
Ask HN: Idea Sunday - rokhayakebe
A HN experiment. Every Sunday<i>, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.<p></i>If you think this thread should be started only every other Sunday or monthly, please state it in your comment.
======
crusso
I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments
supporting various political and non-political views.

I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on
various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not
looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less
popular but logically consistent argumentation.

As an end product, if I'm discussing, say, gun control with someone, I should
be able to give them a URL:
[http://www.xyz3323499.com/crusso/gun_control/](http://www.xyz3323499.com/crusso/gun_control/)
and all of the arguments and important information that I have upvoted, added
to, or edited would show up.

Most of this stems out of my frustration with the tedious nature of arguments
on the internet. New stories stir up old arguments. Forums like HN tend to
rehash all those old arguments with often little thought for the mountains of
arguments/evidence already out there. Rather than have new stories refine or
even change arguments and their conclusions, most people on the internet just
chase their tails in circles.

I'd view this kind of site as a "let's stand on each others' shoulders and
provide our shoulders to others" kind of work. With a decent web of trust, I
should be able to look at the arguments of the most "respected" members of the
site and mix-in their arguments with my own.

I think that a sufficiently complex web of trust would allow for fundamentally
different viewpoints on a given issue to thrive because the spheres of
supporters of those viewpoints have different value systems. Even with those
different value systems, it should be possible at some point to pick out the
thought leaders across different spheres that transcend typical Republican,
Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Theist, Atheist labels with arguments that
are acknowledged across the board as being internally consistent and factually
based.

Yeah, I realize that I've rambled -- but if someone finds value in the idea
and runs with it, I'd love to see it out there.

~~~
ggchappell
I appreciate the idea, but it needs some reworking.

In particular, I see two big flaws.

(1) The essence of the use of this site would be that one chooses a position,
and then finds arguments to support it. In other words, "I've made up my mind;
now show me why I'm right."

Now suppose I'm the person discussing an issue with you. Why should I pay any
attention to some page chosen based largely on the assumption that I'm wrong?

(2) You say "... I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian
thought and punishes less popular ...." And then you apparently want to use
something along the lines of up/down voting to judge arguments. That's not the
way to get what you say you want.

In short, the idea, as stated, strikes me mostly as a tool for increasing
polarization.

More beneficial would be a site that simply provides information to help make
decisions on whatever issues are of interest. To go with the gun-control
example, you could have links to -- or summaries of -- studies on the effect
of gun control. You could have comparative data on rates of various crimes in
locations with different gun laws. Etc.

How do deal with (2) is a harder problem. The plague of voting-based-on-
agreement that makes sites like HN & Reddit so much worse than they could be,
is something I wish more people were trying to address.

~~~
fragmede
I have some ideas for improving the efficacy of online voting systems, but
starting a new online community is hard. Even just starting a subreddits is
hard, and I imagine that to be lower-friction than creating a stand-alone
site, given Reddit's large existing user base.

If you have an online-community that you run and would like some ideas to
combat vote-based-on-agreement, here are a few that I've thought up or come
across:

(Not claiming that these strategies are ungameable).

* Limit the number of upvotes a user can give per day, thus making votes more valuable.

* Force users to space-out voting, allowing only 1 upvote every 5 minutes.

* Vote value: Votes are valued more the less you do it over a certain period - so if you only upvote once per-day, that post gets more points than if you upvoted everything in /new. Choice: Do it hidden on the backend, or could be interesting; do it in a user-configurable format. Give users, say, 100 points per-day and are allowed to upvote transparently - you can give one thing 100 points or four things 25 points.

* Time-delayed voting: votes are only allowed after a certain amount of time has passed since you clicked on a link. A well thought-out and reasoned article should take at least a couple of minutes to read, so I can upvote that after I read; I'm not likely to wait around to upvote an image-macro with fewer than a dozen words unless it's _really_ special.

* Karma cap, both negative and positive: Limit max positive karma to something low, say 50. That's high enough to see that a user isn't brand new but isn't trivially attainable. That way, it's fine to get to the cap, but posting inane one-liners attempting to reap thousands of points for a single comment isn't so tempting. Limit negative karma to something lower, like -100 to dissuade trolls, while still showing that a user is disagreed with. Hopefully that encourages discussion for the sake of discussion.

* Meta-voting: You vote on how many points a post got, so if a pithy but well-timed comment that says "lol butts" gets a lot of points, you can vote to say that the post didn't deserve those points. Make this a limited power granted to a select (but changing) group.

* Make downvoting cost karma: If it cost karma to downvote, that could be a higher bar to drive-by-disagreeing.

* Not sure if it's a good idea, but turn the script around. Instead of trying to avoiding the Pepsi-Blue Advertising syndrome, charge money for votes transparently adding points to a post or comment. As users can still downvote items, it becomes expensive to elevate a bad piece of advertising. Maybe extend this to users by allowing users to receive money for lots of highly-rated comments. Or perhaps use Dogecoin as your currency of choice as the real-world value of 1 Doge is so low that it's effectively free in small quantities, but not actually free.

I don't think allowing the masses to vote on things is a bad idea, but it's an
idea that needs some refinements for best effect.

------
callmeed
Calendars & Events as a Service (aka "Stripe for Calendars")

I'm sick of dealing with scheduled events, timezones, future background jobs,
etc. in almost every app I build. I want a service with an elegant API and
nice libraries that would let me:

* Create multiple calendars (it would have an ID I could then save with my user model or whatever)

* Add events to a calendar by just passing it a timestamp and other metadata

* Have webhooks that get called any time an event starts/stops (possibly also X minutes before)

* Nice API calls for getting all a calendar's events, checking free/busy times, specifying time zone output and strftime formatting, etc.

* A JS library for outputting pretty calendars to an HTML page

* An additional cron-like feature for each calendar allowing you to define recurring webhooks

If anyone wants to give something like this a shot, let me know. I'll be your
first customer, partner or angel investor.

~~~
theboywho
Just out of curiosity, isn't this already possible with the Google Calendar
API?

~~~
callmeed
I haven't looked that deep into the most recent version of G's calendar API. I
don't think they have webhooks though.

~~~
theboywho
Actually they do in v3 [https://developers.google.com/google-
apps/calendar/v3/push](https://developers.google.com/google-
apps/calendar/v3/push)

~~~
31reasons
Does it allow you to create Calendar as a data object whenever you want to
create one or is it just one calendar associated with one google account ?
Because what if I don't want to create google account for my users , just get
the calendar functionality.

~~~
enos_feedler
You can create multiple calendars but they are always associated with a user's
google account. You don't want Stripe for calendars, but rather Balanced for
calendars. A whitelabel calendar API where you user's dont have to sign up for
another service in order to use yours. Correct?

~~~
31reasons
Correct!

------
dang
We like experiments and this is a good one that goes to HN's core. Also, "Idea
Sunday" is a great name.

I don't see why there shouldn't be a thread like this every Sunday, as long as
the quality is good. If there aren't enough new good ideas, we can reduce the
frequency. Consider yourselves challenged!

If it is to become a regular thing, we'll ask the whoishiring account to post
them. That's the only account allowed to make recurring posts like this, which
solves the problem of users competing to do it for the karma. Maybe
rokhayakebe can keep posting these for another few weeks and, if it's still
going strong, we can semi-formalize it then.

~~~
Spittie
What I'd love to see is some kind of "meta" HN where all the ask HN, show HN
and similar threads are posted. For two reasons: 1) those "meta" threads might
gather to a different audience and 2) many people are more interested in
normal threads, and many are interested in the meta.

One could just go ahead and create a site for that, but obviously it wouldn't
have the same traction as HN, and 99% of the value of HN is in the people
posting here.

I do realize that it will not get implemented, but maybe consider this :)
Maybe instead of creating a new section of the site, make those meta thread
listen under an url like
[https://news.ycombinator.com/meta](https://news.ycombinator.com/meta), so
that one interested could see the latest threads without much effort.

~~~
pearjuice
And one for bitcoin! And one for nodejs! And x, and y and z! You know what,
let's put them in a subdirectory, like so: /h/bitcoin or /h/meta. And we call
them sub-HNs!

 _..._

~~~
sarreph
Although a _sub-HN_ approach sounds appealing at face-value, it's likely to
fragment the site content a little too much.

One of the things I appreciate most about HN is its ability to act as a filter
with single point of convergence. I'm not sure I'd want to sacrifice that
(personally), probably nothing more than for 'fear of missing out'.

~~~
avalaunch
Pretty sure he was being sarcastic, referencing reddit, subreddits, and the
/r/ url schema.

------
xur17
I think it would be interesting to have an app that determines the optimal
times to stop for gas during a trip. Especially when you are traveling across
state lines, gas prices can vary a pretty decent amount.

The simple version:

\- Once you're under a certain amount of fuel (1/3 of a tank?), you open the
app, and tell it you need to get gas within the next n miles. The app checks
gas prices along your route (does gasbuddy have an api?), and tells you which
gas station you should stop at.

The complex version:

\- The app connects to your car with an OBDII device via bluetooth (they are
pretty cheap), automatically watches how much gas you have left, and
determines the optimal place to refuel once you are under 1/3 of a tank.
Basically, you would be able to open the app at the start of your trip, and it
would alert you a few miles before the best exit to get gas.

------
netcan
Commitment device app that works on a dead man's switch. The idea is to use
the discipline you have now to discipline your future self.

eg1 - Enter your weight every month. If you go over a predetermined weight, it
does something punitive. Posts embarrassing pictures online, emails your mom,
donates $50 to the Klu klux Klan.

eg2 Create a todo list with due dates, goals or somesuch. Failing to complete
them does something punitive.

eg3 Create out a challenge (exercise 5 times per week). Failure to complete
challenge does something punitive.

The key is to get the psychological component right. I think if someone's
daily task is 100 or more pushups they are more likely to fraudulently push a
complete button than they are to enter a fraudulent number of pushups.

Could be a fun project.

~~~
nostromo
You might enjoy this story / podcast:
[http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/02/save-me-from-myself-a-
new...](http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/02/save-me-from-myself-a-new-
freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

One guy decided that he wanted to get healthy. So, he made a list of
prohibited foods and actions and wrote a check for $750 payable to Oprah
Winfrey (he dislikes Oprah for some reason).

He told his wife, "If I do anything on this list in the next 30 days, send
this check to Oprah, no exceptions."

~~~
netcan
I think I may have gotten the KKK idea from freakonomics podcast, might have
been this episode. The Oprah things sounds familiar too.

------
DanBC
Lower ligature risk USB charging cables. These would be used by mental health
hospitals to allow (risk assessed) patient to charge their devices without
introducing ligature risk.

To go along with this:

Bulk USB charger. Imagine a 20 port USB hub, but this has no USB connectivity.
It only has USB power. It would be kept in a secure place in a mental health
ward and would allow them to charge patient's devices. This would mean that
patients get electronic devices but without having access to cords (ligature
risk) or mains plugs (self harm risk).

(Take a UK 3 pin plug. Place it on floor with prongs up. Jump off bed onto
plug with weight on one foot. That's an unpleasant injury. Removing that risk
is useful).

Advantages:

You don't need to PAT test each charger coming into the hospital. You reduce
(slightly) fire risk from bad quality chargers.

You reduce ligature and self harm risk.

You allow patients access to electronic devices which has some "safeguarding
of liberties" benefits.

Disadvantages: selling to the NHS is possibly hell, and selling electrical
equipment to the NHS is possibly even harder.

You're creating a vigh value stash of easy to steal equipment. MH hospitals
already have lots of IT and stealable medication so they should be able to
keep it safe but maybe a ventilated safe would be part of the package.

~~~
pmorici
wouldn't it just be a matter of using a shorter cable like 4" or less?

~~~
iamben
Or a strong magnetic connector every 10 or so inches to allow you to build a
cable as long as you like? (I have no idea if that's actually possible)

~~~
eli
Swallowing strong magnets is pretty dangerous.

------
d0m
I have a hard time explaining this idea, so please bear with me.

As a founder and hacker, I want to know how my users use my web and mobile
apps. But I haven't found an intuitive and dead-simple way to do it.

Mixpanel and google analytic are way more complex than what I have in mind.

What I would like to have is more similar to Facebook, but instead of looking
at my friends activity, I'd like to see what's happening with my users.

I like the idea of a feed, or more specifically an exploratory object graph.

I'd like to open my phone and see a feed of what's happening, similar to a cat
| tail but where I could click on a verb (Joined the website) or a noun (10
users) and it would direct me to that specific page.

So, for instance, it would tell me:

15 users joined <My service>. Bob And Alice got a new highscore of 2500. Marie
played level 3 10 times.

I could change the Zoom ratio.. I.e. see the feed of the last minute or the
last year, and it would sum up the actions to one statement.. "1541 users
upgrated to premium", etc.

Basically, I don't want to look at graphes or stats or parse log files, I just
want a beautiful and simple feed of what's happening. And when I see something
that I'm curious about, I can just click and learn more. Just a dead simple
way to understand how my users use my apps.

~~~
fiatjaf
I like it. It is like Mixpanel, the implementation on the page would be
similar, but without data aggregation.

There are open-source Mixpanel-like backends out there, some will not come
with a frontend full of charts, you should just get one of these and build a
frontend full of feeds.

~~~
fiatjaf
[https://github.com/paulasmuth/fnordmetric](https://github.com/paulasmuth/fnordmetric)

------
digisth
A service that figures out how to create and deliver healthy (meaning not
extremely salty, sugary, etc.), same-day-prepared, vegetarian-friendly meals
for $10 USD per day or less. The service would make one or two dishes so that
they can be prepared in batch (maybe one non-vegetarian, and one vegetarian),
and deliver them at a predetermined time. The current services in this
industry tend to cost a lot more than this and/or require you to do
preparation yourself (i.e., they supply the ingredients only.) Even better: if
you can accept the delivery soon after "cook time", you can get your meal
warm, assuming it's not a cold dish to start with.

For people who don't, can't, and won't cook, and realize that much restaurant
food isn't focused on trying to balance taste and health, this would be a
great service. $200/month, 5 days a week. The logistics part seems feasible
based on what's current in the marketplace; the economics are an open
question.

~~~
forgotprevpass
Does Sprig or Spoonrocket or the other alternatives not deliver healthy food?
I believe they have a vegetarian option.

~~~
digisth
Spoonrocket looks the closest (CA only for now, I'm in NYC), so thanks for
that. I'll keep watching them. I couldn't find a subscription option for
Sprig; the others mentioned upthread were "ingredients only" services. Looks
like this model is getting closer, though.

I think that a company like Spoonrocket experimenting with a subscription
service would be worth trying - the companies would have steadier income, and
customers wouldn't have to think about it unless they didn't want the daily
meal.

------
sadfnjksdf
While we're at it * :

Funding Monday - where everyone pitches to VC's in the same HN thread.

Trial Tuesday - where everyone provides a link to their demo in the same HN
thread.

Writing Wednesday - where everyone writes an informative hacker-related topic
on their blog and shares a link to it in the same HN thread.

Throwback Thursday - where people all share something informative about past
experiences or past apps/etc. in the same HN thread.

Free Work Friday - where people request work to be done by volunteers to
develop their product with a possible chance at employment at some future date
all in the same HN thread.

* - with slight sarcasm

~~~
ldonley
I like some of these ideas. The Trial Tuesday could be a nice way for people
to get feedback on their WIP projects and perhaps motivate them to keep up and
have weekly updates.

~~~
danohuiginn
that's a great idea. get together a community who will each publish an
update/demo on their project each week on the same thread. I'd certainly be up
for joining in; it might shame me out of letting side-projects sit untouched
for a month at a time.

------
Spittie
Okay, a bunch of ideas. Probably nothing as good as my last one
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7542610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7542610)),
which was meh to begin with (but I'm happy to see that it sparkled a bit of
interest).

#1) An anonymous blogging platform. A site that obviously doesn't log you, and
that allow you to publish posts without having them attached to an username.
Since many would like to somehow post under the same handle, but without
having the post attached to an username, implement a system like tripcodes on
4chan (for anyone that's not familiar, you choose a random string, and then
you get an "username" derivated from that string. No passwords, no login. As
long as you're the only one that know the original string, you are the only
one that can post under that "tripcode"). Problems: Money, it's hard to make
profitable an anonymous site. Useless, it's not that hard to pick a random
name and create a blog on wordpress.com, blogger or similar while using tor.
Spam, a site where one can post anonymously without hassle is just asking for
it.

#2) (totally inspired by Idea Sunday, but I've had this idea before for a
while) a site to post ideas for a project, or a "I'd totally love if someone
where to do this". Then implement a rating system or something similar, so
that the most common/interesting ideas are always at the top. And a random
button to get a random idea (ideas as service!). Call it "Jar for ideas" or
similar :)

~~~
kkoppenhaver
#2) Something like
[http://www.reddit.com/r/somebodymakethis](http://www.reddit.com/r/somebodymakethis)
?

------
Bootvis
I had a small discussion about this idea[1] and I believe that it is
worthwhile:

Make private key based authentication useful for logging in to websites. I
don't have the chops but introducing private key based auth as an extra can be
very worthwhile for some users. So start there and improve the UI until your
grandmother can use it.

I believe the biggest hurdle will be private key management. The advantage of
using private keys for authenticating with web services that if the keys
become unrecoverable the keys can actually changed by the service provider
(after sufficient diligence).

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7553882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7553882)

~~~
jlgaddis
You know client certificates can be used for this, right?

~~~
IanChiles
Having spend the last week or so working with client certificates, they could
be so much more if browsers implemented a proper interface for managing them,
or at least a much more intuitive one than they do at the moment. They work
spectacularly for building closed APIs where you control both sides, however.
They're just a bit tricky for the end user most of the time

------
soneca
A usability test of mobile apps delivered to consumers through ad space on
free mobile games.

You create a "use quest" of your mobile app. One or more screenshots of your
application with a stated goal - e.g. invite a friend on a social app. You
present the user the home screen and he has to find where in your app he can
invite his friends. You record all clicks, and time and etc until he finds it.

This test is served as "partners quest" on free mobile games. The gamer has to
complete your "use quest" in order to continue playing that pool game. You pay
the game producer a small fee and charge from the mobile apps developers that
want to test their designs.

You may give the gamers more in-game bonus if he allows you to record his
voice and face (and pay the game producer a little bit more for this feautre).

~~~
wellboy
These guys are doing it for a whole app. Maybe get in touch with them.
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/11/app-io-turns-ios-apps-
into-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/11/app-io-turns-ios-apps-into-
playable-mobile-ads/)

------
zimbatm
A subscription service for open source projects.

As a company I would pay you monthly and get access to bug and features
development for all the open source dependencies that I am using. The more I
pay the more things I can get done in a month. If a feature is too big for my
budget I can accumulate month to month value on a ticket or get other
companies to participate.

~~~
allworknoplay
I'm not taking a side (really!), but there's a lot to be said for keeping open
source projects strong on their own without injecting cash. Cash coming in
creates a disincentive to develop without cash and promotes a reliance on paid
services rather than a mentality of contributing back. Also, when it comes to
many projects, the organization that offers services around them has a
negative incentive to contribute clear, quality code.

~~~
ggchappell
> ...there's a lot to be said for keeping open source projects strong on their
> own without injecting cash.

Money is already all over the open-source world. Many smaller projects will
not involve it much, but it matters in the larger ones. E.g., much of the code
contributed to the Linux kernel comes from people who write it as part of
their jobs. That means that feature additions & bug fixes in Linux will be
largely those that matter to (say) Red Hat. This idea offers a way to get work
_I_ want done prioritized without needing to know how to do it myself.

It also offers the possibility of software development midway between the
start-up model that groups like YC and Kickstarter are pushing, and the no-
money-involved-ever model. Surely somewhere between the two we might find
something workable.

> Also, when it comes to many projects, the organization that offers services
> around them has a negative incentive to contribute clear, quality code.

A good point. I don't have an answer for that one.

------
joshcanhelp
I want a batch notification service. Every 15/30/60/90/configurable minutes
(or on request), the service would ping all my communication channels and give
me a summary on a page or to a mobile app. I don't have notifications for
email/social media because I don't want the interruption but, during downtime,
I find myself checking through all the different services I use to see what's
outstanding. I don't need the app to interact with these services, just ping
via API and return what's "unread."

I tried to use IFTTT to build something workable but the key is getting
notifications all at once for everything when I want them, not duplicated
notifications when they come in.

I'm willing and able to work on this with someone if anyone wants this problem
solved (PHP, JS).

~~~
stevekemp
I wrote something to bundle "alerts". It was a node application which would
receive updates via HTTP-posts.

From there they would be injected into a redis queue, and fanned out to email
(daily), a simple HTTP web-page, and xmpp.

It wasn't hard to setup the core. The hard part was pushing notifications into
it. I suspect you might have the same problem. Writing a deamon to stream
twitter and POST items matching a regexp, etc. Good luck integrating with
facebook too!

Most of the pieces are out there, and joining them up isn't hard. But .. it
didn't work out as well as expected just because of the integration aspects.
That said I have a semi-working system pinging me via XMPP when new blogs are
posted, etc.

~~~
joshcanhelp
I don't know that batching the alerts would solve the problem, I want to be
able to ping these services to determine unread counts at that point in time.
I'm, of course, just assuming that these are available via API from the
services I use.

------
azinman2
Blackbox web security SAAS.

There are some services out there that will scan you for vulnerabilities, but
I have yet to find a really slick way to integrate security "for free" into
your own servers/services.

This would mean at minimum:

1\. apt-get install X. Automatically decent kernel/network/firewall
configuration occurs, removes cleartext passwords from ssh and changes the
port, etc etc. This is just a base starting line.

2\. malicious user detector. Probably cooperating with an API within
ruby/jvm/python/php/whatever is a mixpanel-like way I can define custom events
and possible milestone-firewalls. E.g. this is a new user sign up, here are
the relevant fields & ip. Or here's a comment on an image from user X with IP
Y. Rather than having to figure out if we're likely being abused outsource
that decision to the service & have it help you block the evil-doer.

3\. APIs to help with usernames/passwords, setting up TLS & perfect forward
secrecy, etc. That is to say, give me patterns I can use that every app has
even with some level of customization.

4\. Have built in DDOS protection, particularly for resource starvation
attacks that might be more app-specific (request X took Y>Z time, and it's
being repeated endlessly).

I understand that security is complicated, ideally should have full time
staff, every app/service is different, ya yada. Except when you're starting
out you don't have these kinds of resources and something like this could get
one quite far, not to mention be able to see much of the internet and what's
happening across clients (like gmail with spam) and thus have an advantage
over you. It seems like a giant hole in the world of app development and most
people are terrible at security when it comes down to doing anything more than
firewall + ssh keys + bcrypt user passwords.

~~~
soupsranjan
So this would be similar to Impermium (now acquired by Google) meets Sift
Science meets Cloud Flare - have you checked them out?

I have thought of building such a security as a service for websites for
sometime. My PhD thesis was on building a reverse proxy server (kind of like
nginx) to detect attackers (via machine learning) and starve them of
CPU/network resources disproportionately (using admission control + WFQ)
during a DDoS attack. After that I've spent a decade building systems to
detect cyber security threats, click fraud, Twitter spammers, etc.

What do you think is lacking in existing security as a service offerings that
prompted your post? Would love to chat more.

------
danfrost
Social Researching: Like social bookmarking, combined with joining comments so
you can share and collaborate on your research.

Think "trails" from V Bush's "As we may think" article, implemented so we can
collaborate. As users start bookmarking things in their own trail, the app
works out what other trails are similar and suggests you merge your
researching efforts.

~~~
makmanalp
Google wave was great for almost this, actually, minus the matching / merging
part! Sad to see it go.

~~~
danfrost
Yes. I think this idea is almost in many things but you need to give the user
the structure to both read and contribute to a thread of research.

------
omarhegazy
A pay-to-post/view social discussion site.

Reddit starts out cool, then slowly becomes 'dumber' (discussion-focused
articles turn into quick reaction images) as it becomes more and more popular.

Hacker News avoids this by purposefully not trying to be as popular as Reddit
-- UI remains minimal, tries to stay out of search engines' ways, etc.

But, in this way, HN is discussion focused through obscurity. What if you
filtered out dumb crap by making it a cost to the user for posting? In that
way, the user would _have_ to really care about what h/she's posting about
before h/she posts it. I.E.: thought-provoking discussion and not cheap
images.

That way, you can mass market and accept huge gains in popularity while being
sure that the people who are posting/voting on the stuff care enough to pay
for it. Want cheap (often not even funny) images? Go to Reddit.

The best posters get compensated with the money that the voters paid. This
creates a network of "I pay to post and I pay to vote but I get money from
posting which incentivizes me to post but I only get paid if I get voted on a
lot which means I'll want to encourage voting which means I'll have to vote a
lot myself" : the voters and content contributors conflate in one genius
network of money movement.

It still wouldn't ever get as big as Reddit, simply because people don't like
direct payment for services on the Internet. But it'd be an effective way to
get a bunch of smart, dedicated people who would kill for thought-provoking
discussion on the Internet, and also pay them for just that.

~~~
Detrus
How do you handle users gaming the system for profit?

I was thinking up various ways to introduce money to our communication systems
to incentivize certain behaviors. But not from the modern Facetwitter
perspective of a site that wastes your life by addicting you. The true measure
should be the correctness of the content and money should pay for that.

First a system where you have to pay to post and if you post is confirmed as
not spam or abuse, then you get the money back. Otherwise the site takes your
money. Should be a negligible amount. Mostly a way to make spam expensive and
compensate for moderation, but of course a site can abuse a user this way as
well.

If a user posts some profound story/comment and others want to compensate him
directly with an easy UI, they can add a monetary amount to their upvote. But
there is little guarantee that the amount will be significant or the money
will arrive promptly. Users should be able to undo money sent for well
sounding but ultimately wrong info. This is to discourage participation driven
by points and monetary rewards.

If participation and content creation is driven by money even more than it is
now, there will be a few new legitimate sources with useful information but
the vast majority will be content farms. To discourage this "points" or
"money" should accumulate, BUT should not be paid out for years until the
accuracy of this content is confirmed by the passage of time, peer review,
etc. If mistakes are found, all readers should be notified of corrections.
There should be penalties for releasing misleading or mislabeled information
(like tech blog posts that are really advertising but pretend not to be. You
should pay to advertise and pay more for advertising what turns out to be crap
after peer review.)

A site should take its share for moderating content well and working on rules
that incentivize useful content/services and penalize attention seeking of
little utility.

It's hard to predict effects of various new incentives. But a site should work
on modifying the rules until desired results are reached. Users should not
stray from normal behavior to satisfy some quick and dirty addicting point
systems. If that means limiting participation to select trained users,
releasing information to larger audiences only after it has been discussed by
relevant experts (so no shocking attention grabbing studies are released) then
so be it.

~~~
hikigo_wanders
I like this idea a lot, thank you for sharing it. I might try this with
[http://hikigo.com](http://hikigo.com). Like most things it might be hard to
get the initial core of users.

What I liked about the parent post is: _It still wouldn 't ever get as big as
Reddit_. When you find yourself thinking that way, you are probably onto
something you actually want.

------
rokhayakebe
Email Link: A simple browser plugin which allows me to click it once and it
emails me the current url. It would be nice if it gives me the option to email
it to others.

Resuscitate Xoopit, a much much better gmail search. Have you ever wondered
why gmail search sucks when its parent company is the supposedly the best
search engine in the world. Xoopit was a nifty addon that mine your inbox and
1) organize every file and links it found, and 2) gave you a search feature at
least 10 times better than the gmail option.

I would pay once for the first tool, and monthly for the second product.

~~~
AbhishekBiswal
"Email Link" : Something you want to save for reading later? Pocket and other
services do the exact same thing, that is, they save links for reading later,
and you can email it to yourself too.

In case you want to automate the process, you can create an IFTTT recipe for
it. :)

And you don't need to pay for it.

~~~
allworknoplay
pocket even provides an rss feed of saved items so you can read and manage
them in your reader.

No affiliation to pocket and no idea if other similar products do the same
thing.

~~~
AbhishekBiswal
Yes! There are other apps too, like Instapaper, Readability, etc. Pocket looks
good, and it has browser extensions so you can save the current page with just
one click. The app is one of those most beautiful apps I have seen on Play/App
store.

------
hbt
A site to organize systems.

There are plenty of "List of frontend development tools" or "list of git
tools".

I want a site where users can build lists, share them, vote on them,
categorize the content and update it with the new tools.

alternativeto.net is a partial attempt at doing that but it doesn't take a
systems thinking approach

~~~
dicroce
I've always wanted something like this to. Only, I suspect that lists are only
one possible form of information that needs to be organized. I also think
users should be able to shape trees (and maybe others).

Maybe you encourage vistors to click on everything they agree with and thereby
learn which users contributions are seen to be the most valuable. Users with
the most valuable contributions could be rewarded with more ability to shape
the tree or list...

~~~
hbt
List would supported nested lists i.e it would be a tree

In terms of rewards or monetization, it would be possible to gamify
contributions ala stackexchange and rely on affiliate links for commercials
tools and perhaps even share the revenues with the top contributors or offer
them options on what to do with the money

------
netcan
Fix podcasts.

I was helping someone set up her android phone for podcasts and noticed how
problematic the whole process is. First, the android apps aren't very good.
More problematic is the process of getting a feed into it. Sometimes searching
by name works. Often it doesn't. Getting from podcast's website to the app is
a problem. Discovery is also quite poor.

~~~
bliker
I am using
[http://www.shiftyjelly.com/pocketcasts](http://www.shiftyjelly.com/pocketcasts).
That is really amazing. And the discovery have not failed me yet.

~~~
justhw
Seconded. Pocketcasts is amazing, especially the settings. For example I have
have mine set to keep only latest 2 podcasts pershow, auto download on wifi,
and auto delete those I've listened to. It's a well built app worth way above
$3.99. Don't bother buying other podcast apps or even show apps like This
American Life.

------
bequanna
When an HN post is popular, we sometimes crash small websites/blogs.

How about a URL Shortener that caches the page at the time the shortened URL
is created?

Then, when the short url is used, the service attempts to reach the site, if
it fails, automatically inform user & redirect them to cached page.

Or, the service can attempt to reach the page periodically (once/ couple
minutes), if fails, redirect all users to cached page until next attempt in a
couple minutes. This period can be based on number of users clicking on the
url. Once the link is no longer very popular, the service will have a fairly
long time between attempts.

~~~
roryokane
The free Coral CDN ([http://www.coralcdn.org/](http://www.coralcdn.org/))
already does something like this. It caches the link the first time it is
visited. But rather than redirecting you to the original page if it’s up, it
always show its own mirror of the page (on its nyud.net domain).

------
bredren
Blockchain Genius. Crowd-sourced annotations of transactions in the Bitcoin
blockchain. Clever UI for 'zooming' in and out of display of the chain.

------
Unai
A crowd-sourced _(á la Wikipedia)_ AI platform to create a chatbot _(á la
Siri)_ , with a nice user-friendly front-end, so users can input de "inputs
and answers".

I guess that with time it could be improved with APIs and better algorithms.

~~~
DanBC
This is a great idea!

I'd be terrified of the results if /b/ get hold of it. I saw the results of a
few chatbots and it was funny, but also scary.

~~~
jpindar
Yes. It's been tried but people kept giving it useless data.

------
VonGuard
MOBA sports. That means DOTA or League of Legends style Soccer, Football,
baseball, any team sport, really.

Baseball probably wouldn't work, but soccer would be fabulous.

\- 5 on 5 with 10 minute halves, every player on the field is a real person.

\- Pay to unlock famous players and skins

\- Just bring FIFA controls over to a multiplayer game.

\- Players can form their own teams and play on ladders.

\- Start it in Brazil, then translate to other languages.

~~~
swanson
You can do this in FIFA already (since FIFA 11 I believe) - it's 11 vs 11
multiplayer. You start in a lobby and then pick your position.

~~~
VonGuard
Do people actually play this mode? Is it popular?

------
nandreev
"Who's in town" app - it's difficult to keep track of where all my friends are
at any given time, and many times I miss out on catching up with friends
because I don't realize they're in the same city that I'm traveling to.

One could say something like the "location" field in chat programs deals with
this, but hardly anyone keeps that current. In the past, I would blast a
Facebook status of my new location and hope that people would notice - this
sort of worked, but it was by no means perfect (and I have since deactivated
my account there)

Essentially, you'd specify a whitelist of people you're willing to share your
location schedule with, and the app would alert you if there's overlap.

~~~
hashtag
Check out Connect. They launched recently and I think they resolve what you're
hoping for:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKzyoGbm-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKzyoGbm-c)

------
crixlet
Google Navigation for Cooking. So as Google Maps gives you turn by turn
instructions for driving, an app could give you line by line instructions for
cooking. So often when following a recipe, I have to read the next item on the
instruction list for a recipe. I think it would be great if I could have these
read out as a line - by - line item that I (or whoever i'm cooking with) can
then follow. I love cooking with people, but sometimes having to stop
conversation mid-sentence to read what we next have to do is
cumbersome/awkward, and having an auto-pilot for new recipes that would read
the next "task" for cooking would be awesome.

------
graham1776
Dark Ages: randomly shuts down all functionality of your phone, forcing human
contact, at random 10-20 minute intervals , no more than a couple times a day.

Perhaps there is a machine learning aspect that learns when you are being anti
social (ie playing Candy Crush for 3 hours straight) and is more likely to
"dark age" you.

------
anupshinde
Tracking browsing habits. I would like to see how much time I spent on what
"kind or type" of browsing. And I can define these as a hierarchy
(type->subtype). And define productive/unproductive/lessproductive segments.

Example: "stackoverflow or localhost:8081" would be "Development" kind of
work. "news.ycombinator.com" \--> "Reading" "gmail.com/outlook.com" \-->
"Commmunication" "facebook.com" \-- "Unnecessary waste of time" ...and so on.

The reports would simply show- how much time I spent on what segment
(Productive work/ General Browsing).

A chrome extension/app would be a good starting point - personally I do not
use other browsers unless absolutely required.

Further I would also like it to automatically classify and show what kind of
content I spend time browsing - like "Entrepreneurship / Programming / Nuclear
fusion / Space Travel / ... "

If anybody wants to try it - let me know. I can dedicate a very small amount
of time on this.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Have you tried RescueTime?

~~~
anupshinde
Thanks, looks promising - I have seen couple of other desktop time-tracking
apps and this looks much better than those.

------
k8si
Social graph app for tracking gang activity on Twitter, with the intention of
predicting potential violence before it happens on the streets. According to
Vice/other sources, it's becoming increasingly popular for gangs to
communicate publicly via Twitter and other social media sources. It's an
interesting NLP problem because Twitter language is crazy and an interesting
"computational social science" problem because it could actually help
communities. You could partner with (or sell it to) municipal police
departments.

~~~
thess24
I was listening to NPR a few months ago and they actually had a bit on
tracking Twitter for gang activity and the ethics behind scanning twitter.
Here's a link to the story [1]. One of the products they outline is called
BlueJay [2] and scans for key words and locations. I guess NPR isn't popular
among gang members or they would probably stop.

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/28/284131...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/28/284131881/as-
police-monitor-social-media-legal-lines-become-blurred)

[2] [http://brightplanet.com/bluejay/](http://brightplanet.com/bluejay/)

~~~
k8si
thanks!

------
throwaway_yy2Di
Offline navigation map for mobile. Small thread here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7171919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7171919)

The entire OpenStreetMap dataset is 23 GiB with moderate compression. With
some optimization/truncuation the whole world should fit comfortably on most
phones.

This is very useful, for the times you're lost with a slow connection, no
connection, in a foreign country, or with roaming charges.

Also it's a fun algorithm-heavy challenge even if you don't finish anything.

~~~
yid
Google maps will cache the current map view at the highest detail resolution
if you type "ok maps" into the search bar and hit go. You don't even need an
active SIM to use gps and zooming. I cached all of central London and used it
from my otherwise non-functional Verizon CDMA iphone for months.

~~~
staticfish
Unfortunately, Google maps caching works as view-only. There's no offline
navigation at all, I imagine that's all done serverside. Only the tiles (or
now vectors) are downloaded.

~~~
yid
That's not completely true--if you load your route on wifi and start turn by
turn navigation, you can be completely offline.

------
jtokoph
I would suggest posting this every Thursday or Friday. Give people something
fun to work on over the weekend.

~~~
bnt
Doing something properly requires time for preparation. Posting ideas on
Sunday is actually a good idea as people have 5-6 days to calm down from the
rush of adrenaline (OMG this idea is THE BEST IDEA EVER!), get some research
done, prepare the time (some folks have family and need to micromanage their
time) and finally do some work next Sunday.

------
tbirdz
Sex toy that uses machine learning to find the optimal method of providing
pleasure to it's owner.

~~~
aragot
As a first approximation to machine learning, it would use Amazon Mechanical
Turk?

~~~
marknutter
You mean Amazon Mechanical Jerk

------
Jemaclus
* Hearing aids that run off body heat. They have watches that do it, why not hearing aids? Or at least helps recharge the batteries... I dunno. I spend a lot of money on hearing aid batteries...

* A better credit rating system. The current one kinda sucks, no offense to Transunion, Experian, and whatever that other one is. Just because Joe Schmoe was unemployed 18 months ago and struggled to pay the rent, much less pay the bills, does not mean that Joe Schmoe is currently unable to do so. A creditor can claim a debt from Sally Schmoe, and Sally has little recourse in fighting it -- it's ridiculously complicated to combat something you know nothing about. Usually she winds up just paying the bogus bill to get it off her credit report. The whole thing is a racket.

* A better job candidate review systems. Companies spend a lot of money hiring recruiters, but recruiters just spam the crap out of people and then send all the resumes in anyway. What if there were an app that could pre-qualify candidates? Cut out the middle man -- death to recruiters! (figuratively, of course)

* A good, interactive environment for remote calls with kids (or anyone, I guess). I'm thinking Skype meets building blocks. Maybe we have to wait for Oculus Rift, or maybe Kinect is enough to get started. For example, I live in San Francisco, and my niece lives in Atlanta. I don't want her to not know who I am. I want to be able to Facetime/Skype with her -- and as she grows, I want to be able to interact with her, play games with her on a shared screen, teach her new words and phrases, and so on. My girlfriend's nephews live 8 hours away, and her parents live even farther away. The nephews are growing up quick, and we Facetime as much as possible, but even so, it's limited to just talking and pointing at a screen. You can make this better. As grandparents, aunts, and uncles increasingly get used to technology, they will want more ways to interact with their young family members without breaking the bank on plane tickets to visit -- and they'll spend money to do it! A small subscription and microtransactions (new games/books!) would be infinitely cheaper than flying across the country. Someone make this happen.

* An app that maps out disc golf courses (please start with the one in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park... please). Using GPS on a map, show me where the hole is from the starting point, and let me record my score. Once I put my score in, show me the next hole.

~~~
krolley
Watches that run on body heat? If you're referring to mechanical watches, I
think they use motion to wind a torsion spring to store energy.

~~~
Jemaclus
Nah, something like this:
[http://www.roachman.com/thermic/](http://www.roachman.com/thermic/)

I'm not really sure if that's legit or not, but I've read several articles
about teams creating watches that can run and/or charge off body heat.

One of the biggest parts of the hearing aid is the part that holds the
battery. If you could somehow eliminate that, then hearing aids could be
super, super, super tiny, in addition to saving me the hassle of having to buy
batteries -- or worse, being in a situation (like the middle of a date) where
it dies on me and I don't have a replacement!

I'm sure this is a pipe dream, but it would be awesome if someone could make
it happen.

------
mechasnake
Open web based CAD application.

I think the problem with previous attempts at this focuses on accomplishing
computation on the client side. I believe it is possible to set up a framework
where the client passes CAD messages to the server and the server returns the
appropriate WebGL object for the client to render.

I've been playing with this idea for a while but I've been struggling on how
to execute such a project. I think the Blender Python module would make a
great CAD engine. However, I've yet to figure out how to rebundle Bpy such
that anyone can simply import it and use as a python library.

~~~
allworknoplay
clara.io

------
marpalmin
SocialPower: Complain about a bad service in a store by adding in the map the
location of it. After that other customers of the store receive notifications
to vote if the complain is valid (by using background location and push). If
many users backup the complain, then the business gets an e-mail stating that
they have been featured in SocialComplaint and they can work to solve the
problem. The complains are alive for x days in the map in they continue
unresolved. After that they go to the archive and statistics of business
complains.

~~~
ghayes
This idea reminds me a bit of PublikDemand[0]. According to their site, they
"aggregate and organize customer complaints by topic and company. Individual
complaints are turned into qualified leads for competitors."

[0]: [http://www.publikdemand.com/](http://www.publikdemand.com/)

~~~
marpalmin
I was thinking more as a mobile reporting platform.

------
DanBC
Google Spellcheck.

Google must have terabytes of data about correct, alternative, international,
and incorrect spelling of English words. (Also probably all words in other
languages).

A Google spell checker product could combine knowledge of word placement
within a sentence and this huge cache of data to accurately guess what the
correct spelling should be.

The product could probably go further and help people avoid eggcorns and
malapropisms and etc.

It would be interesting to compare the accuracy : size ratio of this
dictionary with that created by rtm and father using probabilistic, uhm,
stuff.

~~~
aspidistra
Google Chrome and the Google Toolbar already have spellcheckers ... ?

Or do you mean something more like MS Word, which will correct misplaced
letters and so on?

~~~
DanBC
Yes, i mean a separate product that will integrate with whatever bit of office
software you're using.

~~~
eitally
Google Drive (Docs/Slides/Sheets) already integrate Google's spellcheck.

------
wfbarks
Highlight the Web

A browser plugin that lets me highlight text on a web page. I can view other
user's highlights on that same webpage, and see my highlights again when I
revisit the web page weeks later.

~~~
schlagetown
Something like this, perhaps?

[https://www.diigo.com/](https://www.diigo.com/)
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diigo-web-
collecto...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diigo-web-collector-
captu/oojbgadfejifecebmdnhhkbhdjaphole?hl=en)

------
koliber
A crowdfunded federal lobby group whose agenda is to pass anti-lobbying
legislature. Its ultimate goal would be to create a legal environment which
would prohibit it from functioning.

------
mappum
A mobile app that scans for unsecured WiFi and automatically sends the
location to the service. People who want free WiFi can search and find the
closest one.

It's sure to cause some legal/moral controversy, but it is pretty trivial to
implement and might be pretty interesting.

~~~
f0nd004u
Heh. This is exactly what Google was doing with the StreetView vans, and a
bunch of home users with open WiFi networks are successfully suing them for
collecting their packets.

------
johndoeee
Feedback for catered lunch at work.

I work for a small company and we get catered lunch delivered every day. They
never ask about if we liked it and if the amount we received fit our
consumption. So, some way to inform them about which dishes we liked and how
much food we threw away.

~~~
btgeekboy
Wouldn't a simple Google Docs form fit the bill here?

------
zarriak
I'd like someone to implement a wrapper for youtube that makes using the
website better.

There are lots of things you could do, from watching all of the videos since
the one you last viewed, to a better way of editing playlists than the current
one.

They should also make a way to preview videos, like hovering over the image of
the video and you see a 15 or 30 second preview that you can choose from a
part of the video. There should also be a way to instantly switch from
computer to phone/tablet, just like chromecast.

If you just open up YouTube right now you can see how many links you can
choose, there is way too much clutter on the front page.

YouTube has a great opportunity to distinguish themselves from traditional
media, but they keep making design choices that prevent this. YouTube has
become the leading video service because they created a platform that
differentiated from traditional media, yet the current trajectory doesn't fit
with that.

Chad Hurley is also one of the few notable alumni from the Technology Student
Association, an organization I am a current member of that has not benefited
from the recent increase in STEM funding. It is quite unfortunate, because
they have a much more diverse offering than other stem organisations, even
having an open source software competition!

~~~
hoffcoder
I agree that youtube can be much more useful. But writing a wrapper does not
sound legal, does it?

------
conorgil145
I don't expect this would be a company, but rather more of an open source
project. I have been thinking about this for a while, so I'll throw it up to
see if there is any interest. I would really like someone to create a website
full of information and resources for first time startup employees regarding
stock options.

It would be great if there was a calculator which would allow you to
experiment with different liquidity outcomes given your existing/proposed
stock options.

For example, you would be asked to enter the total number of outstanding
shares, the number of shares you have now, the number of shares you are
entitled to, your vesting schedule, if you have any acceleration upon change
of control or other scenarios and if so how much, whether you have preferred
vs common shares, liquidation preferences (if any), etc.

Once you enter all of the information that you have, the calculator can
estimate how much you stand to make in certain scenarios. You could answer
"How much does the company need to be bought for in order for my options to be
worth $X?" or "If the company sold for $Y amount, how much would my options be
worth?".

If certain pieces of information were not entered into the calculator, then it
could show error messages and link to additional resources explaining why that
particular number is so important.

I realize that the calculator would likely not be exact because of missing
information and the complexities of each particular company's structure.
However, I think in many cases it could be surprisingly accurate. The most
important thing is that it be used as a tool to introduce important concepts
and terms which new startup employees should research and understand.

~~~
hashtag
Contrary to your statement about how it could be __surprisingly accurate__, it
would in fact be the opposite. There is no accurate way to build a calculator
to show different liquidity outcomes because there are way too many unknown
variables if you understand how stocks actually work in a given company.
Everything would have to be a complete guess in the dark for the employee
punching in those numbers making it near impossible to get anything accurate,
particularly early stage.

~~~
xerophtye
On the contrary, "How much does the company need to be worth for my options to
be worth $X?" can be answered with a _surprising_ amount of accuracy. Because
isn't that basic mathematics with the variables "Exercise Price" and "Stock
price"? I am talking about value of options for EXERCISE here, not selling
them off. The selling part is what gets a little complicated, but we have ways
to price them as well so a calculator for that could be built as well.

~~~
hashtag
Unfortunately no. You are making some bad assumptions here. I won't get into
all the details as it can get lengthy to type out but there are numerous
factors missing.

------
hershel
Lack of eye contact in video chats greatly hurts the experience and is
probably the source of the difference between it and face to face chat.

Using something based on [1] but a bit better(for example , let's you cover
maximum screen area) could be a decent solution for this.

[1][http://hacknmod.com/hack/laptop-mod-eye-contact-video-
chat/](http://hacknmod.com/hack/laptop-mod-eye-contact-video-chat/)

~~~
hashtag
Saw this awhile back, related:

[http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/tech/software-gives-the-
ill...](http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/tech/software-gives-the-illusion-of-
eye-contact-on-skype-517913293)

------
rgarcia
Something to help teams rotate passwords on regular intervals. E.g. I want
everyone to rotate their Heroku/Google Apps/Github/etc. passwords every 6
months, or maybe after a major security event (like Heartbleed). Right now it
means sending out a Google Doc for everyone to check off.

Bonus points if it has some way of verifying that passwords were actually
changed and the new password is strong.

~~~
agotterer
I believe commonkey is working on something to handle pw rotations in a team
environment.

------
carlio
I'd love a "profiling firewall", so to speak. I hate it when tethering when
iTunes downloads a 500mb update without telling me.

In general, your Laptop has no idea that it's tethered and therefore data is
more scarce than normal. Something that flips between "ok go for it" and
"restrict these apps" would be nice, especially if it were automatic.

~~~
nobrains
Yes. I haven't thought about laptops/desktops OSes yet, but atleast in phones
I should be able to mark a WIFI connection as "treat-as-data-connection" so
that the OS obeys the background data rules for the OS and the applications.

~~~
sborsje
Android uses a DHCP option for this: [http://www.lorier.net/docs/android-
metered](http://www.lorier.net/docs/android-metered)

------
scobar
A crowd-funded-style of non-profit charity where you can help donations reach
a worthy cause without actually donating money yourself.

I wrote about the idea in more detail in this blog post.
[http://blog.myadversity.com/2014/04/so-many-ideasso-
little-t...](http://blog.myadversity.com/2014/04/so-many-ideasso-little-
time.html)

------
d0m
Google map that can show me parking?

I'm driving to a coffee place, great, but then it's 10min turning around the
place looking for parking. Ideally it should drive me in real-time to a place
where I can park.

~~~
Jemaclus
I was thinking the other day about this. They have cars that can park
themselves already. I think Audi has been advertising them. They obviously use
some sort of sensor to detect empty parking spaces. What would be brilliant is
if they did two things:

1) Used GPS coordinates to figure out if you are in a high-demand area for
parking and, if so:

2) Passively scan for parking spots as you drive by, then upload them to the
cloud.

You don't actually have to be looking for a parking spot -- but your driving
by an empty one could help someone else.

A more YC-focused idea is to design a small device that does exactly that for
_any_ car and is as simple as dropping something onto your antenna or sticking
it on a passenger-side window.

------
mudil
Open source ad serving platform. Or P2P ad serving platform . Basically like
Google Adsense minus Google, the middle man.

I have a site, and every month I get a check from Google with a seemingly
random amount. Yes, it is connected to traffic, but what cut Google makes is a
complete mystery. In my opinion Google Adsense is an unfair scheme for
millions of publishers.

~~~
techstroke
Well, I have been a adsense publisher for over 5 years now and they are pretty
clear about their commission rates they give us 68% for content ads -
[https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en)
(earlier it was 70% i think )

and to me it's not unfair as even if someone was to make such a OS system , he
still has to manage server cost/support/advertiser acquisition/marketing cost
etc. & so wont be able to pay as good as adsense also the ads initially wont
be that diverse & so ads might not be in context or even blank spaces , kind
of chicken and egg problem !

------
cr4zy
cron as a service...but unlike setcronjob.com and easycron.com, allow more
than a few thousand jobs and in general support advanced job scheduling
features. So actually more like _quartz as a service_ , i.e. hosted
[http://quartz-scheduler.org/](http://quartz-scheduler.org/)

~~~
bshimmin
Doesn't IronWorker do all of that, and well, already?

~~~
cr4zy
Most expensive plan only allows 1,000 concurrent tasks for $3250. This
wouldn't work if I wanted to have a custom schedule for each user of most apps
for example.

------
p_eter_p
One of the things I have been kicking around is a charity hub.

It seems like the tools for discovering and rating charities are well
developed, but the tools for allowing them to collaborate and provide help are
non existent. This causes a lot of duplication of effort. Someone who needs
help should be able to fill out a survey detailing their needs, and then their
profile would be available to any charity.

This would allow a more holistic approach to giving; A single parent who gets
tuition assistance might also benefit from free babysitting or help with
meals, which are probably provided by two different groups. Social workers
would be able to assemble a variety of different forms of help for each
recipient, and the program could automatically suggest donor/recipient
matches.

------
skullum
Venmo Receipt bill splitter: Mobile app that analyzes a picture of a receipt
using tesseract or something similar and allows the user to charge Venmo
friends for certain items on the receipt.

I would pay for this because then I wouldn't have to create a Venmo payment
for each user.

~~~
ycmike
Friend of mine was working on this. Don't know if they are still active or
if/when they launch.
[http://pennapps2014s.challengepost.com/submissions/20858-div...](http://pennapps2014s.challengepost.com/submissions/20858-divvly)

~~~
skullum
Yeah this is exactly it! Thanks!

------
sferoze
A crowd-funding charity website that collects monthly very tiny micro-payment
(as little as .10 cents) from users for charity. This way many users would
sign up, worry free, as .10 cents a month is extremely affordable and can add
up to a lot of money with scale.

~~~
bnt
OK, on the topic of funding charities, an old idea that I haven't gotten
around to yet: A JS plugin that companies (or regular folks) put on their
blogs, which generates a downloadable PDF of the article people are reading,
but have to pay $1 to download.

~~~
sferoze
Depending on the content, I would consider even charging less, anywhere down
to couple cents, given a practical micro-payment system.

------
dceddia
It could be useful to have a site where researchers could post their failed
attempts at solving difficult problems, a sort of "Journal of Failed Ideas".

I saw this suggested in a reddit thread a while back, might've been the Bill
Gates AMA, but the comment was something to the effect of, "What if cancer
researchers could post things they've tried in some central location, without
the overhead of publishing papers in a journal?"

This wouldn't have to only apply to researchers. I had a similar idea while
ago for a site where motorcyclists could post how they got into an accident so
that others could avoid the same fate, like an informal NTSB-style accident
report.

~~~
danieltillett
The problem is the incentives are all wrong for reporting negative outcomes -
basically you get no benefit, but it cost you time.

What would work would be to pay each researcher for every negative result they
published and more importantly why the idea failed. Often the failure is
caused by something minor that the researcher overlooked when doing the
experiment initially - I have saved many a project in the pub, by just
chatting informally with people about the problems they are having.

------
tbsmartens
Hey everybody, and maybe something in particular for the Berliners: We started
a meetup exactly about that "IDEATALKS" \- this Thursday we are hosting the
next event, feel warmly invited to join at

www.techpeople.eventbrite.com

(use fullofideas for a free ticket)

------
mrborgen
Great initiative.

* Someway to re-introduce photos into cabins' visitors books.

In Norway, all cabins have their own visitors book. Until the mid-'00s these
books were filled with physical photographs. With digital cameras, the images
in these books have disappeared, and there has not yet been invented a way of
attaching digital albums to each trip/chapter/page. (Social networks doesn't
do the work, as a lot of people who aren't connected to each other read these
books.)

The people who writes about their cabin trip need somewhere to upload the
images from their stay, and the people reading the book need someway to see
these photos.

------
yitchelle
A translation service - A photo of the document to be translated is emailed
into the service. In 1 or 2 days time, the email is replied with an translated
document. The photo can be taken with mobile phone photos and emailed.

~~~
tizzdogg
You should check out gengo.com. Sounds like that's exactly what you're looking
for, or at least they have an API that could be used to build the app you
want.

~~~
yitchelle
Thanks for the heads up on gengo.com. I shall checked them out. Have you dealt
with them before?

~~~
tizzdogg
Yes I used them to translate some of the text in an app to a bunch of other
languages, and it was pretty easy, and a good translation (so I am told, at
least). Note that I'm not affiliated with them at all, and have only used it
once a year or so ago.

------
wgx
Startup idea: WiFi hardware that attaches to street lights (for power) and
forms a UK-wide mesh network to rival the telcos.

~~~
ShinyCyril
I would love to see a UK Meshnet take off - however activity behind projects
doesn't seem to be anywhere near the level of places like Seattle etc. which
is a shame.

Would there be any issues with regards to attaching these devices to street
lights? Who owns that infrastructure - the councils?

~~~
aspidistra
Councils maintain streetlights:

[https://www.gov.uk/report-problem-street-light](https://www.gov.uk/report-
problem-street-light)

~~~
junto
And they have no spare money for such projects. Ideally you would bundle the
meshnet with cheaper lighting.

Something similar is mentioned here:

> Philips’ LED street light poles will now include small cell mobile telecom
> equipment from Ericsson that cities can rent to telecom operators. The
> payments from telecom providers would then help pay for the infrastructure.

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-
tech/conservation/...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-
tech/conservation/can-internet-access-pay-for-led-street-lights)

------
oliwary
This might already exist, but a user management as a service provider focused
on security.

I'm afraid that if I do a website and it is breached, all the users would
suffer. Therefore I'd rather someone made a service that kept all sensitive
user info, like email and password, separate from my webapp. The only way to
access it would be via api over a unique user ID. Then I could worry about
doing the website instead of about security.

EDIT: Also, one teamt would fix bugs such as heartbleed, and everyone using
the service would be secure. It would eliminate the security risks of leaving
an old side project running.

~~~
qw
I was planning to make something like that myself, but there seems to be
plenty of competition from [https://stormpath.com/](https://stormpath.com/)
and others

~~~
oliwary
Yup, that seems to be exactly what I was thinking about. Thanks for replying!

------
mhp
Open source US tax filing application. Basically TurboTax but free.

~~~
dkresge
Why can't the government just send me a bill? If they're able to detect that
I've slighted them, they sure as hell have a reasonable idea of what I owe.

~~~
charlieflowers
Even better -- there should just be some kind of flat tax or other very simple
approach. 100 years from now, people are going to scoff at how ridiculously
over-complex our tax systems were, and how much of our GDP was spent on it.
(But alas, this is not an idea a couple of motivated hackers can implement).

------
colemorrison
Something to help me switch between workflows. Everytime I want to switch to a
different project (i.e. writing code for software project X to designing a
mockup for software project Y), I don't even know how much time I waste
getting my development environment, tools, documents, ideas, etc. setup.
Sometimes I'll get an impulsive idea (i.e. how to fix that one bug), but what
will stop me from doing it right then is the fact that I'd have to set
everything up...

~~~
neil_s
I keep each project in a different desktop (using Dexpot on Windows or Spaces
on Mac). Rather than opening and closing applications, I simply switch
desktops. The context switch cost decreases significantly.

An added advantage is a clear separation between work and play, its harder to
sneak open a procrastination tab when you have to explicitly switch to the
procrastination desktop to do it.

------
golergka
I read this article recently:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-so-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-so-
you-think-youre-smarter-than-a-cia-agent)

And now I'm building a small app that'll give the people the ability to make
predictions about future events and measure how well are they doing it. For
now, it's just an experiment to test the idea.

------
Thiz
Soylent bars.*

I like the idea of Soylent as a complete food, but instead of a nutritional
drink, I believe a power bar would be a better idea, for portability, storage,
and consumption.

* Not tech related.

~~~
covercash
People in the Soylent discussion boards have made bars, breads, muffins, etc.
out of the base Soylent mix.

More here: [http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylid-solid-
soylent/3145](http://discourse.soylent.me/t/soylid-solid-soylent/3145)

------
samelawrence
I continue to update this over time:
[https://github.com/samelawrence/ideas](https://github.com/samelawrence/ideas)

------
anonu
Idea: Biometric Signature Authentication as a service: We all have these
incredibly powerful input devices in our pockets (aka smartphones). The idea
is to create a powerful algorithm to verify someone using their signature by
capturing the form of the signature, speed, pressure, etc... This would be
provided as a service to different websites who require user ID on the
biometric level.

------
alexmic
I'd like a service that allows me to write internet-connected scripts that can
be scheduled or executed on demand via webhooks. I have a bunch of things I
want to do (like monitor a site for example) without messing around with
servers.

To take it even further these scripts can come with their own store (just a
simple key-value will do the trick), exposed over an API with a private key.

~~~
gfosco
You can probably do this with several different existing services. Parse.com
Cloud Code (either express endpoints, or cloud functions) can definitely
handle this.

------
dan335
Someone please fix 3d software. Autodesk owns 3 of the top 4 3d software
programs. They are about to stop developing Softimage. There other two have
little innovation and lots of bugs. Their biggest competition Modo is not a
complete enough package to be used by major studios. Someone please bring a
fresh pair of eyes and create an innovative killer 3d program.

~~~
tizzdogg
Okay give me a minute, I'll just hack something together for you. :)

Seriously though, this is a good request, but the graphics market is really
difficult to do business in. It takes a ton of development effort to make a
full-featured 3d package, and the market of high-end studios is very small. If
you create a graphics software company, your best exit opportunity is probably
to be bought out by autodesk eventually anyway. Houdini has been gaining some
ground recently though, and I think is the best alternative at the moment to
the autodesk products.

------
sjclemmy
Github meets SoundCloud. When I create a piece of music (using something like
Logic Pro) I go through many iterations and only end up with a mixdown piece
and no idea of how it evolved to that point. so it would be nice to see the
evolution of the piece. But the best bit would be the remix potential. Someone
else could fork it and create a remix!

~~~
subdane
I believe Splice is working on this?
[https://splice.com/](https://splice.com/)

------
vijayr
Two ideas:

1\. Would be labor intensive, but: a site (blog?) that talks to people/experts
from various industries, quizzing them about problems they face in their daily
jobs. Some of these might be solvable by software. It doesn't need to be too
detailed, but it would help if it is totally outside of the _usual_ tech stuff
- the quirkier the better.

People can pick something from the blog, instead of building yet another
project management app.

2\. A website that asks a series of questions (skillsets, weather preferences,
languages spoken, food preferences, age, educational qualifications etc) and
suggests countries/cities to move to. Should also take into consideration
special visa privileges (canada-us, nz-aus etc). It would be quite tough to
keep the data fresh, for an app like this. but this would be immensely useful,
and it can be monetized too. Even if done narrowly (ex: only for software
people), it would still be very useful.

~~~
swah
f(a,b,c,d,e,f) -> return "San Francisco";

(Meaning: the kind of people that would use that app would all go to the same
place).

~~~
vijayr
I disagree. There are lots of non-software people (other engineers, business
people etc) for whom SF is not the ideal destination. They are quite tech
savvy, though they might not know how to code. I'm sure they'd use it.

------
DanBC
3D file managers, using Occulus Rift or similar, especially if it has REZ-like
interface.

This website has a bunch of 3D interfaces. They'd have to be brought up to
date. And perhaps the various metaphors need a lot of work.

I don't think this will be particularly useful. I jist want something that
makes me feel like I'm living in the future.

~~~
metaobject
If you're interested in seeing one implementation in action check out the one
SGI created for the Irix OS back in the 90s (or early 2000s?). Also, the scene
at the end of Jurassic Park where the little girl is activating the park's
electrical system shows it in action.

------
beaglebone
It's common that many people go for a decent restaurant and have their meal
alone which turns out that it's expensive and boring. Idea is why don't we
have an mobile/web application which will list out nearby restaurants and
users who posted that they want a company to share their lunch bill. With this
advantage is that they can try out different dishes and still with lesser
expense as you would share with your stranger partner.

To be more specific about the application: 1)Any one wants to share their
lunch bill, they open the application and check the near by hotels. 2)If
anyone has posted already that they need a partner to share lunch, you could
join them (probably their taste also mentioned in the app) 3)If you don't find
any one who's open for sharing, you can post one.

This will work out for people those who travel, single, students,group of
strangers.,

------
ethnomusicolog
Every sunday:

Product Idea: a gmail app that shows me a graph with the number of mail I
sent/receive a day , by person, group,...

~~~
AbhishekBiswal
Here you go, [http://gmailmeter.com/](http://gmailmeter.com/)

:D

~~~
akshatpradhan
Getting an error:
[https://gist.github.com/akshatpradhan/10603374](https://gist.github.com/akshatpradhan/10603374)

------
marpalmin
SoundAct: Similar to IFTTT but that triggers with sound. You can record sound
patterns such as a double clap, clap, footstep, etc and associate that with an
action, like notifying someone or reading the news. Ideal for context where
siri-like apps does not work well because of noise like the car, metro, etc.

~~~
th0br0
I've had something similar in mind for a long time now... mainly for use in
home automation. (Clap twice to stop your MPD, etc.) ... would be great to see
this get done! ;)

------
hershel
Dynamic search anonimizer: most of the times google's personalized search is
much better than anonimized search services like duckduckgo. But in certain
query types anonimized search is highly preferable.

What about a service/browser extension that understands thoses difference and
guide the search accordingly ?

~~~
UweSchmidt
how about Startpage.com

~~~
hershel
It isn't dynamic as far as i know.

------
tpae
Debugging as a service: parse out the error logs and find a better way to
traverse/debug application-level problems. Automatically create tests with few
clicks, automate debugging/testing process.

Create standards for error handling, and create application scores to
determine quality of the application.

~~~
grogs
Takipi may be of interest. It's only for JVM languages though - I'm not sure
if equivalents exist for other languages.

Otherwise, look at building (or find existing) tooling on top of Log stash.

------
Theo59
You should check out innovantage, halfbakery, or marblar. There are literally
1000s of ideas out there.

------
lukencode
I'm currently building a web app I'd like to sell as self hosted. Something
that would be great for me is a service that handles payment and license
generation for this type of software. Things like supporting purchase orders
and quotes would be useful too.

------
NAFV_P
Online resource for hardcore computer science and other "headbanging"
subjects, collaboratively written by, and for, people who haven't had a formal
background in computer science or the equivalent "headbangology".

EDIT: I made my sentences, make sense.

~~~
blueatlas
I like this, but rather than "hardcore", targeted at pre-CS, and possibly 1st
year CS students. Computer Science programs are awful at introducing and
reinforcing fundamentals. Examples are binary/hex, how data is stored in
memory, compilation, basic system architecture (CPU/memory interaction), basic
command line/shell usage, etc. - topics beyond a typical high school
programming course, but prepares the student for their first year of CS.
Content built around an Arduino or Pi would be ideal.

~~~
NAFV_P
> _I like this, but rather than "hardcore", targeted at pre-CS, and possibly
> 1st year CS students._

Apologies, I should have explained myself better.

Being aimed at people with only their own wits to guide them, their knowledge
is likely to be patchy. So filling in knowledge, even basic things such as
mentioned by yourself would be included.

Trying to read up on a subject you often don't know which terms to look up, so
some supermarket of info where you just wonder around (like a zombie) until
you work what you need to get would be useful.

------
marpalmin
A programming language equivalence site that helps you transition from one
language to another. I mean it does not have to be perfect because full
equivalence don't exist for many languages but just how you would do similar
things.

~~~
nanidin
You mean Rosetta Code[0]?

[0] [http://rosettacode.org/](http://rosettacode.org/)

~~~
marpalmin
Yes. That's more similar to what I expected. However, I don't like at all how
information is presented in Rosetta Code. I would like to be able to chose two
languages and filter by task.

------
dethstar
A craiglist like site to find projects/people to work with. It could connect
to tools e.g Trello and give you a rough estimate of how this persons delivers
e.g closes their cards almost always on time.

~~~
cstefanovici
[http://builditwith.me/](http://builditwith.me/) has been around for a while
but without much success

------
jdprgm
I attended a startupweekend dc event last weekend and we literally built
exactly this haha. You can check it out at
[http://ideavine.co/](http://ideavine.co/)

------
mjadobson
Hosted PostgreSQL service with exposed HTTP API and ACL/validation hooks. Also
syncing hooks to plug into SQLite/iDB/etc for offline apps.

Sort of like Cloudant/Firebase but using relational db.

~~~
andrewstuart
Not quite what you are suggesting but....

[http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/)

------
bru
Retro console gaming. A huge panel of old console games could come to mobile
devices and look fine. After being convenient and stable, connectivity could
be really cool.

------
rukshn
Came up with this site today, what do you guys think? all in one product from
the looks of it [http://soosci.com](http://soosci.com)

------
unclek
A small device that lets me piggyback off my friend's phone's battery if my
battery is at 5% and theirs is at 99% and they can spare some charge cycles.

~~~
mappum
I've thought about how public chargers are something that businesses should
start using. Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and getting a full charge
during your meal.

If wireless charging gets more standard, then there won't be an eyesore of
cables.

~~~
my_username_is_
My university added some charging stations in public places in my senior year.
There were countless times where these came in handy for both myself and
fellow classmates, I can definitely see this catching on

------
whitef0x
I always thought a DNA analyzer for potential dates would be a good idea. I
know it sounds crazy but you want to know if the your date has any good bad
genes or not so you can make a full gene ARRAY so you can see their store gene
structure and see if they are eatable. This would also translate into better
offspring for maximum efficient.

/s before anyone jumps on me for posting this, know that this was posted as
sarcasm

~~~
mappum
You're kidding, but some day, scanning people's brain structure and comparing
would probably be pretty effective.

------
dsschnau
A central hub for home improvement. I just bought a house and I don't know a
damn thing about maintaining it. I can't find a good central resource on the
internet. I'm stuck with random YouTube videos and Google searches.

I want a sort of wiki with examples for different home maintenance jobs. It
must have good, reputable information and high-quality videos. I would pay a
monthly sub for this kind of service.

~~~
DeanWormer
What about Lowe's Home Improvement YouTube channel? A friend and I were
considering starting a similar site and selling the parts to complete the
project, but we found Lowe's did a pretty good job of covering any routine
project we thought of.

I'd be interested to hear what projects you couldn't find helpful information
for.

~~~
dsschnau
Sure. Here's the first specific issue I've encountered.

I want to find out how to install a deadbolt on my door which only has a keyed
knob. I'd like to install one on two of the three exterior doors. The doors
are steel, and I with my zero-knowledge of home improvement, don't know how,
or if I even could, drill holes through them. Because I needed to change the
locks right away, I just bought some new doorknobs and changed them all out.

Of course, I didn't realize I got locks that have different keys for each of
the three exterior doors. Ugh. They will only have to be temporary.

I _really_ don't want to replace the door from messing up a drilling job. I've
spent 20 minutes now researching and only now I'm kind of confident that have
the resources to figure out exactly what I need to do.

The best one-stop-shop site for learning I've found is doityourself.com. It
has basically all the features I'm looking for - howtos, forums, user-
submitted projects, but the site is bloated(just open up dev tools and watch
the ocean of requests on pageload). The site is also not responsive.

I already feel overwhelmed at how much I'm going to have to learn to keep my
house in good shape for my family. The lack of a good web resource is
frustrating. I'm considering attacking this problem as well. Feel free to
email me.

~~~
joeclark77
I'm just buying my first house now, too. (Closing on Monday.) Like you, I'd be
the target user for this. Let me know if you'd like some help on it!

------
foolinaround
Idea: Wikipedia like graph db for curated content

1) An API framework with an ORM of sorts around the existing graph dbs ( it
could be Gremlin based ).

This would allow queries on levels of nodes ( tutorials -> { python | ruby }
-> { django | flask } , etc. Another dimension would be { beginner |
intermediate | hard }. An important search dimension might be the popularity
of the curator (submitter), the upvoters and downvoters, etc. The API would
allow RESTful retrieval of nodes, and based on permissions granted to the user
allow operations such as voting, modification, creation and deletion.
Wikipedia like data could be public domain, but the API itself could be self-
hosted on private servers allowing for enterprises to have their own internal
wiki of sorts.

Licensing should allow extension of the API if needed for premium revenue
models that might allow users to create 'n' relationships on a server that is
a kind of bookmarks, can keep private graphs, clones/forks of existing
graphs/sub-graphs with annotations, etc. Or contributors may contribute code
to extend features on the open source platform as well.

2) A web/mobile UI that would leverage this API and create the UX around
searching, for example, a) cross-indexing wikipedia and storing as graphs and
allow different search algorithms to be built. b) a knowledge graph of maths (
similar to the ones at khan academy ) and linking in the URLs / videos based
on dimensions such as target age, content length, language, pre-requisites,
etc.

------
kclay
Mobile payments for the vending Industry, yes they have card swipers but what
if you don't have your Cc.

~~~
coderheed
I heard about AirVend a year ago working in this space. [http://www.air-
vend.com/home](http://www.air-vend.com/home)

------
klchoi
Biometrics authentication. Iris in human eye's unique and doesn't change over
time as proven by a medical research paper published back in the day. This
will solve so many password-related problems present on the web as people tend
to use same passwords over the multiple websites.

------
Holbein
Lots of additional ideas (3.5 years old):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779246)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564)

------
morewillie
Brand-based trivia integrated into other apps to offset service costs (Uber,
Hailo, etc..)

------
gaurab
kickstarter for promoted tweets:

\- a site where one posts a tweet for a cause they're passionate about: "Bring
back Firefly for another season #FlyAgain" \- others can donate $ to have
adequate funds to promote the tweet on twitter

~~~
junto
> "Bring back Firefly for another season #FlyAgain"

I for one back this request with a passion! Best series ever. What were they
thinking canning this?

------
archagon
A DOM aggregator/filter browser plugin.

Let's say I'm looking for a room on AirBNB. The filter they have on their
website isn't specific enough: if I want to find a room that's $32 or less and
that has at least 20 reviews, I have to use my eyeballs to filter all the <
$35 results. What's more, there are many pages of results, making side-by-side
comparison difficult. My idea is to create a browser plugin that harvests each
element of a particular HTML class on a webpage (".search-result"), filters it
based on the contents of some of the child classes (".listing-price < 32", ".
listing-review-count > 20"), and puts all the results in a single window,
probably using CSS copied from the original page. All I'd have to do in the
AirBNB case is plug in the classes and comparators listed above and quickly
cycle through each page of the listings with "gather mode" turned on. I'd then
have all my preferred results in one place. Perhaps the plugin could even
allow you to identify your classes by simply pointing and clicking on the
desired nodes, much like the inspector in developer tools!

Ultimately, with this idea as the basis, I think you could make a great
Automator-style tool that streamlines your research. Is there some information
that's missing in the search results? Make it follow the links and filter the
full listing descriptions! Looking for listings with specific kinds of owners?
Do some keyword matching on each profile! Want a map of all your filtered
locations? Gather the GPS data and display it in a beautiful native map
interface! (Maybe you could even interface with external services like Wolfram
or Yelp: crime statistics, nearby restaurant reviews, Amazon ratings?) Kind of
like a web scraper, but with a very user-friendly UI specifically tailored for
filtering and aggregating search results. You wouldn't have to keep 100 tabs
open anymore when you're doing research: everything would be saved and synced
in a handy Evernote-like interface.

I've run into this problem frequently enough with comparison shopping that I
think there's value in this idea. I'm not really all that inclined to make it
unless I can make some money, but I made a little Javascript rough draft
script that can filter a webpage's DOM if you manually enter all the classes
and comparators and copy/paste it into the dev console. A lot more work than
the browser plugin I described, but still very useful for my purposes.

[https://gist.github.com/archagon/10233251](https://gist.github.com/archagon/10233251)

~~~
thom
import.io might be close to what you want here. You create a custom web
scraper with a nice visual interface, it extracts the data for you.

~~~
archagon
That looks really promising! I will have to look into that.

The previous discussion on HN[1] has a few more interesting leads. A lot of
people there are advocating writing their own scraper, but the point of this
sort of idea is to allow you to get going in just a few seconds, without ever
having to poke around in the dev tools, debug custom scripts, or even look at
the HTML source. If you're going to be doing research for an hour, spending
half an hour on writing your own scraper just feels like a waste.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582858)

------
blazespin
A service that incorporates startups and sets up stock options with a few
standard templates. You can manage everything online, including investment
rounds.

------
lavkesh
A book renting/borrowing app, which can be used to discover people(May be in a
integrated map) who are willing to rent the book for a few days.

------
danohuiginn
Weekly is good. But I'd prefer it to be posted a bit earlier in the day, for
the benefit of those of us in Europe.

------
davewasthere
real-estate search engine mashup that has maximum internet speed available to
residence as a filter.

Would be great in Australia. I'd love to be able to filter rentable properties
which have NBN/FTTP connections for instance... Would work well in UK too.

But for FTTN connections, having a distance from exchange would probably work
well enough.

------
jain_chirag04
my 2 cents: [http://chiragjain.tumblr.com/post/19578015287/startup-
ideas-...](http://chiragjain.tumblr.com/post/19578015287/startup-ideas-i-
killed-so-far)

------
teemo_cute
A while ago I was reading a blog post and I spotted a grammar error. The post
was good but it made me a little uncomfortable.

So I decided to make it right. I used chrome developer tools's edit html
feature... I edited the html and behold the grammar error was gone. I read the
paragraph again with pure delight. I love technology.

Idea Generated: There are lots of blog posts out there that have good content,
but sometimes they are not written well or grammar errors exists because of
lack of proof-reading.

What if there was a web-app where readers can correct blog posts or articles.
Of course, it needs the approval of the author. There might be a 'Correct me
if I have grammar errors' button of some sort somewhere in the post.

The editor is not allowed to edit the meaning of the content, only the typos
and/or grammar errors, which of course needs the approval of the author. It's
like github for blog posts and articles.

~~~
Detrus
Quora does this. It would just be hard to standardize across all the
variations of publishing.

~~~
Schwolop
It doesn't provide the "Suggest Edits" feature for blog posts, only answers to
questions. Until I discovered Quora, I was working on
[http://wikiblog.jugglethis.net/](http://wikiblog.jugglethis.net/) which was
my solution to this problem.

------
danfrost
Every Sunday

------
amardeepcgupta
Every Sunday.

------
adam419
Every Sunday, and I just posted it 10 minutes ago..

