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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

• danfrost 13y ago
  Every Sunday
• adam419 13y ago
  Every Sunday, and I just posted it 10 minutes ago..
• teemo_cute 13y ago
  A while ago I was reading a blog post and I spotted a grammar error. The post was good but it made me a little uncomfortable. So I decided to make it right. I used chrome developer tools's edit html feature... I edited the html and behold the grammar error was gone. I read the paragraph again with pure delight. I love technology. Idea Generated: There are lots of blog posts out there that have good content, but sometimes they are not written well or grammar errors exists because of lack of proof-reading. What if there was a web-app where readers can correct blog posts or articles. Of course, it needs the approval of the author. There might be a 'Correct me if I have grammar errors' button of some sort somewhere in the post. The editor is not allowed to edit the meaning of the content, only the typos and/or grammar errors, which of course needs the approval of the author. It's like github for blog posts and articles.
  • AbhishekBiswal 13y ago
    Not automatic correction right? You said something like "Github for blog posts" sounds cool, but it will take time for others to edit/push new versions of the post, hence a lot of work on a single blog post. Inefficient.
  • total 13y ago
    I'm actually rather fond of this idea. Far too often I read blog posts and the mistakes are glaring and plentiful. I understand that English is not everyone's first language and so it is acceptable, of course, but it sure does make reading jarring at times. I've always wanted a feature to correct people but without coming off as rude, overbearing, or overly concerned with semantics. (Please don't have any errors in this reply as I talk about correcting others. ;) .)
  • otisfunkmeyer 13y ago
    Pull requests for blog posts sounds amazing, at least theoretically :)
  • artyomkazak 13y ago
    There are lots of tools which allow sending typo reports instantly to the author, e.g. http://orphus.ru/en http://orphus.ru/en.
  • Detrus 13y ago
    Quora does this. It would just be hard to standardize across all the variations of publishing.
    • Schwolop 13y ago
      It doesn't provide the "Suggest Edits" feature for blog posts, only answers to questions. Until I discovered Quora, I was working on http://wikiblog.jugglethis.net/ http://wikiblog.jugglethis.net/ which was my solution to this problem.
  • neil_s 13y ago
    Yes. I imagine this as a javascript/jquery plugin with a backend service that website/blog owners can integrate into their website. It would work something like Medium comments - you highlight the erroneous text, click the 'report typo' button, and then optionally suggest a corrected version.
• rokhayakebe 13y ago
  Email Link: A simple browser plugin which allows me to click it once and it emails me the current url. It would be nice if it gives me the option to email it to others. Resuscitate Xoopit, a much much better gmail search. Have you ever wondered why gmail search sucks when its parent company is the supposedly the best search engine in the world. Xoopit was a nifty addon that mine your inbox and 1) organize every file and links it found, and 2) gave you a search feature at least 10 times better than the gmail option. I would pay once for the first tool, and monthly for the second product.
  • AbhishekBiswal 13y ago
    "Email Link" : Something you want to save for reading later? Pocket and other services do the exact same thing, that is, they save links for reading later, and you can email it to yourself too. In case you want to automate the process, you can create an IFTTT recipe for it. :) And you don't need to pay for it.
    • allworknoplay 13y ago
      pocket even provides an rss feed of saved items so you can read and manage them in your reader. No affiliation to pocket and no idea if other similar products do the same thing.
      • AbhishekBiswal 13y ago
        Yes! There are other apps too, like Instapaper, Readability, etc. Pocket looks good, and it has browser extensions so you can save the current page with just one click. The app is one of those most beautiful apps I have seen on Play/App store.
  • iKlsR 13y ago
    OneTab kinda does the first.
  • roryokane 13y ago
    I just wrote a rudimentary version of “Email Link”. You can use it for free. You just need a few lines of JS in a bookmarklet: var myEmail = "my-email@example.com"; var url = window.location.href; var subject = "Link: " + document.title; window.location = "mailto:"+encodeURIComponent(myEmail)+"?subject="+encodeURIComponent(subject)+"&body="+encodeURIComponent(url); To install it, change the email address in the code, URL-escape the code (with `encodeURIComponent(…)` in a JS console), prepend “javascript:”, and save it as the URL of a browser bookmark with the title “Email Link to Self”. Put the bookmark in your bookmarks bar or somewhere else convenient. When you want to use it, open that bookmark to open a new message in your mail client, then click Send without changing anything and switch back to your browser. To send the link to others, edit the To field in your mail client before clicking Send. P.S. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all have a menu item for this built-in, except they don’t prefill the To field with your email address for you. The menu item is in the File menu, about 3/4 of the way down.
• ethnomusicolog 13y ago
  Every sunday: Product Idea: a gmail app that shows me a graph with the number of mail I sent/receive a day , by person, group,...
  • syerram2 13y ago
    I signed up for goconspire.com a while back - it does a decent job at that (weekly/daily email stats)
    • ethnomusicolog 13y ago
      Thanks, just signed up. I'll have to wait to see what it can do.
      • ethnomusicolog 13y ago
        I just got the mail , exactly what I was looking for, all they need to add is the same results in the web interface and the ability to play with it. -- Is there a way to edit one's comment ?
  • AbhishekBiswal 13y ago
    Here you go, http://gmailmeter.com/ http://gmailmeter.com/ :D
    • ethnomusicolog 13y ago
      I have tried it, but there is not enough granularity
    • akshatpradhan 13y ago
      Getting an error: https://gist.github.com/akshatpradhan/10603374 https://gist.github.com/akshatpradhan/10603374
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• omarhegazy 13y ago
  A pay-to-post/view social discussion site. Reddit starts out cool, then slowly becomes 'dumber' (discussion-focused articles turn into quick reaction images) as it becomes more and more popular. Hacker News avoids this by purposefully not trying to be as popular as Reddit -- UI remains minimal, tries to stay out of search engines' ways, etc. But, in this way, HN is discussion focused through obscurity. What if you filtered out dumb crap by making it a cost to the user for posting? In that way, the user would have to really care about what h/she's posting about before h/she posts it. I.E.: thought-provoking discussion and not cheap images. That way, you can mass market and accept huge gains in popularity while being sure that the people who are posting/voting on the stuff care enough to pay for it. Want cheap (often not even funny) images? Go to Reddit. The best posters get compensated with the money that the voters paid. This creates a network of "I pay to post and I pay to vote but I get money from posting which incentivizes me to post but I only get paid if I get voted on a lot which means I'll want to encourage voting which means I'll have to vote a lot myself" : the voters and content contributors conflate in one genius network of money movement. It still wouldn't ever get as big as Reddit, simply because people don't like direct payment for services on the Internet. But it'd be an effective way to get a bunch of smart, dedicated people who would kill for thought-provoking discussion on the Internet, and also pay them for just that.
  • minimaxir 13y ago
    The best posters get compensated with the money that the voters paid. Any service that offers a significant monetary incentive to cheat it, will implode.
    • rgbrgb 13y ago
      Adsense is pretty far from imploding.
  • krapp 13y ago
    I can easily see it becoming a platform for astroturfing and viral marketing campaigns by corporate accounts, and i'm not entirely certain i'm comfortable with directly linking a poster's ability to participate in a discussion with their disposable income. Would be an interesting experiment to see though.
• danfrost 13y ago
  Social Researching: Like social bookmarking, combined with joining comments so you can share and collaborate on your research. Think "trails" from V Bush's "As we may think" article, implemented so we can collaborate. As users start bookmarking things in their own trail, the app works out what other trails are similar and suggests you merge your researching efforts.
  • makmanalp 13y ago
    Google wave was great for almost this, actually, minus the matching / merging part! Sad to see it go.
    • danfrost 13y ago
      Yes. I think this idea is almost in many things but you need to give the user the structure to both read and contribute to a thread of research.
  • danohuiginn 13y ago
    This idea has a /lot/ of use cases. I'm not sure how easy it would be to make a business out of it -- maybe you allow public collaborations free, and charge to take it private. It'd sink or swim on the details of the UI, though, and I have frankly no idea how to get those right. Lots of painstaking user testing, presumably.
• Unai 13y ago
  A crowd-sourced (á la Wikipedia) AI platform to create a chatbot (á la Siri), with a nice user-friendly front-end, so users can input de "inputs and answers". I guess that with time it could be improved with APIs and better algorithms.
  • DanBC 13y ago
    This is a great idea! I'd be terrified of the results if /b/ get hold of it. I saw the results of a few chatbots and it was funny, but also scary.
    • jpindar 13y ago
      Yes. It's been tried but people kept giving it useless data.
  • hpvic03 13y ago
    I'm really interested in chatbots, though it seems the underlying state of the art is still pretty poor. Mitsuku (http://www.mitsuku.com/ http://www.mitsuku.com/) won the Loebner Prize last year, and that chatbot still runs on basic AIML files. I think a new approach is probably necessary to take chatbots to the next level, but I don't know what it is.
  • aragot 13y ago
    That's creative enough to have potential to win the game of AI.
• cr4zy 13y ago
  cron as a service...but unlike setcronjob.com and easycron.com, allow more than a few thousand jobs and in general support advanced job scheduling features. So actually more like quartz as a service, i.e. hosted http://quartz-scheduler.org/ http://quartz-scheduler.org/
  • bshimmin 13y ago
    Doesn't IronWorker do all of that, and well, already?
    • cr4zy 13y ago
      Most expensive plan only allows 1,000 concurrent tasks for $3250. This wouldn't work if I wanted to have a custom schedule for each user of most apps for example.
• netcan 13y ago
  Fix podcasts. I was helping someone set up her android phone for podcasts and noticed how problematic the whole process is. First, the android apps aren't very good. More problematic is the process of getting a feed into it. Sometimes searching by name works. Often it doesn't. Getting from podcast's website to the app is a problem. Discovery is also quite poor.
  • danfrost 13y ago
    I nearly worked on an idea like this 4 years ago. End-to-end podcasting which helps people make good quality, listenable podcasts. +1 from me
  • graublau 13y ago
    On iOS it's not much better, most apps are too granualar (e.g. Downcast) or not enough (Apple Podcasts). Pegging some hope on http://overcast.fm/ http://overcast.fm/ fixing the situation but it's not a great ecosystem...yet.
    • justinhj 13y ago
      The built in iOS podcast app is the worst app I've ever used. It's not that it fails to be great, it actually seemed to go out of its way to delete podcasts just before I left home. I bought downcast and I'm happy with it except for the problem of discovering podcasts.
  • Unai 13y ago
    Most free podcast android apps are pretty terrible, but PocketCast (paid) is really awesome (at least it have a great UI). I don't even listen to podcast that often, but I bought it without hesitation. But it's true that there's a problem with podcast, so take my +1.
    • crazypyro 13y ago
      I've been using BeyondPod for a couple years now. It has a paid and free one and the free one has suited my needs, but its a relatively cheap upgrade for some nice features.
• marpalmin 13y ago
  SoundAct: Similar to IFTTT but that triggers with sound. You can record sound patterns such as a double clap, clap, footstep, etc and associate that with an action, like notifying someone or reading the news. Ideal for context where siri-like apps does not work well because of noise like the car, metro, etc.
  • th0br0 13y ago
    I've had something similar in mind for a long time now... mainly for use in home automation. (Clap twice to stop your MPD, etc.) ... would be great to see this get done! ;)
• johndoeee 13y ago
  Feedback for catered lunch at work. I work for a small company and we get catered lunch delivered every day. They never ask about if we liked it and if the amount we received fit our consumption. So, some way to inform them about which dishes we liked and how much food we threw away.
  • btgeekboy 13y ago
    Wouldn't a simple Google Docs form fit the bill here?
  • sunberries 13y ago
    you can make a simple database app for this in Ragic (https://www.ragic.com/ https://www.ragic.com/)
• skullum 13y ago
  Venmo Receipt bill splitter: Mobile app that analyzes a picture of a receipt using tesseract or something similar and allows the user to charge Venmo friends for certain items on the receipt. I would pay for this because then I wouldn't have to create a Venmo payment for each user.
  • ycmike 13y ago
    Friend of mine was working on this. Don't know if they are still active or if/when they launch. http://pennapps2014s.challengepost.com/submissions/20858-divvly http://pennapps2014s.challengepost.com/submissions/20858-div...
    • skullum 13y ago
      Yeah this is exactly it! Thanks!
• soneca 13y ago
  A usability test of mobile apps delivered to consumers through ad space on free mobile games. You create a "use quest" of your mobile app. One or more screenshots of your application with a stated goal - e.g. invite a friend on a social app. You present the user the home screen and he has to find where in your app he can invite his friends. You record all clicks, and time and etc until he finds it. This test is served as "partners quest" on free mobile games. The gamer has to complete your "use quest" in order to continue playing that pool game. You pay the game producer a small fee and charge from the mobile apps developers that want to test their designs. You may give the gamers more in-game bonus if he allows you to record his voice and face (and pay the game producer a little bit more for this feautre).
  • wellboy 13y ago
    These guys are doing it for a whole app. Maybe get in touch with them. http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/11/app-io-turns-ios-apps-into-playable-mobile-ads/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/11/app-io-turns-ios-apps-into-...
• hershel 13y ago
  Dynamic search anonimizer: most of the times google's personalized search is much better than anonimized search services like duckduckgo. But in certain query types anonimized search is highly preferable. What about a service/browser extension that understands thoses difference and guide the search accordingly ?
  • UweSchmidt 13y ago
    how about Startpage.com
    • hershel 13y ago
      It isn't dynamic as far as i know.
• Thiz 13y ago
  Soylent bars.* I like the idea of Soylent as a complete food, but instead of a nutritional drink, I believe a power bar would be a better idea, for portability, storage, and consumption. * Not tech related.
  • forgotprevpass 13y ago
    Someone is working on that! (I have no relationship with this company) http://www.mealsquares.com/ http://www.mealsquares.com/
  • covercash 13y ago
    People in the Soylent discussion boards have made bars, breads, muffins, etc. out of the base Soylent mix. More here: http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylid-solid-soylent/3145 http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylid-solid-soylent/3145
• marpalmin 13y ago
  SocialPower: Complain about a bad service in a store by adding in the map the location of it. After that other customers of the store receive notifications to vote if the complain is valid (by using background location and push). If many users backup the complain, then the business gets an e-mail stating that they have been featured in SocialComplaint and they can work to solve the problem. The complains are alive for x days in the map in they continue unresolved. After that they go to the archive and statistics of business complains.
  • ghayes 13y ago
    This idea reminds me a bit of PublikDemand[0]. According to their site, they "aggregate and organize customer complaints by topic and company. Individual complaints are turned into qualified leads for competitors." [0]: http://www.publikdemand.com/ http://www.publikdemand.com/
    • marpalmin 13y ago
      I was thinking more as a mobile reporting platform.
• netcan 13y ago
  Commitment device app that works on a dead man's switch. The idea is to use the discipline you have now to discipline your future self. eg1 - Enter your weight every month. If you go over a predetermined weight, it does something punitive. Posts embarrassing pictures online, emails your mom, donates $50 to the Klu klux Klan. eg2 Create a todo list with due dates, goals or somesuch. Failing to complete them does something punitive. eg3 Create out a challenge (exercise 5 times per week). Failure to complete challenge does something punitive. The key is to get the psychological component right. I think if someone's daily task is 100 or more pushups they are more likely to fraudulently push a complete button than they are to enter a fraudulent number of pushups. Could be a fun project.
  • ghayes 13y ago
    See also, Gym Pact [0]. An app that lets you earn rewards (versus payout cash) for hitting gym goals. Similar idea of adverse motivation. [0] http://www.gym-pact.com/ http://www.gym-pact.com/
  • forgotprevpass 13y ago
    Isn't this what beeminder.com does?
    • roryokane 13y ago
      Yes, it is. (The specific punishment it uses is charging you money – more money each time you fail). Clickable link: https://www.beeminder.com/ https://www.beeminder.com/
  • nostromo 13y ago
    You might enjoy this story / podcast: http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/02/save-me-from-myself-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/02/save-me-from-myself-a-new... One guy decided that he wanted to get healthy. So, he made a list of prohibited foods and actions and wrote a check for $750 payable to Oprah Winfrey (he dislikes Oprah for some reason). He told his wife, "If I do anything on this list in the next 30 days, send this check to Oprah, no exceptions."
• tbirdz 13y ago
  Sex toy that uses machine learning to find the optimal method of providing pleasure to it's owner.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • aragot 13y ago
    As a first approximation to machine learning, it would use Amazon Mechanical Turk?
    • marknutter 13y ago
      You mean Amazon Mechanical Jerk
  • mappum 13y ago
    Hard to do effectively until we have consumer FMRI hardware that can measure dopamine/serotonin release.
    • kevinwang 13y ago
      Grip strength? Facial analysis?
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
• dethstar 13y ago
  A craiglist like site to find projects/people to work with. It could connect to tools e.g Trello and give you a rough estimate of how this persons delivers e.g closes their cards almost always on time.
  • cstefanovici 13y ago
    http://builditwith.me/ http://builditwith.me/ has been around for a while but without much success
• DanBC 13y ago
  Lower ligature risk USB charging cables. These would be used by mental health hospitals to allow (risk assessed) patient to charge their devices without introducing ligature risk. To go along with this: Bulk USB charger. Imagine a 20 port USB hub, but this has no USB connectivity. It only has USB power. It would be kept in a secure place in a mental health ward and would allow them to charge patient's devices. This would mean that patients get electronic devices but without having access to cords (ligature risk) or mains plugs (self harm risk). (Take a UK 3 pin plug. Place it on floor with prongs up. Jump off bed onto plug with weight on one foot. That's an unpleasant injury. Removing that risk is useful). Advantages: You don't need to PAT test each charger coming into the hospital. You reduce (slightly) fire risk from bad quality chargers. You reduce ligature and self harm risk. You allow patients access to electronic devices which has some "safeguarding of liberties" benefits. Disadvantages: selling to the NHS is possibly hell, and selling electrical equipment to the NHS is possibly even harder. You're creating a vigh value stash of easy to steal equipment. MH hospitals already have lots of IT and stealable medication so they should be able to keep it safe but maybe a ventilated safe would be part of the package.
  • pmorici 13y ago
    wouldn't it just be a matter of using a shorter cable like 4" or less?
    • DanBC 13y ago
      Well, the cables have to be really robust so nothing can be extracted from them that could be used for cutting. Some people can cause surprising damage with a bobby pin so having robust, potted, cable shells would be important.
    • iamben 13y ago
      Or a strong magnetic connector every 10 or so inches to allow you to build a cable as long as you like? (I have no idea if that's actually possible)
      • eli 13y ago
• bredren 13y ago
  Blockchain Genius. Crowd-sourced annotations of transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain. Clever UI for 'zooming' in and out of display of the chain.
• yitchelle 13y ago
  A translation service - A photo of the document to be translated is emailed into the service. In 1 or 2 days time, the email is replied with an translated document. The photo can be taken with mobile phone photos and emailed.
  • tizzdogg 13y ago
    You should check out gengo.com. Sounds like that's exactly what you're looking for, or at least they have an API that could be used to build the app you want.
    • yitchelle 13y ago
      Thanks for the heads up on gengo.com. I shall checked them out. Have you dealt with them before?
      • tizzdogg 13y ago
        Yes I used them to translate some of the text in an app to a bunch of other languages, and it was pretty easy, and a good translation (so I am told, at least). Note that I'm not affiliated with them at all, and have only used it once a year or so ago.
• jtokoph 13y ago
  I would suggest posting this every Thursday or Friday. Give people something fun to work on over the weekend.
  • bnt 13y ago
    Doing something properly requires time for preparation. Posting ideas on Sunday is actually a good idea as people have 5-6 days to calm down from the rush of adrenaline (OMG this idea is THE BEST IDEA EVER!), get some research done, prepare the time (some folks have family and need to micromanage their time) and finally do some work next Sunday.
• Bootvis 13y ago
  I had a small discussion about this idea[1] and I believe that it is worthwhile: Make private key based authentication useful for logging in to websites. I don't have the chops but introducing private key based auth as an extra can be very worthwhile for some users. So start there and improve the UI until your grandmother can use it. I believe the biggest hurdle will be private key management. The advantage of using private keys for authenticating with web services that if the keys become unrecoverable the keys can actually changed by the service provider (after sufficient diligence). [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7553882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7553882
  • earthrise 13y ago
    Steve Gibson is working on a system called "SQRL" that does exactly that, and should be very usable: https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm edit: forgot some words
  • locacorten 13y ago
    Check out virtual smart cards, a very cool feature: http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles-tutorials/authentication_and_encryption/Using-Virtual-Smart-Cards-Windows-8.html http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles-tutorials/authenticat...
  • jlgaddis 13y ago
    You know client certificates can be used for this, right?
    • IanChiles 13y ago
      Having spend the last week or so working with client certificates, they could be so much more if browsers implemented a proper interface for managing them, or at least a much more intuitive one than they do at the moment. They work spectacularly for building closed APIs where you control both sides, however. They're just a bit tricky for the end user most of the time
    • Bootvis 13y ago
      Yes, see the linked discussion. I think the hard part is getting people to use them.
• throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  Offline navigation map for mobile. Small thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7171919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7171919 The entire OpenStreetMap dataset is 23 GiB with moderate compression. With some optimization/truncuation the whole world should fit comfortably on most phones. This is very useful, for the times you're lost with a slow connection, no connection, in a foreign country, or with roaming charges. Also it's a fun algorithm-heavy challenge even if you don't finish anything.
  • Doctor_Fegg 13y ago
    Do you mean navigation as in "routing" or just as in "viewable map"? If the latter, MapsWithMe does a good job of it already.
    • throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
      Um, never mind then. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapsWithMe http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapsWithMe 12 GB, impressive.
  • bri3d 13y ago
    While offline navigation is increasingly an edge case I do agree that it offers vast utility in the situations where it's still necessary. Nokia's HERE Drive+ offers this as its headlining feature on Windows Phone, and Windows Phone comes with offline mapping support built in (to be downloaded on a region-by-region basis). I think the most challenging part of offline mapping is honestly geocoding. Decent vector data for streets is easily available thanks to OSM and learning how to render it and do routing is a fun path down learning well-known algorithms. When you think about it, you're basically reimplementing early 2000s standalone navigation systems like TomTom. But even once I've implemented rendering and routing (and reached early 2000s TomTom parity), I still can't enter "Pizza Hut" and end up at the nearest Pizza Hut. This is where Google excels over other map providers and especially over the existing mobile-phone offline maps solutions like Nokia's - Google's PoI database and search facility is unmatched in my experience. Google even solves for fun problems like locating the closest instance of an intersection between common street names like "23rd and Broadway."
• DanBC 13y ago
  3D file managers, using Occulus Rift or similar, especially if it has REZ-like interface. This website has a bunch of 3D interfaces. They'd have to be brought up to date. And perhaps the various metaphors need a lot of work. I don't think this will be particularly useful. I jist want something that makes me feel like I'm living in the future.
  • metaobject 13y ago
    If you're interested in seeing one implementation in action check out the one SGI created for the Irix OS back in the 90s (or early 2000s?). Also, the scene at the end of Jurassic Park where the little girl is activating the park's electrical system shows it in action.
  • fest 13y ago
    I like this idea. Especially when combined with something like Thingiverse- you could view the available 3D models, pick one, rotate it, view it, and then throw it either in bin, or against your 3D printer to print it :)
• sferoze 13y ago
  A crowd-funding charity website that collects monthly very tiny micro-payment (as little as .10 cents) from users for charity. This way many users would sign up, worry free, as .10 cents a month is extremely affordable and can add up to a lot of money with scale.
  • bnt 13y ago
    OK, on the topic of funding charities, an old idea that I haven't gotten around to yet: A JS plugin that companies (or regular folks) put on their blogs, which generates a downloadable PDF of the article people are reading, but have to pay $1 to download.
    • sferoze 13y ago
      Depending on the content, I would consider even charging less, anywhere down to couple cents, given a practical micro-payment system.
  • allworknoplay 13y ago
    micropayments are hard. credit/debit card fees are proportionately astronomical. some day things will be better...
  • binsch 13y ago
    My friend started a site that does exactly that: Goodst.org
    • sferoze 13y ago
      This isn't exactly what I was thinking. When you sign up on Goodst.org you sign up to a plan that charges your credit card about $6.00 a month. Even though they let you choose where to direct .25 cents each day. So overall you have to be willing to give at least $6.00 a month. I was hoping to really lower the barrier to donating by only asking for a .10 - .20 cent donation per person, per month. I think many more people would be willing to donate .10 - .20 cents per month instead of $6.00 per month. .10 - .20 cents a month would not be a noticeable difference to most people, so people would sign up without any concern about their own finances. As long as they could trust the payment options and donation service. Lets take a look at a possible scenario here. Currently amazon micropayments charges credit cards 5% of transaction value + $0.05 for transactions anywhere between $.05 - $9.99. Lets consider single transactions between .10 - .20 cents. Any transaction in this range comes with a 6 cent transaction fee. So you would receive a net payment of .04 - .14 cents per person per month. Imagine an example where each person donates .20 cents and we receive .14 cents net per person after transaction fee. How many user do we need to get $500,000? About 3.57 million users. Seems like a lot of people but it is only about .01% of the United States population. And since the website could take donations from anyone in the world willing to give .20 cents a month, I think attaining practical large sums would be achievable. And extremely affordable! So .25 cents a day is good if you can afford it, but .20 cents a month is soo extremely affordable for most people and with scale it could add up to a lot!
• dang 13y ago
  We like experiments and this is a good one that goes to HN's core. Also, "Idea Sunday" is a great name. I don't see why there shouldn't be a thread like this every Sunday, as long as the quality is good. If there aren't enough new good ideas, we can reduce the frequency. Consider yourselves challenged! If it is to become a regular thing, we'll ask the whoishiring account to post them. That's the only account allowed to make recurring posts like this, which solves the problem of users competing to do it for the karma. Maybe rokhayakebe can keep posting these for another few weeks and, if it's still going strong, we can semi-formalize it then.
  • Spittie 13y ago
    What I'd love to see is some kind of "meta" HN where all the ask HN, show HN and similar threads are posted. For two reasons: 1) those "meta" threads might gather to a different audience and 2) many people are more interested in normal threads, and many are interested in the meta. One could just go ahead and create a site for that, but obviously it wouldn't have the same traction as HN, and 99% of the value of HN is in the people posting here. I do realize that it will not get implemented, but maybe consider this :) Maybe instead of creating a new section of the site, make those meta thread listen under an url like https://news.ycombinator.com/meta https://news.ycombinator.com/meta, so that one interested could see the latest threads without much effort.
    • pearjuice 13y ago
      And one for bitcoin! And one for nodejs! And x, and y and z! You know what, let's put them in a subdirectory, like so: /h/bitcoin or /h/meta. And we call them sub-HNs! ...
      • sarreph 13y ago
        Although a sub-HN approach sounds appealing at face-value, it's likely to fragment the site content a little too much. One of the things I appreciate most about HN is its ability to act as a filter with single point of convergence. I'm not sure I'd want to sacrifice that (personally), probably nothing more than for 'fear of missing out'.
• DanBC 13y ago
  Google Spellcheck. Google must have terabytes of data about correct, alternative, international, and incorrect spelling of English words. (Also probably all words in other languages). A Google spell checker product could combine knowledge of word placement within a sentence and this huge cache of data to accurately guess what the correct spelling should be. The product could probably go further and help people avoid eggcorns and malapropisms and etc. It would be interesting to compare the accuracy : size ratio of this dictionary with that created by rtm and father using probabilistic, uhm, stuff.
  • aspidistra 13y ago
    Google Chrome and the Google Toolbar already have spellcheckers ... ? Or do you mean something more like MS Word, which will correct misplaced letters and so on?
    • DanBC 13y ago
      Yes, i mean a separate product that will integrate with whatever bit of office software you're using.
      • eitally 13y ago
        Google Drive (Docs/Slides/Sheets) already integrate Google's spellcheck.
• scobar 13y ago
  A crowd-funded-style of non-profit charity where you can help donations reach a worthy cause without actually donating money yourself. I wrote about the idea in more detail in this blog post. http://blog.myadversity.com/2014/04/so-many-ideasso-little-time.html http://blog.myadversity.com/2014/04/so-many-ideasso-little-t...
• bequanna 13y ago
  When an HN post is popular, we sometimes crash small websites/blogs. How about a URL Shortener that caches the page at the time the shortened URL is created? Then, when the short url is used, the service attempts to reach the site, if it fails, automatically inform user & redirect them to cached page. Or, the service can attempt to reach the page periodically (once/ couple minutes), if fails, redirect all users to cached page until next attempt in a couple minutes. This period can be based on number of users clicking on the url. Once the link is no longer very popular, the service will have a fairly long time between attempts.
  • _mhr_ 13y ago
    Like a link shortener built on top of the Wayback Machine?
  • aspidistra 13y ago
    Something like http://archive.is http://archive.is ?
  • roryokane 13y ago
    The free Coral CDN (http://www.coralcdn.org/ http://www.coralcdn.org/) already does something like this. It caches the link the first time it is visited. But rather than redirecting you to the original page if it’s up, it always show its own mirror of the page (on its nyud.net domain).
  • dantiberian 13y ago
    This is the idea behind http://fireballed.org/ http://fireballed.org/. Nice idea though.
• callmeed 13y ago
  Calendars & Events as a Service (aka "Stripe for Calendars") I'm sick of dealing with scheduled events, timezones, future background jobs, etc. in almost every app I build. I want a service with an elegant API and nice libraries that would let me: * Create multiple calendars (it would have an ID I could then save with my user model or whatever) * Add events to a calendar by just passing it a timestamp and other metadata * Have webhooks that get called any time an event starts/stops (possibly also X minutes before) * Nice API calls for getting all a calendar's events, checking free/busy times, specifying time zone output and strftime formatting, etc. * A JS library for outputting pretty calendars to an HTML page * An additional cron-like feature for each calendar allowing you to define recurring webhooks If anyone wants to give something like this a shot, let me know. I'll be your first customer, partner or angel investor.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • saiko-chriskun 13y ago
    This is so true. Dealing with time-related development features is one of the most annoying things I deal with.
  • apineda 13y ago
    I find this interesting. Calendars are fun, until you have to program them :P
  • agotterer 13y ago
    Interesting. I was thinking about a very similar calendar API last night. Mostly from a scheduling standpoint. But the webhooks part is a cool addition. Is something similar now possible with zapier?
    • callmeed 13y ago
      Doesn't Zapier have to act on some outside event? Or are you saying combine Zapier w/ Google Calendar to solve the webhooks problem?
• mjadobson 13y ago
  Hosted PostgreSQL service with exposed HTTP API and ACL/validation hooks. Also syncing hooks to plug into SQLite/iDB/etc for offline apps. Sort of like Cloudant/Firebase but using relational db.
  • andrewstuart 13y ago
    Not quite what you are suggesting but.... http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/
• zimbatm 13y ago
  A subscription service for open source projects. As a company I would pay you monthly and get access to bug and features development for all the open source dependencies that I am using. The more I pay the more things I can get done in a month. If a feature is too big for my budget I can accumulate month to month value on a ticket or get other companies to participate.
  • tectonic 13y ago
    I like this.
  • karangoeluw 13y ago
    This sounds interesting, but doesn't make much sense. Do you mind explaining a bit more?
    • Stwerner 13y ago
      Interesting to see this here, I had this idea a while back and have been discussing it with people before I go on validating/invalidating it. In my mind anyway, the idea is something like https://railslts.com/ https://railslts.com/ but for potentially every other gem in your gemfile. We would provide security patches, bugfixes, features, documentation, training, version upgrade scripts/documentation and so on to subscribers. I really like the accumulated credit for features, maybe a system of like: request feature, we put a "credit" value on the complexity of the feature, then companies/people can pledge credits/money for it would work?
      • th0br0 13y ago
        I've also had this on my mind for quite some time. How would you actually implement things though? After all, you're essentially trying to sell "support contracts" for open source projects via the platform. You could implement these by a) "hiring" the project owner to work on specific bugs/features or b) hiring freelancers to fix requested bugs. Furthermore, how would you ... * determine the value of bugs/features? * react to a project owner abandoning a project? * handle multiple upstream developers?
• Spittie 13y ago
  Okay, a bunch of ideas. Probably nothing as good as my last one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7542610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7542610), which was meh to begin with (but I'm happy to see that it sparkled a bit of interest). #1) An anonymous blogging platform. A site that obviously doesn't log you, and that allow you to publish posts without having them attached to an username. Since many would like to somehow post under the same handle, but without having the post attached to an username, implement a system like tripcodes on 4chan (for anyone that's not familiar, you choose a random string, and then you get an "username" derivated from that string. No passwords, no login. As long as you're the only one that know the original string, you are the only one that can post under that "tripcode"). Problems: Money, it's hard to make profitable an anonymous site. Useless, it's not that hard to pick a random name and create a blog on wordpress.com, blogger or similar while using tor. Spam, a site where one can post anonymously without hassle is just asking for it. #2) (totally inspired by Idea Sunday, but I've had this idea before for a while) a site to post ideas for a project, or a "I'd totally love if someone where to do this". Then implement a rating system or something similar, so that the most common/interesting ideas are always at the top. And a random button to get a random idea (ideas as service!). Call it "Jar for ideas" or similar :)
  • bnt 13y ago
    Regarding 2) Weekend hacker (http://www.weekendhacker.net http://www.weekendhacker.net) used to be a cool little email list with side projects people needed help with. Maybe expand your idea to something like WH?
  • gearoidoc 13y ago
    A buddy of mine built #1 once - dont think it really took off though...
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  • gautamnarula 13y ago
    I created something similar to #1: http://millisay.com http://millisay.com It hasn't really taken off, but I also haven't put much effort into promoting it. It still lacks a few features (I've been busy with other projects), but I really like the clean, simple design and a few people have posted some interesting stuff.
• morewillie 13y ago
  Brand-based trivia integrated into other apps to offset service costs (Uber, Hailo, etc..)
• mhp 13y ago
  Open source US tax filing application. Basically TurboTax but free.
  • Barnaby3000 13y ago
    I think this is a really great idea that could save a lot of poor people a lot of money. It made me think if this recent article from the NY Times. http://goo.gl/IjeL0I http://goo.gl/IjeL0I - People are paying $400 and more for really simple tax returns.
  • maguirre 13y ago
    I love this idea and I'd be interested in backing something like this. However I do worry about the liability of something that is constantly in flux like the US tax code
    • akshatpradhan 13y ago
      I agree that I love this idea. Maybe this can be one of the first products in open sourcing the government. People care greatly about taxes.
  • foolinaround 13y ago
    The hardest part is putting out a MVP for the 1040, but allow it to be extensible. I believe that it will be very popular and forks will come in very fast. At the least, it should allow import of data from other providers ( turbotax, etc ) so that data can be stored for as long as one likes. A big advantage is to allow amended returns ( example I need to amend my 2009 return ) - One just pulls out the 2009 code base, put in the previous data from turbo tax and amend it.
  • dkresge 13y ago
    Why can't the government just send me a bill? If they're able to detect that I've slighted them, they sure as hell have a reasonable idea of what I owe.
    • charlieflowers 13y ago
• crusso 13y ago
  I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments supporting various political and non-political views. I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less popular but logically consistent argumentation. As an end product, if I'm discussing, say, gun control with someone, I should be able to give them a URL: http://www.xyz3323499.com/crusso/gun_control/ http://www.xyz3323499.com/crusso/gun_control/ and all of the arguments and important information that I have upvoted, added to, or edited would show up. Most of this stems out of my frustration with the tedious nature of arguments on the internet. New stories stir up old arguments. Forums like HN tend to rehash all those old arguments with often little thought for the mountains of arguments/evidence already out there. Rather than have new stories refine or even change arguments and their conclusions, most people on the internet just chase their tails in circles. I'd view this kind of site as a "let's stand on each others' shoulders and provide our shoulders to others" kind of work. With a decent web of trust, I should be able to look at the arguments of the most "respected" members of the site and mix-in their arguments with my own. I think that a sufficiently complex web of trust would allow for fundamentally different viewpoints on a given issue to thrive because the spheres of supporters of those viewpoints have different value systems. Even with those different value systems, it should be possible at some point to pick out the thought leaders across different spheres that transcend typical Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Theist, Atheist labels with arguments that are acknowledged across the board as being internally consistent and factually based. Yeah, I realize that I've rambled -- but if someone finds value in the idea and runs with it, I'd love to see it out there.
  • harpastum 13y ago
    Maybe something like http://www.riyarchy.com/issue?title=Euthanasia http://www.riyarchy.com/issue?title=Euthanasia or http://www.crystaltower.co/welcome http://www.crystaltower.co/welcome ?
    • crusso 13y ago
      Fascinating, thanks for the pointers. I'll have to look at them further, but what I think they might lack from what I posted is a notion that different users will value some gray area arguments differently. The system should preserve those differing value systems in the arguments constructed and use them to build upon the webs of trust. For example, user bob may find it axiomatic that "healthcare is a right". User jeff will typically downvote arguments that assume that right and not want to build his framework on top of it.
• VonGuard 13y ago
  MOBA sports. That means DOTA or League of Legends style Soccer, Football, baseball, any team sport, really. Baseball probably wouldn't work, but soccer would be fabulous. - 5 on 5 with 10 minute halves, every player on the field is a real person. - Pay to unlock famous players and skins - Just bring FIFA controls over to a multiplayer game. - Players can form their own teams and play on ladders. - Start it in Brazil, then translate to other languages.
  • swanson 13y ago
    You can do this in FIFA already (since FIFA 11 I believe) - it's 11 vs 11 multiplayer. You start in a lobby and then pick your position.
    • VonGuard 13y ago
      Do people actually play this mode? Is it popular?
• carlio 13y ago
  I'd love a "profiling firewall", so to speak. I hate it when tethering when iTunes downloads a 500mb update without telling me. In general, your Laptop has no idea that it's tethered and therefore data is more scarce than normal. Something that flips between "ok go for it" and "restrict these apps" would be nice, especially if it were automatic.
  • nobrains 13y ago
    Yes. I haven't thought about laptops/desktops OSes yet, but atleast in phones I should be able to mark a WIFI connection as "treat-as-data-connection" so that the OS obeys the background data rules for the OS and the applications.
    • sborsje 13y ago
      Android uses a DHCP option for this: http://www.lorier.net/docs/android-metered http://www.lorier.net/docs/android-metered
  • neil_s 13y ago
    I know Windows 8 contains an option to avoid downloading updates on 'Metered connections', which is basically this. I don't know if 3rd party apps can access and obey this setting though.
• wgx 13y ago
  Startup idea: WiFi hardware that attaches to street lights (for power) and forms a UK-wide mesh network to rival the telcos.
  • ShinyCyril 13y ago
    I would love to see a UK Meshnet take off - however activity behind projects doesn't seem to be anywhere near the level of places like Seattle etc. which is a shame. Would there be any issues with regards to attaching these devices to street lights? Who owns that infrastructure - the councils?
    • aspidistra 13y ago
      Councils maintain streetlights: https://www.gov.uk/report-problem-street-light https://www.gov.uk/report-problem-street-light
      • junto 13y ago
        And they have no spare money for such projects. Ideally you would bundle the meshnet with cheaper lighting. Something similar is mentioned here: > Philips’ LED street light poles will now include small cell mobile telecom equipment from Ericsson that cities can rent to telecom operators. The payments from telecom providers would then help pay for the infrastructure. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/conservation/can-internet-access-pay-for-led-street-lights http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/conservation/...
• rgarcia 13y ago
  Something to help teams rotate passwords on regular intervals. E.g. I want everyone to rotate their Heroku/Google Apps/Github/etc. passwords every 6 months, or maybe after a major security event (like Heartbleed). Right now it means sending out a Google Doc for everyone to check off. Bonus points if it has some way of verifying that passwords were actually changed and the new password is strong.
  • agotterer 13y ago
    I believe commonkey is working on something to handle pw rotations in a team environment.
  • dbenamy 13y ago
    Lastpass might fit your need.
• sjclemmy 13y ago
  Github meets SoundCloud. When I create a piece of music (using something like Logic Pro) I go through many iterations and only end up with a mixdown piece and no idea of how it evolved to that point. so it would be nice to see the evolution of the piece. But the best bit would be the remix potential. Someone else could fork it and create a remix!
  • subdane 13y ago
    I believe Splice is working on this? https://splice.com/ https://splice.com/
  • sprobertson 13y ago
    http://blend.io/ http://blend.io/
• bru 13y ago
  Retro console gaming. A huge panel of old console games could come to mobile devices and look fine. After being convenient and stable, connectivity could be really cool.
• p_eter_p 13y ago
  One of the things I have been kicking around is a charity hub. It seems like the tools for discovering and rating charities are well developed, but the tools for allowing them to collaborate and provide help are non existent. This causes a lot of duplication of effort. Someone who needs help should be able to fill out a survey detailing their needs, and then their profile would be available to any charity. This would allow a more holistic approach to giving; A single parent who gets tuition assistance might also benefit from free babysitting or help with meals, which are probably provided by two different groups. Social workers would be able to assemble a variety of different forms of help for each recipient, and the program could automatically suggest donor/recipient matches.
• mechasnake 13y ago
  Open web based CAD application. I think the problem with previous attempts at this focuses on accomplishing computation on the client side. I believe it is possible to set up a framework where the client passes CAD messages to the server and the server returns the appropriate WebGL object for the client to render. I've been playing with this idea for a while but I've been struggling on how to execute such a project. I think the Blender Python module would make a great CAD engine. However, I've yet to figure out how to rebundle Bpy such that anyone can simply import it and use as a python library.
  • allworknoplay 13y ago
    clara.io
• sadfnjksdf 13y ago
  While we're at it * : Funding Monday - where everyone pitches to VC's in the same HN thread. Trial Tuesday - where everyone provides a link to their demo in the same HN thread. Writing Wednesday - where everyone writes an informative hacker-related topic on their blog and shares a link to it in the same HN thread. Throwback Thursday - where people all share something informative about past experiences or past apps/etc. in the same HN thread. Free Work Friday - where people request work to be done by volunteers to develop their product with a possible chance at employment at some future date all in the same HN thread. * - with slight sarcasm
  • ldonley 13y ago
    I like some of these ideas. The Trial Tuesday could be a nice way for people to get feedback on their WIP projects and perhaps motivate them to keep up and have weekly updates.
    • danohuiginn 13y ago
      that's a great idea. get together a community who will each publish an update/demo on their project each week on the same thread. I'd certainly be up for joining in; it might shame me out of letting side-projects sit untouched for a month at a time.
• graham1776 13y ago
  Dark Ages: randomly shuts down all functionality of your phone, forcing human contact, at random 10-20 minute intervals , no more than a couple times a day. Perhaps there is a machine learning aspect that learns when you are being anti social (ie playing Candy Crush for 3 hours straight) and is more likely to "dark age" you.
• hershel 13y ago
  Lack of eye contact in video chats greatly hurts the experience and is probably the source of the difference between it and face to face chat. Using something based on [1] but a bit better(for example , let's you cover maximum screen area) could be a decent solution for this. [1]http://hacknmod.com/hack/laptop-mod-eye-contact-video-chat/ http://hacknmod.com/hack/laptop-mod-eye-contact-video-chat/
  • hashtag 13y ago
    Saw this awhile back, related: http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/tech/software-gives-the-illusion-of-eye-contact-on-skype-517913293 http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/tech/software-gives-the-ill...
  • moubarak 13y ago
    i like this idea. i'm gonna officially work on it for iOS.
• hbt 13y ago
  A site to organize systems. There are plenty of "List of frontend development tools" or "list of git tools". I want a site where users can build lists, share them, vote on them, categorize the content and update it with the new tools. alternativeto.net is a partial attempt at doing that but it doesn't take a systems thinking approach
  • dicroce 13y ago
    I've always wanted something like this to. Only, I suspect that lists are only one possible form of information that needs to be organized. I also think users should be able to shape trees (and maybe others). Maybe you encourage vistors to click on everything they agree with and thereby learn which users contributions are seen to be the most valuable. Users with the most valuable contributions could be rewarded with more ability to shape the tree or list...
    • hbt 13y ago
      List would supported nested lists i.e it would be a tree In terms of rewards or monetization, it would be possible to gamify contributions ala stackexchange and rely on affiliate links for commercials tools and perhaps even share the revenues with the top contributors or offer them options on what to do with the money
  • pearjuice 13y ago
    http://getthinglist.com http://getthinglist.com
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • refrigerator 13y ago
    I had exactly this in mind last summer and actually built something! http://curate.im http://curate.im - check it out. I had planned to add voting and collaboration functionality, but nobody ended up using the site so I gave up on it and it's just been sitting there for almost a year. It's not tailored specifically to systems organisation though. Enter the beta code HN001 if you want to sign up lol
• oliwary 13y ago
  This might already exist, but a user management as a service provider focused on security. I'm afraid that if I do a website and it is breached, all the users would suffer. Therefore I'd rather someone made a service that kept all sensitive user info, like email and password, separate from my webapp. The only way to access it would be via api over a unique user ID. Then I could worry about doing the website instead of about security. EDIT: Also, one teamt would fix bugs such as heartbleed, and everyone using the service would be secure. It would eliminate the security risks of leaving an old side project running.
  • qw 13y ago
    I was planning to make something like that myself, but there seems to be plenty of competition from https://stormpath.com/ https://stormpath.com/ and others
    • oliwary 13y ago
      Yup, that seems to be exactly what I was thinking about. Thanks for replying!
  • allworknoplay 13y ago
    Isn't that userapp? I've never actually dug into it. https://www.userapp.io/ https://www.userapp.io/
• zarriak 13y ago
  I'd like someone to implement a wrapper for youtube that makes using the website better. There are lots of things you could do, from watching all of the videos since the one you last viewed, to a better way of editing playlists than the current one. They should also make a way to preview videos, like hovering over the image of the video and you see a 15 or 30 second preview that you can choose from a part of the video. There should also be a way to instantly switch from computer to phone/tablet, just like chromecast. If you just open up YouTube right now you can see how many links you can choose, there is way too much clutter on the front page. YouTube has a great opportunity to distinguish themselves from traditional media, but they keep making design choices that prevent this. YouTube has become the leading video service because they created a platform that differentiated from traditional media, yet the current trajectory doesn't fit with that. Chad Hurley is also one of the few notable alumni from the Technology Student Association, an organization I am a current member of that has not benefited from the recent increase in STEM funding. It is quite unfortunate, because they have a much more diverse offering than other stem organisations, even having an open source software competition!
  • hoffcoder 13y ago
    I agree that youtube can be much more useful. But writing a wrapper does not sound legal, does it?
• kclay 13y ago
  Mobile payments for the vending Industry, yes they have card swipers but what if you don't have your Cc.
  • coderheed 13y ago
    I heard about AirVend a year ago working in this space. http://www.air-vend.com/home http://www.air-vend.com/home
• marpalmin 13y ago
  A programming language equivalence site that helps you transition from one language to another. I mean it does not have to be perfect because full equivalence don't exist for many languages but just how you would do similar things.
  • epsylon 13y ago
    http://hyperpolyglot.org/ http://hyperpolyglot.org/ ?
    • marpalmin 13y ago
      yea somewhere in that area but where you can chose any language to any language
  • workhere-io 13y ago
    http://www.php2python.com/ http://www.php2python.com/ is great.
  • nanidin 13y ago
    You mean Rosetta Code[0]? [0] http://rosettacode.org/ http://rosettacode.org/
    • marpalmin 13y ago
      Yes. That's more similar to what I expected. However, I don't like at all how information is presented in Rosetta Code. I would like to be able to chose two languages and filter by task.
• anupshinde 13y ago
  Tracking browsing habits. I would like to see how much time I spent on what "kind or type" of browsing. And I can define these as a hierarchy (type->subtype). And define productive/unproductive/lessproductive segments. Example: "stackoverflow or localhost:8081" would be "Development" kind of work. "news.ycombinator.com" --> "Reading" "gmail.com/outlook.com" --> "Commmunication" "facebook.com" -- "Unnecessary waste of time" ...and so on. The reports would simply show- how much time I spent on what segment (Productive work/ General Browsing). A chrome extension/app would be a good starting point - personally I do not use other browsers unless absolutely required. Further I would also like it to automatically classify and show what kind of content I spend time browsing - like "Entrepreneurship / Programming / Nuclear fusion / Space Travel / ... " If anybody wants to try it - let me know. I can dedicate a very small amount of time on this.
  • Doctor_Fegg 13y ago
    Have you tried RescueTime?
    • anupshinde 13y ago
      Thanks, looks promising - I have seen couple of other desktop time-tracking apps and this looks much better than those.
  • sarthakk 13y ago
    You might want to check out BeLimitless (http://belimitless.co/ http://belimitless.co/): It's a Chrome extension that uses your browsing activity to tell you how productive you are/ have been.
• colemorrison 13y ago
  Something to help me switch between workflows. Everytime I want to switch to a different project (i.e. writing code for software project X to designing a mockup for software project Y), I don't even know how much time I waste getting my development environment, tools, documents, ideas, etc. setup. Sometimes I'll get an impulsive idea (i.e. how to fix that one bug), but what will stop me from doing it right then is the fact that I'd have to set everything up...
  • neil_s 13y ago
    I keep each project in a different desktop (using Dexpot on Windows or Spaces on Mac). Rather than opening and closing applications, I simply switch desktops. The context switch cost decreases significantly. An added advantage is a clear separation between work and play, its harder to sneak open a procrastination tab when you have to explicitly switch to the procrastination desktop to do it.
• Theo59 13y ago
  You should check out innovantage, halfbakery, or marblar. There are literally 1000s of ideas out there.
• rukshn 13y ago
  Came up with this site today, what do you guys think? all in one product from the looks of it http://soosci.com http://soosci.com
• wfbarks 13y ago
  Highlight the Web A browser plugin that lets me highlight text on a web page. I can view other user's highlights on that same webpage, and see my highlights again when I revisit the web page weeks later.
  • schlagetown 13y ago
    Something like this, perhaps? https://www.diigo.com/ https://www.diigo.com/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diigo-web-collector-captu/oojbgadfejifecebmdnhhkbhdjaphole?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diigo-web-collecto...
  • avalaunch 13y ago
    I think that's the direction RapGenius is headed in. Here's an article where it's mentioned directly. http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/03/rap-genius-andreessen-horowitz/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/03/rap-genius-andreessen-horow...
  • nchuhoai 13y ago
    You missed the (IMO) greatest product ever: Apture http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/29/apture-hotspots/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/29/apture-hotspots/
• NAFV_P 13y ago
  Online resource for hardcore computer science and other "headbanging" subjects, collaboratively written by, and for, people who haven't had a formal background in computer science or the equivalent "headbangology". EDIT: I made my sentences, make sense.
  • blueatlas 13y ago
    I like this, but rather than "hardcore", targeted at pre-CS, and possibly 1st year CS students. Computer Science programs are awful at introducing and reinforcing fundamentals. Examples are binary/hex, how data is stored in memory, compilation, basic system architecture (CPU/memory interaction), basic command line/shell usage, etc. - topics beyond a typical high school programming course, but prepares the student for their first year of CS. Content built around an Arduino or Pi would be ideal.
    • NAFV_P 13y ago
      > I like this, but rather than "hardcore", targeted at pre-CS, and possibly 1st year CS students. Apologies, I should have explained myself better. Being aimed at people with only their own wits to guide them, their knowledge is likely to be patchy. So filling in knowledge, even basic things such as mentioned by yourself would be included. Trying to read up on a subject you often don't know which terms to look up, so some supermarket of info where you just wonder around (like a zombie) until you work what you need to get would be useful.
• foolinaround 13y ago
  Idea: Wikipedia like graph db for curated content 1) An API framework with an ORM of sorts around the existing graph dbs ( it could be Gremlin based ). This would allow queries on levels of nodes ( tutorials -> { python | ruby } -> { django | flask } , etc. Another dimension would be { beginner | intermediate | hard }. An important search dimension might be the popularity of the curator (submitter), the upvoters and downvoters, etc. The API would allow RESTful retrieval of nodes, and based on permissions granted to the user allow operations such as voting, modification, creation and deletion. Wikipedia like data could be public domain, but the API itself could be self-hosted on private servers allowing for enterprises to have their own internal wiki of sorts. Licensing should allow extension of the API if needed for premium revenue models that might allow users to create 'n' relationships on a server that is a kind of bookmarks, can keep private graphs, clones/forks of existing graphs/sub-graphs with annotations, etc. Or contributors may contribute code to extend features on the open source platform as well. 2) A web/mobile UI that would leverage this API and create the UX around searching, for example, a) cross-indexing wikipedia and storing as graphs and allow different search algorithms to be built. b) a knowledge graph of maths ( similar to the ones at khan academy ) and linking in the URLs / videos based on dimensions such as target age, content length, language, pre-requisites, etc.
• dceddia 13y ago
  It could be useful to have a site where researchers could post their failed attempts at solving difficult problems, a sort of "Journal of Failed Ideas". I saw this suggested in a reddit thread a while back, might've been the Bill Gates AMA, but the comment was something to the effect of, "What if cancer researchers could post things they've tried in some central location, without the overhead of publishing papers in a journal?" This wouldn't have to only apply to researchers. I had a similar idea while ago for a site where motorcyclists could post how they got into an accident so that others could avoid the same fate, like an informal NTSB-style accident report.
  • danieltillett 13y ago
    The problem is the incentives are all wrong for reporting negative outcomes - basically you get no benefit, but it cost you time. What would work would be to pay each researcher for every negative result they published and more importantly why the idea failed. Often the failure is caused by something minor that the researcher overlooked when doing the experiment initially - I have saved many a project in the pub, by just chatting informally with people about the problems they are having.
• mudil 13y ago
  Open source ad serving platform. Or P2P ad serving platform . Basically like Google Adsense minus Google, the middle man. I have a site, and every month I get a check from Google with a seemingly random amount. Yes, it is connected to traffic, but what cut Google makes is a complete mystery. In my opinion Google Adsense is an unfair scheme for millions of publishers.
  • danieltillett 13y ago
    Couldn't your problem be solved by Google just being more transparent? My thought why they aren't is to avoid people over optimising their pages.
  • techstroke 13y ago
    Well, I have been a adsense publisher for over 5 years now and they are pretty clear about their commission rates they give us 68% for content ads - https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en (earlier it was 70% i think ) and to me it's not unfair as even if someone was to make such a OS system , he still has to manage server cost/support/advertiser acquisition/marketing cost etc. & so wont be able to pay as good as adsense also the ads initially wont be that diverse & so ads might not be in context or even blank spaces , kind of chicken and egg problem !
• digisth 13y ago
  A service that figures out how to create and deliver healthy (meaning not extremely salty, sugary, etc.), same-day-prepared, vegetarian-friendly meals for $10 USD per day or less. The service would make one or two dishes so that they can be prepared in batch (maybe one non-vegetarian, and one vegetarian), and deliver them at a predetermined time. The current services in this industry tend to cost a lot more than this and/or require you to do preparation yourself (i.e., they supply the ingredients only.) Even better: if you can accept the delivery soon after "cook time", you can get your meal warm, assuming it's not a cold dish to start with. For people who don't, can't, and won't cook, and realize that much restaurant food isn't focused on trying to balance taste and health, this would be a great service. $200/month, 5 days a week. The logistics part seems feasible based on what's current in the marketplace; the economics are an open question.
  • tadruj 13y ago
    If this would be a Kickstarter project right now, I would put a month worth of money on the table. Low salt, low sugar food you can't get anywhere.
  • onnoonno 13y ago
    Not exactly the same, but when they started I found them to be impressive in delivery speed, Berkeley/Oakland: http://spoonrocket.com/ http://spoonrocket.com/ (I am not affiliated in any way)
  • bernardom 13y ago
    Not quite the same, but these guys are close: http://www.platejoy.com/ http://www.platejoy.com/ It differs in that they deliver the ingredients, you spend up to 30 minutes cooking (for dinner) or 10 minutes (for lunch). (no affiliation)
  • josephjrobison 13y ago
    Yup this would be amazing! The closest thing I could think of would just be to pickup/have delivered Native Foods every day.
  • stevekemp 13y ago
• tbsmartens 13y ago
  Hey everybody, and maybe something in particular for the Berliners: We started a meetup exactly about that "IDEATALKS" - this Thursday we are hosting the next event, feel warmly invited to join at www.techpeople.eventbrite.com (use fullofideas for a free ticket)
• nandreev 13y ago
  "Who's in town" app - it's difficult to keep track of where all my friends are at any given time, and many times I miss out on catching up with friends because I don't realize they're in the same city that I'm traveling to. One could say something like the "location" field in chat programs deals with this, but hardly anyone keeps that current. In the past, I would blast a Facebook status of my new location and hope that people would notice - this sort of worked, but it was by no means perfect (and I have since deactivated my account there) Essentially, you'd specify a whitelist of people you're willing to share your location schedule with, and the app would alert you if there's overlap.
  • bequanna 13y ago
    Or, would it be possible to extract location information from existing Instagram/Facebook/etc friends via their posts?
  • hashtag 13y ago
    Check out Connect. They launched recently and I think they resolve what you're hoping for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKzyoGbm-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKzyoGbm-c
• k8si 13y ago
  Social graph app for tracking gang activity on Twitter, with the intention of predicting potential violence before it happens on the streets. According to Vice/other sources, it's becoming increasingly popular for gangs to communicate publicly via Twitter and other social media sources. It's an interesting NLP problem because Twitter language is crazy and an interesting "computational social science" problem because it could actually help communities. You could partner with (or sell it to) municipal police departments.
  • thess24 13y ago
    I was listening to NPR a few months ago and they actually had a bit on tracking Twitter for gang activity and the ethics behind scanning twitter. Here's a link to the story [1]. One of the products they outline is called BlueJay [2] and scans for key words and locations. I guess NPR isn't popular among gang members or they would probably stop. [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/28/284131881/as-police-monitor-social-media-legal-lines-become-blurred http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/28/284131... [2] http://brightplanet.com/bluejay/ http://brightplanet.com/bluejay/
    • k8si 13y ago
      thanks!
  • allworknoplay 13y ago
    oh cool, pre-crime. worked for tom cruise, why not poor people in disadvantaged communities?
    • k8si 13y ago
      :(
      • allworknoplay 13y ago
        Haha, I think your idea is great, I just think it has unintended profiling consequences and is the sort of thing that justifies police overreach. Even compstat (crime tracking system that largely helped clean up NYC and then other US urban centers) is being intensely scrutinized for its role in driving profiling, harassment, and quota arrests in places that aren't war zones. The police aren't great at understanding how systems like this can be used to make people feel safer rather than feel oppressed.
• joshcanhelp 13y ago
  I want a batch notification service. Every 15/30/60/90/configurable minutes (or on request), the service would ping all my communication channels and give me a summary on a page or to a mobile app. I don't have notifications for email/social media because I don't want the interruption but, during downtime, I find myself checking through all the different services I use to see what's outstanding. I don't need the app to interact with these services, just ping via API and return what's "unread." I tried to use IFTTT to build something workable but the key is getting notifications all at once for everything when I want them, not duplicated notifications when they come in. I'm willing and able to work on this with someone if anyone wants this problem solved (PHP, JS).
  • stevekemp 13y ago
    I wrote something to bundle "alerts". It was a node application which would receive updates via HTTP-posts. From there they would be injected into a redis queue, and fanned out to email (daily), a simple HTTP web-page, and xmpp. It wasn't hard to setup the core. The hard part was pushing notifications into it. I suspect you might have the same problem. Writing a deamon to stream twitter and POST items matching a regexp, etc. Good luck integrating with facebook too! Most of the pieces are out there, and joining them up isn't hard. But .. it didn't work out as well as expected just because of the integration aspects. That said I have a semi-working system pinging me via XMPP when new blogs are posted, etc.
    • joshcanhelp 13y ago
      I don't know that batching the alerts would solve the problem, I want to be able to ping these services to determine unread counts at that point in time. I'm, of course, just assuming that these are available via API from the services I use.
• alexmic 13y ago
  I'd like a service that allows me to write internet-connected scripts that can be scheduled or executed on demand via webhooks. I have a bunch of things I want to do (like monitor a site for example) without messing around with servers. To take it even further these scripts can come with their own store (just a simple key-value will do the trick), exposed over an API with a private key.
  • gfosco 13y ago
    You can probably do this with several different existing services. Parse.com Cloud Code (either express endpoints, or cloud functions) can definitely handle this.
  • moollaza 13y ago
    Perhaps Yahoo Pipes? http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
• jdprgm 13y ago
  I attended a startupweekend dc event last weekend and we literally built exactly this haha. You can check it out at http://ideavine.co/ http://ideavine.co/
• whitef0x 13y ago
  I always thought a DNA analyzer for potential dates would be a good idea. I know it sounds crazy but you want to know if the your date has any good bad genes or not so you can make a full gene ARRAY so you can see their store gene structure and see if they are eatable. This would also translate into better offspring for maximum efficient. /s before anyone jumps on me for posting this, know that this was posted as sarcasm
  • danieltillett 13y ago
    I know you are joking, but everyone carries around 250 defective genes with 2 new mutations per generation.
  • mappum 13y ago
    You're kidding, but some day, scanning people's brain structure and comparing would probably be pretty effective.
• xur17 13y ago
  I think it would be interesting to have an app that determines the optimal times to stop for gas during a trip. Especially when you are traveling across state lines, gas prices can vary a pretty decent amount. The simple version: - Once you're under a certain amount of fuel (1/3 of a tank?), you open the app, and tell it you need to get gas within the next n miles. The app checks gas prices along your route (does gasbuddy have an api?), and tells you which gas station you should stop at. The complex version: - The app connects to your car with an OBDII device via bluetooth (they are pretty cheap), automatically watches how much gas you have left, and determines the optimal place to refuel once you are under 1/3 of a tank. Basically, you would be able to open the app at the start of your trip, and it would alert you a few miles before the best exit to get gas.
• lukencode 13y ago
  I'm currently building a web app I'd like to sell as self hosted. Something that would be great for me is a service that handles payment and license generation for this type of software. Things like supporting purchase orders and quotes would be useful too.
• gaurab 13y ago
  kickstarter for promoted tweets: - a site where one posts a tweet for a cause they're passionate about: "Bring back Firefly for another season #FlyAgain" - others can donate $ to have adequate funds to promote the tweet on twitter
  • junto 13y ago
    > "Bring back Firefly for another season #FlyAgain" I for one back this request with a passion! Best series ever. What were they thinking canning this?
• tpae 13y ago
  Debugging as a service: parse out the error logs and find a better way to traverse/debug application-level problems. Automatically create tests with few clicks, automate debugging/testing process. Create standards for error handling, and create application scores to determine quality of the application.
  • grogs 13y ago
    Takipi may be of interest. It's only for JVM languages though - I'm not sure if equivalents exist for other languages. Otherwise, look at building (or find existing) tooling on top of Log stash.
• samelawrence 13y ago
  I continue to update this over time: https://github.com/samelawrence/ideas https://github.com/samelawrence/ideas
• d0m 13y ago
  Google map that can show me parking? I'm driving to a coffee place, great, but then it's 10min turning around the place looking for parking. Ideally it should drive me in real-time to a place where I can park.
  • mappum 13y ago
    Google could implement this very effectively when they have a couple self-driving cars going around each city scanning for empty parking spots. Before then, you might have to do something hacky like user-submitted data.
  • Jemaclus 13y ago
    I was thinking the other day about this. They have cars that can park themselves already. I think Audi has been advertising them. They obviously use some sort of sensor to detect empty parking spaces. What would be brilliant is if they did two things: 1) Used GPS coordinates to figure out if you are in a high-demand area for parking and, if so: 2) Passively scan for parking spots as you drive by, then upload them to the cloud. You don't actually have to be looking for a parking spot -- but your driving by an empty one could help someone else. A more YC-focused idea is to design a small device that does exactly that for any car and is as simple as dropping something onto your antenna or sticking it on a passenger-side window.
  • chiptuned 13y ago
    There are some apps out there that are collecting parking data for cities: http://parkopedia.com http://parkopedia.com http://www.parkme.com http://www.parkme.com http://www.bestparking.com http://www.bestparking.com Would be nice for Google Maps to acquire/build their own parking data and integrate it as an overlay. As for the others discussing dynamic spot availability, I say worry about nailing the static info first: street parking rules, parking lot locations, rates, etc..
• d0m 13y ago
  I have a hard time explaining this idea, so please bear with me. As a founder and hacker, I want to know how my users use my web and mobile apps. But I haven't found an intuitive and dead-simple way to do it. Mixpanel and google analytic are way more complex than what I have in mind. What I would like to have is more similar to Facebook, but instead of looking at my friends activity, I'd like to see what's happening with my users. I like the idea of a feed, or more specifically an exploratory object graph. I'd like to open my phone and see a feed of what's happening, similar to a cat | tail but where I could click on a verb (Joined the website) or a noun (10 users) and it would direct me to that specific page. So, for instance, it would tell me: 15 users joined <My service>. Bob And Alice got a new highscore of 2500. Marie played level 3 10 times. I could change the Zoom ratio.. I.e. see the feed of the last minute or the last year, and it would sum up the actions to one statement.. "1541 users upgrated to premium", etc. Basically, I don't want to look at graphes or stats or parse log files, I just want a beautiful and simple feed of what's happening. And when I see something that I'm curious about, I can just click and learn more. Just a dead simple way to understand how my users use my apps.
  • laxk 13y ago
    You can do that by using Google Analytics custom events. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/events https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
  • fiatjaf 13y ago
    I like it. It is like Mixpanel, the implementation on the page would be similar, but without data aggregation. There are open-source Mixpanel-like backends out there, some will not come with a frontend full of charts, you should just get one of these and build a frontend full of feeds.
    • fiatjaf 13y ago
      https://github.com/paulasmuth/fnordmetric https://github.com/paulasmuth/fnordmetric
    • fiatjaf 13y ago
• anonu 13y ago
  Idea: Biometric Signature Authentication as a service: We all have these incredibly powerful input devices in our pockets (aka smartphones). The idea is to create a powerful algorithm to verify someone using their signature by capturing the form of the signature, speed, pressure, etc... This would be provided as a service to different websites who require user ID on the biometric level.
• unclek 13y ago
  A small device that lets me piggyback off my friend's phone's battery if my battery is at 5% and theirs is at 99% and they can spare some charge cycles.
  • mappum 13y ago
    I've thought about how public chargers are something that businesses should start using. Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and getting a full charge during your meal. If wireless charging gets more standard, then there won't be an eyesore of cables.
    • my_username_is_ 13y ago
      My university added some charging stations in public places in my senior year. There were countless times where these came in handy for both myself and fellow classmates, I can definitely see this catching on
• conorgil145 13y ago
  I don't expect this would be a company, but rather more of an open source project. I have been thinking about this for a while, so I'll throw it up to see if there is any interest. I would really like someone to create a website full of information and resources for first time startup employees regarding stock options. It would be great if there was a calculator which would allow you to experiment with different liquidity outcomes given your existing/proposed stock options. For example, you would be asked to enter the total number of outstanding shares, the number of shares you have now, the number of shares you are entitled to, your vesting schedule, if you have any acceleration upon change of control or other scenarios and if so how much, whether you have preferred vs common shares, liquidation preferences (if any), etc. Once you enter all of the information that you have, the calculator can estimate how much you stand to make in certain scenarios. You could answer "How much does the company need to be bought for in order for my options to be worth $X?" or "If the company sold for $Y amount, how much would my options be worth?". If certain pieces of information were not entered into the calculator, then it could show error messages and link to additional resources explaining why that particular number is so important. I realize that the calculator would likely not be exact because of missing information and the complexities of each particular company's structure. However, I think in many cases it could be surprisingly accurate. The most important thing is that it be used as a tool to introduce important concepts and terms which new startup employees should research and understand.
  • hashtag 13y ago
    Contrary to your statement about how it could be __surprisingly accurate__, it would in fact be the opposite. There is no accurate way to build a calculator to show different liquidity outcomes because there are way too many unknown variables if you understand how stocks actually work in a given company. Everything would have to be a complete guess in the dark for the employee punching in those numbers making it near impossible to get anything accurate, particularly early stage.
    • xerophtye 13y ago
      On the contrary, "How much does the company need to be worth for my options to be worth $X?" can be answered with a surprising amount of accuracy. Because isn't that basic mathematics with the variables "Exercise Price" and "Stock price"? I am talking about value of options for EXERCISE here, not selling them off. The selling part is what gets a little complicated, but we have ways to price them as well so a calculator for that could be built as well.
• mappum 13y ago
  A mobile app that scans for unsecured WiFi and automatically sends the location to the service. People who want free WiFi can search and find the closest one. It's sure to cause some legal/moral controversy, but it is pretty trivial to implement and might be pretty interesting.
  • f0nd004u 13y ago
    Heh. This is exactly what Google was doing with the StreetView vans, and a bunch of home users with open WiFi networks are successfully suing them for collecting their packets.
• dan335 13y ago
  Someone please fix 3d software. Autodesk owns 3 of the top 4 3d software programs. They are about to stop developing Softimage. There other two have little innovation and lots of bugs. Their biggest competition Modo is not a complete enough package to be used by major studios. Someone please bring a fresh pair of eyes and create an innovative killer 3d program.
  • tizzdogg 13y ago
    Okay give me a minute, I'll just hack something together for you. :) Seriously though, this is a good request, but the graphics market is really difficult to do business in. It takes a ton of development effort to make a full-featured 3d package, and the market of high-end studios is very small. If you create a graphics software company, your best exit opportunity is probably to be bought out by autodesk eventually anyway. Houdini has been gaining some ground recently though, and I think is the best alternative at the moment to the autodesk products.
• azinman2 13y ago
  Blackbox web security SAAS. There are some services out there that will scan you for vulnerabilities, but I have yet to find a really slick way to integrate security "for free" into your own servers/services. This would mean at minimum: 1. apt-get install X. Automatically decent kernel/network/firewall configuration occurs, removes cleartext passwords from ssh and changes the port, etc etc. This is just a base starting line. 2. malicious user detector. Probably cooperating with an API within ruby/jvm/python/php/whatever is a mixpanel-like way I can define custom events and possible milestone-firewalls. E.g. this is a new user sign up, here are the relevant fields & ip. Or here's a comment on an image from user X with IP Y. Rather than having to figure out if we're likely being abused outsource that decision to the service & have it help you block the evil-doer. 3. APIs to help with usernames/passwords, setting up TLS & perfect forward secrecy, etc. That is to say, give me patterns I can use that every app has even with some level of customization. 4. Have built in DDOS protection, particularly for resource starvation attacks that might be more app-specific (request X took Y>Z time, and it's being repeated endlessly). I understand that security is complicated, ideally should have full time staff, every app/service is different, ya yada. Except when you're starting out you don't have these kinds of resources and something like this could get one quite far, not to mention be able to see much of the internet and what's happening across clients (like gmail with spam) and thus have an advantage over you. It seems like a giant hole in the world of app development and most people are terrible at security when it comes down to doing anything more than firewall + ssh keys + bcrypt user passwords.
  • soupsranjan 13y ago
    So this would be similar to Impermium (now acquired by Google) meets Sift Science meets Cloud Flare - have you checked them out? I have thought of building such a security as a service for websites for sometime. My PhD thesis was on building a reverse proxy server (kind of like nginx) to detect attackers (via machine learning) and starve them of CPU/network resources disproportionately (using admission control + WFQ) during a DDoS attack. After that I've spent a decade building systems to detect cyber security threats, click fraud, Twitter spammers, etc. What do you think is lacking in existing security as a service offerings that prompted your post? Would love to chat more.
• blazespin 13y ago
  A service that incorporates startups and sets up stock options with a few standard templates. You can manage everything online, including investment rounds.
• Jemaclus 13y ago
  * Hearing aids that run off body heat. They have watches that do it, why not hearing aids? Or at least helps recharge the batteries... I dunno. I spend a lot of money on hearing aid batteries... * A better credit rating system. The current one kinda sucks, no offense to Transunion, Experian, and whatever that other one is. Just because Joe Schmoe was unemployed 18 months ago and struggled to pay the rent, much less pay the bills, does not mean that Joe Schmoe is currently unable to do so. A creditor can claim a debt from Sally Schmoe, and Sally has little recourse in fighting it -- it's ridiculously complicated to combat something you know nothing about. Usually she winds up just paying the bogus bill to get it off her credit report. The whole thing is a racket. * A better job candidate review systems. Companies spend a lot of money hiring recruiters, but recruiters just spam the crap out of people and then send all the resumes in anyway. What if there were an app that could pre-qualify candidates? Cut out the middle man -- death to recruiters! (figuratively, of course) * A good, interactive environment for remote calls with kids (or anyone, I guess). I'm thinking Skype meets building blocks. Maybe we have to wait for Oculus Rift, or maybe Kinect is enough to get started. For example, I live in San Francisco, and my niece lives in Atlanta. I don't want her to not know who I am. I want to be able to Facetime/Skype with her -- and as she grows, I want to be able to interact with her, play games with her on a shared screen, teach her new words and phrases, and so on. My girlfriend's nephews live 8 hours away, and her parents live even farther away. The nephews are growing up quick, and we Facetime as much as possible, but even so, it's limited to just talking and pointing at a screen. You can make this better. As grandparents, aunts, and uncles increasingly get used to technology, they will want more ways to interact with their young family members without breaking the bank on plane tickets to visit -- and they'll spend money to do it! A small subscription and microtransactions (new games/books!) would be infinitely cheaper than flying across the country. Someone make this happen. * An app that maps out disc golf courses (please start with the one in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park... please). Using GPS on a map, show me where the hole is from the starting point, and let me record my score. Once I put my score in, show me the next hole.
  • jmasonherr 13y ago
    something like mightyspring for #3?
  • 13y ago
• klchoi 13y ago
  Biometrics authentication. Iris in human eye's unique and doesn't change over time as proven by a medical research paper published back in the day. This will solve so many password-related problems present on the web as people tend to use same passwords over the multiple websites.
• crixlet 13y ago
  Google Navigation for Cooking. So as Google Maps gives you turn by turn instructions for driving, an app could give you line by line instructions for cooking. So often when following a recipe, I have to read the next item on the instruction list for a recipe. I think it would be great if I could have these read out as a line - by - line item that I (or whoever i'm cooking with) can then follow. I love cooking with people, but sometimes having to stop conversation mid-sentence to read what we next have to do is cumbersome/awkward, and having an auto-pilot for new recipes that would read the next "task" for cooking would be awesome.
• beaglebone 13y ago
  It's common that many people go for a decent restaurant and have their meal alone which turns out that it's expensive and boring. Idea is why don't we have an mobile/web application which will list out nearby restaurants and users who posted that they want a company to share their lunch bill. With this advantage is that they can try out different dishes and still with lesser expense as you would share with your stranger partner. To be more specific about the application: 1)Any one wants to share their lunch bill, they open the application and check the near by hotels. 2)If anyone has posted already that they need a partner to share lunch, you could join them (probably their taste also mentioned in the app) 3)If you don't find any one who's open for sharing, you can post one. This will work out for people those who travel, single, students,group of strangers.,
• amardeepcgupta 13y ago
  Every Sunday.
• Holbein 13y ago
  Lots of additional ideas (3.5 years old): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564
• jain_chirag04 13y ago
  my 2 cents: http://chiragjain.tumblr.com/post/19578015287/startup-ideas-i-killed-so-far http://chiragjain.tumblr.com/post/19578015287/startup-ideas-...
• koliber 13y ago
  A crowdfunded federal lobby group whose agenda is to pass anti-lobbying legislature. Its ultimate goal would be to create a legal environment which would prohibit it from functioning.
• mrborgen 13y ago
  Great initiative. * Someway to re-introduce photos into cabins' visitors books. In Norway, all cabins have their own visitors book. Until the mid-'00s these books were filled with physical photographs. With digital cameras, the images in these books have disappeared, and there has not yet been invented a way of attaching digital albums to each trip/chapter/page. (Social networks doesn't do the work, as a lot of people who aren't connected to each other read these books.) The people who writes about their cabin trip need somewhere to upload the images from their stay, and the people reading the book need someway to see these photos.
• golergka 13y ago
  I read this article recently: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-so-you-think-youre-smarter-than-a-cia-agent http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-so-... And now I'm building a small app that'll give the people the ability to make predictions about future events and measure how well are they doing it. For now, it's just an experiment to test the idea.
• archagon 13y ago
  A DOM aggregator/filter browser plugin. Let's say I'm looking for a room on AirBNB. The filter they have on their website isn't specific enough: if I want to find a room that's $32 or less and that has at least 20 reviews, I have to use my eyeballs to filter all the < $35 results. What's more, there are many pages of results, making side-by-side comparison difficult. My idea is to create a browser plugin that harvests each element of a particular HTML class on a webpage (".search-result"), filters it based on the contents of some of the child classes (".listing-price < 32", ". listing-review-count > 20"), and puts all the results in a single window, probably using CSS copied from the original page. All I'd have to do in the AirBNB case is plug in the classes and comparators listed above and quickly cycle through each page of the listings with "gather mode" turned on. I'd then have all my preferred results in one place. Perhaps the plugin could even allow you to identify your classes by simply pointing and clicking on the desired nodes, much like the inspector in developer tools! Ultimately, with this idea as the basis, I think you could make a great Automator-style tool that streamlines your research. Is there some information that's missing in the search results? Make it follow the links and filter the full listing descriptions! Looking for listings with specific kinds of owners? Do some keyword matching on each profile! Want a map of all your filtered locations? Gather the GPS data and display it in a beautiful native map interface! (Maybe you could even interface with external services like Wolfram or Yelp: crime statistics, nearby restaurant reviews, Amazon ratings?) Kind of like a web scraper, but with a very user-friendly UI specifically tailored for filtering and aggregating search results. You wouldn't have to keep 100 tabs open anymore when you're doing research: everything would be saved and synced in a handy Evernote-like interface. I've run into this problem frequently enough with comparison shopping that I think there's value in this idea. I'm not really all that inclined to make it unless I can make some money, but I made a little Javascript rough draft script that can filter a webpage's DOM if you manually enter all the classes and comparators and copy/paste it into the dev console. A lot more work than the browser plugin I described, but still very useful for my purposes. https://gist.github.com/archagon/10233251 https://gist.github.com/archagon/10233251
  • thom 13y ago
    import.io might be close to what you want here. You create a custom web scraper with a nice visual interface, it extracts the data for you.
• danohuiginn 13y ago
  Weekly is good. But I'd prefer it to be posted a bit earlier in the day, for the benefit of those of us in Europe.
• dsschnau 13y ago
  A central hub for home improvement. I just bought a house and I don't know a damn thing about maintaining it. I can't find a good central resource on the internet. I'm stuck with random YouTube videos and Google searches. I want a sort of wiki with examples for different home maintenance jobs. It must have good, reputable information and high-quality videos. I would pay a monthly sub for this kind of service.
  • DeanWormer 13y ago
    What about Lowe's Home Improvement YouTube channel? A friend and I were considering starting a similar site and selling the parts to complete the project, but we found Lowe's did a pretty good job of covering any routine project we thought of. I'd be interested to hear what projects you couldn't find helpful information for.
    • dsschnau 13y ago
      Sure. Here's the first specific issue I've encountered. I want to find out how to install a deadbolt on my door which only has a keyed knob. I'd like to install one on two of the three exterior doors. The doors are steel, and I with my zero-knowledge of home improvement, don't know how, or if I even could, drill holes through them. Because I needed to change the locks right away, I just bought some new doorknobs and changed them all out. Of course, I didn't realize I got locks that have different keys for each of the three exterior doors. Ugh. They will only have to be temporary. I _really_ don't want to replace the door from messing up a drilling job. I've spent 20 minutes now researching and only now I'm kind of confident that have the resources to figure out exactly what I need to do. The best one-stop-shop site for learning I've found is doityourself.com. It has basically all the features I'm looking for - howtos, forums, user-submitted projects, but the site is bloated(just open up dev tools and watch the ocean of requests on pageload). The site is also not responsive. I already feel overwhelmed at how much I'm going to have to learn to keep my house in good shape for my family. The lack of a good web resource is frustrating. I'm considering attacking this problem as well. Feel free to email me.
      • 13y ago
• vijayr 13y ago
  Two ideas: 1. Would be labor intensive, but: a site (blog?) that talks to people/experts from various industries, quizzing them about problems they face in their daily jobs. Some of these might be solvable by software. It doesn't need to be too detailed, but it would help if it is totally outside of the usual tech stuff - the quirkier the better. People can pick something from the blog, instead of building yet another project management app. 2. A website that asks a series of questions (skillsets, weather preferences, languages spoken, food preferences, age, educational qualifications etc) and suggests countries/cities to move to. Should also take into consideration special visa privileges (canada-us, nz-aus etc). It would be quite tough to keep the data fresh, for an app like this. but this would be immensely useful, and it can be monetized too. Even if done narrowly (ex: only for software people), it would still be very useful.
  • swah 13y ago
    f(a,b,c,d,e,f) -> return "San Francisco"; (Meaning: the kind of people that would use that app would all go to the same place).
    • vijayr 13y ago
      I disagree. There are lots of non-software people (other engineers, business people etc) for whom SF is not the ideal destination. They are quite tech savvy, though they might not know how to code. I'm sure they'd use it.
• davewasthere 13y ago
  real-estate search engine mashup that has maximum internet speed available to residence as a filter. Would be great in Australia. I'd love to be able to filter rentable properties which have NBN/FTTP connections for instance... Would work well in UK too. But for FTTN connections, having a distance from exchange would probably work well enough.
• lavkesh 13y ago
  A book renting/borrowing app, which can be used to discover people(May be in a integrated map) who are willing to rent the book for a few days.