
Ask HN: Idea Sunday - avinassh
I think we should resume this Idea Sunday threads. And this first edition of March, 2015.<p>A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.
======
miguelrochefort
We need to take a step back, and stop building all these silly websites and
applications. Seriously, this madness must stop. The application paradigm
simply cannot scale.

How many apps can you install? How many profiles can you maintain? How many
inbox can you empty? How many activity feeds can you go through? How many
shopping apps do you use until you buy that one thing? How many times have you
seen the exact same article/story posted across your social networks? How many
"share your startup ideas" communities does it take for humanity to find the
meaning of life? After how long and how much are you going to realize that
nobody will ever use your niche social network?

We need to look at the big picture. We need to rethink all of this. We're
doing it wrong, and now is the time to fix it. Everything else is distraction.

~~~
Throwaway90283
What's the issue? People use these silly websites and applications, and they
provide a service. Why do we need 100 different to-do list applications? Well,
because everyone has unique needs. Some people want a simple list, some people
want categories, some people want to organize it by priority levels, some
people want it to look like a piece of virtual paper while others prefer a
modern design, some want to self host it, and others want it stored in the
cloud.

And what's wrong with niche social networks? You're on HN, this is a fairly
niche place. Did you want it merged with Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, etc?

~~~
miguelrochefort
> What's the issue?

There are many things to consider.

1\. I don't believe in giving people what they ask for. People don't know what
they want. If you give people what they need, they will eventually want it.

2\. It is not possible for software that's designed with a user in mind to
cover the needs of everyone. Even with 1000 different to-do list applications,
nobody will truly feel it's perfect for them. We need generic and dynamic
software that can adapt to users needs and context.

Don't you think it's sad that we have to endure HN's horrible UI/UX to access
its community and content? Shouldn't we be able to have this discussion
through a client that's made for us and respect our individual needs?

The current paradigm is full of unecessary trade-offs. If we stopped assuming
and accepting that every user interaction should be manually designed by some
UI person, and embraced a framework that automates that process, we would be a
lot more advanced as a society.

------
RivieraKid
Like Gravatar but for everything, not just avatars. Gravatar is a service,
where you save your avatar. Websites such as StackOverflow can connect to
Gravatar and retrieve your avatar from there. So when you decide to change
your avatar, you do it in one place.

On a more abstract level, the problem here is that people and organizations
often create some data and basically Ctrl+C Ctrl+V it to different services.
Couple of examples:

\- RSS subscriptions. If I want to try a new reader, I have to export
subscriptions from my current reader and import it to the new one.

\- Calendar events. Same problem. Yes, some services can sync with each other
but it's a messy situation. Calendar apps must separately implement sync with
several calendar services.

\- Whenever I want to buy something from a new eshop, I need to enter my email
and address.

\- Restaurants publish their location, opening hours or photos on Yelp, Google
Maps and others. When opening hours change, they need to separately update
every service.

\- Public transport operators send their timetables to Google and other
services.

The solution I suggest is to store this data at the source. People and
organizations would have something that's sort of similar to Dropbox, let's
call it databox. You have a databox url, such as databox.org/1\. Your avatar
is available at databox.org/1/avatar. Your RSS subscriptions are at
databox.org/1/rss/subscriptions. Opening hours of some company are inside a
JSON that's on databox.org/2/restaurants.

The databox URL also serves as a login. So the workflow when trying a new RSS
reader is like this. 1) You click on "register". 2) Enter your databox URL. 3)
The reader requests a read and write permission to your RSS data. 4) You allow
it and the reader fetches your subscriptions.

There are some standardized "subdirectories" (e.g. /rss, /calendar, /tasks)
but anyone can create a new standard. For example, a bunch of Linux
distributions can decide they will save desktop background and other desktop
settings to /linux-desktop.

~~~
shiggerino
The W3C sort of had a solution with the semantic web, too bad nobody cared
about the semantic web.

~~~
akshatpradhan
I personally think the semantic web was a solution in search of a problem.
People weren't concerned about ontology and mappings. They were concerned with
making the web more approachable. I think, therefore, money was invested into
Mobile Apps / JS frameworks instead of tools for semantic web.

~~~
shiggerino
I think it grew out of very much the same idealism that still drives Ted
Nelson to this date. I guess to unify all of human knowledge to reach a higher
form of understanding just isn't on most people's mind. Not even those whose
day job it is to do just that, as is my experience from dabbling in academic
publishing.

This reminds me of an old blog post, Charles’ Rules of Argument [1]:

“5. DO NOT argue with Lisp programmers, believers in the Semantic Web, or
furries”

1\.
[http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/03/21/charles_rules_of_arg...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/03/21/charles_rules_of_argument/)

------
lazyjones
Idea: a personal blood testing device for use at home (to test for many
parameters including vitamin levels).

It would be beneficial to be able to test at least monthly in order to avoid
risks associated with various deficiencies, to detect possible diseases early,
to monitor relevant parameters while on a diet or exercising etc.. Also, we'd
like to keep our results confidential to avoid trouble with insurances and
other interested parties.

Labs have large, expensive devices tuned for throughput (e.g.
[http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia-...](http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia-
centaur-cp-immunoassay-sys/features-benefits)). They can probably be reduced
in size and cost to something comparable with a laser printer. Newer testing
methods would work with single drops of blood (e.g. Theranos) so no special
skills would be required.

(personal motivation: discovered an extreme Vitamin D3 deficiency, supplements
seem to have a dramatic effect)

~~~
srunni
What exactly is the advantage of a home device over Theranos, which has a
Vitamin D3 test ([https://www.theranos.com/test-
menu/test/82306](https://www.theranos.com/test-menu/test/82306))? Data
privacy?

~~~
lazyjones
Privacy, no need to mail tests around and wait for days, test price not
dictated by 1 entity.

~~~
reitanqild
See my reply elsewhere: sell a lab-kit, customers send them in, anonymously if
they want, get results by writing the code from the kit into a website.

This is kind-of-anonymous (won't help if the feds are after you)

~~~
lazyjones
Indeed, this already exists. It's like sending a 3D model to a 3D printing
shop and getting a (pricey) result, instead of having a 3D printer at home.
Different uses, appeal to different people. For example, an athlete interested
in monitoring his body closely while exercising will prefer getting results
within a few hours rather than days and the cost per test might be very
relevant.

------
downandout
An Uber-like app where people pay for their rides with banked miles earned by
giving others rides. This would serve a large market of people that a) travel
alot and can give rides in their home city (free rides when they travel) and
b) people that only have part-time access to a car but may need rides when
they don't have it. It may also be legal in areas where Uber can't legally
operate because they charge money for rides. If it got big enough, Uber would
probably buy it.

~~~
bring1
we have that already, the layer is called "money" you can give people rides
and be compensated in the "money points (usually US dollar). Later you can use
this points to recieve rides yourself by others. great thing is that you can
use those points for many goods and services and not only for rides.

~~~
downandout
After the 20% they pay to Uber, and income taxes on the money earned from
Uber, they would wind up with half of the miles they had earned through this
"money" layer. With this, they get full value for each mile. Additionally,
Uber is restricted from entering into many markets (example: their failed
entry into Nevada, where one of the largest tourist markets on earth is
located). With free - as in no money changing hands - rides, presumably the
app would be allowed everywhere.

~~~
pdabbadabba
You don't need money to change hands for a transaction to be taxable. The sort
of barter-based system you describe would also (in theory) be taxed. The only
difference is that tax _enforcement_ would be much more difficult under your
system.

That would work well for a while, but if your service got really big, and
became a target for enforcement, you (or your users) might have serious tax
problems.

------
tuscarok
How about someone besides Apple makes trackpads for laptops which are actually
usable?

~~~
namuol
If Apple already makes great trackpads for laptops, why not just use their
hardware?

~~~
tuscarok
Maybe I want to use a GPU with a couple of cores? Or even play a proper
computer game...

~~~
namuol
You play "proper computer games" with the trackpad? Suit yourself:
[https://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/](https://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/)

------
downandout
FDAPI: Food Delivery API. Grubhub is winning the food delivery battle because
the industry is so fragmented. Have a simple, central API for restaurants to
export and store in the cloud their menus, hours, availability, percent they
are willing to give to affiliates (if any) etc. Any app can tie into the
system and submit orders in exchange for affiliate revenue. Restaurants can
receive orders, with order info, payment info for the customer, etc. Delivery
specialists can tie into the system and receive payment for delivery in the
case of restaurants that don't already offer delivery. The system could handle
all affiliate and delivery driver coordination and payments without
restaurants having to worry about it. They just get more orders.

~~~
karanbhangui
I like this idea. You could even auto-generate branded mobile/web ordering
apps just for those restaurants as a way for them to uniquely market
themselves, and could be used as a revenue stream besides the exchange.

------
DanBC
This type of thread should be monthly, not weekly.

You might want to set up an account just for posting these threads. That helps
avoids a bunch of different people starting the threads as Sunday rolls around
to their timezone.

~~~
minimaxir
The OP is not affiliated with Hacker News/YC.

~~~
DanBC
I don't understand your point.

------
capex
MVP as a service, where you pay a fixed amount each month to get a fixed
number of developer hours.

EDIT: To expand on this a bit: True lean development, every month focused on
delivering a working product. Initially using third party applications like
Firebase and Parse, gradually increasing features, but the product must launch
by the end of the first month.

~~~
lordnacho
I've got a team that can do this. In fact, I've already started meeting
startup people who are interested.

The team is able to make websites, iOS/Android apps (that talk to the sites),
pretty much anything that you'd want an MVP to do. We know how AWS works (can
make things scale ready), and how the app launch/approval process works. We
can integrate all manner of components, including push messaging, databases,
pictures, social media integration, etc.

The core team are two HFT developers who've moved into the web space over the
years, and a number of associates who can do things like design work.

I've also got a member who has 15 years online marketing experience, if that's
considered part of MVP.

~~~
capex
@lordnacho could you send me an email about your team: hello@buildbase.io

------
NoMoreIdols
There needs to be an easy method for consumers to pay the record labels for
the rights to use signed-artist music in amateur videos. That way I have the
rights to upload my GoPro snowboarding videos that will have Content ID
matches on Facebook, YouTube, etc. because of the music. I realize there's
plenty of ways around Content ID matching and even more Creative Commons
music, but that's not the point.

~~~
Danilka
Ohh, someone, please figure this one out!

My understanding though, is that it's not hard, just expensive. Therefore,
everyone just end up using illegal content. There should be an easy way way to
track views and pay per 1K/M, etc. Or better, pay with revenue share of
commercials alongside.

------
grantbachman
Tutorials that actually validate whether they currently work.

One use case would be tutorials on deploying to IAAS/PAAS providers. Deploying
always seems to be the hard part after I build something; I don't like using
the same language and IAAS/PAAS twice for learning purposes. It's complicated
even more so as many tutorials don't reference when they were written or which
code versions they used. The site would require this information, and then use
it to periodically attempt to deploy that sample to AWS/Digital Ocean/etc
(whichever the tutorial is covering), and prominently display whether the
tutorial currently works.

~~~
CodyReichert
I thought about this after scrolling past a couple of times - and I think this
is a good idea.

I'm thinking like a CI for tutorials. For example, I create an account on
Tutorial CI (or whatever), give it the environment of the tutorial's code. It
spits out a badge that I can put on my tutorial that says whether the build is
passing or not. Pretty much exactly like the Travis badges you see on Github.
That way, someone can verify before they even start reading that the tutorial
is valid.

I actually like this idea a lot.

------
minimaxir
Since no one linked it, here's the reason Idea Sunday was killed in the first
place:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640)

~~~
bythe4mile
I kinda liked the idea (yes, I see the irony of this in this particular thread
:)) about having these post not being liked to the karma of a user.

Then again, perhaps the best thing about hackernews is the simplicity of the
system without having these complex scenarios tied to posts.

------
phantom_oracle
Most of these ideas will be an echo chamber for the niche needs of this niche
crowd.

HN itself identifies towards the tech-centric crowd, so most of these ideas
are already focused around some market + tech (or just tech for some marginal
utility).

Granted, some of these ideas sound cool. But why so? It's because of the echo-
chamber in that "we" all find them cool on some level, and thus they become
niche ideas in fragmented markets with demanding users and no possible
financial gain.

This is probably why it was stopped in the first place.

------
logicallee
some place where entrepreneurs can put real ideas they're working on, and
anyone can vote on them. If you're an investor and love an idea, you can pay
for an intro to the team. (names and details are otherwise hidden.)

any such money is shared with the founders who posted the idea (30% site, 70%
them) and they can use it to help roll out their MVP.

~~~
zatkin
How does this idea differ from Kickstarter? Or those other websites that you
get your ideas funded on.

~~~
logicallee
Kickstarter is a donation platform and, more recently, a de facto pre-order
platform. It has nothing to do with investment. (in the literal sense, like
what investors do.)

I would argue it is also not a platform for ideas (i.e. in the way that this
thread _is_ , though few people have incentive to post their genuine ideas
here.) For example, computer renderings are prohibited on KS - only working
products may be shown.

------
tathagatadg
"Ask HN: Idea Sunday/{{Idea}}" : "Show HN:/{{Idea}}" mapper.

------
keyle
A TV-show backing system, after the fact.

Many shows are not available in countries where they are as a result, vastly
downloaded. Sometimes they're available 6 months later. Sometimes you need
bundles with various companies in order to get the shows you like. Sometimes,
they're only available with so much advertisement that you lose the plot,
while the same ad has been served 3 times in 40 minutes. These shows are GOOD.
They deserve people's money, other than being split by an equal length of
advertising to content ratio.

If a website had most TV show cast / writers represented, with a trusted
authority overseeing, and an anonymous donate buttons; I can think of many
shows to which people would donate their monthly entertainment-budget to.

TV is greater than ever. Writers are brilliant. Casts are amazing. But the
whole system is rigged and barely functional. I realize the system cannot be
flipped suddenly, but an initiative such as this one could drive to
fundamental changes in modern TV production.

------
philbarr
Idea Validator:

Type in the long-tail search phrases and it goes off and does as much market
research automatically for you as possible, and comes back with a yes/no on
whether you should bother pursuing it. Perhaps including a list of statistics
like: how much it would cost to get into that market, how many competitors
there appear to be, etc. etc.

~~~
Alex3917
I'm currently working at a startup that actually does something like this.
You're probably never going to get a yes/no answer though because most large
competitors will have multiple unrelated lines of business, and it's usually
not possible to get data beyond the organization level. (Sometimes though the
larger organization is a holding company that has different subsidiaries for
related lines of business.)

------
srunni
Problem: lots of early stage biotech/medtech ventures have a hard time raising
funding, for a variety of structural reasons
([http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-
re...](http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-reflections-
on-exits-funding-and-startup-formation/)), despite having already made initial
progress using non-dilutive government funding (NIH grants, SBIR, STTR, etc.).

Solution: an equity crowdfunding site for early stage biotech/medtech ventures
focused on gaining backing from doctors and other knowledgeable medical
professionals. Those same life sciences entrepreneurs who are having a hard
time raising $5-10M in VC funding are often in a hospital environment,
surrounded by doctors who both deeply understand the problems they're trying
to solve and whose pooled capital could easily add up to $5-10M.

Not only would this counteract scams in this industry made possible by
information asymmetry ([http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug-
hearing-a...](http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug-hearing-
aids-293k-indiegogo-campaign-was-a-scam/)), many medical professionals already
meet the (pre-JOBS Act) income or wealth requirements to be an accredited
investor.

One major concern with this idea is whether the VCs who weren't willing to
invest in a series A-stage life sciences ventures would be willing to come in
at a later stage. They typically prefer tranched investments
([http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections-
on-...](http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections-on-early-
stage-biotech-venture-investing/)) and don't necessarily see later stage
ventures as less risky ([http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late-
stage-vs-ea...](http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late-stage-vs-
early-stage-biotech/)). If that turns out to be a problem, another scalable
source of follow-on investment will have to be tapped in order to prevent a
"series B crunch" for these non-traditionally funded biotech/medtech ventures.

------
richardpenner
App of Thrones: second screen app for Game of Thrones that I can glance at to
see character names and bios while watching the show. Crowd-sourced content,
audio synced so it's smart about pausing.

------
conorpp
Idea: A TENS Machine you can control with your phone

[http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-
ele...](http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-electrical-
nerve-stimulation-device-in-a-weekend/)

TENS are currently kind of expensive and hard to use. People typically only
use them when prescribed by a doctor and the devices are actually quite
useful.

Many people get pain somehow or could use some sort of recreational
relaxation, and a intuitive TENS machine for a smart phone could have a good
market.

------
philbarr
Easy Expenses:

There are lots of expenses saas apps out there, but the pain with expenses is
scanning in all the receipts. I should be able to do this by just taking a
picture of the receipt at the time I get it. Perhaps include some computer
vision stuff to pick the numbers off the receipt and let me choose which one
was cost (incl./excl. VAT). Include other fields for project, time, date,
reason, etc.

Then when I'm finished I click a button and it emails the expenses so I can
forward it onto my accounts department.

~~~
dkyc
Check out Abacus (recent YC company):
[https://www.abacus.com/](https://www.abacus.com/)

------
aytekin
StartupMentions.io

We recently wanted to create a page to list all mentions of our product. So,
we duct taped a JotForm form with the JotForm api and created one. But if
there was a service that created and maintained the list and let you manually
edit the list, I am sure many startups would pay $20/month for it.
[http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/](http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/)

------
et1337
A CMS designed specifically for the solo contractor making a typical brochure-
type website for a mom-and-pop organization or company. Every website is a
fork of the main repo, so devs have full control and version upgrades are just
git merges. Runs on SQLite and comes with in-page editing controls a la
Medium. Basically Wordpress for the 21st century, but designed for devs rather
than users.

~~~
CodyReichert
I've thought about this too - what language would you think would be the most
universal for devs? I think Wordpress pretty much covers this, though I do
think there is room for another competitor.

~~~
et1337
There's definitely room for competition. Most recently we've got Wix and
Squarespace, but again they target the end user rather than developers. I
think most people are willing to shell out a bit more for a local developer
rather than an impersonal SaaS site.

At the moment I'm working on a prototype using Python and Flask, which seems
like Django without all the cruft. Pretty much the only other options would be
Ruby, Go, and Javascript. But I really like Python. :)

~~~
federico3
+1 for using a language with a good security track record.

------
bbody
Idea: A startup which holds your data, it then provides it as a service to
other websites giving them it only as they need it.

This will provide a single place where you data exists and other companies
will only be able to use it as need be. Security would become a big problem
however... But it could get around a lot of privacy concerns at the moment.

~~~
Cynddl
Its name is [http://openpds.media.mit.edu](http://openpds.media.mit.edu),
developed at MIT.

OpenPDS is a service acting as a middle datastore, between the user (who can
even host the service themselves), and the data consumers. The key issue here
is to guarantee privacy, by responding with ‘SafeAnswers’ to the queries of
external services. It's a WIP, but free and open source.

------
interdrift
I'm interested in building a 3D mobile game that allows you to build your own
life through scanning items around you through your camera and then
representing them by making them interactable inside your phone. You'll have
quests and stuff..

Can this idea be a worth giving a go at it?

------
olalonde
They don't fit in an HN comment but I recently dumped a couple of ideas on my
blog: [http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-
ideas-2015...](http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-
ideas-2015-edition/)

~~~
CodyReichert
Your cold calling as a service caught my attention. It's an interesting idea,
but I feel the pitfall would be that random callers may not know or be as
passionate about my product as an employee or myself. I could see a sale
easily being lost because of an unexpected question.

~~~
olalonde
Yes, that's definitely a big risk to take especially if your target market is
relatively small and you don't want to burn bridges.

One solution could be to have different types of callers (similar to freelance
marketplaces) to chose from. You could pick a less experienced/expensive
caller for stuff that isn't really important and pick a more
qualified/expensive caller for stuff that really matters. Callers could even
specialise in certain industries.

Another solution could be to let users listen in on calls and provide live
feedback to the caller but then most people would just opt to do the calls by
themselves. Personally, I might still use such a service simply because I hate
talking on the phone and am not good at sales.

------
thecolorblue
Idea: Companies setup a basic poll asking people to pick their favorite of 2-5
options. Customers pay $1 (or a little more) to vote.

Companies can use it to understand their actual customers better, people who
are actually willing to pay. I was thinking it would be used to prioritized
features but it could be used just to raise money. Customers would get a voice
with the company, and would not get drowned out by potential customers who are
not commited enough to pay a small amount.

I thought of this from the companies perspective so I'm having trouble
thinking about it from the customers point of view. Would there be enough
incentive for customers to pay?

~~~
avalaunch
_Would there be enough incentive for customers to pay?_

In a word, no. Companies will often pay a lot to survey their customers.
Getting the customers to pay to be surveyed sounds like a very tall request.
And any incentive of value the company could add would run counter to the
value proposition you've outlined for the company.

------
cageek
I've created a subreddit for regular idea validation:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ideavalidation](https://www.reddit.com/r/ideavalidation)
because we have ideas more than once a month.

------
yesimahuman
NLP as a service. It's a growing field yet setting up training models and all
of that for a wide variety of NLP related services is pretty hard still.
Things like sentiment analysis, Named Entity Recognition, etc.

~~~
znt
I don't have any experience on NLP, but are any of these suitable for you?

[http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language-
processi...](http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language-processing-
apis/)

------
babygamedev
the day of the one page resume serving any purpose are over. If companies look
at your resume at all, they are looking for information in raw data form: what
projects you've worked on/completed, where you've worked, skills, etc.
Otherwise they don't even bother. You might be asked to bring in a one page
resume to a job interview but it's rarely used for anything but
reference/quick glances.

The Idea: Gravatar but for resumes. Raw data that you fill out online and can
be updated as you work on projects. Companies (or you) can pull this data into
usable formats or to fill out online forms.

Additionally it'd be cool if it had a "condensed" option that either you fill
out with terse explanation for each project, or it ignores the descriptions of
projects entirely and just shows the project name,date,and role. This would
give interviewers something to glance down at for reference, but would save
the functionality of the resume as a complete document of experiences.

Idk the idea that only our most recent projects (that can still fit on one
sheet of paper) is the only relevant info is absurd to me; there is a lot to
be learned from seeing the growth of a person over time.

To me the resume fails on every goal that it SHOULD accomplish except for
maybe your ability to choose your best work, which i can see as important but
there could even be a feature where you select the three works you are most
proud of or something.

------
minthd
Problem: the torrent network is not so good for hosting rare files, because
often people download rare files, use it once or twice and delete them or
place them in another library not accessible to the torrent.

So there are file hosting sites for that matter, but they're far from ideal -
because they are centralized with all the problems that come with that.

That creates a lack of accessibility to rare files.

Not sure what would be the best solution that won't hurt the bittorent
network(by splitting it), and that will have a reasonable monetization source.

------
viraptor
An app, possibly desktop one, which gets two music fragments and tries to
figure out the stack of effects that were applied to one of them.

Context: I realised recently that a lot of film/series music is processed,
compared to the album version. Specifically, I noticed blues tracks on Suits
sound so much deeper than their album versions. I'd like to know how was that
result achieved and how to make a chosen track sound as if it was processed
for that series.

------
cageek
I've had this idea several years ago, and it now exists in a few cities around
the world. Feel free to start one in your city, and add it to the wiki:
[http://www.ideasmeetings.org](http://www.ideasmeetings.org)

It's simply a monthly meetup for idea sharing, validation, and collaboration.
Helping each other make our ideas happen, be it an art project, community
project, business, or social enterprise.

------
avinassh
some old threads -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910)

~~~
gus_massa
You linked to the first editions, but the interest decreased a lot in the
following threads. Latest I can find:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149)
(4 points, 105 days ago, 1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657)
(18 points, 111 days ago, 12 comments)

~~~
covercash
Maybe it should be monthly instead of weekly?

------
awwstn
I have obvious bias as a member of the Assembly team, but I think it would be
a perfect place to build lots of these ideas collaboratively – and I'd love to
help facilitate/participate.

Here's where to start:
[https://assembly.com/start](https://assembly.com/start)

And if you mention @awwstn anywhere on Assembly I'm more than happy to help
out.

------
NhanH
Meta: As the last time this was done have showed, every Sunday is probably not
sustainable, which lead to progressively worse thread every week.

That said, iirc it have been a year since the last popular "Idea Sunday" was
on (I started working on a project from that thread!), it seems like a good
idea to do it a week or two ... unless someone decide to kill it off early
again.

On topic: I think there might be a need for Website-for-SaaS-as-a-service.
What I meant is that whenever a developer decide to start a SaaS, you have to
have a website for that service (that has info, landing page, billing, account
management etc.). Of course, if the website itself is the service, then you
have to develop it, but alot of SaaS is more of the backend stuffs, which the
website is merely a presence for sign up and customer support. I think it's
just a natural progression from Landing-page-as-a-service and Document-as-a-
service (that we already had). The value you providing would be the design of
the site, A/B for conversion testing etc.

Another idea: "What could go wrong when I do X?". You see, in modern time, it
seems like every thing can cause cancer, every other tools you have in your
household is out to get you. And people tend to be in one of the two camp:
"whatever, you can't avoid everything" or just being freak out by any, and
everything (those that use gluten free vegan organic computer mouse, for
example). I believe neither of those behavior is optimal, but unless you're an
expert in the field, you really can't tell whether a risk is real or not. It
would be nice to have a place where you can come and look for common scenario
and see if anything is worth being concerned about (I see black mold, is that
a drop everything and move out, or contact the landlord and wait? My roommate
is sanding his old car paint in the garage and we have kid around the house,
isn't it bad because of ... lead or something? How bad it is if I lick a bar
of metal lead? Which kind of cleaning supplies is absolutely dangerous, and
which is just essentially ethanol?). A lot of those might sounds like just
"common sense" to you, but when I first move (from South East Asia) to the US,
I had none of that "common sense" , and it was a nuisance trying to be
careful. It's also noticeable when you're living with people that have a
different idea of what constitutes "toxic" than you -- and then realize that
you're actually not sure if you're overreacting or the other party being a big
fat idiot. Google is not suffice, as even though you might find a few articles
with advice, "being careful" doesn't help with a risk assessment. The info
will have to be qualified quantitatively, or at the very least, very specific.

Also, for any of you go (the board game) player out there, we need a new
tsumego solver!

~~~
davedx
> I think there might be a need for Website-for-SaaS-as-a-service. What I
> meant is that whenever a developer decide to start a SaaS, you have to have
> a website for that service (that has info, landing page, billing, account
> management etc.).

Yeah I like this idea. You can get so far with Bower, before you inevitably
start spending so much time working on "product boilerplate". I remember being
dismayed by this when I wanted to launch my invoice management app, I thought
I was at "the last 90%" and I was -- of my product implementation. But then
came the billing integration, legally required unsubscribe stuff, privacy
policy, t&c's, blah blah blah.

~~~
lichinobu
Sorry for being a bit spammy, but if you want to team up (just some sparring
would be awesome), this SaaS-in-a-box sideproject im working on might be
something you'd check out.

[https://github.com/AndersSchmidtHansen/LaravelSidequest](https://github.com/AndersSchmidtHansen/LaravelSidequest)
:)

------
sponsored_ad
#Hardware: what about a solution for 'endless-3d-printing' ? new mopboards
will be welcome for our next 'spring-renovation' ...or maybe some fineart
picture frames :)

edited: mopboards (?!) in german called "Fussleisten"

------
rahulvarshneya
We solved the problem of curating content to share in your newsletter for
engaging your audience/leads through email:
[http://mailcaddy.co/beta](http://mailcaddy.co/beta).

Let me know your thoughts!

------
rgovind
Quora for just India, with answers from experts instead of kids fresh out of
college

------
rafael-rinaldi
Fake it till you make it. Trust your guts and never stop learning and trying.

------
S4M
A Firefox (or Chrome) plugin to collapse comments on HN.

~~~
dolzenko
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-
news/mnlaodle...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-
news/mnlaodleonmmfkdhfofamacceeikgecp?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-
dialog)

