mathematicians and computer scientists will go nuts wanting to know, so one day you hold a conference with an astronomical entry fee. Profit. Easy as pie.