

Ask HN: What are the current best solutions for the 30 YC 'ideas'? - FreeRadical

Please see http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html and feel free to add your own.<p>1. Spotify (for the music element)
2. Chrome
3. Twitter/BBC News
4. service-now.com
5. 37 signals
6. ??
7. ??
8. Match/Plentyoffish
9. Facebook
10. eBay
11. Google Docs/ Zoho
12. Adwords/Adsense
13. University of Phoenix
14. ?? 
15. ??
16. Bing
17. Paypal
18. ChromeOS
19. AWS/Rackspace
20. Thefind
21. Mint/Quickbooks
22. Google Docs/Zoho
23. ??
24. ??
25. Gumtree/Facebook
26. ??
27. ??
28. Gmail with filtering
29. Too many to list
30. ??
======
hga
10\. Auctions: <http://gunbroker.com/>, which was started immediately after
eBay wimped out on auctions having anything to do with firearms. I've bought
stuff on both and sold stuff on GunBroker.com and the latter is much better
and has several ideas worth using on most any online auction site.

One thing that might be hard to replicate: firearms, ammo, etc. are serious
things, e.g. you can't transfer a firearm across state lines without going
through a licensed dealer and getting a background check. In the cultural
sense reputation on GunBroker.com is treated very seriously; I'm not sure how
this could be replicated in other areas, including ones where prices of items
are lower.

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araneae
8\. OkCupid

I have several friends who have gotten an endless series of dates from there.
I've only met one person from OkCupid, but she was pretty amazing.

All the other sites I've tried (otakubooty, aff, cl, some other ones that have
already died) have been completely useless, except for some niche bdsm ones
^-^.

~~~
Alex3917
In my opinion CrazyBlindDate, which is run by OkCupid, is much better than the
main site. But only if you live in a major US City.

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ajt
An editable google doc for this:
[http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Af5maeCRtjlnZGhndGt3bXZfMm...](http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Af5maeCRtjlnZGhndGt3bXZfMmN2MzJyY2Nm&hl=en)

~~~
mechanical_fish
Very good -- the HN format is terribly suited to such a project.

~~~
yungchin
Actually, Google Docs is not too suitable for it either: you can add to the
list, but where do you leave comments for entries you disagree with, etc etc?
Would become a strange hybrid discussion split between HN and the Google
Doc...

This is one of those cases where I see real use for Google Wave.

------
iamelgringo
#3: New news

I'm a news hound. And, I started <http://Newsley.com> to try and find a
solution to the new news problem that I had. I picked financial and economic
news because it's an interest of mine that will hold my attention. Besides,
advertising rates are much better for financial and economic keywords than
they are for funny videos or cute cat pictures.

My hypothesis, social news sites have done a pretty good job of finding and
highlighting interesting and new content (Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, Digg,
Metafilter, etc..) But, I don't think that anyone has really done a good job
of offering great news recommendations yet. The solutions we've seen so far
are generally human editor (newspapers), moderators (slashdot), or
collaborative filtering (reddit, digg, HN).

My goal is to build a community of people interested in great financial and
economic news and analysis, and then try to build a great personalized news
recommendation engine for them.

There are other sites working on the news recommendation systems. Twitter sort
of fills that bill, MeHive has been trying a heavy indexing/algorithmic
approach, but I haven't really been happy with what the recommendations
they've been able to offer me yet.

Also, if any body else is doing news recommendations, ping me. I'd be really
interested in talking.

~~~
richardw
You sure those sites do collaborative filtering? AFAIK, the 'front page' is
the same for all, and real CF would show you a personalised page depending on
your tastes. Like movielens does for movies.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering>

~~~
iamelgringo
Collective Intelligence. My bad. I got a little algorithmically dyslexic.

------
danwolff
Over the last couple of months, I became involved with a nonprofit which is
taking a whack at #13, Online Learning. It is not technically the "current
best solution", since it is upcoming: <http://www.innovativeineducation.org>.
The website is admittedly rough, but this organization is initiating free
online accredited college courses. This spring semester will be for no credit
(Calc I and Organic Chem I), as it will be a trial for the technology. For-
credit courses are scheduled to be offered starting in the summer/fall, back-
dooring through community colleges until its own accreditation is achieved.
The idea is to start with Gen Ed type classes which can be taught online and
transferred to just about any school, and to offer more courses as the program
grows.

Since the endeavor is structured around corporate sponsorships, Innovative in
Education can afford to pay professors and graduate students appropriately to
create high quality content and instruct live online. No complicated login
process to access the live content; users can just tune into the classroom
page at class time, and view the embedded livestream. (Of course, content will
be archived as well, a la OCW).

Actually, on that note: there seem to be good streaming solutions for live
action video (high FPS, high compression) and for slides (low FPS, low
compression for detail clarity), but I have not found a solution that allows
the broadcaster to selectively switch between the two optimizations. If anyone
knows of such a streaming solution, please share. Thanks!

------
iamelgringo
16\. A form of search that depends on design.

The Android app, Google Goggles is really worth checking out. It really is a
phenomenal idea. I hope they work hard at refining it.

------
shaddi
28\. Unblab (<http://www.unblab.com>)

They seem promising (I know one of the founders personally) but things are
going slower than the impression I originally got. One of their products
(Gtriage) is already out though. Basically they're doing data mining on
people's inboxen.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Clickable: <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

------
jmonegro
17\. I think Square (<http://www.squareup.com>) qualifies. 19\. Heroku counts
23\. Powerset 30\. Builditwith.me (<http://www.builditwith.me>)

~~~
cabalamat
I'm not sure what problem Powerset is trying to solve. It seems to me that
they don't bring any extra functionality to searching Wikipedia with Google.
Maybe I have misunderstood their project...?

~~~
andrewcooke
you need to type in a whole sentence and then look at the results above the
traditional search results.

for example, for "what did andrew cooke do?" -
[http://www.powerset.com/explore/go/what-did-andrew-cooke-
do%...](http://www.powerset.com/explore/go/what-did-andrew-cooke-do%3F) \- the
third response is "designed an algorithm" (which is what i was looking for).

it's not wonderful, by any means, but that does illustrate the semantic-ness
of what they are doing (imho).

------
bokonist
1) Rhapsody (yeah, I know hackers are supposed to hate DRM, Windows, and Real
Networks, but I really like being able to pay $10 a month and listen to any
song, ever made, instantly).

3) news.ycombinator.com The comment section is almost invariably better than
95% of articles in the NYTimes.

4) Google Apps

5) Salesforce

6) HelpSpot?

7) An app that could automatically convert a web site created in Dreamweaver
or some custom solution into a wordpress blog.

13) wikipedia

20) google search, site:news.ycombinator.com best laptop (etc)

22) DabbleDB

------
JeffJenkins
While I'm probably a bit biased since I work for one of their competitors
(shopwiki), I'm not sure if TheFind counts as an answer to 20. As far as I can
tell they don't have any shopping guides, or at the very least not ones which
are being made obvious to a user who is trying to find out what they want. I'm
not going to remove them since I have a conflict of interest, but I'm going to
add Kaboodle which seems to be doing the most interesting work in the shopping
space.

------
rodyancy
1\. Avatar, or other movies that can't be fully experienced without 3D or
other tech that is only available in theaters. For music additional offerings
like I Am T-Pain.

~~~
andr
You mean a $5 pair of red and green glasses? 3D movies for home consumption
have been available for a while [http://www.amazon.com/Coraline-Blu-ray-Combo-
Digital-Copy/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Coraline-Blu-ray-Combo-Digital-
Copy/dp/B00288KNJU) and 3D HDTV is expected to start in late 2010.

------
richardburton
Interesting that "6. More variants of CRM" hasn't had much attention.

------
cabalamat
Fixes to these problems needn't be startups. Part of the fix for problem 1 is
the international Pirate Party movement.

~~~
wlievens
Hardly. Part of public awareness around the issues, sure.

~~~
cabalamat
It isn't just public awareness, it's about getting the law changed. The
Swedish Pirate Party got 7% of the vote last June. If this can be replicated
throughout the world (particularly in Europe, where the Pirate movement is
strongest), there will be 2 effects:

1\. in some countries, PP may hold the balance of power in parliament, and
will thus be able to join whichever coalition offers the best concessions to
their points of view. This may well be the outcome of the next general
election in Sweden.

2\. other parties, seeing how many votes PP is getting, and they are
potentially losing, will tend to move their policies to what PP endorses. A
historical example of this sort of process working is after the 1989 European
election in the UK, where the Green Party got 15% of the vote; the main
parties immediately started copying their polices, or at least giving lip
service to them. When Pirate Parties start doing well in elections, we are
likely to see the same effect.

~~~
wlievens
Sure, except that "green" is something many people are interested in, whereas
copyright law is a narrow issue that only artists, distributers and nerds care
about.

------
bpick
Yourgrounds.com is in beta right now, and should be a better way to use
classifieds than craigslist.

------
flog
21\. xero.com

------
fleaflicker
I think aol is positioned well for #3.

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/one-vision-for-the-
new-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/one-vision-for-the-new-aol-
redefine-online-content-as-print-magazines-fail/)

~~~
yannis
They are very well positioned and have the funds. Somehow though they will
need to connect all these 'Toyota' brands. I don't think they have as yet
managed to do this.

------
quantize
13\. MIT Open Courseware

------
zackattack
30\. CustomerFind.com

Disclaimer: Owned and operated by me.

