
Startup idea list - deltapoint
Post novel startup ideas as comments and see how many karma points it receives. Who knows, one might be developed and you can take credit for thinking of the idea first.
======
mdemare
Oh, one more! A web consultancy that advises start-ups about i18n,
translation, local laws, cultural differences, etc, so they wouldn't think:
"Foreign countries are scary, let's conquer the domestic market first." Then
we, the Dutch, could actually have used great sites like Amazon, Facebook,
Ebay, and Craigslist instead of the terrible knock-offs that won here, solely
because they were available earlier.

Seriously, Europe is a huge market, and if you wait until you're big in the
U.S., you'll be too late. It's the internet - the rest of the world is just
one hop away!

~~~
falsestprophet
what are the dutch knockoffs? (so we can have a look)

~~~
JohnnyRainbow
Amazon: www.bol.com

EBay: www.marktplaats.nl

Facebook: www.hyves.nl

~~~
mdemare
We don't have a craigslist competitor, and craigslist covers Amsterdam, but
_only in English_.

~~~
sabat
Oh, like you guys don't all speak English anyway. :-) C'mon, admit it: you
only speak Dutch for sport.

------
staunch
Here's one I _wish_ someone would take from me and spend lots of time
perfecting. I've been trying to get around to it, but have other stuff to do.
It's on my "fun weekend hacks" list.

I have a commute that's about 30 minutes each way and 1 hour lunch every day.
That's two hours I want to fill by reading printouts of interesting text and
listening to interesting audio on my iPod.

For me PG essays would be the ultimate example of texts I want to read and
Venture Voice (podcast) would be the ultimate example of what I want to listen
to (others would obviously have different taste). I've gone through that stuff
repeatedly and _tons_ of other similar content, making it difficult to find
enough new stuff to keep me entertained.

A site that let me assemble text-printout "playlists" and iPod playlists for a
week or more in advance would be great. It requires measuring or guessing how
long a given text (or book) is to see how long it would last and organizing
the audio into chunks that are optimal for my given time allotments.

It seems kind of a weird maybe or niche, but it arose from a real problem I
have and I think it could be pretty big. There has to be more people like me
that want really targeted text and audio content to consume on their commute.

~~~
mikesabat
Man,

This is exactly what I am building - a website to create On-Demand Magazines
from Internet content, like PG essays.

The splash page will be up in a day or 2 and I'll be collecting email
addresses and feedback for the beta test.

The name of the site is ShelfMade.net. As soon as I have ANYTHING up I will
get the link to YC. BTW if you can do this in a weekend, please get in touch.

------
andyn
These have been floating about in my head for a while. Mostly social web sites
but with a twist:

mmmbop: A Hanson based social networking site. Haven't quite worked out how
this would work.

pandr: A social networking site for bears.

prson: A social networking site for like-minded people to organise crimes.

Feel free to use them yourself.

~~~
altay
prson is like my friend's idea -- an online marketplace for the contract
killing industry. connect hits and hitmen. =P

~~~
sbraford
an illicit social network / market could be huge.

host it in Sweden / Amsterdam / offshore (or wherever it's legal).

not worth the hassle from the feds though =)

~~~
altay
definitely. another friend suggested a facebook app that helps you find drugs.

i have some sketchy friends.

~~~
chengmi
Too bad you can't use Google Maps for that:
<http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html>

Read the last bullet point...

------
adsyoung
Macro news. I get the news in my RSS feeds and its damn near useless.

These events tell me almost nothing about the world. The signal to noise ratio
is not good. I don't want to know that another 6 people in iraq have been
killed in some incident, I want to know whether the situation there is getting
better or worse, is it happening in a new area than before, does it involve a
new group of people...big picture stuff.

This is the kind of info you typically get from reading feature length
editorials but I don't have the time.

I want big picture news and global trends, complete with graphs and
visualisations to give me perspective on an issue, delivered to me in an RSS
feed.

Also I want to be able to subscribe and unsubscribe to different issues that I
wish to follow from start to end.

Already exist?

~~~
mdemare
For big picture news I find nothing beats The Economist. No more kidnapped
babies or small plane crashes! I've stopped reading (online) newspapers, and I
don't miss them at all.

For subscribing to different issues - interesting! I'd like that too. In
theory, you could subscribe to the RSS of the history page of
wikinews/wikipedia. You'd get all the updates, but I'm not sure how useful or
reader-friendly that is in practice.

~~~
adsyoung
Yeah, I'm mainly ranting at my feeds.

To some degree I'm wishing for a new style of journalism. Or at the least
journalists actually learning to write headlines that make any sense and are
useful.

The startup ideas there are:

\- Subscribing to specific issues that you want to keep track of over time is
something I want to see way more of.

\- Sites that use data visualisations to increase understanding and
perspective of...anything really, is something I've been thinking about. Think
the world would be a better place if people had perspective and we have access
to a lot of data now to play with.

~~~
far33d
A gripe... Journalists don't write headlines. Editors do.

------
mdemare
Location based gaming: playing games while moving around in your town with an
iphone-like device (and having your location _matter_ in-game.) You could port
any kind of game to this concept: counterstrike, racing, even monopoly. Or
pac-man, chasing your friends around the block. Or Sokoban, pushing giant
boulders through Fifth Avenue.

I had this idea six years ago. I'm appalled that it still hasn't happened. Of
course, very few devices have GPS chips, and operators are wary of sharing the
location of their customers with random companies. But still!

Anyway, Loopt is a step in the right direction.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_game>

~~~
chaostheory
already has multiple implementations: [http://www.in-
duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_g...](http://www.in-
duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_games.php)

there's one not listed, that's a variant of pokemon; pretty fun I forget the
name (when I saw it, it was only available in japan - though the company is
French)

~~~
mdemare
Well, I know people are experimenting. But who will come up with the first big
hit? I'd buy a compatible phone just to play.

~~~
chaostheory
there are already location based hit games... just not in the US.

This will probably stay the same for at least a few more years. This is due to
a dif in culture. In most places in the US (aside from NY), most people have
room and time to relax at home ( = using wii, 360, or PC for games). Until
iphone and treo (and even now) most people don't really use their mobile
phones for much... the reasons go on and on...

------
mstevens
A better email client - automatic classification of incoming mail,
understanding mailing list headers, reminding me to add attachments if I've
said "see attached", understanding bounce messages and tracking them against
that address in my contacts list ("You're trying to email <foo>. I see that
didn't work last time. Please check the address is correct."). etc.

~~~
mdemare
If you make a better webmail-client, make switching easy! Allow me to give
your site a try with my current archive of (gmail) messages and contacts, and
keep gmail up-to-date, so I can switch back if I decide (and I'm a pessimist)
that your service isn't good enough.

------
sbraford
Problem Scenario:

I'm a hacker. That's just how I roll. Last night I built a "digg/reddit for
pictures" type of site. No sweat. But now I need someone to
maintain/market/add content / etc. It's a huge pain, and I'd much rather stick
to coding.

What would be nice:

Some kind of site/forum/network/etc that connects hacktrepreneurs with
talented and/or cheap marketing people. (sometimes you get what you pay for;
sometimes the work is just not that hard)

~~~
mpc
Interesting, basically the opposite of rent-a-coder type sites

~~~
dpapathanasiou
FindaBusinessModel.com ?

GetMeClients.com ?

HowCanIMakeMoney.com ?

------
Hexayurt
A really good quality __standard __CSS layout.

I don't mean the stylesheets - no, those come later - no, I mean a really
good, one size genuinely does fit all, semantic HTML layout. Does blogs, does
galleries, does comments, does discussions, in a single well thought out
semantic HTML format.

Then you have a library of CSS templates that people can use. And people can
upload new templates. And each template gets checked, to make sure that it
represents each element properly, and works across browsers (yep, that's a
validator).

The business model is this: advertising on the template inspection pages, so
that the "greek" text on the layout pages is all advertising.

Advertising is split with the authors of the pages _which are downloaded_ \-
you copy the CSS to yer drive (downloading the zip file of the CSS + images)
and the author of the template gets a cut.

How do you prevent fake downloads distorting the figures? Up to you, but I
think you can filter based on IPs.

But the real key is that semantic HTML on the front end, because once you have
that, it's _easy_ to do the rest. But that part is a genuine hardness.

Or you could, you know, write the software for this:

<http://disastr.org>

~~~
joshwa
<http://code.google.com/p/blueprintcss/> ?

------
mpfefferle
This may be more of a pipe dream than a viable idea, but I'd like to see
someone come up with a new model for an insurance company where everyone's
interests are more aligned. For example, a health insurance company that paid
doctors a dividend on the long term health of their patients minus costs
instead of per procedure. If it worked, doctors and patients would be the ones
balancing the effectiveness of treatments vs costs rather than an insurance
bureaucracy.

Note that to prevent doctors from working with only healthy patients, they'd
be paid out for improvements in health rather than absolute health.

~~~
euccastro
I think I read somewhere that in China doctors's salaries are, or used to be,
linked to the healthy days per year of their 'customers'.

~~~
mdemare
Measuring performance doesn't work, Joel says:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/July2002.html>

~~~
iamwil
I think it's both Joe Krause and Max Levin that both quote the HP founder
that, "You make what you measure"

The problem is that sometimes it's not obvious what you measure, since what
you might be interested is something vague like "effectiveness" or "progress".
And, like all pattern classification problems, if you pick features that don't
give a good signal to noise ratio, your assessment could be way off.

Even worse when that being measured knows what's being measured. A feedback
loop, if you will. And thus, the fact that you observed something changes it,
which sways the results from if you didn't measure it. Sounds a little bit
like photons in physics, but I'm guessing photons work off of different
principles.

Joel is merely saying that you should be careful of what you measure, because
some metrics (lines of code, hours work) aren't indicative of what you're
really trying to figure out (progress, effectiveness).

~~~
iamwil
when I say photons, I mean, using photos to measure the position of a
particle.

------
mdemare
A social music site / including music client and music store for classical
music. Both last.fm and iTunes suck for classical music, which has a
completely different set of concepts from pop music. Composers, conductors,
orchestras, choirs, movements, etc. It's a smaller market, and the people are
less technically inclined, but they're richer and less likely to pirate music.

~~~
mdemare
Oh, why a social music site? Because discovering new (to you) music is a
harder problem than playing, organizing or buying music.

~~~
dyu
I was thinking of something like that, but I am not familiar with the
copyright laws etc even for test listening music. How does last.fm deal with
that? Loyalty fees to the big four?

~~~
greendestiny
I believe playing a 30 second clip is considered fair use.

------
Goladus
I'm writing a practice app, which was my second idea but I think I have a
better chance of getting a version 1 done quickly. (Not planning on applying
to YC this round. I may be ready by next summer though)

Basically, it's something about MMORPGs that's never been done quite right.
I'm sick of trying to explain how it should work, and want to show people
instead.

~~~
alex_c
Well, I'm curious. Want to try explaining anyway? :)

~~~
Goladus
'Tradeskill' engines don't really reward creativity. With some minor
exceptions here and there, they all follow the model of:

(combine X Y Z) -> ItemXYZ, where X, Y, and Z are constants and ItemXYZ is an
element in a (relatively small) finite set of predetermined items.

Instead of adventuring to obtain ItemXYZ, you adventure to obtain X, Y, and Z
component pieces that you combine to get ItemXYZ, assuming you have enough
skill. It feels sort of silly that way. The actual artisan, the guy who
combines X, Y, and Z to get ItemXYZ, is not really creative. All he's doing is
following a predetermined recipe and applying the skill he got by doing
hundreds of mindless combines.

Blizzard's answer to this problem was to shift the focus from item creation to
collecting ingredients. They made sure it was fun to gather X, Y, and Z,
without just making X, Y, and Z exclusively monster loot. Compared to some
other games, WoW's engine was also simpler. Blizzard's solution worked, but
only because they sidestepped the core problem.

Tradeskilling appeals to people because it's a creative activity. Players want
to be able to feel pride in the stuff they can make. The result is
disappointing. Imagination picks up the slack, the novelty wears off after a
few hundred clicks, and unless you're addicted to gaining the next level; you
aren't going to bother. The way it works now, it winds up only really
appealing to people who enjoy organizing things.

From what I've read, Second Life is the opposite. Gamers don't like Second
Life, because there's no consistent, professionally-crafted fantasy world to
give meaning to anything. It's completely open-ended, allowing for lots of
creativity, but what's the point? Obviously plenty of people find a point to
SL, I'm just saying this what the typical WoW or EQ or FFXI or DAoC player
thinks when they see second life.

I've only heard of two other games with interesting tradeskill engines. I
wasn't able to play either of them, so I don't know how similar they are to
what I'm going for. One was Horizons, which tanked almost immediately; the
other was Star Wars Galaxies, which suffered from being inappropriate for the
mainstream Star Wars audience. I say 'suffered' because even though the game
was actually doing quite well, it never came near its potential given the
franchise name. But whatever the reason, the game was overhauled and the
original SWG is no longer available.

~~~
bct
So what's the solution?

(ah, this article describes Horizons' system:
<http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/378/378346p1.html> )

~~~
Goladus
That sounds pretty close to what I'm going for, actually. The solution is, of
course, to define a set of building blocks that is orthogonal but easy to use,
so that clever artisans will be able to combine in many different ways. (like
the 25 different blades, with 25 different handles, etc from the article). My
ideas are a little different, but mostly in the details and what sort of
controls I'm hoping to give the artisans.

------
mdemare
A social fashion site. Categorize your entire wardrobe with photos, favorite
brand, sizes, date of purchase, photos of you wearing combinations, links to
friends, that kind of stuff. If girls would program, such a site would have
been invented around 1997 - instead we got slashdot.

~~~
rms
I think there is a YC funded company doing this already, I'm sure someone here
will remember the name.

My fashion idea involves you being presented with a bunch of different outfits
and picking which ones you like to train a recommendation engine. Then, the
site recommends complete in-season outfits (with affiliate links)

~~~
iamwil
Dammit, hook that crap up to my closet, so it prepares an outfit for me to
wear every morning, instead of having to fumble around for that crap when I
just woke up. If I don't like it, I can say, "another suggestion!"

And allow it to order one new outfit every 4-6 months based on which outfits
I've been wearing, so I don't have to go to the mall to buy clothes.

~~~
chaostheory
i actually suggested this idea 2 years ago to the devs at delicious monster as
a product similar to their delicious library (since their product already
supporting lending, isight, cool cataloging, ...)... no bites

------
DanielBMarkham
A program that scours the obituaries to reverse-engineer email addresses and
online identities so that people that you've met online can find out you've
croaked.

~~~
ivankirigin
the list would be more valuable to those looking to steal identities.

How do you think I win all my elections?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Hey -- if the money's there, it's a business :)

Seriously. That what makes this exercise a little dubious. It's never version
1.0 of the idea. Sometimes it might be version 23

For example, here's v2.0 of my idea.

Identity Life Insurance. For a fee, either use the internet and/or a physical
inspection of people's computers after death to shut down online accounts and
notify correspondents that you are deceased (and perhaps what to do about
sending flowers, etc) This would give the insured privacy in their final
online affairs and also make sure the people you chat with daily know what
happened to you. Sales would be to traditional insurance companies (which
could offer it as a rider) and funeral homes.

Now does that sound better? The fun of this game isn't necessarily in the
idea, it's in the evolution of the idea in response to market forces. Cool
stuff!

~~~
cosmin
So this would work for people with no relatives, close friends or at least a
lawyer? I imagine for most folks someone must know when they died and having
some instructions for what to do when you pass away shouldn't be too
difficult.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes. Of course.

But there are many problems with your assertion that it's just knowing someone
who will follow directions:

1) Many people do not know enough technology to be able to track all the
accounts a user might have. 2) Many users don't want their families going
through their accounts when they die (ie, cybersex and online fantasy issues)
3) Some people may die unexpectedly, with insurance but no directions as far
as online presence 4) The average family memeber when left with an unexpected
death, even with a list of online associates, will not know how to approach
these people (what were their roles in the deceased life?) or what to say 5)
It's just a hassle and is easier to have someone else do it and 6) It's not
something people think about a lot, but with the wired-up X Generation and
tail-end-of-the-boomers getting older, it will become a more pronounced issue.

------
altay
a social network for couples. my married friends complain that they feel like
hermits, because it's hard to meet other couples to hang out with.

you'd have a shared profile, which is matched with other local couples with
similar tastes in movies, music, food, whatever.

~~~
danw
Could work for singles too. Instead of a dating site that matches people to
each other, it matches people to fun activities and events. Send a bunch of
singles or couples to Cocktail-making or salsa dancing class and they've got a
common ground to talk about and can still enjoy even if they don't find
someone.

~~~
yubrew
I thought this was the basic premise for meetup.com ?

------
paulgb
Try looking for places where there is quality content and people who would
enjoy that content if only they could find it. Where this occurs, there should
be lots of potential to generate value, by matching people with content they
might like.

For example, last.fm does this for music, del.icio.us/digg/reddit/news.yc for
content, and I'm sure there are lots of other examples of services like this.

Here are two areas where such services, to my knowledge, don't exist: web
comics and blogs.

------
deltapoint
No. I just like ideas. I have my own ideas, I just think it would be cool to
get a list of ideas that people have but know they won't be able to work on.
To prove this I'll start by listing some of my own. PG says one point of this
site is to make you look like a desirable candidate for a start up so if you
can list some good ideas or critique others it makes you look good. Ideas
alone have very little intrinsic value on their own. The best ones are ones
that can make things just not suck. 1\. An online radio site that lets you
select station by what mood you want to feel. 2\. A website like 43things but
with a timeline for each goals that tries to hold you accountable for them
through social pressure. 3\. An online video website that are like demo
conferences where people can share their ideas. 4\. A social network (or app)
where users could do market research and product development for companies and
get paid for their work and ideas and it would turn it into a competition.

~~~
rms
Easy to use operating system for older computer users.

~~~
falsestprophet
An easy to use operating system for computer users in general would be nice.

~~~
rms
Agreed, an easier to use operating system would be great for most power-users
too. I'd start by eliminating the desktop and completely abstracting away the
file system, instead letting you browse all of your media files at once, all
of your documents, etc.

I'd do it with a dynamic start page that would let you accomplish everything
from within Ubuntu/Firefox in kiosk mode. The design's the hard part, but I
have the beginnings of a workable design.

~~~
mpc
It's called OSX.

What could be better than a powerful unix machine with a beautiful and
intuitive GUI? And also "just works" out of the box.

~~~
rms
Sit your grandfather (or person of similar age) in front of OSX by himself
after only an hour of instructions and see what happens.

It's intuitive to those of us who grew up with computing. To everyone else, it
isn't.

~~~
randallsquared
It worked out pretty well for my father, who's 80. It probably ruins the
experiment that he had been using (well, failing to use) Windows for years
previously, however.

~~~
rms
How does he do with the mouse? From my experience, people over a certain age
just never quite get the mouse. Touch screens are the ideal solution, touch
pads would be fine except the ones on laptops are too small, and trackballs
are a whole lot better than mice because they let you seperate the action of
clicking and moving... too often I see older computer users accidentally
moving the pointer when they want to click.

~~~
cosmin
Touch screens can be good for a lot of things but a desktop just isn't one of
them unless the monitor is laid flat on the desk. Having to reach out your arm
to the monitor constantly is not comfortable.

~~~
rms
That's true. The ergonomics of a laptop touch screen/tablet PC are better.

------
samwise
What would be great is a way to subscribe to torrents as you do on tivo. So
that my shows can be downloaded with out me having to search, Like a virtual
tivo, but better. yes, that would be sweet.

~~~
danw
TVRss + Miro (formerly democracy) or utorrent, tutorial here
[http://lifehacker.com/software/bittorrent/hack-attack-get-
yo...](http://lifehacker.com/software/bittorrent/hack-attack-get-your-tv-
season-pass-with-democracy-204057.php). You might also want to check out TV-
links.co.uk if you prefer convenience over quality. As for a legal option, no
idea, joost?

~~~
sbraford
Yes but the UIs are still horrible.

Someone needs to make something so easy a retarted monkey could use the thing
and probably not even realize "torrents" were powering the thing.

~~~
danw
TV-links is far from horrible, click the show you want and start watching.

Torrents are a non-starter for regular users. Download a .torrent file from
one of many tracker sites and open it with the client on your computer is
simply too many steps and it's too different from the experience on limewire
etc.

~~~
dcurtis
tv-links isn't a horrible experience, but the quality is horrible compared to
the dvd-rip and hd-rips that are available abundantly on torrent sites.

------
zeke
A temporary phone forwarding service where you can give a number out freely
but say "It will only work for seven days." Same idea as the onetime email
address but for phones.

~~~
sbarbour
Handy service.

<http://numbr.com/>

Highly recommended.

------
npotter
-a real estate aggregator to provide people with historical price trends on given property. Eliminate the information asymmetry between the real estate agent and the buyer.

-public and uploadable data warehouse, a la Many Eyes and Swivel, but with better graphic capability, something along the lines of trendalyzer. Design it in a way that rewards contributors with points to build resident 'data experts' and to enable referencing and storing of different people's analysis.

-web-based statistical software like SAS. allow sharing of programs through repository as well as collaborative editing.

------
bsc
Solve whether P=NP, but keep it a secret. Slowly mathematicians and computer
scientists will go nuts wanting to know, so one day you hold a conference with
an astronomical entry fee. Profit. Easy as pie.

------
cellis
1) a money machine 2) a nano particle assembler that encrypts the dna of its
creations with a quantum computer. (does that make sense?)

by the way,did you know that My last startup idea was facebook?

~~~
blored
me too.

------
yters
Generic combiner of web 2.0 apps. Not the same as a personalized homepage,
e.g. google's homepage. The system would work with any web 2.0 app that
provided an API, and would either give users an easy plug and play method of
combining the apps to create something new, with easy app discovery; or use AI
to resolve general goals. Basically, SOA on a global scale.

~~~
sbraford
Yahoo Pipes?

~~~
yters
Isn't yahoo pipes just rss feeds?

------
altay
this isn't a startup, but i want it: a flashlight on my cell phone. i'm always
using my phone's screen as a flashlight in the dark, but it's not very bright
and drains the battery.

they've got those tiny, efficient, mega-powerful LED flashlight keychains --
can't be THAT hard to integrate one into a phone.

~~~
btbytes
Its called Nokia 1100. Its an incredibly popular phone in India.

Its cheap, sturdy, comes with a flashlight that you can operate by clicking
one button. Very useful. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1100#Features>

~~~
altay
wow, according to that page, the nokia 1100 is the world best-selling handset.
200 million sold. (cf. 50M razrs, 110M ipods, 115M ps2s)

i'm guessing it's cause of the flashlight. ;)

------
chubbard
I know this topic is really already past, but what about a fully up to date
web browser. Full CSS standards compliance, JIT javascript, nice developer
tools, memory models, full garbage collection, just the web browser we all
want right. Pay attention because here is the interesting part. Sell it to
Microsoft. This is not a web browser where you are trying to capture the
market. No just sell it to Microsoft because they aren't going to fix their
browser anytime soon. I imagine they can't. It's too old, and maintenance has
become a nightmare. That's why their browser is so behind the times. So, they
got a problem, a big one, so someone should fix it for them.

------
nextmoveone
I'd also like to see visual voicemail integrated into gmail or yahoo mail or
aol or any client, but real visual voicemail...with voice-to-text technology
for the message to be right in your inbox and a click to call back link or
button.

~~~
danw
GrandCantral or spinvox

------
henning
i don't know. find a way to take away some of the pain I feel as a computer
user:

having to have like 30 different logins for all the sites and communities that
interest me where i inevitably wind up using the same password for all of them
and a similar username for most of them

feeling paranoid when i browse the internet on a windows machine even when i
use firefox, run windows update, and avoid leet juarez d00d sites

being frustrated that the extension language in excel is fine for quick, minor
things but doesn't scale up to real software development efforts while the
users i develop solutions for have no appreciation of how craptacular VBA is

you can probably think of more.

~~~
bls
See Microsoft CardSpaces (InfoCard). I don't know if it will catch on but it
is very sound technically.

------
yters
Hijack that google image labelling game idea and apply it to something like
WoW. Basically, make an open platform that encodes computer AI hard problems
humans can solve easily into a MMOPRG format.

~~~
rms
Interesting, but do you have any examples of something that would be useful
and fun?

~~~
yters
The google game was kind of fun. Another unoriginal example would be using RTS
games for real wargaming. I haven't come up with a good characterization for
the general case though.

------
joe
What you want is something that capitalizes on a basic human need, whether
that means validation of existence or sex or facilitation of work, etc.

For me, it was dealing with frustration (<http://ventations.com/>), although
that site's not really a startup. More of an almost-joke.

------
breck
SocialNotwork.com

A social network for all the people building social networks. It's perfect--
now they can talk about how they are building the next Facebook to people that
actually believe it can be done! It will also allow you to import all of your
existing social networking profiles into one place. Widgets. Video. Wikis.

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samwise
wow. Glad to know most of the ideas suck. why is everyone working on a "social
network" get some original ideas.

~~~
deltapoint
A social network is just a platform for an idea, their is still room for
original social networks.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Sure there is room. It's just that if "social networking" appears in the
project title there's a high probability that they haven't figured out what
that room is. I'm sure there are a lot of great new ideas that include some
kind of social network, but have something more interesting to say about it
than that it is a social network.

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peterarmstrong
"The iPod of water coolers, producing flat and bubbly water from tap water."

details here:
[http://peterarmstrong.com/articles/2007/08/19/company-1-turn...](http://peterarmstrong.com/articles/2007/08/19/company-1-turn-
tap-water-into-premium-flat-and-bubbly-water-via-the-ipod-of-water-coolers)

------
steveplace
Location based creations/addons to social and dating sites.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137254-c,webservices/artic...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137254-c,webservices/article.html)

------
amichail
I have some ideas on my blog:

<http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/>

See for example this discussion on using lifecasting to encourage good
behavior in a world where few people are genuinely religious (you could also
combine this method with a traditional religion):

[http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/2007/07/justintv-vs-
god_07.ht...](http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/2007/07/justintv-vs-god_07.html)

[http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-
bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board...](http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-
bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_general;action=display;num=1183768425)

~~~
Dalgar
"in a world where few people are genuinely religious"

I would argue the vast majority of the world is genuinely religious.

~~~
gwenhwyfaer
I'd contend that the vast majority of the world pretends to be genuinely
religious, and is genuinely superstitious.

------
yters
autodidact - state the subject area you want to learn and it presents the best
resources for learning the subject.

~~~
ecuzzillo
wikipedia

~~~
ntoshev
Learning guides for Wikipedia

------
german
I would love to see someone creating a RPL programming language, like HP
calculators.

I love that language.

~~~
ayc
FORTH is programming language with RPL. Look forth.org

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nextmoveone
id like to see an extension to expensr.com's app, to text message my expenses
in!

~~~
nfriedly
check out <http://buxfer.com> I think they let you text in expenses.

~~~
nextmoveone
thanks...thinking about signing up for it.

------
yaacovtp
go play on cambrianhouse.com

~~~
rbitar
or Cofoundr.com (yeah, shameless plug)

------
jpalacio486
Are you trying to get us to give you ideas so you can apply to YC?

