

EventKnower - Know the uknowable the instant it happens (feedback on my idea) - tocomment

I came up this idea a few nights ago.  I'm hoping you guys would be kind enough to offer me any kind of feedback you can think of.  I'm still not sure how viable it is.<p>Here goes:<p>Problem: There are some things I'd like to know when they happen but can't easily get notified right now.<p>Examples:<p><pre><code>    *new Homestarrunner cartoon
    *last season of 24 released on DVD
    *Simpsons movie released on DVD
    *Windows Vista released (old)
    *Nintendo Wii launched (old)
    *updates to small software projects 
</code></pre>
Maybe lots of people have things like this they would like to be notified about. Thus the idea is a website where you can request to be notified of something via a myriad of options e.g, RSS, email, sms, etc.<p>It could work like this. You get say 5 points when you sign up. Each event you sign up to be notified of costs you a point. If you correctly report when one of the other events on the site happened in a timely matter, you earn points. 
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oditogre
Huh...that actually would be really handy.

Problems:

-How would you deal with people who aren't 'in the know' enough to earn back points?

-How would you prevent them just creating a new account to get more points?

-Chicken and Egg Problem: It's not reasonable to hire enough people to pre-verify that a post is correct in saying 'Event XYZ has just occurred'. The best solution, to my mind, is to allow the receiver ('wants-to-know person') to verify. How do you prevent people from 'griefing' by repeatedly saying a major event has just occurred, thus SMS spamming a bunch of people who want to know, say, when Spore is released? You could wait for multiple people to say something just happened, but then you create a sort of latency, especially for less-heavily-watched items, and you totally blow the chance to get inside scoops.

-Define 'timely manner'. And do you get points even if you're not the first to say that an event has occurred?

Your idea would be viable in terms of income, though, I would think. Charge
software companies to become members, and then create a few never-expiring
general-purpose event types for 'exploit found', 'POC posted', 'Code Stolen',
etc., while giving them, say, a 3-day advance before anybody else watching
those things or similar ones gets notified.

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palish
If people submit events which other people vote up or down then "x has
happened" simply becomes "x has 10 votes".

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tocomment
So it's like the probability that x has happened? That's an interesting way to
to do it.

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ltibb
I like this idea as well, especially as a facebook app. Use the Facebook api
to scrape together an initial group of events pertinent to an individual user
and have them mold it from there.

Problem: Right now when I want to know when something happens (new cd/movie
release) i go to a reliable source and I know with some degree of certianty
that that event will happen when they say it will. I give them some reasonable
leeway since its still a future event with numerous opportunities to miss the
date(later ship date, cancellation, etc.). However, when you tell someone an
event just happened or is happening now, you better be 90% correct or the tool
becomes an annoyance instead of useful.

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drm237
The real gem would be if you could find a way to figure out what they might
want to be notified about without them having to specifically request it. For
example, say I want to know when 24 is coming to DVD, but I've only used your
site once and I don't think to go and add it. Maybe you can use the Facebook
API, see that one of my favorite shows is 24, and then any new notifications
relating to 24 get directed to me. This is of course just one example.

Just a thought...

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jroes
This is interesting, and sounds a bit semantic web-ish even :) You could maybe
use something like Greenspun's Solar Magnitude Forum to find things that are
closer to your interests as well.

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louisadekoya
I think this is actually quite a good idea - better than truemors certainly. I
recently had an idea to notify people when new series of their favourite tv
shows hit the screens - I know there are usually many promos but for some
reason I still tend to miss them. What you are proposing takes the concept
beyond just TV shows and I think it could very likely work. I say go for it.

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tocomment
Hmm, that could be the motto: "EventKnower- It's better than Truemors!" :-)

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chaostheory
I take it you already got the domain name?

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tocomment
No, no domain name yet. Why do you ask?

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chaostheory
b/c if you don't grab it now (unless you were thinking to launching with a
different name) someone else will grab it (especially if there's a jerk
reading your post on yc news - hopefully not)

Being open with ideas is fine, b/c execution of an idea is hard (even with
"easy" ideas). Grabbing a domain name or even trademarking a name is a lot
easier.

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rms
Yeah, it's a really bad idea to post an unregistered domain name in a public
forum. Grab it right now, you can get the .net and .org later.

www.namecheap.com is my registrar of choice, $8.88 a year with free WhoisGuard
(anonymizes your whois information in a way that won't allow someone to steal
your domain).

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tocomment
That is a good deal. I'll use that in the future. I'd say there's only say, a
20% chance I'd want to use that name, and then there's only say a 30% chance
I'll do this idea, so I'm not sure if I'll buy it just yet.

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rms
It's worth paying the extra $.89 over GoDaddy just because the checkout
process isn't painful.

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tocomment
Do you guys have any ideas on how to market / promote something like this?

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mikesabat
I think a lot of the marketing has to do with the prodct and the interface. I
think this is something that you build first and then take it to sources - ie
- Paramount Movie Studio. Whenever a movie or TV DVD is released they let your
website know.

The marketing: On their 24 page "Want us to remind you as soon as 24 season 3
is on DVD? Get a free reminder with ____.com. As you grow build it out so that
any organization can customize for any product or event and then put it on
their site.

