
Ask HN: Idea Sunday - livestyle
Fresh start for the last week of April.
======
pookieinc
For reference from the past three weeks of Idea Sunday:

Last weeks Idea Sunday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910)

2 weeks ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077)

3 weeks ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601)

Humble recommendation: Maybe we can post these in the original post for people
who would be interested?

~~~
rory096
The OP should probably include a restatement of the purpose, too- wouldn't
want people to get confused with the side project help thread!

------
fiatjaf
I've been thinking about the problem of making make people organize their
public and semi-public data better.

Groups (such as email groups and Facebook groups) and communities need a way
to organize and share their data freely, but in a structured way. Also people
who have data, or start building some kind of data, in text format, or tabular
data, but don't know of any other mean, so they build a blog and start posting
everything, then it is impossible to make anything useful with the data later.
Or maybe they make a spreadsheet and link to it.

I've come to 2 solutions:

\- for the first thing (but also applicable to the second), a structurable
database (such as PouchDB) stored in the people's browser and communicating
with other people from the group via webRTC could build a decentralized
database everyone will have. Some things could be made on top of this;

\- other thing is just a blogging platform that is not only a blogging
platform (what I really want is it to not be a blogging platform), but it is
also some way to publish static atemporal articles, tree-data, tabular data,
hierarchical data etc. Written in javascript, running from the browser and
communicating directly with GitHub or some other static hosting service with
an API. The person would load the contents with the API then deploy the new
contents as a static page. Free blogging, no central servers or providers
(except for GitHub, but it could be made to generate HTML hostable anywhere),
cool stuff can be attached (even some plugin that will take the data from the
first solution and share in the blog/page/site).

~~~
rhythmvs
Immediate sharing of raw data (with the world, or restricted to one’s peers),
instead of going through the tedious process of information packaging through
text, words, written description or synoptical graphics — that’s the future of
our open Web. When anyone can create and update the underlying raw data, there
can exist infinite summarizing views, syntheses, charts, text, all drawing
their own conclusions.

Pushing and syncing strings is a solved problem, as are atomicity,
consistency, isolation, durability. Powerful visualization tools are being
made, too. The View and the Controller are taken care of.

The unsolved problem remains: how will we empower users to relate those
strings, to have them turn data into information, and information into
knowledge? How will we enable the many thousands of non-tech domain experts to
create their models? How will we devise the Model?

~~~
fsainz
We’ve working on an approach to tackle this problem. We saw that the burden of
having to create a data structure - along with the need to attach it to a
visualization - makes people post what they can as hacky html lists, if they
get so far.

We wanted to show people that they were in fact able to create structured
contents, even if it was in a limited way, and we choose the analogy of file
and folders since most people know how to organize them. But structuring and
gathering data is half of the problem, you need to translate that data into
friendly views and same sort of browsing experience, so we developed same
conventions to turn the structure into a small website/embed.

We thought of developing an open way to store and share this data, and let
people copy, follow, contribute to these chunks of content. Build a friendly
web dashboard that exposes every item with simple views, and which let other
developers consume them in any other ways they want.

The problem is that we don’t really know who wants this. We thought that it
would be appealing for web agencies as a way to quickly add structured
contents to websites, but we were wrong. Some people suggested us to develop a
full CMS, but we wanted to work on the problem of sharing and opening up a
library of contents, not to be an alternative to Wordpress. We honestly don’t
know what to do next. If you want to talk further about it, my email if
fsainz/gmail.

~~~
fiatjaf
I wouldn't know what to do with Pageboxes also (as I still don't know of what
exactly I am talking about in the main comment in this thread), but my use
cases for the general idea were two:

\- Online communities. For example, groups of students of some area, groups of
pregnant women, groups of people who like tiny houses, groups of people who do
geocaching, people who like to save dogs in the streets and give them to
adoption, people who like to shoot at birds, people who work with something
specific. All these groups probably have groups of email, or Facebook groups,
(probably more than one group, maybe various localized groups) where they chat
and share interesting links, data and information. Then this data is lost, it
isn't searchable by the people who know it exists (specially if they are
inside an Excel spreadsheet that was emailed to all the groups' participants),
it isn't knowable for people who joined the community later. This people will
never know (or will know too later) that that interesting data was there, just
behind a pile of emails and posts. There are a lot of examples of data that
could be indexed (yes, I'm talking about database indexes) in interesting
ways, but I will give none now, and lots of data that could just be organized
in an easy way (categories, although I don't like this very much) and made
searchable.

For this problem, Trello is a good option, but it is limited, it is
centralized, it requires an "owner" of the Trello board to authorize other
people, it cannot develop in an organic way, with few people starting to use,
then other people joining, and people who don't wanna join never joining. It
also cannot index data, just categorize and archive.

\- Myself. I don't want a blog, but I have interesting data stored in my
computer and my brain I wanna handle to the public over the internet, to
whoever be interest in it. I have articles I can't find anywhere else anymore,
I have spreadsheet data that should be presented as spreadsheets, I have
articles I typed from old magazines, I have videos I don't remember how I got,
I also have impressions of books, commentaries about lots of non-mainstream
topics, and mainstream topics also, mainly atemporal things, that don't fit
well in a blog. I could make a static web page and put all this there, but it
seems too difficult for such a low value it will have. I also don't wanna do
it because I wanna keep thinking about how would a non-programmer do it. I
can't help thinking every people in my situation would: (i) do nothing; or
(ii) make a blog, post everything there for two month and abandon the blog. I
don't like abandoned blogs.

Pageboxes could do something for this, but I don't know how exactly.

~~~
rhythmvs
I’ll have a closer look at Pagebox.es

Long time ago, I mused¹ about these kind of things, then worked like mad on
devising an implementation. Meanwhile, a side project I’ll take up again, one
day.

I love the idea of data blogging.

Thinking more along the lines of what Freebase was doing (before Google
smothered it), what Fluidinfo² originally intended to do, and what Silk³ seems
to be doing best, right now.

¹ [http://rhythmvs.tumblr.com/post/19750973162/hello-
world](http://rhythmvs.tumblr.com/post/19750973162/hello-world) ²
[http://fluidinfo.com](http://fluidinfo.com) ³
[https://www.silk.co](https://www.silk.co)

~~~
fsainz
"data blogging" sounds awesome, never thought of those words. I'm pretty much
addicted to RSS Feeds, for me there's no better way to access those contents.
Being able to translate that experience to structured data would make very
happy.

Reading your tumblr post, I think there is useful work to do on the points you
mention: Collecting and List Making // Visualising Knowledge // Open Access.
We need something simple enough to get the people who already know how to
publish posts interested.

Silk is pretty good, and I never heard of Freebase. From wikipedia: "Freebase
is a large collaborative knowledge base consisting of metadata composed mainly
by its community members. It is an online collection of structured data
harvested from many sources". I got to look into this, sounds beautiful.

------
stoev
How about a search engine that bases its results on how unique the information
is on every one of them.

Every time I try to do an in-depth research on Google about some topic I open
up 10 or 20 of the most relevant results, only to discover that at least 80%
of the information is repeating itself in at least 50-60% of the pages.

One could write a search engine that compares the contents, groups the
articles that have similar enough contents and only displays one article per
group. This could work especially well in the case of longer searches with
enough keywords.

Obviously, this is not a standalone product that would compete against the
established search engines, but it could be built on top of them - a browser
extension for example.

Any thoughts on this?

~~~
miguelrochefort
The problem is lack of semantics. Computers don't understand the content of a
web page or article, and you have to manually parse it and make sense of it.
You'll find 80% of what you need in 20% of relevant pages, and the remaining
20% in the other 80% of pages.

The semantic web is the solution. A system that understands content,
understands what you know, and understands what you want. Then, all it has to
do is show you what's relevant and necessary to the task you're trying to
accomplish. In most cases, you won't have to actually do the task, as it will
be automated.

I don't see any way around this. Changing how search engines work will still
not let you find articles that complement each-other perfectly. And you'll
still have to read more than necessary.

~~~
stoev
Yes, the problem won't be solved completely and you will still end up reading
the same content more than once. But at least, by analysing the text the
search engine could detect which articles are coming from the same source
(e.g. inspired by the same press release or just telling the same news event
over and over again) and group them accordingly. Currently, I don't feel like
Google or other search engines are doing any of that (maybe they are, but if
so, the results are not good enough).

------
UweSchmidt
Bring back tactile controls.

Now that the smartphone innovation has slowed down a little, why not bring
back real buttons, wheels etc.? They should be well-designed, precisely
engineered and fun to use. I belive mobile gadget design is now awesome enough
to make this work.

I wouldn't mind a scrollwheel, or even real radiobuttons (one button goes in,
the other pops up). The exact functionality would still depend on the current
application.

Since they give real physical feedback they should objectively be superior to
the touchscreen-only functions, no?

~~~
nmikz
I recently came across this tech where physical buttons appear and disappear
on touch screens when needed :
[http://tactustechnology.com/](http://tactustechnology.com/)

------
miguelrochefort
Terms and Conditions as a service.

Most websites have some kind of "terms and conditions". They all seem to
manually implement the whole process of:

\- coming up with proper T&C

\- display them to the user

\- ask the user to agree to them

\- notify the user that T&C changed

\- etc.

For the user, the experience is just plain bad. I can't recall two T&C
agreement process that were identical. Sometimes I have to check a box,
sometimes I have to press a button. Sometimes I have to scroll to the bottom
to be able to click "I agree". And when I do, I don't even get a copy or
receipt of what I agreed to.

Call me stupid, but I usually never read T&Cs. As far as I know, my soul could
now belong to a lot of companies. I don't think I'm a unique case.

What if websites could delegate the T&C agreement process to a third-party
service that does just that. This service could help small businesses create
their own T&Cs from templates, standardize the agreement process, let users
have access to a list of everything they agreed to, and even let people (or
lawyers) review T&Cs to make it easier for others to know what they're getting
into. If a company wants to change their T&C, the service will notify users of
these changes, and let them react accordingly.

This service could also be extended to more than just website T&Cs, and became
a central hub for all your contracts and agreements, from your bank, phone
company, rent, job, contract, etc. One place where you can see everything you
legally agreed to in your life.

~~~
callmeed
This is a good idea and I've thought about it in the past. I think
[http://snapterms.com/](http://snapterms.com/) is doing something along these
lines, although I think the price is still too high.

Ideally, I'd like to see the service keep diff's of the terms so consumers
(and you) can see how they've changed over time.

I'm also wondering if there's any value in having cohorts of customers based
on what set of terms they signed up under.

~~~
miguelrochefort
Snapterms only seem to write custom ToS for businesses. That's almost the
opposite of what I have in mind.

The goal is not to create "funny and unique" ToS that businesses can use in
their own ToS agreement process. The goal is to:

\- Standardize ToS (with semantic information) \- Democratize ToS (let people
review them) \- Delegate the ToS agreement process (redirect people to this
service to read, review and agree with terms of services.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a "contract hub" where people can manage,
track and review all of the ToS (or other contracts) they agreed to in their
life.

The change/diff history is an excellent idea. Github for ToS, with version
tracking and forking. I like that.

------
sergiosgc
A public protocol and a reference implementation of a social network. The
problem is stabilized, it's time to do to social networks what SMTP did to
email. Open it up to be fully decentralized, where people can host their
social hub or use a hosting service, of which there would spring up a
multitude.

Social networking is nowadays as central to the internet as email, and it is
the first such, heavily used, application layer "protocol" that is closed.

For a small period of time I had hopes that this would be the path G+ would
take to the top. It isn't.

~~~
aspidistra
Something like Tent?

[https://tent.io](https://tent.io)

~~~
coolsunglasses
Are there any implementations or user-friendly frontend webapps designed to
interoperate?

~~~
aspidistra
There was, at one point, a Twitter clone running at
[http://tent.is](http://tent.is). But that now redirects to cupcake.io, which
runs a tent hosting service.

There are some projects on the tent Github page but nothing with activity less
than months old:

[https://github.com/tent](https://github.com/tent)

------
graham1776
Html Tables as a service.

For the average Joe, making html tables is such a task. <tr><td> about a
zillion times. Yes I realize that anyone putting a table into html should
really be using a database, but again for the average joe, that is too much
brain damage, and still too hard.

The idea is: Copy excel headers and data into the service, and out pops
embeddable html/javascript/whatever code that the person can embed directly on
their site. From the user perspective, they can have one place to keep their
table data and have an easy way to embed a table into html from excel.

Alternatives: Google Docs embed, zoho creator embed, etc - but these do not
integrate directly into the site (ie they cannot inherit css styles from the
site) Tableizer - does the conversion of excel cells to html, but does not
store the table and data for the user to call at a later date (ie data is
static and used once)

It is really similar to the [http://myjson.com/](http://myjson.com/) idea,
except its for people who don't know what json is.

~~~
fiatjaf
Why just HTML tables? Why not JSON, HTML tables, charts built on top of the
JSON or the HTML tables, a custom search engine over all this data, database
indexes, CouchDB views, a way to validate the data being saved and fetched,
encryption as a service?

------
bluerail
I have been rethinking all the time when I am working on this (seriously, is
this worth it).. Please let me know your suggestions..

a site which let's you to post what your typical day would be(tday).. the tday
can be either in a view of a profession (ex., a typical day of a doctor in San
Francisco, a typical day of an cab driver in Japan (location plays a major
role of a professional)) or it can be a view of personal one which could be
shared with your fb friends..

Users can request for a tday for their known people by inviting them to the
site via their social networking connections... also, users can request for a
tday of a famous person by including their #tags or @name pointers and other
users can support that request by upvoting them (obviously most users' request
would be on top).. not only tday, if they can share their most special day,
most special week, unforgettable day and other users can upvote them... this
lets to know people beyond what is seen from them.. what do you think...

~~~
danohuiginn
I like this, but I think it would work best as a subreddit. The work of
building (and persuading people to use) a separate site would be a big
distraction without real benefits.

------
gbrits
Included this last week, but a bit late so less eyeballs. Hope it's ok to
repost...

Chrono: chronological inventions and academic breakthroughs of mankind as a
dependency graph. This is a lingering idea that has been coming back to me a
couple times a year over the last decade or so.

What if there's a kind of semantic wikipedia that is built upon a dependency
graph of inventions and academic breakthroughs. What led to the invention of
the internet, to nano-tubes, etc? How cool would it be from an education
standpoint to be able to jump back in time and see invention upon invention
replayed (with backgrounds on how these breakthroughs came to be) up to today.
Check out what led to invention X (the galaxy S you're reading this on),
played back . Or reversely, lookup which inventions were build (transitively)
upon the discovery of Y.

Socio-economic backgrounds, anecdotes, etc. what led to invention X, and how X
was important for Y, etc. An interactive "Short history of nearly everything"

~~~
rz2k
Take a look at the older BBC "Connections" documentaries by James Burke.[1]
They're really fascinating, however they have a strong editorial presence. In
my view, like with Sagan's Cosmos, the presence of the series creator's point
of view can make the content more interesting than a collection of data alone.

However, people do really enjoy TV tropes, so a huge effort to categorize
everything could attract a huge audience, too. Such a site would be a good
source of inspiration for new ideas incorporating older ones, too.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plgLCYha7pE&list=PLGi4Jd5YfR_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plgLCYha7pE&list=PLGi4Jd5YfR_lnV68fTIlPMZQzVAjeeg5g&feature=share&index=1)

~~~
gbrits
The editorial aspect could be in the "Socio-economic backgrounds, anecdotes,
etc. what led to invention X, and how X was important for Y, etc." Part of why
I found A Short History of Nearly Everything so great is the backdrop in which
Bill Bryson is able to frame the great inventions.

------
ToastyMallows
An ifixit[0] like site for repairing your car. I really like the format of
ifixit because they give detailed pictures and the tools you will need. A site
like this would be great for cars, ranging from just changing oil and tires to
possibly harder things.

[0]: [http://www.ifixit.com/](http://www.ifixit.com/)

EDIT: If you create the site, please let me know. This is not something I can
work on right now but if it's a wiki like site I'd love to contribute.

~~~
spaboleo
The problem with this is most likely insurance and safety related. :(

~~~
ToastyMallows
What's the difference between that and opening up a new Macbook and changing
the battery, voiding your warranty?

~~~
DanBC
A Macbook can not crash into another car and kill all the passengers.

I'm not sure that's an actual problem though. The UK had "haynes manuals" for
many years. The actual problem is that specialist tools are needed more often
now.

------
parennoob
Analytics on all of my application usage, email, chats, texts, twitter and
facebook interactions, and map locations. Should provide outputs like Google
Now, but run on my own operating system (preferably Linux-based).

This ([http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/01/psa-back-up-your-
shit/](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/01/psa-back-up-your-shit/)) should be good
jumping off point to get a lot of the stuff. The system should have
customisable hooks written in something like Python to write your own
"filters". e.g. "If I've been in emacs for 1 hour straight, pop up a reminder
to take an eye break, etc."

Suggestions? Thoughts?

~~~
edparry
RescueTime [1] seems to be along the right lines here, and is available on
Linux. Doesn't appear to be able to track emails/texts/social interaction,
though, only the time spent in applications and websites.

[1] [https://www.rescuetime.com/](https://www.rescuetime.com/)

------
charismaticfoo
A bookmarking service, that not only saves any "interesting" links that you
visit but also saves the data in that link for future search. The service
should let you specify topics that you are interested in and will analyze
every page you visit (with the exception of blacklisted pages) and put it into
the appropriate bucket (topic), for future reference. It should also index the
PDFs and word documents that are read by you. In research we consume so much
of content. Organizing them effectively becomes as daunting as the research
itself at times.

~~~
ishansharma
Except this part:

>> The service should let you specify topics that you are interested in and
will analyze every page you visit (with the exception of blacklisted pages)
and put it into the appropriate bucket (topic), for future reference.

Evernote does all of this.

------
dcho47
Predictor of successful retail stores:

A small retail property recently became available about 2 blocks from me in
NYC and, for fun, I began thinking about what kind of stores would do well.
I'd come up with an idea and realize that a similar type of store was just a
block or two away. When I thought I'd come up with a good idea, such as a pet
grooming service, I asked the nearby pet store what the traffic was like and
apparently it was horrible.

Enter predictive analytics. This tool would draw upon publicly available city
records of what types of retail stores have been in neighborhoods that I can
characterize through publicly available census data. If I could use the length
of existence of a rented (not owned) retail shop as a proxy, I could, with X%
probability, be able to predict, with probably surprising specificity, what
kind of retail store would do well 2 blocks from me. This combines elements of
what sort of retail store isn't serving that particular area (as an assumed
factor of success), what kind of stores have failed in the past in the
immediate area, which have been 'successful,' behavioral patterns of the
neighborhood demographic (heck, combine that with social traffic tracked
data), etc.

Obviously, this discounts the innovation of retailers that adds to a store's
success, among other factors, but this tool would at least yield an important
factor to consider when trying to figure out what store would do well in a
particular spot,

------
edparry
A mobile application to assist in the job of house/flat hunting.

Something that could tie in to RightMove (at least in the UK), access your
saved properties, and provide a simple interface to schedule viewings
(although I guess this would still have to be a manual process to book
viewings, but the app should provide a calendar to store them in).

The app could then alert you when the viewing is soon, and provide an
interface for you to rate the viewing, add comments and maybe your own
photographs to remind you later on, rather than having to scribble notes down
on the same piece of paper that becomes home to your chewing gum the next day.

On a social front, it would be good to see how many other people were viewing
the same property, to gauge the interest, and maybe you would be able to see
an overall rating of a property based on what other people that have viewed
think about it?

House/Flat adverts are still relatively useless in the process of finding
somewhere suitable, and until you can view and see a property for yourself,
it's impossible to tell. I think it would be very useful to be able to see
ratings and comments from other users, such as "the second bedroom is a lot
smaller than the photos show, and the flooring in the bathroom seriously needs
replacing!".

It doesn't look like there's an available API for RightMove at the moment, so
I'm not sure how the integration could happen. Still, a stand-a-lone app could
still be a worthwhile idea?

~~~
ollysb
The rental market in London is pretty ferocious. I don't think comments could
work because you'd always run the risk that somebody has decided they like a
place and want out off other people from looking. In the end you'd still have
to check the place yourself. I like a lot of your other ideas though and user
photos could definitely work.

~~~
edparry
I agree with the user comments issue. Maybe a way of vetting them, possibly if
other viewers agree with previous comments, they become publicly available?

EDIT: ...but even then, you might not get personal opinions. Tough one!

------
tlogan
Email service for small business: something companies can use in combination
with Box.com / Dropbox.com or other cloud storage instead of Google Apps. This
is not really idea but more of our need: we started using more Box (and
Dropbox) instead of Google Drive but we are stuck with email provided via
Google Apps. There is no other service on the market as Google Apps email for
small business.

(I tried FastMail, Atmail, Rackspace, and none of them is a good alternative).

~~~
cbg0
> (I tried FastMail, Atmail, Rackspace, and none of them is a good
> alternative).

Why not?

~~~
tlogan
\- interface is clunky

\- no nice mobile app

\- does not integrate with third-party systems (yea "not their problem" but
they should do something to promote 3rd party system to integrate with them)

\- spam filter is not so great (false positive is the problem - I'm ok having
occasional spam in inbox, but email from wife linking some stuff I need order
is really annoying.)

It is kinda hard to pinpoint the main reason...

------
callmeed
"Pixel Bar" or a brick and mortar photo/print studio for a new generation.

Working in the photo industry, things have changed so fast but I still think
there's value in physical, printed products. I haven't worked out the perfect
setup but something like:

\- a small retail location in a high-traffic, high tourism area (think union
square in SF or 3rd St in Santa Monica)

\- "print stations" where people can drop in, connect their phone and get
great prints on demand. It looks like an apple store not a crappy kiosk as
Walgreens

\- photo booths or "selfie stations" where friends/family can snap some shots
together and get prints

\- a staffed area like the apple Genius Bar where people can get a quick
professional portrait taken and printed or order higher price-point printed
products (think books or framed prints)

\- sell photo related smartphone accessories

\- have an app to order prints for pickup and do deals with other local
attractions, hotels, conferences and Uber. For example, a hotel in the
embarcadero encourages you to take a photo using the app or a specific
hashtag. Those photos are automatically sent to the store and you can pickup
prints any time.

~~~
27182818284
I must be missing something—my sister does this routinely with Walgreens. She
collects the digital photos she wants to print to a USB stick and just goes to
her local Walgreens in her relatively small city. Done.

Photo booths still very much exist and have been really popular at weddings
recently

If people want a Genius Bar for a "professional portrait" they actually have
someone take a professional portrait.

~~~
callmeed
You might not be missing anything (hey, it's "Idea Sunday" not _" Great Idea
Sunday"_). I still haven't working out the numbers enough to know if it could
work.

To your points, however, any time I try to print at a wal-mart or drug store
kiosk there's a 50% chance the kiosk is broken or busy.

I'm very familiar with the wedding and portrait industry as well as photo
booths. I think the booths in a retail location could work well–and could be a
way to drive app downloads (want the file? download the app).

 _> If people want a Genius Bar for a "professional portrait" they actually
have someone take a professional portrait._

Right, this would be a place to do that. It would be a combination of low-cost
with contemporary styling/posing.

------
adam419
A way to motivate yourself to complete a task (writing a book, losing 10 lbs,
etc) by saying I will put up X dollars towards this goal, and if I don't make
it, I don't get it back and it gets donated to charity.

The idea is that you need some sort of external consequence in order to really
motivate yourself to do things outside of work, school, etc.

What do you guys think?

~~~
_jnc
Looks like something like this debuted last week:
[https://gofuckingdoit.com](https://gofuckingdoit.com)

~~~
adam419
where did you find this?

------
viraptor
A browser extension / additional service that allows you to tag/lookup the
music on google music / spotify by any set of strings. And I mean your own
saved collection, not for sharing/exploring/social purpose. This can be faked
to some extent by multiple playlists, but it's a bit hard to use in real life.

This would be great help when trying to dj dancing party: now show me a list
of "blues", "chicago", "slow", "with breaks" to choose the next song. Actually
in this context, separate service / app would be great - it would work on a
mobile device, rather than just desktop.

(a long standing idea on spotify list already:
[https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Tag-
Music/idi...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Tag-
Music/idi-p/57185))

~~~
mitchmindtree
You might find this interesting, just came across it today!

Unofficial Google Music API in Python, quite well documented.
[http://unofficial-google-music-
api.readthedocs.org/en/latest...](http://unofficial-google-music-
api.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html)

About to get started writing a little script that will take care of
synchronising my library with my google music one, and automatically uploading
those that it can't find a match for. A few of my friends also use it, so I
was also thinking of making a little tool that would allow us to compare our
libraries and show us what each other are missing etc.

------
Thriptic
1\. Roll your own Google Maps overlays / plugins for navigation of large
facilities. I envision a system where you take a series of GPS readings using
your phone around the facility (a few on each floor). You then scan a
blueprint or floor map and are able to import the structural data via OCR.
Finally you roughly correlate those GPS coordinates with spots on the floor
map and the software uses them and the known structural information / layout
to create a Google Maps overlay.

2\. A peer to peer service for facilitating sharing of paywalled scientific
journal articles. You could put in a request for a specific article, the
utility would check which of your friends had access to the material, your
friend would be prompted to download the article and place it into a
designated folder for transmission.

~~~
shadowfox
A less organized version of #2 is available via
[http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar](http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar).

------
sdrinf
A media browser for leveraging (browsing, and surfing) multi-terrabyte home
media servers:

Problem: I've got 2TB of videos, music, and images on my hard drives, and I've
found my available tools to be too low-leverage on managing this anymore.

Context: about 2 years ago, I've stopped the directory structure madness, and
embraced search as first-order link for media files. As a byproduct of this, I
notice I don't have a clear mental structure of what videos/music is
downloaded to my computer anymore, and to where (good riddance!). Neither do I
want it to; instead, I'd like to have a "youtube for local hard drive":

Basically, I'm looking for a local Media Browser application for windows:
specifically, an app which allows:

* thumbnailed preview of all videos & images

* Automagically categorized based on all online, or within-file available meta-information

* With a built-in search

To perform the following operations:

* Preview a thumbnail on video files (similar to file explorer)

* Display categorized lists of all media available locally on my drives

* Channelsurf, similar to youtube: be able to start from one movie file, and have "similar" videos around it

* Double-clicking on the file to start mplayer

* typing the first 2-4 letters of the movie/image to instantly bring up the list of media with that part in it

While specifically not doing:

* Anything that requires me to touch any of the files in any way shape or form whatsoever

* Any upsale (I'm looking at you, windows 8 "personal videos"), advertising, or introduce any friction during interaction

* Bringing up any browsers: solution must be windows-native, and responsive (<20ms results)

Specific things I've tried so far:

* The closest thing I can wave towards "want" is apple's itunes, and JRiver's media center; they both share the same weakness of not being able to use mplayer as playback engine

* Banshee on windows is unable to show video previews, have multiple stability issues, and can't use mplayer for double-click

(I've posted full details of this to
[http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/2646/media-b...](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/2646/media-
browser-recommendation) a month ago, to no response avail, but getting
upvotes, which evidences a market to be had for this )

~~~
olalonde
Have you tried [http://www.plex.tv](http://www.plex.tv)?

~~~
sdrinf
Plex shares the terminal disability (with itunes, and JRiver) of trying to be
two things at once: a media _browser_ , and a media _player_ ; quite similar
to how file sync programs before dropbox were terminally unusable by trying to
include redundant functionality ( [http://qr.ae/rwZF4](http://qr.ae/rwZF4) ).

Regarding built-in media players, not one vendor takes usability of playback
seriously. Specifically, when I hit "enter" on a file, that means I'd like to
see it played back, like, now. Not "queueing", nor 5 seconds later. When I
scroll left & right, that means I'd like it to go +-1 min / hour, like, now;
and not 5-10 seconds "seeking". On my quadcore 3.4ghz battlestation, this
remains a problem for every single native, and web-based app. MPlayer is, to
date, the only one which consistently delivers on sub-second videoplayback,
and it does so from cold start. (There are also major problems with how
subtitles are handled by players, but I grant you that might be a niche)

Hence my strong requirement above for the app to go with shell.exec, instead
of half-baked non-implementation of every single video codec under the sun.

------
nandreev
"My Top Priorities" App.

* Ideally no downloads or installs required, you just list your top x priorities (up to 3, because we all know that if you have more than 3 priorities... you have none).

* Each one limited to 50 characters or so (e.g. "Write Chapter 3 of my book" , "Buy food for Sunday's cookout" , etc.)

* You get a custom link that you can edit at any time, so when in doubt you reference it and know instantly what you should be working on

* Analytics would be extra fun, high potential for interesting trends. Basic sentiment analysis would yield "priority" trends and tendencies by city/state/country

------
gradschool
My girlfriend suggests a menstrual calendar app that enables men to predict
women's moods, especially the days they're most amenable to amorous
solicitation, and generally because it's good for men to know their partners'
cycles. A woman might enter the data herself and share it with selected
parties, or men could try to maintain their own records on behalf of women who
aren't motivated to do it. There is also a monetization potential for
advertisers insofar as women are more inclined to pamper themselves at certain
times.

~~~
jonathanwallace
There's numerous mobile phone apps that do this for women.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pink-pad-period-tracker-
free...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pink-pad-period-tracker-
free/id389724080?mt=8) I thought to make one for men for just the reasons you
described but it seemed a little too.. unethical.

Especially since women's vocal range is affected by their cycle. I thought to
use DSP to help determine their cycle and facilitate pregnancy or help avoid
it. It turns out getting the proper audio baseline for the vocal range of
women is tough and they'd be saying weird words into their phone daily.

------
con5aak
A bookmarking plugin which is installed by the website owners. So instead of
users having a extension button in their browser, the website will have the
option bookmarking. This plugin is provided by a website, which just asks the
end user to create a one time account. Then the end user can bookmark from any
website that has that plugin installed.

Advantage: End user will not have to install anything. Cloud based
bookmarking. Advantage for the website owner: Their link circulating because
the website that provides this plugin has internal networking.

------
syerram2
An insurance plan for APIs - in today's world companies are extremely reliant
on 3rd party APIs for a variety of applications (FB Ads API, Twitter's API,
etc.), however, in my experience, these APIs are not a 100% reliable & can
sometimes go down which impacts the end customer/user. Similar to travel
insurance, if you can provide the option as an add-on to buy insurance against
this downtime - there are several business models - but essentially you would
be offering a modern day "SLA".

~~~
bennyhirsch
Interesting thought. How would this insurance plan work? monthly payment to
Twitter for API insurance, and if their API goes down just a financial payout?
This doesn't really make me whole again as my business is still impacted.

~~~
syerram2
I don't think you'd pay Twitter - essentially - you would pay this "third"
party service similar to any insurance company & when there is an incident -
this service would investigate & offer you a payout. Just like any car/home
insurance plan - where the payout is based on your coverage plan/incident.
Then, based on the payout amount you can potentially give your customers a
"discount" for that month. (in a SaaS B2B business)From a technical
perspective, it would be ideal if this third party insurance provider can act
as a "stop gap" or a "temp API" if the main service provider's API is down.
(maybe they have a separate API connection with say someone like Twitter which
is more reliable than the one you have - I'm thinking something like a
firehose)

~~~
bennyhirsch
I like the ideal scenario. Are there multiple kinds of Twitter's API? where
some are more reliable than others? And would the third party insurer have the
ability to allow impacted clients of Twitter to access it? The financial
payout makes the insurance a good hedge but the "ideal" scenario would ensure
100% up time.

~~~
syerram2
There are usually multiple levels of Twitter API access. (regular, white
label, fire hose) The same can be applied to FB Ads API (reg, pmd, spmd) &
many other APIs. In my experience, a lot of these APIs aren't as reliable and
can sometimes cause huge financial loses. (Imagine if you use the FB Ads API
to run an Ad campaign for a client - it goes out of sync & you sync back 10
mins later - in a matter of 10 mins - you could've spend $X) Since your
relying on the networks API - they are not liable for any sync issues - you
have to take that on as a liability on your end. Ideally, the third party
would have premium level access all these APIs that you can leverage, but the
big value add would be around the financial payout versus the premium level
API access. (It would something like gnip.com with insurance)

------
olalonde
A tool/system to manage dot files. Some ideas:

\- easily install dot files on a new system

\- keep track of files in git

\- possible to specify different configurations (OS X, Linux, etc.)

\- possible to exclude sensible dot files (i.e. .ssh/id_rsa)

\- easy to update files and keep them in sync

\- the tool should not be mixed with individual dot files repositories so that
it's easy to upgrade to a newer version

\- eventually: a dot file repository where people can share / show off their
configurations

There are a few tools available on Github but none which have all the above
features (AFAIK).

~~~
foresterh
All or most of those are available at
[http://dotfiles.github.io](http://dotfiles.github.io)

~~~
olalonde
Any specific one you recommend? I've reviewed a few but didn't manage to find
one that met my criteria.

------
avalaunch
"Doubles Poker" app.

What's Doubles Poker? It's quite possibly the most fun you'll ever have
playing poker. Two people get paired together for a duration of a tournament.
The game is typically no limit Texas Hold'em but any game with an even number
of rounds per hand of play would work.

During each hand the two teammates are not allowed to talk. Teammate 1 plays
pre-flop and then passes the cards to teammate 2 who plays the flop. Teammate
2 passes the cards back to teammate 1 who plays the turn. Finally teammate 2
plays the river. On the next hand the order is switched so Teammate 2 begins
playing pre-flop.

It can be a great deal of fun and adds another level of complexity to the
game. Now you have to figure out not only what your opponents have but what
your teammate's motivations in the hand are. Is he setting you up for a big
bluff or was he just taking a cheap shot at winning the hand on the flop?

Here's a Double's Poker tournament that was aired on tv awhile back:

[http://www.pokertube.com/videos/doubles-poker-
championship-e...](http://www.pokertube.com/videos/doubles-poker-championship-
ep01-12)

I'd love to create an app (mobile or otherwise) where people could experience
the joy and excitement of this form of poker.

~~~
determinant
The core idea behind your concept is basically breaking risk-management apart.
However, a good team should be on the same page with regard to risk
management. So, wouldn't the player-end-refinment of sorts on this game just
be teams who more or less have a uniform, systematic view of assessing risk?

I think you have an interesting idea, though.

Maybe it would be better for poker teams to transfer chips to each other in
between hands as a two-player mechanic instead. If there is a tournament and
both team members are seated at different tables, then the optimal strategy
might be to allocate more chips to the table where both players think they
have a larger edge. However, by moving chips to the other table, that becomes
a signal to other players that would could cause them to shift gears.

I think there is something to your rough concept though, and it could be a lot
of fun.

------
swah
Soulver for the web
([http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/](http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/))

~~~
syerram2
soulver is a neat everyday expense/adding tool - how could you see this being
applied to the 'web' in general?

~~~
swah
A neat everyday little tool that isn't Mac only.

(and since you're on the web, might as well save notebooks, share, edit
concurrently in realtime, etc)

------
avalaunch
Meta: it would be nice to get an exception to the flame war detection for
these threads. It seems like they're getting penalized.

------
flashmob
Programmer's laptop: A good quality, high performing, non-widescreen laptop
with a 4:3 aspect rato.

Why? With a taller screen, there's less scrolling and your eyes don't have to
jump as much when reading from line to line.

I would like to know if there would be a market for this and why manufacturers
phased out 4:3 displays?

~~~
brador
That doesn't allow 2 windows comfortably though which is what shoots dev
productivity through the roof. Higher res big screen 16:9 would be better, but
then you reach the weight limit.

------
zopf
Oauth for contact details. When I change my phone number or address, the
individuals or corporations I have authenticated should be able to fetch that
latest info from a centralized service that manages _only_ that information
(and holds it in strictest confidence, no list-selling).

~~~
dordoka
Like Perpetuall? [1]

[1] [http://perpetuall.net/](http://perpetuall.net/)

------
read
Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) for email.

I wish it was possible emails sent are erased from the recipient's email
client. I want to own the parts of the email conversation that I wrote.

The reason to want this is to not leave an electronic trail of everything you
say. Chat clients, which communicate synchronously, can already do this. Is it
impossible to do asynchronously with email?

One problem is people might want to archive what you write, which would defeat
the purpose of OTR. This isn't something a messaging protocol can solve. Once
text shows up on a screen, you can copy the text. But I can imagine people
archiving rarely in practice, if only because you'd have to do something
manually, which would make keeping an electronic record the exception and not
the rule.

------
Thiz
More privacy.

A completely private social platform with messaging, email, timeline, blog,
pics, docs, etc.

~~~
miguelrochefort
Less privacy.

A completely transparent social platform with messaging, activity tracking,
content management, knowledge storage, wishlist/preference/opinion management,
idea generation, etc.

You might not know yet, but privacy is the root of all evil, and the privacy
madness has to stop.

The more we hide, the more we have to hide. It's a never ending cycle.

People don't see the world as it really is. They see the world the way others
want it to be seen. They see an artificial, curated version of the world where
people have no flaws.

This disconnection between what is real and what we think is real makes people
feel broken, different, not good enough. How are they supposed to know that
nobody is perfect when everybody actively try to show their perfect side? We
all wear masks by fear of rejection, fear of being different.

Just like you, I need privacy because privacy is expected of me. I need to lie
because people don't want to hear the truth. I have to wear a mask because
everybody else does. Being completely transparent and honest is a sure way to
be rejected and jailed. But if I had the choice, I would prefer to be myself,
to never have to remember lies, to never have to hide.

Do you think the privacy paradigm is sustainable? Do you think it makes sense
to use so much resources to encrypt everything? Do you think it makes sense to
hide yourself behind proxies and firewalls? Do you think it makes sense to
protect everything with passwords? Do you think it makes sense to keep
creating fake profiles online? Do you think it makes sense to disable location
tracking on your devices? Do you think it makes sense to constantly worry
about others learning the truth? I don't.

I want to live in a world where I don't ever have to recall or input a
password or a PIN. I want to live in a world where I don't have to lock my
doors, lock my bike, lock my PC. I want to live in a world where I don't need
to encrypt anything. I want to live in a world where I don't have to worry
about privacy settings at all.

I want financial information to be public. I want all media content to be
public. I want my location to be tracked and available to anyone at all time.
I want my health records to be available to anyone. I want my every thought
and emotion to be queryable. I don't ever want to waste energy communicating
with the world information that can be tracked by machines.

In the future, people will not fear the NSA. People will not fear online
tracking. People will embrace them. We will soon see people pay third-party
services to track their every move, their every thought. Why waste my time
being explicit about what I want and do when I can delegate that task to
something else? The only thing I should input in a system are my values, my
opinions, my feelings. Everything else is objective.

Privacy is the antithesis of society. Privacy is an act of pure selfishness.
Privacy is slowing down innovation and discoveries in every possible field.
Privacy is what inhibits humanity to reach the next level. I can't think of
anything that sustains worries and fears more than society's expectation of
privacy.

Privacy is a symptom, a defense mechanism. Privacy is not a cure.

Prove me wrong.

~~~
Thiz
Idealism, meet reality.

I live in an oppressed country. I need privacy to try to topple the government
by any means. They watch us, they hear us, they follow us, the read everything
we write, they want us dead, we want them dead.

Survival is a harsh word. Learn it or die.

Do you think Tor, Wikileaks, Bitmessage, Darknet are just toys that geeks code
in their basements just for fun?

Do you know Snowden, Assange, Stallman, and many others fight for your rights
and your liberty against those who try to oppress you?

Innocence, meet reality.

Privacy is more than a human right, is a vital need.

In heaven you don't need privacy, in hell you don't have it. Welcome to
reality.

------
cweiss
A context-sensitive 'nag' app - Pops a simple notification (Growl-esque) when
a window/URL comes to the foreground. Should support one-offs and repeating
nags. Could be used to create habits as well as just follow up on the details.

Use cases:

\- Remind me to CC someone when emailing someone else.

\- Remind me that I need to include X information when opening a ticket on a
web page.

\- Remind me to use new technique X when using App Y.

\- Remind me where I was when I closed this doc.

Bonus points for:

\- Triggering off of typed text (like an email address or function name)

\- Triggering off of a selected email subject/to/from

\- "Do not show until" on one-offs (I dont need to do this until tomorrow
morning)

------
Dwolb
A laptop with a slide-out second (or third) screen for more screen space.
Packaging and power consumption are big issues. Maybe a couple of years off
until super thin, flexible OLED displays reach maturity.

~~~
hashtag
Thinkpad did something like this a few years back. See:
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337322,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337322,00.asp)

------
mback2k
A mileage tracking app that primarily uses the following input methods:

\- taking a photo of the current mileage displayed on the dashboard that is
automatically analyzed using text recognition technology.

\- the current position (using the phones location information, e.g. GPS and
cell-tower information) and address.

In case the photo cannot be interpreted or the location is not know, it should
also be possible to manually enter the required information using an easy to
use interface. It should be possible to categorize trips and take a "snapshot"
at the origin and destination location.

~~~
spaboleo
At some entrepreneurial meetup I met a german scientist, who was working on
applying their image and information system's detection algorithms for exactly
that. Could be useful to make an "uncheatable" driver's log.

Didn't hear if it actually made it to market. It still would be quite niche,
as the only "improvement" would be that the user wouldn't have to enter the
current mileage by hand and can just snap a picture.

However I have a strong feeling that other tools, such as "automatic.com" or
other systems that plug into the Can BUS of the car are of more use, if you
have to manage a small fleet of cars with varying drivers.

------
bennyhirsch
A Yelp like review app for colleges. Currently the best way for prospective
students to get the best idea of what a school will be like before attending,
is to head to the schools cafeteria or quad and ask a student how they like
the school. The current students and/or alumni are most honest about their
experience with the school. Make an application that requires some proof of
enrollment to rate and review a given college, and allow for the most honest
reviews of the school.

~~~
avalaunch
If you google "review your college" a number of sites come up that seem to be
offering what you're looking for.

~~~
spaboleo
Who actually uses them?

I still can't wrap my head around why people are willing to rate products on
pages like amazon or leave restaurant ratings on yelp and write detailed
reports on tripadvisor or holidaycheck, but are not willing to do the same for
their workplace and schools attended.

The obstacle seems to high for most of the users to write honestly. Only a
fraction of the potential people that could be rating (all of the students for
example) actually do it.

Facebook would have had the chance in the early days. But I guess that card is
drawn...

------
mechasnake
A latex add-on in Google Doc.

I'm aware writelatex and sharelatex exist. I would like a latex feature in
Docs though. Preferably one that compiled/rendered the output in realtime

------
thom
A low-budget version of Prozone's sports stats. If you could create the
computer vision algorithms to create Prozone/Opta-like stats from a commodity
camera, you could sell that system to lower-league clubs and those worldwide
with less money. Placemeter are already proving some of this is possible with
old smartphone cameras, but the stats have proven their value in the sports
world already.

------
acesubido
A Developer Laptop.

Think 'Macbook Air' for developers (open-source devs, .NET guys won't benefit
much from this) installed with an operating system without all the usual
bloatware.

Don't get me wrong the Macbook Air is a great machine, but it obviously has
too much 'Apple stuff' on it that I don't use very much at all.

Officemates told me that the closest to a great developer laptop is the
Dellbook XPS13.

~~~
w1ntermute
I know it's not exactly what you're thinking of, but still interesting:
[http://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-
laptop](http://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop)

------
blakesterz
An open source proxy server used for libraries to use so they can give access
to the paid restricted-access databases and other websites available only to
certain patrons. Most types of libraries (especially college and public) have
resources they pay for and require users to authenticate in order to access.
There's currently not a nice easy to use FOSS solution for this.

------
bikamonki
This idea has two components and maybe it already exists. First a social
network/virtual gallery for visual artists (designers, photographers, etc) to
post their work. Second a browser plugin that 'knows' where ads are placed on
popular free sites and overlaps a frame that randomly showcases the artists
work (click to see more or click to edit preferences)

------
klchoi
Internet of things for a washing machine. Think of the time when you had to
pay like $2.5 worth of quarters just to wash a towel. What if you can pay by
the amount of laundry you have? Also, it would be great if it alerts my phone
whenever the laundry is done so that I do not have to keep track of how much
time it has passed.

------
con5aak
A blogging platform with content delivered in interactive narrative way.
Suppose, a user has a story with two possible versions depending on the
decision made by the readers at some point of time in the middle of the
content. Then provide him with such a platform to write a story in that
format.

~~~
sshine
That sounds like an interesting idea.

It reminds me of this XKCD: [http://xkcd.com/1350/](http://xkcd.com/1350/)

~~~
con5aak
Wow ... yeah absolutely... I m thinking on similar track. Anybody having an
idea could write his blog this way.

------
olssy
A monitor that outputs wavelengths of light that are therapeutic.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy)

Been thinking about this since Asus came out with a laptop with an air ionizer
in 2008.

------
ivank
An encyclopedia of odors. Like the perfume scent strips in magazines, but for
everything.

~~~
brador
Does there currently exist a system of scent catogarization?

~~~
Jonovono
Maybe this?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragrance_wheel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragrance_wheel)

------
jchendy
A dead simple way to remember where you parked your car and when you need to
move it. Like this:
[http://jchendy.com/2014/04/10/dude.html](http://jchendy.com/2014/04/10/dude.html)

~~~
sshine
I could certainly use a better system for remembering where I park my bike.

One system: Take a photo of the bike every time you park it in a non-standard
place (standard being e.g. "work", "home" or "girlfriend's"). Unfortunately,
taking out my smart-phone every time I go grocery-shopping is bothersome, and
I might only find out I need to suddenly go elsewhere when I've already parked
the bike.

Ideally, my bike (or, through statistical inference, my smartphone) should
just publish GPS coordinates. Unfortunately this drains the battery very fast.
Perhaps a background service that uses the GPS a little more sparingly than
the Google Maps app?

------
bambax
A paying Wine (winehq.org) that would work with demanding multimedia programs
such as Adobe LightRoom or Sony Vegas.

I would pay something like $100/year for such software that would keep up with
every new version of its supported programs.

~~~
HorizonXP
Why? Isn't it easier and cheaper to run a VM?

~~~
olalonde
Not easier. You have to wait for the OS to load, login, find the app you want
in your menu bar, etc. I think Wine just opens the app in you current desktop
environment and it's presumably faster since it doesn't need to emulate the
CPU.

~~~
dmd
VMs don't "emulate the CPU".

~~~
olalonde
Ah, I thought they did (at least the CPU architecture, not down to the actual
transistors/atoms). Wouldn't a full blown VM which also needs to run the OS
have more over head than Wine though?

------
ishansharma
A progress and time tracker like Habit RPG and Rescue Time that tracks number
of hours spent towards a habit/skill. Basically, something that can track
where you are on 10,000 hours rule. More automation is better!

~~~
glyphobet
[https://lift.do/](https://lift.do/) does this

~~~
yuvipanda
I tried it a few months ago. Was sadly very very laggy and buggy (Android N4).
Ratings on play store don't look too good either.

------
thom
Real-time Groupon. All sorts of businesses lose money due to last minute
cancellations - give them a platform to advertise discounted slots in the near
future.

~~~
wengzilla
That's actually been tried by Groupon in the past... It wasn't successful
largely because it's hard to get merchants to adopt that way of thinking and
also because people don't walk around with the Groupon app open all the time.

~~~
thom
Doesn't really need an app, just needs a phone number. Even if your initial
marketing list for a business is every customer they've ever had, you're still
starting with something.

------
jussy
Scan a QR Code/NFC to donate to a charity collector outside a train station.

