
Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build? (ie: free ideas to hack on) - famousactress
I'm not asking because I want ideas, I'm asking cause I keep having them. Seems like plenty of folks want weekend projects and I keep stubbing my toes on something I'd love to see show up as a Show HN post in the near future. I figured maybe other folks could toss some of their lingering projects-I-won't-get-to in the pile as well. I'll leave projects in the comments and let things get voted around on their own merit.
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sathishmanohar
3\. Online sellers can include QR code in each physical items they sell, say
Books, T-Shirts, Coffe Cup, to its URL on the site. That way, if your friend
wants the exact same thing, he just scan the qr code, go the link and buy. It
may be even awesome if, each qr code is custom qr code, which has user data in
it, that way, if a friend buys a book through the qr code from my book, I get
the referal bucks, but, It will be touch to implement a custom qr code in each
product.

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famousactress
TV has changed. Tell me when/where new episodes are available.

I watch TV on cable, hulu, netflix, individual network's websites, or
increasingly on internet tv stations like vbs.tv, etc. I'd love a service that
tells me when new episodes are available of things I want to see across all of
this cruft. The individual source generally do an awful job, and it's become a
job for an aggregator.

~~~
jeffool
Try Clicker.com, they do this!

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macca321
So many HN'ers side projects die because they have no customers, and
developers are rubbish at getting the first ten customers, so...

...a site where people who are wanting some particular SAAS app but can't find
the right one- (or can't afford one the right one) can conglomerate and become
the first customers for startups.

~~~
anujkk
I like this idea. Basically, a site connecting startups and early adopters.
Ineedanapp.com?

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findm
I want to see a better cable/TV company. Where instead of paying for 500+
channels. You get 10 personalized channels. Where each particular channel
learns what you like and suggests content that you might like. So I can
program a channel for my kids and using some web based ui preload the channel
with content I approve.Think pandora + TV content.

I'd imagine on the business side of things you can collect some of these
preferences and then in turn serve ads based on my preferences rather than
blindly trying to get someone to look at your ad.

Remove the slow step top boxes the complicated remotes the tv guide channel.
Simplify everything to the basics. I think hulu is a nice start but this is
what I think are looking for.

~~~
Mankhool
Cable/IPTV companies are some of the last surviving tech dinosaurs. When will
they wake up and tell the content providers that they will not carry their
content bundled? A la carte channel selection is the only way I would ever
have traditional TV in my home. Charge me $X.XX per channel and let me choose
just the ones I want. I thought that IPTV would provide this, but the content
producers are the kings.

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Jun8
Fix the computer projector stupidity: Almost _every_ conference, meeting I
attend has at least one case of a person connecting their laptop and the
display not working because of some incompatibility between the projector and
laptop.

~~~
eec
I was just at a conference where our "leader" spent 20 minutes trying to get
the sound to work on his presentation while we all sat there fighting to stay
awake. When the sound emerged we were forced to watch a video clip from the
movie, "Any Given Sunday". -In this case, I wish the incompatibility had
existed permanently.

On a serious note though, this IS a problem that arises often.

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famousactress
A better 'Buy me a beer' site. It should be more frictionless, and you can
take advantage of the low spending to prevent fraud. I want to a one or two
click 'Buy me a beer' link to send someone 5$ for answering a forum question,
or an awesome pull request or whatever. Maybe if I use it more than twice in a
day it re-challenges me for a password, or something. Send me confirmation
emails, or a text every day I use it, or for each event. I dunno. Something
about the paypal workflow causes me too much hesitation and friction.

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mooism2
A graphical repl. Would be great for kids learning to program.

e.g.

    
    
        Prelude> 3 + 4
        7
        Prelude> \x -> x * x
    
        <interactive>:1:0:
            No instance for (Show (a -> a))
              arising from a use of `print' at <interactive>:1:0-10
            Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Show (a -> a))
            In a stmt of a 'do' expression: print it
    

Would be great if it could display a scrollable graph of _y_ = _x_ ² instead.

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jeffool
I'd like to see the bastard child of an iPad and a Wacom pad. My computer us
stronger than your tablet; give me a light-weight touchscreen wireless monitor
I can carry around my house.

Make the charging dock a stand do it functions as a normal monitor as well.
Bonus points if you include: mic, cameras (the more the merrier, even two in
and two out,) and IR (so I can use it on my tv.)

Of course, I'm sure the bandwidth required to get the video to/from such a
device would be insane.

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famousactress
A tool that evaluates which flights are most likely to be on time. I've
noticed from travelling for business that there are clearly routes that you
can have more confidence in than others. Add in weather, current events, etc..
It seems like it ought to be possible to give these trips a confidence
indicator. Similar work could be used to indicate flights likely to be
overbooked. I'd liket that too, because I like to get bumped for free tickets.

~~~
thematt
<http://www.flightcaster.com>

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sathishmanohar
I have tons of ideas, that I'm probably never going to work on. I was planning
on writing some idea giveaway series in my blog, and post the links here.
Anyway I'll just list my ideas.

1\. A Backup Service for all Cloud Data. Eg: Imagine if you google account
stops working, then all your gmail, gdocs, blog posts all gone, But, services
like google give access to your data, but its not easy to figure out for
users, so, a service with monthly or yearly subscription, that backups all
users data from multiple sites, automatically and periodically.

2\. A Market Place for T-Shirts, I love the customink, Just stumbled upon it
today. But, I was looking for a market place to sell T-Shirts, Like, I create
a T-shirt with some wording, which is inexpensive. Then, the site prints and
sells/ships it to costumers, who want one. Money is shared in profit shared
basis.

I'll post more ideas, soon.

~~~
thematt
At #1: I really like that idea, but then how would you restore it?

~~~
sathishmanohar
While I was thinking about it, I also thought how to market the idea#1,
basically you have google account login page in the website, when users enter
their email and password (for whatever password it, may be), It'll just say,
you account is disabled. Then a modal box appears, Say the catch line, "What
if this is real? Better safe than sorry!! Signup Here". Easy sell ;)

Technically this may be considered phishing, but I can't come to a conclusion,
that its evil or not.

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mathiasben
crowdsourced data driven smart phone app that lets you know when your program
comes back from commercial. just tap the screen reapetdley once the program is
back on. when signing on the user selects what they are watching, which
network, locality, etc.. If you are the first person to sign on for that
program, you would have to type in the details so others could follow it. use
some sort of averging equation to cancel out the early tappers and the late
tappers. no need to mess with synching scheduling data, the users do all the
work. offer some incentive for those that inform the rest of the users that
the commercial break is over. it's a dopey idea.

~~~
dkokelley
I've thought about this before. In reality, this doesn't require a crowd
sourced solution if users are willing to pay in some way for the data. One
person could keep track of a few channels at a time, and the most popular
channels would be the first ones to track.

What would be really interesting is a device that can understand the
difference between commercials and programming and make the alert
automatically.

~~~
mathiasben
I can't imagine anyone willing to pay for the service, beyond paying to
download the app. cable television has cue marks inserted to indicate where to
place the commercials. dvrs know where the commercials are, maybe there's a
way to siphon off that info and redirect it.

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sathishmanohar
4\. Forum Application for Facebook, I used Orkut in the days, It has the best
online communities and discussion, ever. There is something to users with
similar interest interacting with each other, with real names/identity instead
of pseudonyms.

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joe_bleau
iOS app to count points on dominoes using the camera. Relatives like to play,
especially over the holidays, but they use those double-twelve sets and
keeping score can be a significant bit of work.

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md1515
I was thinking it might be cool for a job recruiting software program.

The software would pull data from Facebook and find people that are graduating
the upcoming academic year, find the correct major for the job, and then send
the applicant a job proposal.

It reverses the job search, helps students leaving college have options
immediately after school, and makes companies bid on the best and brightest -
i.e: Stanford grads would perhaps have many offers and would require bids from
companies.

Just thought of it - probably not THAT viable of a program.

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bartonfink
The equivalent of MouseFree for complex programs. MouseFree is an Eclipse
plugin that displays the keyboard shortcut for any action you initiate with
the mouse. It's meant to train you to learn the hotkeys for things you do
frequently so you can be more efficient. It requires less effort than reading
a manual and I think it gets better results because it offers immediate
feedback.

I'd like to see this concept extended further to more software.

~~~
thematt
Do you mean MouseFeed?

~~~
bartonfink
Yeah, I do. My mistake.

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nodata
We kind of covered this the other day:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3153290>

~~~
famousactress
Oh sweet, thanks! Missed that. [Edit: Doesn't look like that thread got past
'build a better toaster' and 'build a better toilet']

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jeffool
Oh, something I would've like when working in an office? A tie-in to our phone
system that let me type in someone's name to get their number/info, and click
on a button (well, tab then tap enter) to make my phone ring, and them call
that person.

Sure, I could use Google Voice or whatnot, but a single database for everyone
would've been handy.

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ig1
A shared calendaring app, where multiple people can have rights to edit their
own events but not other peoples events.

See discussion at:

[http://www.quora.com/Calendar-Software-Online-
Calendars/What...](http://www.quora.com/Calendar-Software-Online-
Calendars/Whats-the-best-shared-editing-calendar-app)

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Mankhool
Location-based anonymous tasking with anonymous payment. Like a crowd sourced
Wikileaks for professional information gatherers (journalists, videographers,
photographers, audio recorders etc.). A global network to facilitate the
buying and selling of all kinds of information.

~~~
congaqueue
Reminds me of the CIC in Stephenson's Snow Crash.

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sathishmanohar
5\. Computer screens, starts to dim after a certain time, which can be brought
back up by blinking our eyes, by, this feature, we can get users into habit of
blinking every now and then, while working. Good for Eyes.

