Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? - bramgg
======
spodek
A book and online course for geeks and other people generally less emotionally
aware and skilled (like myself growing up) on how to develop emotional
awareness, empathy, compassion, understanding and other skills schools rarely
teach.

Also a project-based course on entrepreneurship to teach in the fall.

Also a seminar on leadership for General Assembly in New York for later this
month.

Why are those things cool?

Because when I started my first company I had plenty of skills with science,
technology, and knowledge and facts. I didn't know how to build relationships,
work with teams, motivate people, and other business and personal skills I've
come to find more important for business and other relationships.

I find very few places teach this stuff effectively. For that matter, few
people think it can be taught or learned. Meanwhile people without these
skills get promoted to positions where they'd help. Instead the run their
organizations into the ground, destroy morale, and things like that.

I'm going to change that.

~~~
sheeeep86
how do we follow you :-D

------
interintel
Working on simulating a complete nervous system (i.e. C Elegans Connectome)
and connecting to a robot so we can see an entire organism simulated from
environment to a simulated "brain". To my surprise the robot behaves in a
similar manner as the worm; i.e. I wire the sonar to activate nose touch
sensory neurons and when the robot comes upon an obstacle, it will stop,
reverse a bit and change direction. This is not a program that tells the robot
to stop, reverse and change direction but the connectome. This proves in part
that we are our connectome. Furthermore, I have created a true "thinking" and
autonomous inorganic creature. Currently I am analyzing the captured neural
data to validate against the biological creature. Next I want to apply to an
autonomous ground vehicle for exploration = throw a hundred of these guys out
in the desert and have them search for minerals. Check out my work at
[http://www.connectomeengine.com](http://www.connectomeengine.com)

------
mkal_tsr
#knowledgebomb

Fully offline live-USB (Ubuntu) w/ offline Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg,
OpenStreetMaps, and other public domain / creative common sources, all running
on OSS. Just download and toss it on a USB, then use it as you want. I think
it's great for those that have/may-have an intermittent internet connection,
want to have an offline way to browse wikipedia, want to put it in a time
capsule, are going camping but want educational material, etc.

~~~
lowglow
This is a pretty decent idea. I wonder if you can build an app for this? I'm
not pay for cellular data/voice anymore and would love offline access for a
bunch of things like this. [https://www.techendo.com/posts/how-i-killed-my-
cellphone-pla...](https://www.techendo.com/posts/how-i-killed-my-cellphone-
plan)

------
gamegoblin
I've been spending almost all of my hobby code time in 2014 writing my own
personal web server, database, and web framework in Haskell.

My reasons are:

\- I wanted to learn Haskell.

\- I wanted to learn more about web stack internals.

\- I wanted a web stack that was entirely mine. I know how every single aspect
of it works, from low level asynchronous network IO to HTML templating.

Of course, the amount of time I spent frustrated by bugs in my previous
Apache/Django stack will certainly be less than 1% of the amount of time I've
spent writing my own stack, I have no regrets. I've learned so much doing it.

It's cool because now that I've gotten several thousand lines of Haskell under
my belt, I finally know what "a monad is just a monoid in the category of
endofunctors" means.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
What: A chording keyboard.

Why: Englebart's demo made people overlook the chording keyboard, and now we
are still mostly stuck with QWERTY, a layout that takes too long to learn and
doesn't take much advantage what humans are good at. I'm joking about
Englebart, but I do like the line of thinking that computers can be powerful
instead of faux friendly.

~~~
westward
Have you looked at Plover? It's target audience is stenographers, but it can
be used by anyone who wants to type at 250 wpm.

[http://plover.stenoknight.com/](http://plover.stenoknight.com/)

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Steno is a great at taking advantage of something humans do well, it might be
on the far end of that spectrum. I'd like to see a keyboard that with 100
hours or less of practice would let you type at 100 WPM.

------
ibanez270dx
What: A personal finances app

Why: Because Mint and Credit Karma have horrible interfaces that don't allow
me to manage my money and view spending trends in a way that I feel is
satisfactory. Prototype for now and using plaid.com API for access to
financial institutions.

~~~
z3ugma
I'd be really interested to see this.

~~~
tekknolagi
Ditto!

------
PeterWhittaker
Danny Boy on the viola, and my own arrangement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, for
solo instrument (I'm using primarily the first violin line, reading it as
written in alto clef, not treble, so down a 7th, dipping into the other
violins or the viola occasionally to replicate the "feel" of the piece).

Because the viola is cool. Just like fezzes are cool.

Because life cannot be all-tech-all-the-time.

During my day job, key marketing messages, conceptual architecture, and high-
level system architecture for an open-source service-to-business platform for
governments based on two primary notions, true "tell us once" to ease the
burden on business and automated on-boarding of new programs to ease the
burden on domain-expert but IT-ignorant (as they should be) program managers.

Why? Coz it's like fezzes. And because after years in business, anything I can
do to make dealing with the government easier and cheaper is good for me, good
for the government, and good for the economy.

------
josemando
What: [http://www.colab.re](http://www.colab.re), a Brazilian social network
for citizenship

Why cool: We are helping people solving city problems by connecting them to
local government. Already live on 25 cities in Brazil

------
roschdal
I'm working on [http://play.freeciv.org/](http://play.freeciv.org/)

Making games is a lot of fun!

------
austenallred
We're building grasswire ([http://grasswire.com](http://grasswire.com)), a
real-time newsroom that's curated and fact-checked by everyone.

It's cool because it is unreasonable that in this day and age the information
that governs the world is controlled by governments and corporations.

it's cool because social media is ridden with lies, errors and propaganda, and
it doesn't make sense that those keep spreading without being refuted.

It's cool because it lets you watch any news event develop in real-time from
the point of view of the people on the ground.

~~~
alphagenerator
I think what you're doing is very important. Thank you for tackling this
problem.

------
k_kelly
What: A better way to find github repos relevant to your interests. Works by
compiling all the starred repos of contributors and . Currently in early alpha
at
[https://github.com/KingsleyKelly/GitStar](https://github.com/KingsleyKelly/GitStar).

Why? I went from having about 10 starred repos to 300, and found loads of
useful libraries and tools along the way.

------
steveklabnik
Rust: [http://rust-lang.org](http://rust-lang.org)

It is cool because memory safety is really hard in low-level languages, and
Rust helps you out a lot in that department.

I'm also working on a little product on the weekends. A CRM for tattoo shops.
It's cool because it'll be a fully Free (AGPL 3'd) Rails app, and there aren't
enough of those in the world.

------
vikp
What I'm working on: Turfly ([http://www.turf.ly](http://www.turf.ly))

Why it's cool: You get to capture real-life territory by running and walking
through it. Just keep your phone in your pocket. Compete with your friends if
you want. This is the game I have always wanted, and I get to make it. Feels
great.

~~~
tekknolagi
Any Android app coming soon? :D

------
mafuyu
I just finished working on BoosterBot, an entry for the Texas Instruments
Intern Design Challenge!

It's a robotics daughterboards for TI Launchpads.

[http://hackaday.io/project/1845-BoosterBot](http://hackaday.io/project/1845-BoosterBot)

[http://youtu.be/I0JuGvbfIIE](http://youtu.be/I0JuGvbfIIE)

------
ASquare
PlanitWide: A whole new approach to planning trips that's faster & easier (for
everyone not just those that are savvy/in the know):
[http://www.planitwide.com](http://www.planitwide.com)

It's cool because it brings together: a) a travel focused vertical search
engine that's categorized 1000+ (sometimes interlinked) variables that can be
found without typing a single word (just pick from easily labelled menu
options) and presented as highly relevant result shortlists vs 100s of pages
of results

and

b) an intelligent itinerary generator that helps you arrive at a realistic
final itinerary faster by letting you shortlist content from these results and
allowing you to iterate faster by presenting what-if scenarios based on how
you construct your final itinerary.

Better Search + Intelligent Itinerary Creation = Faster And Easier Trip Plans

------
magnet1c
What: Petpoc is an iPhone app for pet owners to snap, edit and share photos of
their pets. Use virtual stickers to express yourself and your pets with silly
costumes and accessories. Targeted towards a young female audience who have a
strong affinity to their pets. [http://www.petpoc.com](http://www.petpoc.com)

Why: Because pet owners are under served in the App Store. Either the existing
apps are poor quality or they focus on being a social media network for pets.
I believe a relationship with your pet is a very personal thing and so the
focus is simply on your pet, not anyone else's. The target audience clearly
enjoy expressing themselves and customising every facet of their digital lives
so I provide simple tools to empower them to do that with their pets.

------
hav
What: A service that promotes the use of bicycles and helps people to maintain
their cycles.

Why cool: Most people nowadays use cars for shorter distances when using their
bicycles would be just fine. If we could get more people to use their cycles,
not only would we promote health but also lower CO2 emissions.

------
spencerfry
What: [https://www.uncover.com](https://www.uncover.com)

Why is it cool: In the fifteen months we've been in operation, we've never
lost a customer. It just gives everyone a smile on their face and that's the
type of businesses that I like to work on.

~~~
codezero
Heads up: the site doesn't appear to render correctly on Safari on iOS.

~~~
spencerfry
Yeah. Noted. We don't have a mobile site yet. Lack of resources at the moment,
but I hope to do it soon.

------
tekknolagi
I am working on a small virtual machine in C, called Carp.

It's cool because I am learning about C, a bit about asm, and a bit about how
a simple CPU works. Ish.

I also got a bit acquainted with comp.lang.c :)

[http://github.com/tekknolagi/carp](http://github.com/tekknolagi/carp)

------
domlebo70
We are working on Cammy ([http://www.cammy.com](http://www.cammy.com)). It's a
cloud based security and monitoring platform. The idea being, you buy cheap IP
cameras (20 - 40 dollars), put them in places you'd like to monitor, and they
send images to the cloud, available for viewing via our app.

We are working on some useful features around alerting users when a camera
detects movement, and you aren't in the immediate vicinity (I.e. an intruder
etc), which will make it a good alternative to conventional alarms. Live view
of camera feeds is also coming.

If you have a spare iPhone or Android device, you will also use those as
cameras, rather than purchase IP cameras (not yet in production).

Best of all, the app is free. Any feedback?

------
achamilt
I've been writing an algebra editor analogous to Vim/Emacs. Unlike English,
maths is too slow to re-type while you perform algebra. Instead, insert
expressions once then use keyboard shortcuts to edit and combine existing
expressions.

It is interesting because it's the only algebra system in which the user
actually performs the algebra. With practice, edits are as fast as maths on
paper, but without all of the redundant re-writing. Similar to the sense of
flow you get when programming with Vim, this leads to a sense of immersion in
the maths.

A small, fast executable *.jar, check it out at:
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/ket/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ket/)

------
gpinkham
Working on [http://beatsimporter.com](http://beatsimporter.com) It uses
Ruby/Rails, Nginx and MySQL.. It imports playlists from Spotify, Rdio, iTunes
and plain ole CSV files. It even will import a subscribed playlist from
Spotify. I welcome feedback, comments and issues.. so check it out..

Why is it cool.. 1\. when I wrote it a month ago it was the only importer for
Beats Music (need to look to see if it still is)..

2\. I wrote it because I was moving the family from Spotify and Grooveshark to
BeatsMusic and I knew my daughters wouldn't manually move their 500+ song
playlists.. So everything I do for my daughters is cool.. (well.. maybe not in
their eyes. haha)

------
Permit
I'm working on a new way to visualize and edit code called Code Connect
([http://codeconnect.io](http://codeconnect.io))

We're leveraging Microsoft's new Roslyn compiler to break apart software into
functions. The user then navigates their code on a function-by-function basis,
similar to what was shown off in Code Bubbles a few years ago.

We've got a demo video here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQ8NJOypqs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQ8NJOypqs)

We're planning to launch our beta for Visual Studio and C# this August.

~~~
V-2
Pretty cool. Reminds me there was a thing called Debugger Canvas, too
(although I don't think it ever got mature, I may be mistaken).

What's with the bracing style inside these bubbles?? :) Looks normal in Visual
Studio, yet the whole body of the method gets an extra indentation in
CodeConnect

~~~
Permit
Yeah unfortunately Debugger Canvas was scrapped after Visual Studio 2010.

Haha, yeah that's an artifact that's no longer present in current versions. It
was including the tabs as part of the content of the function. So that's why
it looks weirdly indented in that video.

------
erming
I'm creating a web-based IRC chat.

Basically: You install it from npm and then run it, then you browse to
[http://localhost:9000/](http://localhost:9000/) and start chatting.

It's responsive and works great on your smartphone.

Repository: [https://github.com/erming/shout](https://github.com/erming/shout)
(star if you like it!)

And of course, a demo: [http://shout-irc.com:9000/](http://shout-
irc.com:9000/)

Edit: If you can't connect (Freenode only allows ~5 active connections) try
"irc.rizon.net".

------
bernatfp
I'm working on a voicecall widget that lets businesses be called by their
visits for free with just one click (using Flash and WebRTC). It's called
Calloud ([https://calloud.com](https://calloud.com) ).

I'm doing it because I'm a big fan of tools like Olark or Zopim which are
essentially the same but for live written communication (chat). Because some
people prefer talking rather than typing, I'm selling a live voice
communication alternative so websites can tailor to this preference as well.

------
bfwi
What: A site/app that will tell you the most popular events in your city, and
which event you should go to.

Why: I wanna be able to reach after my phone and quickly find out where I
should go to have fun.

------
mackwic
I work on an embedded device which monitor your body in a way that will
prevent people to hurt themselves without being aware of (because they can't
feel it).

It's not cool at all. All the pain, the damages on the body. Sometimes the
amputations. It's a lot of pressure to develop a software which has to decide
if you are in danger right now and how to help. Anyway that's what we're doing
and we want to do it right.

No link, no demo, no video, it's still pretty confidential, sorry.

~~~
balor123
Wow, that is totally cool! I don't have any neuropathies but I could see how
it would totally suck. I imagine you'll be targeting the low hanging fruit
first (limbs)? I would guess that the tongue is probably the worst place to
lose feeling. You'd lose the ability to distinguish between chewing food and
tongue.

------
thewoo
What: A cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) self-help website to support
people who are currently in therapy, or who want to know more about common
mental health conditions

Where: [http://self-help.tools](http://self-help.tools)

Why cool? It aims to help people to take control of their therapy. The
evidence indicates that people going through a course of CBT who take more
control of their therapy, and take more responsibility for their well being,
have better outcomes.

~~~
mackwic
I like your project a lot. But the articles seems harsh to read (I don't
really know, I'm projecting myself).

Did you think about making short clips ? Maybe making the font nicer, more
healthier ? (no serifs, use the color scheme of the healthcare, put round
thing all around)

I don't know, it's like I am opening an encyclopedia rather than a self-help
book. Is it the goal you want to achieve ?

------
bobfunk
What: [https://www.bitballoon.com](https://www.bitballoon.com)

Why is it cool: complete beginners are deploying their first ever websites
with it, and experienced programmers are building cool stuff with it! I also
really like using it for my own stuff and think static site generators and
static apps have a huge future ahead of them. Especially if we can help
building tooling to make static solutions easier to build and work with.

------
nitai
What: I'm working on [http://helpmonks.com](http://helpmonks.com) right now.
It helps teams to manage the never ending flow of emails.

Why: Some have similar tools, but they all concentrate on the HelpDesk aspect
of it. Instead of re-inventing the wheel we simply integrate with popular
existing helpdesk apps. Furthermore, we encourage sales and marketing to use
our app.

Thanks.

------
keenerd
Hacking on RTL-SDR.

I've been running a successful fundraiser [1] and have just posted a detailed
progress report [2].

This might be the first FOSS software-development fundraiser where backers get
to decide what features are added.

[1] [http://igg.me/at/rtlsdr](http://igg.me/at/rtlsdr)

[2] [http://kmkeen.com/igg-report/](http://kmkeen.com/igg-report/)

------
ducuboy
What: News discovery platform (Svven.com - news rearranged).

Why: It works by clustering the users based on their reading history, ranking
one's fellow readers, and providing what else they read in order of relevance.
Besides the news discovery part, I find it very cool to automatically connect
the people with similar interests. Great things may come out of this.

------
udiw
What: [http://paperthon.com](http://paperthon.com)

It's a research management service, consolidating submissions, notifications,
reviews and revisions across multiple conference systems.

Why: because I was sick of using emails to track these things, and it allows
researchers getting fun stats about their work.

------
foreverodd
What: A 3270-terminal emulator interaction wrapper for Node.js
[https://github.com/Chris-Cullins/hllapi-node](https://github.com/Chris-
Cullins/hllapi-node)

Why: Because old school meets new. Also, it is fairly useful for my job as a
CICS mainframe programmer.

------
phatak-dev
Learning functional programming both in scala and js using
[http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/](http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/) book.

[Why] Wanted to learn core concepts and coding in both languages at same time
is fun.

------
interpares
What: Emphatic ([http://emphatic.co](http://emphatic.co)) -- social media as-
a-service

Why it's cool: gives marketing resources to small businesses who lack the time
or expertise

~~~
lbearl
Just an FYI, but under the blurbs about the founders, a little bit of proof
reading would go a long way to ensuring legitimacy: "...other large corporates
in..."

I understand typos, but when it is for someone who wants to run a service
which would have very high visibility for a companies image, they really
aren't acceptable.

~~~
interpares
Ah! "Corporates" is a term that's often used within European professional
service firms and is a holdover from my Dutch corporate banking days. Thanks
for the advice, I'll change!

~~~
lbearl
Ah, I did not know that. I just assumed with a .co domain, and mostly
targeting American social media companies the main focus would be on US
English.

~~~
interpares
Most of are customers _are_ American. Just the old habits dying hard :-)

------
graycat
What: A new Internet search engine.

Why cool: To be the best for the roughly 2/3rds (safe for work or not) of
Internet content, searches people want to do, and content they want to find at
best poorly served now.

~~~
balor123
Porn I'm assuming? I would think that spam dominates internet content.

~~~
graycat
Porn? No, not necessarily at all, or as I said, "safe for work or not".

Spam? No, not at all. Instead, as I said, searches people want to do and
results they want to find, and those are nearly never spam.

Nothing tricky; take my description just the way I gave it.

The content types are primarily still images, recorded music, video clips,
i.e., content types where search by keywords/phrases work from poor down to
not at all due to far too little text in the content for matching users'
keywords/phrases, and a major fraction of blogs and long tail Web sites, that
is, where the content is mostly text.

A point is that search by keywords/phrases works well for only about 1/3rd of
the content, searches people want to do, and results they want to find. My
work is for the other 2/3rds. This description is difficult to understand?

------
Mc_Big_G
A mobile app for timing your stretches. My daughter had to do some physical
therapy so I did the stretches with her and got tired of counting and keeping
track. Should be in the play store Monday.

------
BrianPetro
Work: The "LinkPlug" >
[https://www.LinkPlugApp.com](https://www.LinkPlugApp.com)

Coolness: Helping people gain value from sharing resources.

------
cliffdailey
Just launched a dead-simple way to discover one new mobile app, every day.
[http://appstumblr.co](http://appstumblr.co)

------
sensecall
[http://gofokus.com](http://gofokus.com)

We want to improve on current project management tools by giving people more
flexibility.

~~~
thebenedict
Is the name a joke? (not asking sarcastically)

------
len
a generalized learning system.

there are best practices that are superior to a traditional education. they
are free and totally accessible with an internet connection.

its cool if you believe in everyone being able to self-educate using the
internet.

will start applying it in a group context, namely business organizations
shortly.

looking for companies of 11+ people to participate.

------
salahxanadu
Android Wear stuff. I just got my graphics. Now I just need to figure out how
to get it on the store.

------
sftcore
[http://availableworks.net](http://availableworks.net)

------
rtx
[http://saleszip.com](http://saleszip.com)

Sales cycle management tool.

------
elyrly
What: Healthcare application

Why Cool: By doctors for doctors. 'Nuff Said'

------
chuhnk
scridx.com

It's a screenplay search engine. I couldn't find any adequate resources out
there so decided to build my own. I've got much loftier goals for it, but all
in good time.

~~~
jeffmorrisjr
Awesome product. I would have loved this in film school or when I was a reader
at a production company.

~~~
chuhnk
Thanks, much appreciated. Exactly the kind of people I'm trying to target.
Students in film school would benefit greatly from this kind of resource for
educational purposes. I hope to become the defacto source for scripts and at
some point approach studios to gain access to more.

------
Estragon
Replicating Deep Mind's deep-learning video game player.

