
Share your weekend/part-time startup (December 2012) - withinthreshold
Tell us about your ventures!
======
scrumper
I recently shipped WOPR, a subtractive polyphonic synthesizer with an embedded
Game of Life grid. The GoL modulates the various parameters in time with an
internal (or now, external) clock. It's for iPad 2 and up. I started it a year
ago to learn a bit more about iOS and DSP. It had 9 months of sporadic evening
& weekend development over a very busy year, with a 3 month hiatus over the
summer.

It's had pretty decent reception so far. Beer money only, but enough that I
could have a few every day if I wanted to! It's done better than I ever
thought it would; I think because no musician can ever resist another synth.

Subsequent versions will increase in price as more features are added. Right
now I'm working on a huge v1.2 upgrade with a ton of stuff people have
requested.

<http://www.omnivoresoft.com>

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codesink
I made AppLens (formely AppSnap) a iphone app that lets you install any other
iphone app by taking a picture of its icon (on other phones or laptop screens
or anything else).

It's a free app + ads, most of its users are from china and japan.

Money-wise definitely not an hit!

I spent quite a bit on time to develop the backend part (in C) and optimized
it to query 3mil icons in few ms on a commodity server (cheap).

<http://bit.ly/Szmy7X>

~~~
saurabh
This is incredibly awesome.

~~~
codesink
Thanks!! :)

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sagey
(Just posted on HN) my new (ad)venture <http://songsasaservice.com> the idea
is every week people submit suggestions for a song subject (and a bid) and
within one week the winning bidder will receive an original song written on
the subject. The idea is based on a little 10 week challenge I set myself
earlier in the year. This time I thought I'd try and generate some revenue of
it :) and use it as an opportunity to create the most minimal MVP ever, whilst
simultaneously learning a minimum about python/ appengine and using existing
web services to minimise my workload (e.g. Gumroad, soundcloud, appengine,
bootstrap). Hope you like it?

~~~
withinthreshold
Looks cool, and who does the songs?

~~~
sagey
Oh, forgot to say if you could tell other people about it I'd very much
appreciate it :)

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Nemmie
Not really a start-up, but some things I've been working on, mostly in an
attempt to get in the habit of shipping stuff opposed to writing.

1\. Kill long meetings (<http://killlongmeetings.com/>). Counts the time and
calculates the money you're spending in a meeting.

2\. Where to pee in Antwerp (<http://antwerp-wheretopee.apphb.com/>). The city
of Antwerp (Belgium) has opened up some of its data. This mobile web app get
all the toilets in Antwerp and sorts them by distance. Shows that the browser
is already capable of running these sort of apps; beats building 3 native
apps.

3\. Culture in Antwerp (<http://antwerp-culture.apphb.com/>). Also for the
city of Antwerp. This is just a POC which should show that their current site
(<http://www.antwerpen.be/eCache/ABE/80/34/031.html>) is visually very
unattractive.

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WalterGR
<http://offensivest.com/books/> ranks the most vulgar English books. The books
are from a DVD released by Project Gutenberg. The offensiveness scores for
individual words and word phrases come from votes cast by visitors to The
Online Slang Dictionary (<http://onlineslangdictionary.com/>).

It desperately needs an "About" page describing the data and the methodology.

Later, I hope to expand the number of books we analyze and also analyze other
forms of media.

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herval
DailyCrunch (<http://dailycrunch.mobi>) - a "Flipboard for the Kindle".

Building it "to scratch my own itch" of having something to read on the subway
and getting rid of the "infinite streams of news" devices such as the iPad
suck you into.

Still pretty alpha, but everyone's welcome and feedback is appreciated :-)

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RyanZAG
Experiment on making a browser/android-based MMO using GWT to offload a lot of
heavy processing to the client (and save on those pricey cloud cpu charges)

<http://www.gloopsh.com/>

General idea is that each player controls a bunch of soldiers that they can
equip and give battle tactics to (flank, use abilities, etc). Battles get
auto-resolved with a nice graphical replay (you can check out an early version
of that by clicking the bottom right button on the page), so anybody can
attack anybody else on the map regardless of whether they're 'online' or not.

Currently coding up a stock exchange based economy for the game so that there
are caravans moving between cities for players to raid and generally make the
world seem a bit 'alive'.

Obviously a pretty big project to be doing with one guy and part time, but
it's surprisingly coming along pretty nicely!

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lazerwalker
I'm working on Scribe, web-based sheet music notation software for songwriters
and composers. Right now the public-facing URL is just a landing page, but if
you ping me (contact info in profile) I'd be happy to give you access to the
prototype.

<http://scribeapp.com>

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jmanzano
I've been some time developing a solution for most of us. It's a website
called Parkuik that will use a wiki-like environment to make us easier to find
parkings (some of you may have had this problem on your city :-P) with the
help of all of us.

I can just develop it when I have some time on weekends, but it is starting to
have some users and I hope sooner than later It'll be one of the reference
websites for this :)

You can find it here: <http://www.parkuik.com>

Hope you can visit it and tell me whatever you think that can be done to
improve it :)

~~~
adir1
You mean something like this? <http://en.parkopedia.com>

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evalcrux
I'm working a nights/weekend startup that positively conflicts with the
subject matter: a better kiteboarding forecast service/app.
<http://kitecaster.com> The idea is to model how kiteable a spot is based on
the location, your schedule/equipment, and of course the weather. Prototype is
going slow, kiteboarding gets in the way! And I am enjoying doing the full
stack using the tech I want (node, Parse, etc) when I should outsource some
things, but we're looking good for 2013!

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kaffeinecoma
Two related projects:

1\. <https://github.com/armhold/ocarina> \- a Ruby gem for doing simple OCR.

2\. <http://wordhelper.net/contact> \- helps you win at Letterpress. Uses my
OCR library to find playable words on the board. Have only tested it on an
gameboards generated on an iPhone 5.

I created the first project just to see if I could write a simple OCR library
(yay, I can!) I created Wordhelper mostly to find a practical use for Ocarina.

------
147
The first startup I'm seriously trying to build: <http://folkrobots.com>

It's only a landing page at the moment, working on finishing the MVP within
this month.

What I'm trying to build is a SEO tool that analyze your inbound traffic and
gives you a list of keywords to target. It'll analyze the keywords and related
keywords and check how competitive they are for you, automatically.

Give me lots of feedback please. If anything confuses you, please let me know.

~~~
Ixiaus
Don't bet too heavily on this...HitTail is having a rough time with Google's
(very slow but incremental) roll-out of removing the search phrase from the
inbound referrer headers...

~~~
147
If this becomes a problem do you have any suggestions for a slight pivot?

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FedericoElles
A kind of Google Now for Movies. Instead of searching for movies, new releases
automatically land in your inbox once available as stream and you just need to
sort them into "Want-watch", "Saw-and-liked", "Saw-and-disliked" or "Dismiss"
folders (for later auto-sorting). A beta version is available at
<http://exkino.de> for all you native German speaker and learner.

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jmstone617
An iPhone app for skiing/snowboarding. Track the stats for your runs on the
mountain. Add friends and see where they are on the mountain you're on. Send
meet up notifications. Download detailed maps of various mountains. Free to
download, with options for upgrading to PRO version and obtaining additional
maps. E-mail me at jordan [AT] kingofthemountainapp [DOT] com if you're
interested in testing!

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bizodo
We built from SignUpasaService.com from scratch, launched, won AngelHack New
York, got featured in TechCrunch, got hundreds of beta users, got inquiries
from investors all in 48 hours!

([http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/11/21/bizodo-launches-
signupasa...](http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/11/21/bizodo-launches-
signupasaservice-at-angelhack-nyc-to-cut-registration-woes-out-of-the-design-
process/))

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matb33
Send a screengrab, sketch on it, annotate, all in real-time (using Meteor
framework): <http://sket.sh/>

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volpav
I've been doing <http://priceflurry.com> for quite some time now (I posted
about my progress on HN couple of times). It's a service where people can
collaborate on prices and deals. It's finally getting some traction (not that
big of, but who said it's going to be easy) and I'm really happy to see that
:-)

~~~
adir1
Besides really pretty Russian girl, there is very little benefit to that
video. Maybe add some subtitles or spend more seconds on video portions that
have text? I couldn't figure out why some things she scrolls have price tags
of $250 and some $30 - what is she seeking in such wide price range?

~~~
volpav
Thanks a lot :-) I'm really thinking about redoing the video since more and
more people say it's not informative at all.

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ishbits
I'm plugging away on a service to allow mobile developers to add messaging and
location services (and some simple online storage) to their apps without
having to write the backend themselves - and provides high availablility.

Sadly I feel like its become moot, with some rather big players doing that as
well. But I might be able to white label it in some fashion.

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kh_hk
Been involved in CityBikes[1] for a while, both an Android app to find
stations on public bike schemes, and an API[2] that homogenizes and provides
the same information for projects, applications and statistical research.

[1]: <http://www.citybik.es>

[2]: <http://api.citybik.es>

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Jonovono
More like just a project, but we will see where it goes:

I made <http://tunesicles.com> but am sort of re writing it and making it look
better and have some more features using MeteorJS to learn in.

For now that one is at: <http://tunes.meteor.com>

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jbbarnes
We launched today - <http://www.ultimategiftlists.com> \- we've spent the last
week on it. I got bored of having to write an email with a series of links to
my family to tell them what I wanted for Christmas and for my birthday so
built this..

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andygcook
Nameknack - App to help you learn names: <http://www.nameknack.com>

Just a landing page right now for the user, but I have a prototype I'm almost
done with that I'll be launching soon. Sign up with your email and I'll invite
you when I'm ready if you're interested.

~~~
withinthreshold
Signed up and ready to hack my name learning issues :)

~~~
andygcook
Awesome! It's a nights and weekend project right now. My goal is to be
launched by the end of the month.

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zan2434
I, with some friends, created DOM: a bookmarklet that turns websites into 3D
platformers using jQuery, Three.js and an accompanying multiplayer server with
Node and Socket.io With it we won HackNY and presented it at NYTM

<http://tiny.cc/domjs>

~~~
lucaspiller
Clicking 'Instant Demo' on the landing page doesn't seem to work...

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micro_cam
<http://www.hillmap.com>

A google maps mash up for backcountry travelers that does things like find
avalanche prone slopes by analyzing image maps of elevation in
canvas/javascript.

Started it mostly for my own use but it has been getting some traction.

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kaffeinecoma
In pursuit of a casual passive income generator, I've been working on a meme
creator. It uses HTML5 canvas rather than Flash. I'm only a weekend or so into
it, but would appreciate any constructive feedback.

<http://mememachin.es>

~~~
lyaunzbe
How do you expect to generate income? Are you going to charge for creation?

~~~
kaffeinecoma
No way. Ad-supported.

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yashg
I released a Canvas based online photo watermark app a couple of weeks ago.
Its not really a starup, but one instalment in a series of photo based apps I
plan to build.

Check it out at <http://www.umarkonline.com>

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sagey
Couple of months ago I spent 30 days doing/writing this
<http://leanpub.com/30daysonobliquestrategies> A few months before that I
wrote this Http://leanpub.com/howtobeadick

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grotm001
I am working on EquityLancer (<http://equitylancer.com/>), the world's first
equity marketplace. We're setting up to launch our new website, but come check
us out before we expand.

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jyothepro
Not a startup but a side project
<https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/albumsyncer/id548959990?mt=8>

Sync your Facebook friends albums to Dropbox

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max_ardine
I'm working on ticket on rails <http://www.ticketonrails.com> an easy customer
support tool dedicated to startups. Check it out, it's free!

~~~
gazoo
Is it really free? I need a customer support tool for a new project and this
looks good!

~~~
max_ardine
yeah, absolutely! Feel free to register and try the service, any feedback is
appreciated.

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ramiyer21a
More than a weekend long...checkout <http://www.moupp.com>. A mobile app for
bands, musicians and artists to stay connected with their fans.

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noinput
<https://captivate.me> \- Add interactive apps with your YouTube & Vimeo
videos. Just launched to MVP stage and starting to get traction!

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sensecall
We're working on Farmly, a website & app that aims to make finding and buying
from local food producers in the UK much easier:

<http://farmly.net/>

~~~
kh_hk
Good take! Been thinking about it for some years.

What's your plan on handling distribution?

~~~
sensecall
Thanks! Us too – it's something that we feel just hasn't been executed in the
right way yet.

We're focussing first on creating a platform for local producers & consumers
to connect before we tackle distribution. We've got some interesting ideas on
the cards though when the time comes. Would be great to hear your thoughts on
it.

~~~
kh_hk
I like your approach: test the market without taking risks, and learn on how
locals handle it themselves.

Can't think on a better way of doing it. Distribution can kill your idea. At
the same time, it's the best selling point of it. If users are buying through
the website, they expect a quality deliver, which is not always easy to get,
and is expensive too.

On a sidenote: let sellers express themselves. I would not buy groceries from
a craigslist-sort site. I would if I can see photos, location, and know more
about the product and the business ethics of the seller.

~~~
sensecall
Those were exactly our thoughts.

For sure – something we really want to emphasise is the people behind the
produce, their story and what makes the things they sell so good.

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timmillwood
<http://heroku-mobile.herokuapp.com>

A mobile friendly web app for monitoring and helping to manage heroku apps.

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polarcuke
My friend and I have been working on Protobowl, a realtime multiplayer
quizbowl game.

<http://www.protobowl.com>

~~~
refiammingo
what is the software stack you're using? thank you.

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charlieirish
<http://livelystocks.com> \- Realtime stock news for day traders

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garysieling
A stock photo search engine- <http://www.stickstock.com/>

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anil_mamede
Emoji - An OSX app to make diagrams <http://bit.ly/YEv3SR>

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spIrr
Great topic! Don't have a startup by myself, but am looking for some
inspiration for 2013 :)

