
Brainstorm HN: Outlandish Startup Ideas Pool - dryicerx
Pitch totally unrealistic Startup ideas.<p>Why do this? Well think of it like a brute-force brainstorming method. Very low SNR but hopefully a few of these will inspire someone to come up with a realistic/sane/good idea.
======
callmeed
A Woot.com for travel Unlike other last min travel sites, this would offer
just 1 product per day with 0 or 1 options Example: "2 nights at the Edgewater
Seattle 6/1-6/3 for $179 total" OR "2 RT tix LAX<->Vegas + 2 nights at
Bellagio for $379 total 6/1-6/3"

Just need to find some travel companies who are willing to work with you. They
just need to agree to block off X number of rooms/flights for that date.

If the site picks up steam, maybe offer products for diff regions each day
(west coast, east coast, midwest, south)

~~~
sachinag
Groupon.com actually does this - not travel, but experiences/discounts.

------
neilk
Kidnap vacations. The ultimate thrill ride. You pay them some amount of money
and they will arrive at your home, blindfold you, put you on a plane, and then
take it off once you are in the foreign country. Then you have to work out
where you are and how to get back.

I believe the government has been doing this for a while now.

~~~
dxjones
Can you give this as gift? You pick someone else to go on a "kidnap vacation"
?

------
makeee
Hire a bunch of people to walk around large markets in other countries, such
as India, with wireless webcams attached to their heads. Shoppers can then
direct these people to various stands, barter, and purchase stuff through a
web interface.

~~~
raquo
that doesn't really sound unrealistic though! :)

~~~
aditya
yeah, justininindia.tv?

~~~
maggie
Depending on what 'large markets in other countries' you're talking about, I
see a few immediate problems: -monetizing: a lot of these people don't have
the money for additional services like this. Additionally, they /know/ the
markets well, they're their markets! It's home! -customer base: this is
similar to monetizing. How many people are you going to reach that would
actually want your service?

This is an interesting idea, but it seems like we're too far away from the
potential userbase to make something that people would actually want.

Now, if you're actually in India, I apologize for the last critique, but my
first two statements stand.

~~~
makeee
I meant out-door shopping markets, and the customers would most likely be
people in wealthier nations purchasing the goods online.

------
mooders
1\. Go on a diet. 2\. Open [web|desktop] app. 3\. Select diet plan (atkins;
south beach; XYZ etc). 4\. Select number of people in household. 5\. Select
number of people on diet. 6\. Select dietary options (eg gluten-free). 7\.
Select budget. 8\. Add credentials and payment details for preferred online
grocery store. 9\. App notes diet plan and previous shopping activity to
reduce duplication, finds recipes and extracts ingredients 10\. App creates
shopping cart automagically based on the above (and probably more besides) and
purchases. 11\. App records purchases.

I've wondered for the last 4 or 5 years since I have had this idea whether
this would actually be something to pitch to the retailers rather than the
consumers.

~~~
froo
I pitched this idea to YC last year, basically.

Mine also had "GPS on phone to monitor person's level of physical activity to
help tailor diet to their dietary needs"

We even worked on putting this together so that the algorithm could work
automatically for a family who had different dietary requirements.

The problem we found is that it doesn't work for the consumer market. We
focussed too much on the idea and not enough on consumer behaviour, which if
we had done our market research would have shown this to be not so good an
idea.

We found that the dietary consumer market is focussed on selling you early
into things you wont use, because the people that generally need these
products have low motivation.

Those people who buy dietary books, supplements, exercise equipment etc
generally purchase them and might use them for a month or two before
essentially "giving up" at best. That's why most businesses targetting that
large market are focussed on getting your money early, because relying on
longterm revenue is a bad idea.

Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig use a similar model, although the diet plans
they use are actually loss leaders so they can sell you their other products,
which is where they actually make their money. The diet plans in the long run
is where people stop going, but they've already extracted value out of you by
purchasing their material.

~~~
10ren
That makes sense. But it reminds me of search engines cluttering up their
portals with ads, and having pay-for-ranking search results - which also made
sense. That was the market before google. I don't know if an analogous change
of market exists for diets.

~~~
froo
Well the thing is that is one of the conclusions we came too after having
built a prototype. I'm not a skinny guy (nor was my partner), we built the
thing for personal use and after several months of use we had found that it
was simply too much additional effort that a simple meal plan could accomplish
on is own. There were several things we didn't account for in our initial
design.

1) Battery life on the mobile phone... Keeping your GPS on during waking hours
is a big drain in current generation phones

2) People sticking to the plan (ours was designed so that you could go "off
plan" if you felt hungry and it would adapt) ... during early testing if you
skipped things, it could go out of whack

3) Motivation, we let several people use it, not including ourselves (about 15
all up) and we monitored the use and we found that in almost all cases (except
1) that people just stopped using it after around a month, with it's novelty
wearing off after about two weeks. That's when we started to look at how the
business models of other Dietary businesses work.

Basically, it had little more than novelty value - a simple meal plan and
exercise would have achieved the same result.

(On a personal note, I found it just as easy to ride my exercise bike while
watching TV and eating smaller portions to keep losing weight, I just bought
smaller plates and glasses to change my perspective of the amount of food I
was eating.)

~~~
10ren
Please take this with a grain of salt, as a possible perspective (I don't know
if it's helpful or not). Let me detail the roles in the analogy:

You made a search engine. You found you weren't making any money, so you
studied how other search engines made money, and you found that they had ad
and paid-position results. You didn't like that, so you didn't continue. Then
google took the approach of trying to give people what they want (fast,
uncluttered, relevant results), and then later (literally _years_ later)
working out how to make money from it (this was a whole project in itself:
text ads, relevant to search, priced by auction: adwords, seemingly "inspired"
by goto/overture).

Your point 3 (motivation) seems to be the show-stopper. My suggestion is to
consider if there is a way to solve this problem - not in order for you to
make money, but in order to help people diet. Illustrative examples (recall
that I don't actually know anything about it):

\- Make it continually novel, with new content being added all the time (like
HN, or WoW), or the "achievement unlocked" of some games, or Nintendo games.
Or a new diet every week. Or even as a platform with new perspectives on the
diet coming out each week or day (like a daily horoscope or cartoon maybe?).
Don't know if this would work, but the idea is to attack the problem of
novelty wearing off.

\- Or expand on the solution you found in your personal note: tell people to
buy smaller plates and glasses; and buy an exercise bike, with instructions
about how to set it up with the TV. Maybe this seems trivial and obvious, but
I'm guessing it wasn't the first thing you tried yourself - maybe
encouragement and guidance would make a huge difference for some people.

Maybe it seems that you can't make money from this; but (I believe that) if a
business finds a way to help people, it will find a way to make money. The
thing that is potentially exciting is that maybe there is a fantastic way to
be extremely helpful to people in dieting, that all the other businesses have
missed, because they were focussed on the business model that worked - instead
of doing that, find a better way, like Google did.

It sounds like you've done a thorough and intelligent job (and also that you
are sick to death of it), and that you were excited about your solution, not
about the problem. Let me emphasise that I really have no idea if there exists
such a solution as I'm outlining - I just wanted to communicate a focus on
your customer's problem, not business models. Reading back that previous
sentence, it sounds kind of rude to me, but I hope you'll understand how I
mean it.

~~~
froo
oh I understand what you're saying, the thing is we over-engineered a problem
which has a pre-existing, simple and effective solution (diet + exercise).

With our solution, we figured with the addition of the GPS, we could also do
things like warn people if they went into the wrong place... eg walked into a
mcdonalds, it not only could let them know that they shouldn't be there, but
perhaps could provide them with alternatives close by, so instead of just a
mealplanning solution but also a mentoring thing.

But in the end, it was just a novelty which wore off.

~~~
10ren
Thanks for the quick reply. I see what you mean.

 _pre-existing, simple and effective solution (diet + exercise)._ I agree, but
it doesn't yet seem to be a solved problem for many people - in practice.
Still, that's a different question

~~~
froo
Yeah, the problem with diets and exercise is mostly a continuous motivational
problem if anything I figure, which is why the current business models are set
up the way they are.

People are really motivated for the first few days/weeks, after which their
interest wanes it seems. That's why it's set up as a "pay early" type thing.

Honestly, I think something like the wii fit is a step in the right direction.
Make it fun.

~~~
10ren
heh, wii fit seems to encompass novelty _like a nintendo game_ and exercise in
front of a TV.

ah: wii fit for PC (but avoid patent infringement).

------
diego
A search engine for your house. Tag every object that you care about with a
tiny electronic label (could be an rfid chip). Some objects could come pre-
tagged and added to your library the first time they cross your door.

When you can't find something, find the object on your computer and start
walking around the house with a wand that beeps louder as you get closer to
the object. Would also work when you lose something outdoors and you can more
or less retrace your steps.

~~~
noamsml
Alternatively, just sell matching pairs of electronic tags (sticky) that both
have buttons and beep when the other one is pressed.

~~~
cubicle67
Yep. I'd be sticking them on my kids shoes

~~~
lacker
My girlfriend says she would stick them on her shoes too, and that's a lot of
shoes.

------
alex_c
Set up inexpensive wireless cameras pointed at all street parking spots in the
city. (doesn't have to be wireless cameras - pick any method or device that
can reliably detect whether a parking spot is empty, cameras are the most
flexible). Feed that data to a server, then dish it out to mobile devices
(iPhone, etc.) combined with GPS to find the nearest street parking spot.
Bonus points for intelligent behavior like not sending two cars to the same
spot, or considering which spots are likely to be filled by the time you get
there and what other spots are around. Mad bonus points if you work at a high
enough level that this feature gets built directly into new cars.

I guess "outlandish" is a bit strong, it feels like it's only a matter of
time.

~~~
prawn
Set it so that you can book a parking space (for a fee) ahead of time while
you're driving there.

Instead of wireless cameras, I thought of some sort of sensor(s) embedded in
the ground that could detect something about it (by sight, magnet, etc). If
they were embedded poles, they could raise up once the spot was booked to
prevent it from being taken, until you arrived, entered your booking code and
lowered the barriers.

I think a city might need to be designed in advance for something like this
though!

~~~
10ren
Bonus: auction (a la adwords).

With video, you might not need to physically prevent park-theft - a hefty fine
might be sufficient.

------
anigbrowl
Wikiocracy: instead of electing legislators, you use a wiki environment to
build a corpus of legislation and manage legal cases, with limited commit
ability (eg no more than monthly or so...don't want to make long post). For a
small fee, contracts can be registered and arbitrated like a private
arbitration service, minus the expensive pay-to-play which usually decides on
behalf of the larger entity.

It quietly supplants the the private and later the public legal system by
providing a superior open source alternative.

------
Alex3917
I'm tired of sex shops that ship their products using discrete packaging. I
want a store that ships products in packaging purposely designed to be as
embarrassing as is plausibly possible.

Charge double what a normal sex store does, and even if you only get a few
hundred orders a day via Google you still have a decent business.

~~~
klein_waffle
> I'm tired of sex shops that ship their products using discrete packaging.

I agree. Down with discrete; we need continuous packaging.

<http://everything2.com/title/discreet%2520vs.%2520discrete>

~~~
eru
Just speak German. We have the same distinction, but only one word for both
meanings.

------
rokhayakebe
5 Star Jail Hotel (good for procrastinators).

Pay us and we will lock you up for as many days as you paid. You get one hour
per day to hang out within our establishment. Breakfast, Lunch and Diner are
eaten with other prisoners. The rest of time we will lock you up in your room
(with internet connection). Phones lines are only open for x hours. Emails
programs are blocked most of the time... You see where I am heading with this.

It could be good for someone with a deadline to accomplish something.

~~~
dxjones
Can a boss send an employee to procrastinator jail to make sure they finish
their task by deadline?

~~~
pierrefar
Can you send the boss so you can get on with work?

------
Evgeny
I want to see a smart traffic control system.

Currently I'm only aware of the traffic lights which can sense when the car
stopped next to the line and switch the lights accordingly.

I would like to see more. I would like the system to identify how dense the
traffic is in all directions, including the right/left turn lines.

It would then adjust the duration of the green light according to the number
of cars travelling in corresponding directions. It should also identify if all
the cars that were waiting for the green light have crossed the intersection,
and if there are no more cars it could turn then red light earlier.

So often I see the following: a jam is on a major road. A red line turns on,
and a lonely car crosses a major road. The light is still red though for some
time, with dozens of cars waiting for nothing ...

~~~
ralph
It's called a roundabout. ;-) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout> They
help traffic flow lots in the UK and elsewhere around the world. Not a panacea
though.

~~~
mrduncan
I've never seen a roundabout work well with high traffic though (in the US
anyway), it has always seemed to me that they work amazingly well with low and
medium traffic, but once they are full you end up with a single inbound street
hogging it since everyone else has to yield.

~~~
ralph
Everyone else would have to yield only if all traffic entering from that
single busy inbound road was going all the way around the roundabout and
exited onto the road it entered from. Since few cars do this, the odd single
car on other entrances gets a gap where they pull out, often causing the busy
road to queue while they pass, which in turn lets others out, etc.

I agree though, the heavier the traffic the less they work. Especially when
morons pull out onto it despite seeing the exit is jammed and without leaving
room for other lanes to cross in front and behind of them. Also, in the UK,
many drivers fail to signal correctly, giving less clues to other drivers as
to when they can pull out, e.g. if you're not signalling left as you exit a
roundabout, you're doing it wrong! :-)

------
teehee
The next big user interface: your car windshield. The windshield communicates
with billboards that look empty from outside your car to beam images
appropriate for your consumer tastes and demographic. In addition you will be
able to interact with various mediums: webmail, ipod, video conferencing etc
when your car is fully stopped. It goes on from there.

------
dryicerx
A DBUS like system for the internet (for message passing and multi casting
events to registered handlers). It's like twitter, except for application to
application/people communication.

You first visit the site and create a data structure and register it at the X
service website. Then a application can send messages in that data structure
to the X service. Other services/applications/websites/people can register
(like following on twitter) various handlers on the X service. Any time the
main application publishes a event to the X service, it's pushed out to all
the listening handlers...

I guess when I write it down, doesn't so outlandish. Anyway, up for grabs.

~~~
lacker
I would use it. Can you also include a cross-browser javascript library to
listen for these events? Push over http sucks and this could fix it.

------
bbuffone
I have three great ideas for startups that fit this request.

1.) scambledporn.com - If you can remember tv before it went digital, porn
used to be scambled by varying the horizontal sync of the tv signal for that
channel. This made it unwatchable, unless you were really really patience. My
idea is to create a website that has porn that works on the same concept; it
would be scrambled until people pay to have it unscrambled. The more you pay
the more unscambled it would be.

2.) Fire Energy Convertor (FEC) these are self contained devices that can be
dropped into wildfires. Once placed into the fire; the device would convert
the heat of the fire into electricity. After the fire subsided, the device
would be placed into a grid that would provide electricity. Let's stop wasting
all the energy that is release by forest fires. Eventually the device (FEC
2.0) could be placed into active volcano as well.

3.) An exercise device that can be used while you shower. It would be like
killing two birds with one stone. People wouldn't have to worry about having
to take a shower after working out, because they would already be in the
shower and can soap up when done. The marketing plan for this device is a 30
minute infomercial that walks people through its use, with several nice
looking and in good shape people. When you purchased the device, you will also
receive a instructional video of your choosing (Male, Female).

~~~
zackattack
You actually just gave me a great idea...CPA porn. Complete CPA offers, get
access to porn. Perfect, because that way no credit card is involved...

~~~
pookleblinky
Why not extend it into a Cory Doctorow Woofie system?

I do a favor for you, woofies.com gives me a couple woofie points, which I may
redeem for pron. My favor backfires (buggy code, typos, etc) and my woofie
karma suffers and I must suffer pron of worse quality.

Viva la Bitchun society irl!

Note that this is completely unrealistic because no one pays for pron anymore
anyway.

~~~
froo
_Note that this is completely unrealistic because no one pays for pron anymore
anyway._

You would be surprised. If the following device does half of what is promised
and recent sales of a device called a "monkey spanker" (I helped a female
friend of mine set up an online sex store/blog a few months ago) are anything
to go by, I think the future of pay for porn is very bright indeed.

[http://gizmodo.com/5129520/realtouch-teledildonics-as-
design...](http://gizmodo.com/5129520/realtouch-teledildonics-as-designed-by-
former-nasa-engineer-nsfw)

Those guys are going to make a killing if it works as intended...

------
jimmybot
Device where every time you mutter a complaint it records it and attempts to
match it up and send it to the correct recipient. The complaints are
anonymous, but tracks whether the complaint was responded to or not. If so,
the complainer gets more karma and is prioritized higher. There could be the
opposite marking of spam or unreasonable. The eventual goal is to identify
complainer pundit wizards that will make the world better by walking around
and muttering (bitching) about their dislikes.

~~~
eru
You should include praise as well.

------
amichail
Build an iphone app to alleviate OCD:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=601648>

In particular, such an app would help alleviate problems with repeated
checking. The user would use the app to take a photo/video of something
instead of checking it repeatedly (e.g., you locking the front door).

The photo/video would be tagged with the time and place.

To actually try to cure OCD, one might introduce a probability that the
photo/video will not be taken. One can have this probability increase over
time as the user's condition improves.

Another possibility is to delete the photo/video automatically after some time
interval, which decreases as the user's condition improves.

This is something that I might actually consider building if there is
sufficient demand.

~~~
Zev
What happens if someone's OCD ends up turning into taking pictures to make
sure that they did something?

~~~
amichail
It's better than having continuous anxiety or returning to your house to check
whether the door is locked for example.

~~~
kleevr
as an every-guy, who only at various times has "suffered" mild OCD fits: I can
see the value to be had by the clinically compulsive.

------
dryicerx
I will start:

* Online Grocery shopping with Automated reordering. The service provides a small RFID scanner for the trash can, and all items are tagged with a RFID. Anytime it's thrown away, the items are reordered (such as milk/eggs/drinks). Would work with your local grocery shop.

* A everything recommendations system (such as Amazon's _you might also like_ ) except spans all things (not just things to buy, but also places to go visit, people, idealogies, match making, hobbies, cars, music, etc). Data sources would include websites you buy stuff, social networks, your bank information, gps info, phone calls, browsing methods, your private data, your photos, music, everything. (heh, privacy nightmare).

~~~
villiros
This for washing clothes would be good. Put a reader in the hamper and track
all dirty clothes going into it. Notify me when there is enough similarly
coloured stuff there to do a wash, or when I'm running out of clean necessary
items. Also, tell me to start washing stuff in advance of long trips away.

------
alecst
A junk gym, wherein all equipment would be gathered from a large junkyard, and
could be housed within a cheap warehouse. Bench press could be a small bench
with perhaps an axle and two tires on each side, or metal plates, all with
weights marked. Various other car parts could be transformed into different
exercise machines. Dumbbells would be various pieces of metal with marked
weights.

~~~
dryicerx
This makes for quite the manly place to work out. I mean think about the costs
here (no need for expensive equipment either, their junk!)

------
windsurfer
Create an online AJAX IDE for developing flash using the haXe language. It
would be compiled and put together on the server, but the client would be open
source and free as a desktop app too, by the magic of haXe. Services could
include webhosting and automatic upload of your app, as well as stock flash
animation media and sounds.

------
kiba
An online wargame in reality using geolocation and mobile phones.

Build game servers that serve as wireless mesh network and locate them
throughout the city(Partnering with local businesses such as coffee shops).
They can also store the company's weapon hardwares and suits to loan to
player.

Players can also build their own weapon system and suits.

------
staticshock
Cars that drive without a human at the wheel. This is the norm for sci-fi
movies, and we still don't have it.

~~~
myoung8
We do: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_(vehicle)>

~~~
lacker
But I can't buy one. A startup that solved this problem would have to solve a
lot of legal issues as well as technical ones.

Also Stanley can't drive in traffic. What I really want is something that can
commute for me from San Francisco to Silicon Valley while I play video games.

~~~
ibsulon
We have that too: <http://www.bart.gov/>

~~~
lacker
Bart doesn't go to Silicon Valley, just to Millbrae. Even in SF Bart only goes
through the Mission and downtown. If you don't live and work near Caltrain
then public transportation between SF & the south bay is more or less not an
option.

------
neilk
A pen-sized device which gives you cleaning advice. It has various chemical
sensors built in to the tip and then displays a readout of what cleaning
product to use.

------
neilk
Since the newspapers are about to die, we need something to replace the
government/corporate watchdog function of journalism. (sensational news,
sports, classifieds, entertainment, and celebritard news have already migrated
elsewhere, so let's not consider them.)

Some form of hyper-customizable newsletter service, providing updates on
upcoming legislation or business deals. There are large firms who already
subscribe to such things in the form of clipping services; this goes one level
deeper.

The target market should be small business owners and people who have some
interest in local politics.

~~~
eds
_replace the government/corporate watchdog function of journalism_

I think you misspelled lapdog

------
chaosmachine
A digg-style grocery store, where customers can vote online for new products.

~~~
endtime
Just to play devil's advocate, how much more information would this offer over
purchase data?

~~~
chaosmachine
The idea is to find out what people want ahead of time, rather than buying a
bunch of product only to find out that nobody wants it.

Of course, just because people vote for something doesn't mean they'll
actually go to the store and pick it up.

~~~
endtime
Oh, I thought you were talking about something for consumers to get new
product recommendations, rather than something to help the supermarkets target
their inventory.

So...how often do people know new products exist, let alone whether they want
them, if the supermarket isn't already selling them?

Not trying to shoot you down, I think it's an interesting idea, just trying to
make sure I understand it.

~~~
chaosmachine
One possibility: The grocery store seeds the site with product data from their
suppliers, and customers vote up what they want to see on the shelves.

New product lines could be "featured" weekly, and the ones that pass a certain
vote threshold get ordered. If a product you voted for gets added, perhaps you
get an email with a coupon.

------
vsingh
An engine that scans forum posts for factors like "emoticon content", builds a
network of who replies to whom, and uses that information to establish a
hierarchy of social status among the participants.

------
dryicerx
A startup factory. A collection of hackers, marketing people, business minded
people, and their product is making startups. The basic infrastructure very
very fast. Then selling them out.

~~~
klein_waffle
That's an incubator. Been done.

~~~
dryicerx
The current sense of Incubators are a bit different, they look for groups with
ideas, take them under their wing for a fraction of stakes, and let them go.
The ideas always come from the outside.

What I am saying is, even the ideas are brainstormed inside. Imagine 100 great
minded people every month sitting down and choosing a good idea (that
originated from the inside), and all of them putting their efforts in to
implementing it. You do that every month.

------
arfrank
A online grocery store comparison shopping. Data is customer driven and pulled
from the weekly shopper. Reciepts can be scanned in and processed to keep
track of shopping. Shopping lists can be entered online to be cross checked
against the closest grocery stores (you get to decide if going to 2 stores is
worth saving $10 extra) and sent to your phone. Online grocers(amazon) even
get in the mix to provide deals and free shipping. And why stop there, why not
alcohol too...

~~~
kiwidrew
Shameless plug that you (being, presumably, a kiwi based on your grabaseat
comment earlier) may find interesting: www.boozr.co.nz

I've decided to start with alcohol and work my way backwards towards
groceries, but the idea is roughly the same as what you've outlined. :)
Luckily here in NZ everyone except Foodstuffs (NW, Pak'n'save, Four Square) is
online so getting the prices isn't too tricky...

~~~
arfrank
Actually I just lived there for a half a year, but miss NZ and the special
brand of beer there dearly.

I like app, only we always bought our beer/wine from the grocery stores. But
for any liquor this looks sweet as.

What did you write it in?

------
randomwalker
Train chimps to break CAPTCHAs. My guess is that it's feasible. E.g, see
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgeLEWr614>

It is, however, unethical, and isn't something that benefits society, despite
the fact that a viable business model might exist in the short term.

Note that this would give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Captcha farm' :-)

~~~
rms
Chimps are way too expensive

~~~
eru
Use ravens.

------
mrduncan
A twitter clone that requires you to pass a spelling and grammar check and use
_more_ than 140 characters

~~~
mstevens
Maybe check posts using <http://stupidfilter.org/main/>

------
deutronium
Nuclear powered laptop never needs recharging

~~~
diego
Fat-powered laptop (iphone, etc) plugs into your stomach and makes you lose
weight.

~~~
kajecounterhack
A screen-less laptop that projects images into the mind so as not to make us
all blind

That rhymed!

------
pookleblinky
Think pmsbuddy.com meets Babelfish meets the Mechanical Turk.

The idea is simple: submit transcripts of your conversations with your wife to
the site, and women will translate for you.

"she said "fine." She really means she is pissed off."

For a fee, the site may also offer real-time chats for those situations where
you need to figure out what a woman is thinking NOW.

~~~
windsurfer
We have that already: <http://www.fmylife.com/>

;)

~~~
pookleblinky
"Today, while powerwashing my deck, a bee flew and landed on my leg. Thinking
I'll just wash it away before it stings me, I aimed the powerwasher nozzle at
the bee. A bee sting isn't nearly as painful as powerwashing your leg. FML"
<http://www.fmylife.com/work/1818559>

Ok, new idea. Mix this with the idea for an OCD iphone app, and you get a
Mechanical Turk capable of giving SMS advice in real time to potential Darwin
Award winners.

"should i try to skateboard off my roof?" "62% say no."

This would also work as I originally imagined it.

"I just got a kevlar vest on eBay and I told my wife I was planning on
fighting crime. She said 'whatever makes you happy'" "She meant she's planning
on collecting your life insurance."

------
vaksel
A washer/dryer combo that works as a single unit, so that you don't have to
move things manually from one to the other.

I see it as a 2 story contraption, washer on top, dryer on the bottom. After
the washer is done, a trap door opens and the clothes fall into the dryer,
which then auto-starts.

As you can guess, I was doing laundry recently

~~~
anigbrowl
Already exists. These are the norm in Europe, I have no idea why they're not
popular in the US. We Europeans enjoy mocking antiquated American home
appliances and can't believe you still use stovetop kettles and blenders from
the 1950s.
[http://www.gelighting.com/apo/products/appliances/clothes_ca...](http://www.gelighting.com/apo/products/appliances/clothes_care/02.htm)

It looks like a regular washing machine, you just put your clothes in the
front, set the buttons, and 2 hours later they're clean and dry. It's awesome.

~~~
staticshock
What kind of kettles and blenders do you guys use in Europe? I want in :(

~~~
eru
Stuff like <http://images.google.de/images?q=wasserkocher> is common.

------
dryicerx
A compartment inside a car's engine to keep food warm while travelling.

~~~
icefox
Like the glove compartment? At least on some cars it is very warm in there.

------
aupajo
Gentlemen, I refer you to the ineffable Halfbakery for a more complete list:
<http://www.halfbakery.com/>

------
neilk
Kindle-ize all your books (in a DRM-free form, guaranteed accessible for 25
years). I want a service which is both legal and easy to use. Don't make me
sit there and laboriously use some CueCat thing and make a huge bibliography.

If this means that someone has to cart them away and destroy them, I don't
really care; actually it's kind of a benefit if you live in a small apartment.
Most of them are not remarkable as far as physical form goes.

------
dryicerx
This is for advertising: Have devices in public places where people are likely
to sit down (bus steats, benches in Airports, bus stops) that listen in and
automatically pick out keywords from conversations. Ads are displayed directly
in front that is relevant to the conversation.

~~~
petervandijck
Hahaha that's just crazy enough to get loads of funding.

------
ivankirigin
A music service that actually reflected the reality of today's tech:
ubiquitous access to all the music ever made. My iphone should be able to
store or stream anything. I should be able to send anything I'm listening to
to a friend.

Bullshit about limits on the number of computers connected to my iphone,
illegal file sharing, DRM, $1 for a download that has $0 marginal cost, etc.
-- all of it out the window.

Give creators tools to directly engage with their audience, make all their
content free and easy to consumer & share, and make money from live shows,
special physical goods, and patronage.

------
neilk
Rental for moving boxes.

Whenever I move, which is fairly frequently, I have to make some trip
somewhere just to get boxes. Then there's the effort of breaking them down and
then either storing them or throwing them away.

How about some boxes which are just a little bit sturdier than normal, which
could be rented? They are delivered to your home and then picked up again
(perhaps part of the moving service) and reused for other customers.

~~~
cubicle67
We've moved a number of times, and always bought 2nd hand boxes and then sold
them again when done. No middle man, no hassles if boxes get destroyed or you
want to keep them, and comes out net cost of $0 (2nd hand boxes have a
constant value)

------
klein_waffle
Form a consortium that aims to get drugs decriminalized as long as the
government approves certain suppliers, and get them to write the law such that
your clients are the likely beneficiary. This is worth _billions_ in
investment. Target an American state which seems to be on the tipping point
and you could be very rich.

Except for the fact that existing drug cartels would kill you before you could
succeed.

------
dryicerx
Car Net.

A information network between vehicles that share information about what their
destinations and routes are. Specially for congested areas, they would all
work together to find the optimal route with the least congestion.

Instead of everyone trying to take the shortest path, all the vehicles will
work together to figure out the shortest-time-path based by distributing the
road load levels evenly.

------
VonGuard
Similar to kidnap vacations: larger scale version of JeJune Institute. It's in
downtown SF, and is a physically immersive alternate reality game. It's based
on cults that have committed mass suicide.

So, along those lines, rent a large building and turn it into a hub of some
wild new ARG, with scavenger hunt aspects, physical world puzzles, and
community activities.

------
khangtoh
Twitter for all things non-human. Like my coffee machine tweeting me that the
pot's empty or the new brew's ready.

~~~
khafra
Thinkgeek already sells some device that lets your plants tweet.

------
neilk
An alternative internet for file-sharers, using line-of-sight radio
communications and other methods. There are enough people in many urban areas
to make this work.

Perhaps implausible since you can already do most of that with VPNs on the
regular internet, and hardware is expensive and obvious.

------
markessien
Movie Software that provides stock footage of fixed sets (homes, gardens, etc)
and places you in those settings perfectly. Also same with cars and so on -
the software should be at a level where you could make a full movie without
ever leaving your home.

~~~
klein_waffle
_you could make a full movie without ever leaving your home._

That is approximately the most depressing idea ever.

~~~
ibsulon
Alternatively, very very useful. (I had this idea years ago, in a simpler
form.) Imagine it more as a storyboarding utility.

------
webstartupguy
Any "serious" web programmers looking for new web startup ideas, contact me at
quasi.entrepreneur@gmail.com

This is more than just the idea and includes some proprietary assets.

Please only those who are "serious" or serial entrepreneurs respond,
preferably with a Bio.

------
quizbiz
In an experiment, formed a line in front of a random doorway. After a whole,
the line grew. Nobody knew what they were waiting for.

What about hiring people to make a store front of parking lot or booth look
busy?

------
cflee
This just reminds me of the Half Bakery, it's also got a whole ton of crazy,
outlandish, unrealistic ideas that won't work. Otherwise known as
brainstorming, yes?

www.halfbakery.com

------
anigbrowl
A small game programming library/module which just exports your score, and
allows you to see your rate of progress in different games over time.

------
neilk
Video Twitter. Post updates of 10 seconds or less. I have a feeling people are
already working on this, though.

~~~
gsmaverick
<http://12seconds.tv>

------
philwelch
An alarm clock with a numeric keypad so I don't have to sit there mashing the
"down" button.

------
antidaily
every day one person dies in a high speed chase. street spikes work if you can
get them down and back up again before the chase car runs over them. there
must be a way to shut a car down by addressing its computer system with rfid
or something.

~~~
anigbrowl
EMP guns FTW -
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jul/12/sciencenews.cr...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jul/12/sciencenews.crime)
Bonus: they scare luddites, who are convinced these are used all the time to
kill people the Illuminati hate by making them fly in a small plane during bad
weather first.

------
kokofoo
A chip that implants inside your brain so that you can surf the web with sheer
thought.

------
markerdmann
RentADesignatedDriver.com

~~~
trafficlight
I believe these are called Taxis.

------
alexkearns
Patented training method for teaching pets to do house work.

------
x37llnoise
develop a crossplatform webinterface to read any and every format of text
conceivable in its most CONVENIENT form possible.

~~~
davidalln
Sort of like Readability by Arc90?

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

------
alexkearns
Glasses that make everyone look attractive.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Glasses filled with beer seem to work.

------
alexkearns
Plastic bags that are not a pain to open.

~~~
timdorr
Or those hard plastic cases that don't involve cutting with scissors or a
knife and possibly slicing off a finger.

~~~
mhb
That's called cardboard.

~~~
alex_c
So, what we want is transparent cardboard.

------
dkasper
A law firm connected to a school where the lawyers make $30/hour and the
teachers make $200/hour. ;-)

