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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

• NoMoreIdols 12y ago
  There needs to be an easy method for consumers to pay the record labels for the rights to use signed-artist music in amateur videos. That way I have the rights to upload my GoPro snowboarding videos that will have Content ID matches on Facebook, YouTube, etc. because of the music. I realize there's plenty of ways around Content ID matching and even more Creative Commons music, but that's not the point.
  • Danilka 12y ago
    Ohh, someone, please figure this one out! My understanding though, is that it's not hard, just expensive. Therefore, everyone just end up using illegal content. There should be an easy way way to track views and pay per 1K/M, etc. Or better, pay with revenue share of commercials alongside.
• avinassh 12y ago
  some old threads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910
  • gus_massa 12y ago
    You linked to the first editions, but the interest decreased a lot in the following threads. Latest I can find: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149 (4 points, 105 days ago, 1 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657 (18 points, 111 days ago, 12 comments)
    • bobcoat 12y ago
      yup
    • covercash 12y ago
      Maybe it should be monthly instead of weekly?
• capex 12y ago
  MVP as a service, where you pay a fixed amount each month to get a fixed number of developer hours. EDIT: To expand on this a bit: True lean development, every month focused on delivering a working product. Initially using third party applications like Firebase and Parse, gradually increasing features, but the product must launch by the end of the first month.
  • lordnacho 12y ago
    I've got a team that can do this. In fact, I've already started meeting startup people who are interested. The team is able to make websites, iOS/Android apps (that talk to the sites), pretty much anything that you'd want an MVP to do. We know how AWS works (can make things scale ready), and how the app launch/approval process works. We can integrate all manner of components, including push messaging, databases, pictures, social media integration, etc. The core team are two HFT developers who've moved into the web space over the years, and a number of associates who can do things like design work. I've also got a member who has 15 years online marketing experience, if that's considered part of MVP.
    • lordnacho 12y ago
      Downvoted? Is there some sort of policy?
    • capex 12y ago
      @lordnacho could you send me an email about your team: hello@buildbase.io
  • 147 12y ago
    I do something like this. I think it can be considered as a form of productized consulting. I started charging people $3k for 2 weeks of development. http://christopherdbui.com/i-will-build-your-mvp/ http://christopherdbui.com/i-will-build-your-mvp/
  • capex 12y ago
    Update: In true spirit of an MVP, I've put together a landing page: http://buildbase.io http://buildbase.io. Please sign up for updates and if anyone is interested in building MVPs, please send me an email: hello@buildbase.io
• logicallee 12y ago
  some place where entrepreneurs can put real ideas they're working on, and anyone can vote on them. If you're an investor and love an idea, you can pay for an intro to the team. (names and details are otherwise hidden.) any such money is shared with the founders who posted the idea (30% site, 70% them) and they can use it to help roll out their MVP.
  • zatkin 12y ago
    How does this idea differ from Kickstarter? Or those other websites that you get your ideas funded on.
    • logicallee 12y ago
      Kickstarter is a donation platform and, more recently, a de facto pre-order platform. It has nothing to do with investment. (in the literal sense, like what investors do.) I would argue it is also not a platform for ideas (i.e. in the way that this thread is, though few people have incentive to post their genuine ideas here.) For example, computer renderings are prohibited on KS - only working products may be shown.
    • federico3 12y ago
      Also, Kickstarter is focused on gadgets and other items for casual visitors.
• tuscarok 12y ago
  How about someone besides Apple makes trackpads for laptops which are actually usable?
  • Blahah 12y ago
    Honestly the competition is pathetic. Just got a new HP laptop for my mother - it has a trackpad of a similar size to the one on my Macbook, but the thing is almost unusable. Is anyone making good trackpads?
  • marcosdumay 12y ago
    I have a Dell, it's trackpad is fine.
  • mojuba 12y ago
    Absolutely, and it just strikes me how come nobody notices how bad the other trackpads are. I have Dell laptops and a Lenovo, all of them are equally unusable compared to MBPs and just separate Apple trackpads. One obvious thing is the trackpad surface should be smooth. I don't know, maybe not everyone feels uncomfortable with coarse surfaces, but everyone definitely should feel OK with smooth ones. As simple as that. But there may be something else too that Apple got right, such as sensitivity.
  • SamReidHughes 12y ago
    Panasonic does.
  • namuol 12y ago
    If Apple already makes great trackpads for laptops, why not just use their hardware?
    • tuscarok 12y ago
      Maybe I want to use a GPU with a couple of cores? Or even play a proper computer game...
      • namuol 12y ago
• aytekin 12y ago
  StartupMentions.io We recently wanted to create a page to list all mentions of our product. So, we duct taped a JotForm form with the JotForm api and created one. But if there was a service that created and maintained the list and let you manually edit the list, I am sure many startups would pay $20/month for it. http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/ http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/
• tathagatadg 12y ago
  "Ask HN: Idea Sunday/{{Idea}}" : "Show HN:/{{Idea}}" mapper.
• downandout 12y ago
  An Uber-like app where people pay for their rides with banked miles earned by giving others rides. This would serve a large market of people that a) travel alot and can give rides in their home city (free rides when they travel) and b) people that only have part-time access to a car but may need rides when they don't have it. It may also be legal in areas where Uber can't legally operate because they charge money for rides. If it got big enough, Uber would probably buy it.
  • bring1 12y ago
    we have that already, the layer is called "money" you can give people rides and be compensated in the "money points (usually US dollar). Later you can use this points to recieve rides yourself by others. great thing is that you can use those points for many goods and services and not only for rides.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • downandout 12y ago
      After the 20% they pay to Uber, and income taxes on the money earned from Uber, they would wind up with half of the miles they had earned through this "money" layer. With this, they get full value for each mile. Additionally, Uber is restricted from entering into many markets (example: their failed entry into Nevada, where one of the largest tourist markets on earth is located). With free - as in no money changing hands - rides, presumably the app would be allowed everywhere.
      • pdabbadabba 12y ago
        You don't need money to change hands for a transaction to be taxable. The sort of barter-based system you describe would also (in theory) be taxed. The only difference is that tax enforcement would be much more difficult under your system. That would work well for a while, but if your service got really big, and became a target for enforcement, you (or your users) might have serious tax problems.
• NhanH 12y ago
  Meta: As the last time this was done have showed, every Sunday is probably not sustainable, which lead to progressively worse thread every week. That said, iirc it have been a year since the last popular "Idea Sunday" was on (I started working on a project from that thread!), it seems like a good idea to do it a week or two ... unless someone decide to kill it off early again. On topic: I think there might be a need for Website-for-SaaS-as-a-service. What I meant is that whenever a developer decide to start a SaaS, you have to have a website for that service (that has info, landing page, billing, account management etc.). Of course, if the website itself is the service, then you have to develop it, but alot of SaaS is more of the backend stuffs, which the website is merely a presence for sign up and customer support. I think it's just a natural progression from Landing-page-as-a-service and Document-as-a-service (that we already had). The value you providing would be the design of the site, A/B for conversion testing etc. Another idea: "What could go wrong when I do X?". You see, in modern time, it seems like every thing can cause cancer, every other tools you have in your household is out to get you. And people tend to be in one of the two camp: "whatever, you can't avoid everything" or just being freak out by any, and everything (those that use gluten free vegan organic computer mouse, for example). I believe neither of those behavior is optimal, but unless you're an expert in the field, you really can't tell whether a risk is real or not. It would be nice to have a place where you can come and look for common scenario and see if anything is worth being concerned about (I see black mold, is that a drop everything and move out, or contact the landlord and wait? My roommate is sanding his old car paint in the garage and we have kid around the house, isn't it bad because of ... lead or something? How bad it is if I lick a bar of metal lead? Which kind of cleaning supplies is absolutely dangerous, and which is just essentially ethanol?). A lot of those might sounds like just "common sense" to you, but when I first move (from South East Asia) to the US, I had none of that "common sense" , and it was a nuisance trying to be careful. It's also noticeable when you're living with people that have a different idea of what constitutes "toxic" than you -- and then realize that you're actually not sure if you're overreacting or the other party being a big fat idiot. Google is not suffice, as even though you might find a few articles with advice, "being careful" doesn't help with a risk assessment. The info will have to be qualified quantitatively, or at the very least, very specific. Also, for any of you go (the board game) player out there, we need a new tsumego solver!
  • 12y ago
• philbarr 12y ago
  Idea Validator: Type in the long-tail search phrases and it goes off and does as much market research automatically for you as possible, and comes back with a yes/no on whether you should bother pursuing it. Perhaps including a list of statistics like: how much it would cost to get into that market, how many competitors there appear to be, etc. etc.
  • Alex3917 12y ago
    I'm currently working at a startup that actually does something like this. You're probably never going to get a yes/no answer though because most large competitors will have multiple unrelated lines of business, and it's usually not possible to get data beyond the organization level. (Sometimes though the larger organization is a holding company that has different subsidiaries for related lines of business.)
  • unclesaamm 12y ago
    There's some interesting IR research that's going into stuff like this. See TREC's new Dynamic Domain challenge: http://trec-dd.org http://trec-dd.org
  • kgc 12y ago
    I thought of something like this too. I was going to put it on the domain ideatester.org
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• philbarr 12y ago
  Easy Expenses: There are lots of expenses saas apps out there, but the pain with expenses is scanning in all the receipts. I should be able to do this by just taking a picture of the receipt at the time I get it. Perhaps include some computer vision stuff to pick the numbers off the receipt and let me choose which one was cost (incl./excl. VAT). Include other fields for project, time, date, reason, etc. Then when I'm finished I click a button and it emails the expenses so I can forward it onto my accounts department.
  • quentindemetz 12y ago
    expensify does this already
  • dkyc 12y ago
    Check out Abacus (recent YC company): https://www.abacus.com/ https://www.abacus.com/
  • sunir 12y ago
    Shoeboxed.com is amazing. Try it.
  • ramviswanadha 12y ago
    checkout http://receiptmonkey.com http://receiptmonkey.com does OCR recognition of receipts for easy expense managment
• keyle 12y ago
  A TV-show backing system, after the fact. Many shows are not available in countries where they are as a result, vastly downloaded. Sometimes they're available 6 months later. Sometimes you need bundles with various companies in order to get the shows you like. Sometimes, they're only available with so much advertisement that you lose the plot, while the same ad has been served 3 times in 40 minutes. These shows are GOOD. They deserve people's money, other than being split by an equal length of advertising to content ratio. If a website had most TV show cast / writers represented, with a trusted authority overseeing, and an anonymous donate buttons; I can think of many shows to which people would donate their monthly entertainment-budget to. TV is greater than ever. Writers are brilliant. Casts are amazing. But the whole system is rigged and barely functional. I realize the system cannot be flipped suddenly, but an initiative such as this one could drive to fundamental changes in modern TV production.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• yesimahuman 12y ago
  NLP as a service. It's a growing field yet setting up training models and all of that for a wide variety of NLP related services is pretty hard still. Things like sentiment analysis, Named Entity Recognition, etc.
  • znt 12y ago
    I don't have any experience on NLP, but are any of these suitable for you? http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language-processing-apis/ http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language-processi...
  • trca 12y ago
    Two solutions: Wit.ai for the natural language processing aspect, and then Alchemy's API for the sentiment analysys. Combine those together and you have exactly what you're looking for.
• interdrift 12y ago
  I'm interested in building a 3D mobile game that allows you to build your own life through scanning items around you through your camera and then representing them by making them interactable inside your phone. You'll have quests and stuff.. Can this idea be a worth giving a go at it?
• lazyjones 12y ago
  Idea: a personal blood testing device for use at home (to test for many parameters including vitamin levels). It would be beneficial to be able to test at least monthly in order to avoid risks associated with various deficiencies, to detect possible diseases early, to monitor relevant parameters while on a diet or exercising etc.. Also, we'd like to keep our results confidential to avoid trouble with insurances and other interested parties. Labs have large, expensive devices tuned for throughput (e.g. http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia-centaur-cp-immunoassay-sys/features-benefits http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia-...). They can probably be reduced in size and cost to something comparable with a laser printer. Newer testing methods would work with single drops of blood (e.g. Theranos) so no special skills would be required. (personal motivation: discovered an extreme Vitamin D3 deficiency, supplements seem to have a dramatic effect)
  • FLUX-YOU 12y ago
    Secondary idea: the device optionally sends (or produces) a document with the testing parameters and results to EHR software, doctor, or nurse. Caregivers can then return with answers or catch problematic values.
    • jrometty 12y ago
      Even better, the data is recorded in a central database where you can be compared to all other users. If an anomaly occur, doctors (who will have access to the info from the start) will be notified and be able to call the shots with the benefit of data. Edit: rereading your answer, you might have less explicitly said this.
  • srunni 12y ago
    What exactly is the advantage of a home device over Theranos, which has a Vitamin D3 test (https://www.theranos.com/test-menu/test/82306 https://www.theranos.com/test-menu/test/82306)? Data privacy?
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
• viraptor 12y ago
  An app, possibly desktop one, which gets two music fragments and tries to figure out the stack of effects that were applied to one of them. Context: I realised recently that a lot of film/series music is processed, compared to the album version. Specifically, I noticed blues tracks on Suits sound so much deeper than their album versions. I'd like to know how was that result achieved and how to make a chosen track sound as if it was processed for that series.
• RivieraKid 12y ago
  Like Gravatar but for everything, not just avatars. Gravatar is a service, where you save your avatar. Websites such as StackOverflow can connect to Gravatar and retrieve your avatar from there. So when you decide to change your avatar, you do it in one place. On a more abstract level, the problem here is that people and organizations often create some data and basically Ctrl+C Ctrl+V it to different services. Couple of examples: - RSS subscriptions. If I want to try a new reader, I have to export subscriptions from my current reader and import it to the new one. - Calendar events. Same problem. Yes, some services can sync with each other but it's a messy situation. Calendar apps must separately implement sync with several calendar services. - Whenever I want to buy something from a new eshop, I need to enter my email and address. - Restaurants publish their location, opening hours or photos on Yelp, Google Maps and others. When opening hours change, they need to separately update every service. - Public transport operators send their timetables to Google and other services. The solution I suggest is to store this data at the source. People and organizations would have something that's sort of similar to Dropbox, let's call it databox. You have a databox url, such as databox.org/1. Your avatar is available at databox.org/1/avatar. Your RSS subscriptions are at databox.org/1/rss/subscriptions. Opening hours of some company are inside a JSON that's on databox.org/2/restaurants. The databox URL also serves as a login. So the workflow when trying a new RSS reader is like this. 1) You click on "register". 2) Enter your databox URL. 3) The reader requests a read and write permission to your RSS data. 4) You allow it and the reader fetches your subscriptions. There are some standardized "subdirectories" (e.g. /rss, /calendar, /tasks) but anyone can create a new standard. For example, a bunch of Linux distributions can decide they will save desktop background and other desktop settings to /linux-desktop.
  • et1337 12y ago
    Sounds great, if you can hurdle the main obstacle every standard faces. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ :)
    • RivieraKid 12y ago
      I had "inb4 the xkcd joke" in the comment but deleted it :) I wish Mozilla would create something like this, they have the power to push it.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• bbody 12y ago
  Idea: A startup which holds your data, it then provides it as a service to other websites giving them it only as they need it. This will provide a single place where you data exists and other companies will only be able to use it as need be. Security would become a big problem however... But it could get around a lot of privacy concerns at the moment.
  • Cynddl 12y ago
    Its name is http://openpds.media.mit.edu http://openpds.media.mit.edu, developed at MIT. OpenPDS is a service acting as a middle datastore, between the user (who can even host the service themselves), and the data consumers. The key issue here is to guarantee privacy, by responding with ‘SafeAnswers’ to the queries of external services. It's a WIP, but free and open source.
• downandout 12y ago
  FDAPI: Food Delivery API. Grubhub is winning the food delivery battle because the industry is so fragmented. Have a simple, central API for restaurants to export and store in the cloud their menus, hours, availability, percent they are willing to give to affiliates (if any) etc. Any app can tie into the system and submit orders in exchange for affiliate revenue. Restaurants can receive orders, with order info, payment info for the customer, etc. Delivery specialists can tie into the system and receive payment for delivery in the case of restaurants that don't already offer delivery. The system could handle all affiliate and delivery driver coordination and payments without restaurants having to worry about it. They just get more orders.
  • karanbhangui 12y ago
    I like this idea. You could even auto-generate branded mobile/web ordering apps just for those restaurants as a way for them to uniquely market themselves, and could be used as a revenue stream besides the exchange.
  • NotARobit 12y ago
    I like this idea. I actually like it across many industries. Is anyone doing a great job of this in any industry? Hotels and Flights maybe?
• olalonde 12y ago
  They don't fit in an HN comment but I recently dumped a couple of ideas on my blog: http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-ideas-2015-edition/ http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-ideas-2015...
  • CodyReichert 12y ago
    Your cold calling as a service caught my attention. It's an interesting idea, but I feel the pitfall would be that random callers may not know or be as passionate about my product as an employee or myself. I could see a sale easily being lost because of an unexpected question.
    • olalonde 12y ago
      Yes, that's definitely a big risk to take especially if your target market is relatively small and you don't want to burn bridges. One solution could be to have different types of callers (similar to freelance marketplaces) to chose from. You could pick a less experienced/expensive caller for stuff that isn't really important and pick a more qualified/expensive caller for stuff that really matters. Callers could even specialise in certain industries. Another solution could be to let users listen in on calls and provide live feedback to the caller but then most people would just opt to do the calls by themselves. Personally, I might still use such a service simply because I hate talking on the phone and am not good at sales.
    • avalaunch 12y ago
      Your employees probably aren't passionate about it either, unless they have significant skin in the game (equity). If the calls being outsourced are sales calls, you could pay a commission. That would lead to more motivated sellers at least, although perhaps too motivated and too short sighted.
• srunni 12y ago
  Problem: lots of early stage biotech/medtech ventures have a hard time raising funding, for a variety of structural reasons (http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-reflections-on-exits-funding-and-startup-formation/ http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-re...), despite having already made initial progress using non-dilutive government funding (NIH grants, SBIR, STTR, etc.). Solution: an equity crowdfunding site for early stage biotech/medtech ventures focused on gaining backing from doctors and other knowledgeable medical professionals. Those same life sciences entrepreneurs who are having a hard time raising $5-10M in VC funding are often in a hospital environment, surrounded by doctors who both deeply understand the problems they're trying to solve and whose pooled capital could easily add up to $5-10M. Not only would this counteract scams in this industry made possible by information asymmetry (http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug-hearing-aids-293k-indiegogo-campaign-was-a-scam/ http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug-hearing-a...), many medical professionals already meet the (pre-JOBS Act) income or wealth requirements to be an accredited investor. One major concern with this idea is whether the VCs who weren't willing to invest in a series A-stage life sciences ventures would be willing to come in at a later stage. They typically prefer tranched investments (http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections-on-early-stage-biotech-venture-investing/ http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections-on-...) and don't necessarily see later stage ventures as less risky (http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late-stage-vs-early-stage-biotech/ http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late-stage-vs-ea...). If that turns out to be a problem, another scalable source of follow-on investment will have to be tapped in order to prevent a "series B crunch" for these non-traditionally funded biotech/medtech ventures.
• richardpenner 12y ago
  App of Thrones: second screen app for Game of Thrones that I can glance at to see character names and bios while watching the show. Crowd-sourced content, audio synced so it's smart about pausing.
• et1337 12y ago
  A CMS designed specifically for the solo contractor making a typical brochure-type website for a mom-and-pop organization or company. Every website is a fork of the main repo, so devs have full control and version upgrades are just git merges. Runs on SQLite and comes with in-page editing controls a la Medium. Basically Wordpress for the 21st century, but designed for devs rather than users.
  • CodyReichert 12y ago
    I've thought about this too - what language would you think would be the most universal for devs? I think Wordpress pretty much covers this, though I do think there is room for another competitor.
    • et1337 12y ago
      There's definitely room for competition. Most recently we've got Wix and Squarespace, but again they target the end user rather than developers. I think most people are willing to shell out a bit more for a local developer rather than an impersonal SaaS site. At the moment I'm working on a prototype using Python and Flask, which seems like Django without all the cruft. Pretty much the only other options would be Ruby, Go, and Javascript. But I really like Python. :)
      • federico3 12y ago
        +1 for using a language with a good security track record.
• DanBC 12y ago
  This type of thread should be monthly, not weekly. You might want to set up an account just for posting these threads. That helps avoids a bunch of different people starting the threads as Sunday rolls around to their timezone.
  • minimaxir 12y ago
    The OP is not affiliated with Hacker News/YC.
    • DanBC 12y ago
      I don't understand your point.
• thecolorblue 12y ago
  Idea: Companies setup a basic poll asking people to pick their favorite of 2-5 options. Customers pay $1 (or a little more) to vote. Companies can use it to understand their actual customers better, people who are actually willing to pay. I was thinking it would be used to prioritized features but it could be used just to raise money. Customers would get a voice with the company, and would not get drowned out by potential customers who are not commited enough to pay a small amount. I thought of this from the companies perspective so I'm having trouble thinking about it from the customers point of view. Would there be enough incentive for customers to pay?
  • avalaunch 12y ago
    Would there be enough incentive for customers to pay? In a word, no. Companies will often pay a lot to survey their customers. Getting the customers to pay to be surveyed sounds like a very tall request. And any incentive of value the company could add would run counter to the value proposition you've outlined for the company.
• grantbachman 12y ago
  Tutorials that actually validate whether they currently work. One use case would be tutorials on deploying to IAAS/PAAS providers. Deploying always seems to be the hard part after I build something; I don't like using the same language and IAAS/PAAS twice for learning purposes. It's complicated even more so as many tutorials don't reference when they were written or which code versions they used. The site would require this information, and then use it to periodically attempt to deploy that sample to AWS/Digital Ocean/etc (whichever the tutorial is covering), and prominently display whether the tutorial currently works.
  • CodyReichert 12y ago
    I thought about this after scrolling past a couple of times - and I think this is a good idea. I'm thinking like a CI for tutorials. For example, I create an account on Tutorial CI (or whatever), give it the environment of the tutorial's code. It spits out a badge that I can put on my tutorial that says whether the build is passing or not. Pretty much exactly like the Travis badges you see on Github. That way, someone can verify before they even start reading that the tutorial is valid. I actually like this idea a lot.
  • yaraher 12y ago
    We've been exploring this kind of scenarios at [http://codepicnic.com http://codepicnic.com], where you can create your tutorial and then run some sort of test to see if it's running (perhaps returning non-zero values from some script or testing the existence of some files) but so far we think most of the attempts are a bit clumsy and would lead to false positives. But would love to exchange ideas on the topic.
• minthd 12y ago
  Problem: the torrent network is not so good for hosting rare files, because often people download rare files, use it once or twice and delete them or place them in another library not accessible to the torrent. So there are file hosting sites for that matter, but they're far from ideal - because they are centralized with all the problems that come with that. That creates a lack of accessibility to rare files. Not sure what would be the best solution that won't hurt the bittorent network(by splitting it), and that will have a reasonable monetization source.
• conorpp 12y ago
  Idea: A TENS Machine you can control with your phone http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-electrical-nerve-stimulation-device-in-a-weekend/ http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-ele... TENS are currently kind of expensive and hard to use. People typically only use them when prescribed by a doctor and the devices are actually quite useful. Many people get pain somehow or could use some sort of recreational relaxation, and a intuitive TENS machine for a smart phone could have a good market.
• rosslazer 12y ago
  I'm working on a device that turns any mailbox into a smart one. If you insert my device into your mailbox, it will send you an electronic notification when mail comes in or is taken out. Currently working with a functional prototype. Thoughts?
• phantom_oracle 12y ago
  Most of these ideas will be an echo chamber for the niche needs of this niche crowd. HN itself identifies towards the tech-centric crowd, so most of these ideas are already focused around some market + tech (or just tech for some marginal utility). Granted, some of these ideas sound cool. But why so? It's because of the echo-chamber in that "we" all find them cool on some level, and thus they become niche ideas in fragmented markets with demanding users and no possible financial gain. This is probably why it was stopped in the first place.
• sponsored_ad 12y ago
  #Hardware: what about a solution for 'endless-3d-printing' ? new mopboards will be welcome for our next 'spring-renovation' ...or maybe some fineart picture frames :) edited: mopboards (?!) in german called "Fussleisten"
• minimaxir 12y ago
  Since no one linked it, here's the reason Idea Sunday was killed in the first place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • bythe4mile 12y ago
    I kinda liked the idea (yes, I see the irony of this in this particular thread :)) about having these post not being liked to the karma of a user. Then again, perhaps the best thing about hackernews is the simplicity of the system without having these complex scenarios tied to posts.
  • fiatjaf 12y ago
    Idea Sunday is awesome.
• awwstn 12y ago
  I have obvious bias as a member of the Assembly team, but I think it would be a perfect place to build lots of these ideas collaboratively – and I'd love to help facilitate/participate. Here's where to start: https://assembly.com/start https://assembly.com/start And if you mention @awwstn anywhere on Assembly I'm more than happy to help out.
• cageek 12y ago
  I've created a subreddit for regular idea validation: https://www.reddit.com/r/ideavalidation https://www.reddit.com/r/ideavalidation because we have ideas more than once a month.
• cageek 12y ago
  I've had this idea several years ago, and it now exists in a few cities around the world. Feel free to start one in your city, and add it to the wiki: http://www.ideasmeetings.org http://www.ideasmeetings.org It's simply a monthly meetup for idea sharing, validation, and collaboration. Helping each other make our ideas happen, be it an art project, community project, business, or social enterprise.
• S4M 12y ago
  A Firefox (or Chrome) plugin to collapse comments on HN.
  • dolzenko 12y ago
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-news/mnlaodleonmmfkdhfofamacceeikgecp?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-news/mnlaodle...
• miguelrochefort 12y ago
  We need to take a step back, and stop building all these silly websites and applications. Seriously, this madness must stop. The application paradigm simply cannot scale. How many apps can you install? How many profiles can you maintain? How many inbox can you empty? How many activity feeds can you go through? How many shopping apps do you use until you buy that one thing? How many times have you seen the exact same article/story posted across your social networks? How many "share your startup ideas" communities does it take for humanity to find the meaning of life? After how long and how much are you going to realize that nobody will ever use your niche social network? We need to look at the big picture. We need to rethink all of this. We're doing it wrong, and now is the time to fix it. Everything else is distraction.
  • TACIXAT 12y ago
    Someone just needs to capitalize on the complexity and make something to manage all the profiles, inboxes, and apps.
    • miguelrochefort 12y ago
      You're still thinking in the wrong paradigm. This is the perfect example of what we should NOT be doing. To build on top of this mess is a sure way to increase complexity to new heights. Not in a good way.
      • mrgr1 12y ago
        I know this is old, but I still have to ask. Are you talking about machine learning and artificial intelligence?
        • miguelrochefort 12y ago
          Yes and no. I believe we need a new language, a new way to structure knowledge. Of course, AI will benefit from that, but I don't believe it's a precondition.
  • 12y ago
• babygamedev 12y ago
  the day of the one page resume serving any purpose are over. If companies look at your resume at all, they are looking for information in raw data form: what projects you've worked on/completed, where you've worked, skills, etc. Otherwise they don't even bother. You might be asked to bring in a one page resume to a job interview but it's rarely used for anything but reference/quick glances. The Idea: Gravatar but for resumes. Raw data that you fill out online and can be updated as you work on projects. Companies (or you) can pull this data into usable formats or to fill out online forms. Additionally it'd be cool if it had a "condensed" option that either you fill out with terse explanation for each project, or it ignores the descriptions of projects entirely and just shows the project name,date,and role. This would give interviewers something to glance down at for reference, but would save the functionality of the resume as a complete document of experiences. Idk the idea that only our most recent projects (that can still fit on one sheet of paper) is the only relevant info is absurd to me; there is a lot to be learned from seeing the growth of a person over time. To me the resume fails on every goal that it SHOULD accomplish except for maybe your ability to choose your best work, which i can see as important but there could even be a feature where you select the three works you are most proud of or something.
• rgovind 12y ago
  Quora for just India, with answers from experts instead of kids fresh out of college
• rahulvarshneya 12y ago
  We solved the problem of curating content to share in your newsletter for engaging your audience/leads through email: http://mailcaddy.co/beta http://mailcaddy.co/beta. Let me know your thoughts!
• rafael-rinaldi 12y ago
  Fake it till you make it. Trust your guts and never stop learning and trying.