
Products I Wish Existed - DigitalSea
https://medium.com/products-i-wish-existed
======
jodrellblank
"The Reusable Checklist"

Like Microsoft InfoPath? Or pretty much any business software with "workflow"
in the feature list.

"E-mail with time function"

Like you can set an "expires" time in e-mails in Outlook?

How many more of these are "things which do exist, but searching for them and
finding out about them is actually hard" rather than "things which don't exist
at all"?

Vernor Vinge's programmer-archaeologist vocation was a pretty good prediction.

~~~
ramayac
Is the expire time set in Outlook will work in another email server/client
like Gmail?

~~~
jodrellblank
I don't think so. I don't know if it's a standard header, or even what
Exchange does with it.

But it has existed in Outlook for a decade or more, so people have been
considering this same problem for a long time.

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fnordfnordfnord
There is no way to comment on these. As pointed out, many of the things exist,
but the submitter is merely unaware.

>Email ‘To:’ field randomizer <https://medium.com/products-i-wish-
existed/5dc3f5cd08ab>

For example, it hurts me inside that I cannot tell this guy to use "bcc:"

~~~
kevs
Bcc is different than what he's describing

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
If the entire recipient list isn't disclosed to the recipients, then there
would be no need to randomize it. So, bcc meets his goal of not disclosing the
particular order in which he entered the email addresses.

Granted, in rare cases, it is desirable to disclose all recipients' email
addresses to each other, but I'd personally prefer it if that were the
exception, rather than common practice.

~~~
jamesrcole
> _Granted, in rare cases, it is desirable to disclose all recipients' email
> addresses to each other_

It might be rare for some people's use of email, but it's hardly rare. It's
essential if it's group email and others in that group need to be able to
chime-in to the rest of the group.

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martinshen
The countdown looks super awesome. I think we'll build this over the weekend.
<https://medium.com/products-i-wish-existed/995b0a12ee16> Email me (martin at
UpOut dot com) if you're interested in the beta.

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mistermcgruff
I want a Microsoft Excel clone where each formula is replaced with a call to
R. Formulas can also be used as array formulas.

Wouldn't this be cool: {=randomForest(A1:A1000,B1:H1000,...)} and out dumps
your rf to the selected cells then {=predict(...)} etc.

Pretty sure I'm the only one who wants this.

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dm8
Username charity sounds exciting to me. We are in early years of user driven
web. Imagine what it would be 25 years down the line? I doubt people want to
use their real names unless governments across the world regulate Internet and
make it mandatory.

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vlokshin
I really do love all of these, but I hate knowing that few are viable, and few
will ever be real products. "Awesome ideas" are exactly why we built
LaunchSky.com \-- a tool to quickly and effectively validate if an idea is
truly viable (and needed).

If you go to LaunchSky.com now, we've locked off free invites, and have the
submissions we'll be using for our launch -- but these are really good.

If the OP or any posters of the ideas on that medium page want a free credit
to post it on LaunchSky.com -- email me: Vlad (at) DarwinApps.com and I'll
hook it up with a free credit to LaunchSky for you.

Just screenshot the medium.com part of the post and send it from the email
you'd like the free credit to go to.

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bryogenic
Two hardware products I wish existed but never will:

\- an eInk display laptop for text only computing / document creation and max
battery life

\- 4G basic brick phone + wifi tethering

~~~
Pwnguinz
Never is a long time. 1) Will definitely exist in some form. Perhaps a slate-
like device with relatively fast eInk display which you can connect a kb/mouse
to. 2) I can see mobile SoC's becoming so cheap that you can probably
personally hack together something like that for cheap in a couple of year's
time. Then just buy Data from some reseller.

~~~
zanny
I was under the impression you could get a 4G brick from Sprint and use that
as an access point. Unlimited data and all that. Still kind of insanely
expensive, though, but hey, companies can own radio frequency.

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cdvonstinkpot
I want to be able to enter a target dollar amount into a certain date on a
calendar, then select a date at a time before that date, and have it calculate
how much I have to save each week to reach that target. And have it auto-
adjust the weekly amount when I miss a week now & again, or when I save more
than the required amount sometimes, too.

~~~
JosephBrown
Simple.com lets you set goals and automatically sets the right amount of money
aside for you to reach that goal at your desired date.

I have 5 invites if anyone needs one.

~~~
george88b
I would love an invite if you still have one to spare. What do you think of
Simple.com so far?

~~~
JosephBrown
I think it's great. I've always had trouble saving any money always
desperately waiting for my next paycheck, and after only two months, I've
saved more than I ever have.

It can't really replace a full bank though unless all you do is use a debit
card for all your transactions (like me).

Email me at Joseph@JosephRobertBrown.com if you want an invite.

~~~
ryanknapp
I'm really surprised that integration with external credit cards (and banks,
but especially credit cards given their importance in the US) isn't on the top
of their priority list. I understand that they'll miss out on the extra data
they get by being partnered with their bank, but it would let me drop mint.com
with its dated ui, and make it much easier to use the goals mechanism (and
daily spending limits would be a lot more relevant). Alternatively they could
just launch a Simple credit card, give me 1% cash back / rewards and I'd feel
comfortable moving most of my spending onto their card, which would let me
continue to maintain my credit score and extract a bit of that merchant fee.

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tfinniga
related: <http://www.halfbakery.com>

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wtracy
The jpg format supports all kinds of textual metadata, so "write on the back
of my photo" is theoretically a solved problem. I'm surprised to hear that
there aren't mobile apps that make editing that metadata easy.

~~~
rtkwe
[http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-
to-m...](http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to-
metadata#Description)

Yup there's already a field which could do the job just not quickly editable
in your phone's camera app.

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ishansharma
Google Notes!

That would be heaven for me. I've been trying to do notes via Evernote and
while it is fine and feature rich, it is not a good performer. There's no way
to just open app and take notes!

~~~
nsmartt
That article horrifies me.

People are already putting every question they have into Google. Every email
they send and receive. Every video they watch on YouTube.

Putting every little thought into a service by Google is just a horrifying
thought.

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rtkwe
Things I wish sites would stop doing: changing articles on horizontal scroll
events. Makes my laptop nub scroll completely unusable without jetting across
3+ articles.

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web007
At least part of the answer for "Unsubscribe to junk snail mail" exists -
<https://www.catalogchoice.org/>

"Glamera" too, <http://www.google.com/glass/>

I'd just like the "Time Stopper", a lot of the rest of these could be solved
without any effort if that existed.

~~~
DigitalSea
The idea that interests me most is Uber for food. The number of times I've
wanted Mexican food only to discover my local store doesn't deliver and my
clothes stink so I don't want to go outside, too many times too count.

~~~
jaredsohn
Check out Seamless (<http://www.seamless.com/>) or do a TaskRabbit/Exec to get
somebody to pick up the food for you.

Edit: Verified that the seamless link worked; don't know why that caused
problems for you.

~~~
DigitalSea
That Seamless link didn't seem to work for me and as for those task services I
wouldn't trust them for food. A service with guaranteed time delivery, service
you can rely on is what would sell it for me.

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weix
Great article, I should keep a similar list for the ideas I have

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unreal37
Medium just became an interesting site. It's @ev's new project? Wow. Decent
design, and lots of cool collections of articles. Check the home page.

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venus
Huh, I've been playing around with a shared reusable checklist thing. "Trello
for checklists". Everyone's thinking the same thing as usual!

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codeme
I like all the email related ideas. I hope someone is implementing them.
Anyone want to partner for self destructing email?

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corporalagumbo
No form for readers to submit their own?

