
Ask YC: What are you working on these days? - raw--
What are you working on these days?<p>I just met my co-founder, and we are working out the concept for this product idea I've had for a while, to help with email overload. Lots of fun!
======
scumola
* Still trying to improve the <http://mediawombat.com> crawler

* Working on better pre-caching scripts/SQL for <http://mediawombat.com> search results

* Working on how to charge a company that wants to use the <http://mediawombat.com> API

* Coming up with ideas for a back-end for a new auction-based concept that my friend and co-founder has come up with

* Coming up with ideas for mixing/matching data when Google releases their RSS feeds for google searches

* Trying to master CSS and transparency to make pretty boxes and stuff. I'm not very artistic. :)

* Writing a play-by-email and play-by-web strategy game

* Coming up with a way to keep a linux configuration on my laptop so when I do a fresh-install of Fedora 10 next month, I don't have to re-create all of my custom configurations from scratch (again)

* Thinking of cool ways to use the WiiMote

* Setting up my father's website (has an idea about improving K-12 education)

* Keeping my older kid from injuring my younger kid

* Keeping the wife happy

* oh, and my actual paying day job :)

~~~
nailer
Dude what's your website? You should include a link to it so we know what it
is :^).

------
rickmode
I'm working on an open platform for cloud storage. Imagine something like
MobileMe, Microsoft Strata, or Carbonite, but without your data being trapped
by a single vendor.

At the moment we are considering Celeste as the basis for this platform.
<http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/celeste/>

I've got the partner (alexkravets), now we're looking for funding to mitigate
the risk of having no day job.

We don't have a write-up online at the moment, but we firmly believe in the
"ideas are cheap; execution is everything" philosophy, so we'll answer any
questions.

~~~
unalone
Question: how do you plan on making things sync as effortlessly as they do on
MobileMe? I'm sure it can be done - look at Dropbox - but do you have any
ideas on how to beat something that's built in to the system?

~~~
rickmode
Initially we'll side-step that issue.

First we'll build the equivalent of an online mountable disk so it'll be a
natural fit for online storage/backup and sharing.

Building applications on top of this storage layer such as photo sharing and
syncing will be next.

As for how to compete, the magic sauce is openness on two fronts. Bandwidth
and storage are commodities, and we want this storage tier to be a commodity
marketplace as well. The storage providers will compete for end users while
cooperating to store and serve up data. A user can switch providers and retain
the same data in the system (cloud).

Along with an "open" system, most (if not all) of the software will be open
source. We envision a small hub of centralized services (identity and such), a
storage provider ring, and the end users.

So basically we'll beat the big guys by creating an open system with open
software. Our company, then, will be taking a small slice of a big pie, rather
than on these players head-on.

~~~
unalone
_Our company, then, will be taking a small slice of a big pie, rather than on
these players head-on._

Very nice way of thinking about it. Good luck.

------
toby
* Working on my second book for O'Reilly

* Speaking about, and generally pushing for more interest in Open Data

* Putting my entire life in a semantic graph: <http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=73>

* Trying to figure out what programmers can do about risk management failures

~~~
jgrahamc
Working on my first book for O'Reilly

~~~
DanielBMarkham
What about?

~~~
jgrahamc
It's a travel guide for people who love science and technology. It contains
128 places where you can see really great bits of science or technology
history, and it explains the science behind the place.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Sounds neat! I'll look for it.

------
truebosko
Unfortunately I don't have the time to do anything too crazy but here's what I
currently got going:

\- Just about finished a small 2 week project that will allow indie game
developers a place to host their games, upload media, and give status updates.
Been done before (Infact, I made one of first incarnations the style of
service about 6 years ago) but I need something to do with my www.gamecake.net
domain and this was a fun way to learn more about django and give a little
back to the community I no longer belong to due to time restraints.

\- Starting up a video cooking blog. My side passion is cooking and I would
like to create videos of my recipes. I'm celiac/dairy-free so I have a niche
to focus on. I've got a good camera now, and will probably shoot my first real
episode this week now that I have some recipes nailed down strong.

Not looking to make money on either of these, just for fun and learning. Plus
they look good on a resume in my opinion.

------
tocomment
Working on a place for hackers and artists to find short gigs:
<http://gigbayes.nfshost.com>.

I aggregate all the gigs sites I can find e.g., craigslist (all of them),
sitepoint, elance, etc, and then use Bayesian filtering to bring the most
relevant gigs for you to the top.

------
robdor
Making online customer support easy with Candlelight --
<http://www.candlelightapp.com>

I've been working on it nights and weekends. Great respite from some of the
less than pleasant activities of coding at my day job.

~~~
greaterscope
sounds interesting and probably something I could use since I plan to offer
email-only support at first for my online storefront product.

i'll be keeping tabs on you guys. :-)

------
maryrosecook
<http://theperceptron.com> \- astute music recommendations

And a site where you create your audio autobiography by uploading mp3s. Hello,
RIAA.

~~~
lliiffee
I got: Radiohead -> The Beach Boys

You should remove that my any means necessary.

I think the UI is pretty nice, actually. Very functional, feels like a "tool".
Don't lose that when you make it more fancy.

~~~
jfornear
I would disagree, Pet Sounds is one of the greatest, earliest experimental pop
albums ever.

------
greaterscope
I've been working on an online storefront product that should serve as a great
starting point for web developers that need to roll some custom functionality
for clients. All text can be multi-lingual, support for complex product
options and pricing, multiple storefronts using the same code, and more.
nothing to show yet, but more info here <http://greaterscope.com>

~~~
tocomment
How will you find the customers for it?

~~~
greaterscope
A friend of mine runs <http://www.udm4.com> and we've talked about running an
ad on there since its primary audience is developers (nevermind the fact that
I don't really like the menu). Other than that, try to partner with good
development shops that do online stores ... I have a few in mind.

Any other ideas, besides taking out the obvious ad on google? I really don't
want to screw with trying to get high keyword ranking via the SEO black-magic
route.

------
RKlophaus
Great question :)

Mostly working on Stitcho.com (<http://stitcho.com>)

Stitcho is a desktop notification widget for your website, with support for
Windows and Mac. Add desktop alerts to your web app in less than 30 minutes.

Also, trying to build an Erlang community in the DC area (search for Erlang on
meetup.com)

Finally, putting together a presentation for BarCampDC this Saturday.

~~~
rrival
We've been doing something like this with Growl - how does it compare?

~~~
RKlophaus
Stitcho is basically "Growl for the Web", but NOT in the sense of being
another Javascript-to-Growl bridge (a few of those exist out there,
protoGrowl, Growl mootools, etc.)

Rather, Stitcho lets you send notifications from server side code that are
delivered to your users via the Stitcho widget. The Stitcho server sits in the
middle to route and deliver the notifications.

Also, Stitcho provides widgets for Mac and Windows. (The Mac version can use
Growl if it's available.)

Does that answer your question? If not, please clarify.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Any plans for a Linux Gtk/Qt client?

------
AlexeyMK
* look.fo (<http://look.fo>) / str8.to (<http://str8.to>) - a sort of insta-tinyurl that uses Google search results to create on the fly links. For example, see <http://look.fo/hacker-news> and <http://str8.to/hacker-news>).

Q: Isn't this just a shortcut for
(<http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news>)?

A: Absolutely, but the shortcut makes it viable to create on-the-fly links to
search results (or use str8.to's I'm Feeling Lucky option) in IM
conversations, or on twitter, or in emails (I recently told a client to
<http://look.fo/how-to-use-ftp>) without having to go look up a good answer.

Stuff like that. Anyways :).

~~~
bkudria
Neat!

------
sreitshamer
Working on a desktop app that keeps your photos safe (through sync/backup),
and allows collaboration on a bucket of photos across multiple computers.
Photos are stored in a peer-to-peer version control system like git.
<http://www.thephotothing.com>

------
YuriNiyazov
Working as a researcher on the DARPA URGENT project.

~~~
Shamiq
How can I get to do something similar?

DARPA has all of the amazing stuff coming out of it...

~~~
nostrademons
A friend of mine's working on a bunch of DARPA projects, and his path was:

1\. Attend a top liberal-arts college (CS, Amherst)

2\. Get master's degree from top research university (HCI, Carnegie Mellon)

3\. Work for General Dynamics

4\. Stick around long enough to get promoted, kick butt, etc.

5\. Profit!!!

BTW, he said that chances are, whatever the next big thing is will come out of
DARPA. His bet was on pervasive computing - DARPA's apparently doing a lot
with computers in clothes, computers in canteens, computers in backpacks,
computers in visors, basically computers everywhere. The logic being that most
of their troops are getting deployed to inhospitable environments (Iraq,
Afghanistan, etc.) and if they can monitor environmental conditions for things
like excessive heat, sandstorms, laser sniper sights, explosive residues, they
can save lots of soldiers' lives. And of course, if it trickles down to
consumer uses it could completely change how people use computers.

------
siong1987
Just finished a simple command-based search engine by using Yahoo APIs -
<http://geeky.siong1987.com>.

Now, I am working on trakify.com. It is not up yet. Need a partner
desperately.. LOL...

------
ep
Working on <http://www.roomorama.com>, a short term rental marketplace.

------
known
I am setting up a Bank.

~~~
rms
Seriously?

~~~
kirubakaran
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=316769>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=312260>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283813> <\- answering why he is a
programmer

:-)

------
Anon84
Building an infrastructure to model the spreading of epidemics (SARS, Bird
Flu, etc...) on a global scale.

------
jah
* Porting my chess problem website (<http://chesstr.com>) from Rails to Django

* Working on a new version of my chess engine. I've had various versions over the years with the strongest playing around ELO 2300 (master level)

* Working on a chess engine that uses non-traditional searching/AI techniques. I'd be absolutely thrilled to get this thing playing as well as a child.

* Teaching Intro to Computer Science at the local university - a tremendous experience.

* Learning Doc Watson's version of Deep River Blues on my guitar

------
steveplace
Just started a video blog about stock options. Pretty fun so far.

www.investingwithoptions.com

~~~
LukeG
Do you know Zecco? They're always looking for good content, and I'm happy to
put you in touch with someone there if you're interested.

Disclaimer: didn't [listen] to your videos cause the I/O board on my MBP is
fried and audio output doesn't work.

~~~
steveplace
I've been a big fan of Zecco's business model. I'd be more than happy to
generate exclusive content for major providers. Any networking you can provide
would be greatly appreciated.

My main brokerage is thinkorswim and that's the platform I do screencasts
from.

Hopefully (crossing fingers) when I get some good traffic going I can get some
advertising contracts with some financial service companies.

------
EliAndrewC
My friends and I run the Music and Gaming Festival (MAGFest:
<http://magfest.org/> ) and for the past few years I've been tinkering with a
webapp to help us get more organized. I've been to a lot of conventions,
mostly anime conventions, and no one has a good integrated system for tracking
attendees, staffers, shifts, events, inventory, budget, etc.

My webapp does all of this, and I've spent a lot of my free time lately making
the code cleaner and easier to read. After the next MAGFest in early January
I'm planning on releasing this webapp as an open source project on Sourceforge
or somewhere similar.

I think a lot of other conventions might find this useful if they can find a
programmer or sysadmin to make the small changes necessary to adapt the code
for their purposes. I'm excited that some of our staffers are already planning
on recommending this system to some of the other conventions they staff.

------
petercooper
I've launched (with Dan Grigsby) a blog for iPhone application developers -
<http://www.mobileorchard.com/> \- or follow us at
<http://twitter.com/MobileOrchard> :)

------
greaterscope
Damn, people are still commenting here and I forgot to mention the non-
commercial stuff I'm doing. It all lives at <http://greaterscope.net>. I'm
taking a stab at:

* Creating a foreign key based ORM for PHP5 * Creating a PHP5 database abstraction layer that's easier to use than PDO or the alternatives * An abstraction layer for html forms that generates, validates and even supports deeply nested "arrays of fields" * A console terminal multiplexer (GNU screen, but split-screen) in C for Linux

Disclaimer: There are existing projects similar to many of the above, but I'm
striving to make my APIs cleaner, code readable and more concise. Plus I enjoy
learning by doing.

I'm also extremely interested in wireless mesh ... anyone working on that?

------
teej
Finishing my distributed memory list caching system. Think Memcached, but
instead of storing an object, you store an array, and can CRUD it in an atomic
way. Fast, simple, non-persistent. Usage case: caching a one-to-many
relationship in a relational database.

------
Darmani
I'm currently working on a system flexible to play the card game Mao and every
reasonable rule that could be made for it online. I'm also working on a nice,
comfortable, abstract way to create Turing machines in Arc, with the ultimate
goal being to have one simulate a von Neumann machine (namely by having it
able to interpret a sizable subset of the machine language for a modern
processor). I've taken a long break from both to work on my college
applications, though.

To cut down on my total workload (and so my mother wouldn't complain when I
worked on these projects), I'm using both for two different projects for the
IB diploma program. As a result, I have to do the Mao-playing system in Java
though.

------
zacharydanger
Working on my startup, <http://taskgravy.com>. A project management /
collaboration suite that doesn't neglect the analytical side of project
management.

And also looking for a permanent gig, because I just got laid off. :]

~~~
nailer
Best. Name. Ever.

------
pwoods
A LAMP & AJAX driven framework to assist small businesses who want put their
data online. It is also good at giving startups backend functionality to their
databases so that they can concentrate on the client front end.

~~~
tocomment
Sounds cool. How will you sell/market it?

------
djm
I'm also at the concept stage for a site providing some tools to help UK
residents manage their finances with emphasis on debts.

I have considered this idea a few times over the past couple of years as I
work for an organisation that gives me a great deal of exposure to people in
debt and the methodology typically used to assist them to address those debts.

In the past I have ignored the idea as I considered it technically
uninteresting but I have now found myself in the position where I am (a)
wanting to jump into the startup game, (b) have relevant industry experience,
and (c) it's the right time (credit crunch).

------
DanielBMarkham
I have a web application that manages agile/scrum projects for large
organizations. I've beta-tested it at a large corp, but they're not going to
be able to use it for a while due to legal reasons.

So right now I'm finishing up version 1 this week and deciding whether to 1)
start marketing version 1, 2) start on version 2 and then market, 3) wait for
large corp to come around so I can continue usability testing and making the
product better (it's clunky now), 4) Look for a partner and do any of 1-3

I'm not sure which way to go, to be honest. Anybody got any ideas?

------
LukeG
Working on Job Alchemist (meetings, Startuply, JobSyndicate, fundraising(??)).
Trying to figure out how to get smart kids to work for startups and cool
companies in general rather than for the man. Thankfully, the Wall Street
meltdown will help, especially as it works its way into consulting. Get a real
job, squares (or "suits," as fallentimes would say).

'Bout to lease some space at a pretty rad SoMa office loft, to be joined by
Eddie of Picwing - what's his HN name?

Realizing it's way more fun when the odds are stacked against you.

~~~
edawerd
his HN name is 'edawerd'

Agreed...way more fun when the odds are stacked against you. See you in the
office!

------
arthurk
<http://code.google.com/p/yml2tex/>

A little python script to generate a LaTeX beamer presentation with some
default theming/styling/etc. added. I tend to forget the LaTeX syntax because
I don't use it very often. However, I really like doing LaTeX beamer
presentations so I wrote a little script which basically provides me with
something to start with.

------
guruz
Working on a P2P app for LAN/VPN. See <http://p300.eu/>

It is a "project" though and not a "startup" or "company". :)

------
kaens
Working on:

* a web-site-as-service for customizing installation / install cds for different flavors of Ubuntu.

* a customizable tetris-like game editor done in javascript, allowing people to create their own shapes / rules / etc.

* slowly making an emacs-like editor in python

* working on a web based store for the various media produced by the house I live in

------
jfornear
I'm working on <http://rawberry.tv> \- somewhat of a platform for creating
your own music video mix reel. It's not even close to being done, but I'm
hoping to finish it by the time I graduate to help me land a job or something.

~~~
jeffgreco
It's a nice looking design - what sort of functionality are you rolling in?

~~~
jfornear
Thanks, I think it's going to be fairly straightforward with twitter-like
functionality at first. I'm not really planning to introduce anything
technically groundbreaking. I just need to have a project to work on.

------
plinkplonk
Besides the day job (Program Manager),

(a) Working through Cormen et al's Algorithms book. (b) Trying to learn how 3D
game engines work by building one (in java). Rendering is completely in
software. (c) Working through Rudin's "Principles of Mathematical Analysis"

------
fallentimes
Concerts, theater, <http://news.ticketstumbler.com> and some other fun stuff
for the <http://ticketstumbler.com> mothership

------
rgrieselhuber
Working on the next version of Gridjit (<http://gridjit.com>), which is
turning out to be even better - and bigger - than I first imagined.

------
jakecarpenter
Wow, pretty cool to see other people have a lot of irons in the fire too.
Working on a (yet another) better financial management tool, raising a
newborn, and the day job :).

------
tricky
1) a new/obscure music blog - www.audioindie.com 2) a data tracking app for
medical stats 3) clinical trial data management 4) getting my car ready for a
DE event.

~~~
delano
What is a DE event?

~~~
tricky
Whoops, sorry. Driver's Education - it teaches you how to drive at speed on a
race track.

------
catone
Blogging at SitePoint.com, switching RailsForum.com over to vBulletin (no,
Beast won't cut it), and working on a utility for educators (K-12 and post
secondary).

------
hooande
* real time news aggregation and moderation

* sports data modeling

* desktop notification app

------
ezmobius
Working on the following open source projects: Merb Rubinius Nanite Vertebra

Also working on some top secret engine yard projects that I will be able to
talk about soon.

------
brent
Researching statistical machine learning algorithms.

------
ejs
Still working on my website <http://overtrainer.com/>

Doing other random hardware as well

------
sfamiliar
making online dating reasonable @ flowmingle.com. the balance of structure and
expression is a challenge, but a fun one.

~~~
greaterscope
is anyone aware of any non-dating sites that do a good job of helping you meet
other like-minded people?

~~~
fallentimes
posterous.com

linkedin.com (groups - I'm just as surprised as you)

------
dpapathanasiou
A tag aggregator for blog/rss content: <http://www.seeksift.com/>

------
btw0
I am working hard on pptimes.com every night, it's another next generation
news site, I will announce here when done.

------
shafqat
Fundraising for NewsCred! It's actually fun and not as depressing as all the
blog posts make it out to be.

~~~
fallentimes
I agree. So many free breakfasts, lunches, dinners, beers and even paintball
too. All while meeting some very intelligent people.

~~~
fbailey
paintball?

~~~
fallentimes
Yeah Battery bussed ~70 us an hour away for an all day paintball/beer
drinking/BBQ. It was awesome. They even gave us custom masks to keep.

------
guitsaru
<http://redlists.com>

A better methods for managing mailing lists.

------
okeumeni
I’m working on a great Google map application, that the most I can say for now
(stealth rule).

------
KLAW
A kick-ass reputation monitoring tool... once I find the right lead developer
/ partner ; )

~~~
tyohn
I think I like that idea. Now just add in a kick-ass reputation fixer module
and you're set :)

~~~
KLAW
LOL, the spec doesn't cover that I'm afraid, though it would be a killer
feature. I can think of various politicians that might want it...

~~~
tomjen
Woha, you have a spec - I figured there wouldn't be any of that on Hacker
News.

~~~
KLAW
Don't worry, it's an agile spec. Very loose. Bullet points are amazing things.

------
rokhayakebe
Video communication, Mobile Communications...

------
timcederman
Integrating www.trovix.com to www.monster.com

------
davidkellis
A Masters degree in CS at Texas Tech.

