
Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself. - bemmu
At school we often had to draw class diagrams, basically boxes containing some text, with arrows pointing to other boxes. The free tool we were using for this was made with Java, and would often be very buggy and was generally hated. I couldn't really find anything I liked and ended up making the diagrams in Gimp, not fun. I was really pining for a small perhaps Flash-based web tool that would let me make diagrams and download as PDF.
======
mdasen
So, many cities have bus systems and those bus systems now-a-days are usually
GPS equipped for several reasons (notably that a central office can monitor
the system and that the busses can announce ADA-compliant stop messages based
on location without the driver being involved).

I'd love to have something on my phone that would tell me where the next bus
was on a cool Google Map (or other) and an estimated time to arrival (which
could be calculated by Google Maps). Of course, you'd have to get your transit
authority to give you access to their GPS results.

But this would probably be one of the most helpful things a transit authority
could do. The problem most people have with public transit is that it can be
inconvenient, but often it _is_ convenient if you have better/more complete
knowledge of it. For example, when I get up in the morning, I have no idea
whether a bus went by a minute ago and it'll be another 20+ minutes waiting or
whether a bus is 2 minutes away.

This could also help trip planning. Often in a mass transit system, there are
multiple routes to get anywhere. The trip planners we have today are primitive
in that they often don't take current information into account (such as speed
at various times of day, location of the next bus/trolly/subway train in
proximity, etc.). Using GPS information would greatly change that.

~~~
dirtyaura
A live public transport map for Helsinki, Finland:
<http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/>

It's a trial, there are most (all?) trams and a few buses.

~~~
bemmu
I thought that map is just interpolating from the schedules, not from GPS? Not
that it makes much difference, the schedules in Finland being very accurate
for buses afaik.

In Tampere on major stops we have information about when the next bus is
coming in, some based on GPS and some on schedules, this distinction is
indicated on the board.

~~~
eru
This indication on the boards is common in most bigger German cities for
busses, trams and so on. E.g. in Frankfurt you have it on any tram stop.

------
tremendo
A Pandora equivalent for pr0n. Enter/grade a few images you like or dislike,
build a profile and "stations" to group similar kinds of content. Maybe these
profiles could be condensed into some short-length string--say a Meyer-Briggs
type of string (INTP, etc)--that you can then carry with you without having to
actually give out personal info, but that says hey, according to this
standard, these are my likes/dislikes when it comes to erotic imagery, now
gimme the goods.

Just sayin'

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I've wondered myself about the market for allowing people to drill down
through multiple fetishes. the vast majority of sites organize by single
fetishes. what if you could input a bunch of fetishes and it would
automatically find the videos that have the most tags in common with your
search? this would work best with something that supported user tags, so
people could find and tag specific elements.

~~~
owkaye
"what if you could input a bunch of fetishes and it would automatically find
the videos that have the most tags in common with your search?"

Something like tiava.com?

------
limmeau
A database of MAC addresses of stolen equipment. Participants install a client
which listens for the MAC addresses of all computers in the local network,
alerting the participant that the new possessor of a stolen MacBook Pro 15",
2006 edition, two deep scratches on the lid, seems to be nearby.

Of course, you'd have to find a way of guarding against malicious entries.

~~~
mcxx
MAC address can be changed.

~~~
tptacek
99.999% of people who steal hardware aren't smart enough to do this. Also,
99.9999999% of people who use stolen hardware have bought it (off eBay for
instance) and won't scrub it, but will plug it in somewhere that's monitoring.

I think this is a really good idea.

------
DanielBMarkham
Ad exploder. An add-in for FF and IE that lets you "explode" ads by clicking
on them, complete with sound effects and animation (or not). After you explode
the ad, you'll never see any more material in that spot again.

I don't just want to not see ads, I want something with some visceral action,
something to make the ads not want to come back! -- ie, something fun.

~~~
rrhyne
If you dropped the part about never seeing an ad there again, you could
probably get display Ad companies to pay you for each explosion as a click,
because if a user exploded it, then they saw the ad. Then, you'd LOVE ads!

~~~
emmett
Ad companies would probably like that anyway...they wouldn't be wasting their
money advertising to people who were not interested in their ads.

~~~
petercooper
Much of the point of advertising is to convince (or remind) those who are not
already convinced (or aware). Advertising is not advertising if you are
hitting people eager to see your message - that's _marketing_.

------
froo
Some kind of GPS-based app for a mobile device that works out how you get to
and from work and tries and puts you in touch with others who work closeby and
the hours that you do for the sake of carpooling.

Using your phone to reduce carbon emissions.

~~~
froo
Hmm, didn't think I would have gotten as many upvotes as I did...

Anyway, I know this may seem like common sense, but if someone was going to
build an app like this, I would suggest that the best platform for it is the
iphone simply because Apple actively market their technology as more "green"
than other manufacturers.

------
tocomment
Sell sunscreen in little packets (like ketchup packets) that can fit in your
wallet. That way you'll never forget sunscreen. Should I patent* this?

* I hate patents.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
But what do you do when you have sunscreen on your burger and mayo on your
back? I think this might backfire.

~~~
corentin
You could invent some sunscreen mayonaise.

~~~
stcredzero
That would make it more compatible to the American metabolism.

~~~
cmos
Or make it so we sweat sunscreen when we eat the mayonnaise (on fries?).

~~~
stcredzero
Mayonnaise on fries is British. It's probably related but we'd have to market
it differently.

(I've noted that the covers on the Harry Potter books in Britain seem to be
drawn for intelligent people, whereas the books in the US are far more
cartoony.)

------
limmeau
A first-aid application for e.g. iPhone which shouts at me what to do when
finding an unconscious person. With clear voice and pictures that I can even
understand if my head's in "omg omg he's dying what to do what to do" mode.

(Perhaps such an app exists; I'm too far away from an iTunes-capable computer
right now to check.)

~~~
c1sc0
That's a pretty cool idea, but aren't you better off calling 911 or your local
equivalent? What about liability issues? What about responsiveness? This thing
needs to be fast and non-intrusive !

I was in a (non-life-threatening) accident last week and I can think of a
couple of useful first-aid pointers lots of people overlook, like:

* so what _is_ the local emergency number? (based on GPS position) * "let's give him something to drink to comfort him ..." (Don't !)

Basically a decision tree to help people with basic first aid. These protocols
exist in the first aid world.

~~~
limmeau
Of course, the phone should also dial 911 (or 112 if you're in most parts of
Europe).

I like the idea of a decision tree. Big readable decision screens: "Does the
person answer when spoken to? [YES NO]" etc.

~~~
ConradHex
This could be useful in the case of a mass emergency where 911 can't respond
to everyone in a timely way. Also, when you don't have a cell signal. Or after
the zombie apocalypse.

------
cmos
Custom video games (for non geeks). I doctored up a basic shooter game for my
girlfriends birthday, replacing the backgrounds + all the characters with
relevant images from her life. It makes a basic shooter game much more
interesting when someone you know is attacking!

~~~
Tichy
Hm, I pondered doing this for my memory game (pairs). You think there would be
much interest for this? I could even automate it to create memory games from
flickr.

------
strlen
A SLIME* for Python, Perl or Ruby (<http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/>).

All of these languages have a powerful reflection/meta programming facility
(yes, Perl included). So technically, something like could be implemented:

1) The server (using Twisted in Python or POE in Perl) listens for requests.
Requests are for objects.

2) The server looks at the request, serializes it into a s-exp describing the
state of the object sent to it.

3) Emacs then looks at the s-exp and decides what to do with the object
initially looked at (suggest a method to complete/use on? highlights it red if
it's wrong? bring up HTML formated documentation, etc...)

~~~
apgwoz
> SLIME* for Python, Perl or Ruby

I'm not entirely sure, but I think you might just have to implement a Swank
server, and SLIME* would work without problems. It could be that you're forced
to use s-expressions, but I doubt it.

~~~
strlen
I haven't looked at the client portion of SLIME in a while, but wouldn't there
be some changes needed to deal with languages where statements and expression
are different from each other?

Getting Perl _code_ into an s-exp would be fairly difficult actually (as
opposed to getting an s-exp from a Perl complex hash -- which would be really
easily) - generally (with Perl5) the consensus is anything that can parse
Perl, _is_ Perl. Python, Ruby and Perl6 (which effectively is a Lisp, complete
with macros in forms of first-order primitives for CFGs) would, I am sure, be
easier a lot easier.

~~~
apgwoz
> I haven't looked at the client portion of SLIME in a while, but wouldn't
> there be some changes needed to deal with languages where statements and
> expression are different from each other?

Yeah, probably.

------
shalmanese
I've always thought about a system for teaching kids about programming by
building AI players for online games. The system would consist of 3
components:

1\. A screen scraping/computer vision toolkit that would supply most of the AI
primitives to interpret games 2\. An interpreter for each game that would
provide an machine usable API to interact with the game 3\. An AI program that
would then play the game

Component 1 would only need to be built once, Component 2 would need to be
built once per game and then Component 3 is what the kids would get to build.

I always thought this would be an excellent, gentle introduction into the
world of programming.

Take Fishy (<http://www.xgenstudios.com/game.php?keyword=fishy>) for example.
It would be really simple to build a dumb AI that could do ok but to build a
really great AI would involve some really sophisticated path planning and
optimization algorithms.

What better way to get kids inspired and wanting to learn about programming
than have them solve the games they're already playing?

~~~
GHFigs
Quite a different thing, but you may find this interesting:
<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/>

------
theantidote
A Taxi service site and iPhone app. Lets you send your current location to the
cab company with your iPhone and then track the cab as it arrives. Maybe even
offer a prepay option so you can pay with your paypal account and just read
off a confirmation number to the cab driver or something at the end of the
trip for them to bill you with. Maybe in order to prevent confusion over more
than one cab being called from the same location the app can light your phone
screen up in a unique color for you to call the cab with as it approaches.

This wouldn't really be necessary in NYC where cabs are ubiquitous but in DC
it would be useful.

EDIT: Crud, already sorta exists: <http://taximagic.com/>

~~~
bemmu
Why are you disappointed that it exists? My reaction is more like "great, that
problem is solved, now I can make something else".

~~~
theantidote
I just thought I was original but it turned out I wasn't.

------
tptacek
Something that takes blog posts from a related cluster of blogs and presents
them as a threaded newsgroup.

~~~
tocomment
Sounds interesting, could you expand on that?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
he probably wants news.google.com but in a format like mail.google.com's
threads. kind of like techmeme, i imagine.

~~~
tptacek
I want blogs to look like Usenet, so that best affordance for a response is
another blog post, not a comment. Comments are evil.

There's enough structure in blogs (blogrolls, tags, date, author, backlinks)
--- especially if you mine comments --- to do take a stab at this.

~~~
jacobolus
I'm interested to hear why you think comments are evil.

Would there be any way to make that discussion-like structure accept input
from anonymous, infrequent, or lazy users? Setting up a blog just to reply
might leave out some decent responses.

~~~
tptacek
They're second-class outlets. A blog author can say whatever they want; their
posts are first-class elements in Google's corpus; the medium encourages
stand-alone writing instead of meaningless squibs.

The original vision of the "blogosphere" rejected comments. "Write a blog
post, instead." Here's an old, well-known example:

[http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr0401/Whyblogcommentsarebad.h...](http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr0401/Whyblogcommentsarebad.html)

The problem right now is that the affordances favor comments over posts. The
first step is to adjust them; it just so happens that by making a threaded
blog-group reader, you're also providing a lot of value to people who don't
care that comments are evil, but do find it hard to follow 10 different blogs
talking about the same thing.

------
olefoo
A cradle that updates the baby's facebook page based on decibels, activity,
dampness.

~~~
run4yourlives
Shouldn't the parent pay more attention to the baby than to facebook?

:-) Just Saying.

~~~
tptacek
He's not saying that, he's saying that you should be living his parenthood
vicariously through Facebook. I agree: you should.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
+1

Vicarious parenthood is cheaper, cleaner, and you can take a break from it
whenever you want.

But nieces and nephews have a higher payoff than Facebook.

~~~
tptacek
My sister and brothers would disagree, since I pester them to babysit.

------
vaksel
a bugmenot type service...except it would act as a proxy. The proxy will be
used to hide the actual login info, and to prevent the users from screwing
around with the actual account.(basically I see this as changing the username
to XXXX, not letting users go to pages like usercp.php etc).

Right now bugmenot is pretty much useless, since all accounts are dead almost
right away.

This way the passwords etc will remain private, and the accounts won't go dead
right away

~~~
jcl
I assume the accounts go dead mostly because the content providers kill them,
not because individual users kill them. There isn't much you can do to stop a
content provider from figuring out which accounts are bugmenot accounts and
killing them... It's an arms race to see who will give up first.

~~~
vaksel
more reason to keep the login info secret. Sure they can figure out the
account by multiple ips...but that takes a little bit more effort.

Honestly, I think the user side portion is a bigger problem. Its all the
psychology, people change the login info so that noone else would be able to
do the same thing and prevent their access.

~~~
jcl
In addition to Jerf's comment, I will also point out that you can't hide the
login info from the content providers. All they have to do is
steganographically encode the user name into the web page content. Then they
can use your bugmenot-like service to retrieve the page, extract the user
name, and cancel the account.

I still see no benefit to the users changing the account info. This is to
access sites with free accounts, yes? In that case, isn't it actually just as
much work to assert control over multiple bugmenot accounts as it is to sign
up for the free accounts in the first place?

------
zupatol
I would like a shopping list on my mobile phone.

The main inconvenience I have with my shopping list on paper is that the
things I forget to buy are not automatically on next week's shopping list. And
I might forget less things if I could easily delete the items I buy while I'm
in the supermarket. This sounds like a small easy-to-write application.

The application should also have the advantages of my paper shopping list. My
wife should be able to add things to the list using her phone. Adding items to
the list should be extremely easy. I hate writing text messages.

~~~
inglorian
Whoops, sorry. Meant to upvote and downvoted accidentally instead. Am upvoting
two of your other comments to make up for it.

~~~
bmelton
I upvoted to offset your downvote.

That said, I think there's an android app I saw recently on the market that
does this. I'll install it later and see how closely it compares to the
features mentioned.

~~~
zupatol
I upvoted you both for being so nice.

------
cglee
Filter or customize your tv ads. I hate it when a horror movie ad comes on and
I have to scramble to change the channel. Similarly, I may like watching
John&Kate+8, but that doesn't mean I want to watch the typically associated
feminine hygiene commercials.

~~~
brfox
How about at least filtering the online ads. Just put a little link in the
corner of the ad that allows you to say "no thanks, I never want to see this
ad again."

~~~
robfitz
adpinion is doing this fairly well

------
profgubler
Site that let's teenagers list what kinds of odd jobs they would do for money,
like lawn mowing, leaf raking, garage cleaning. Then people in their
neighborhood can look for kids to do this work.

You would set a means of money exchange and the kids could publish what they
are earning money for to draw the adults into picking them.

------
trickjarrett
For toll roads, some sort of in car item that will receive a short audio ad
and play it. Thus using the ad money to pay my toll. I realize there are
several issues immediately off the top of it, but it could be a viable
alternative to having to pay tolls.

~~~
guruz
That is an interesting idea, however certain tolls (e.g. london city) have not
the goal to earn money, but to keep people away. playing ads won't keep them
away.

~~~
limmeau
In that case, the device could output not an advertisement but a 45-second
uninterruptible lecture about what too much car traffic does to the city.

(but who would voluntarily install that...)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Or perhaps just 45 seconds of a baby crying or nails on a chalk board?

------
crpatino
Rescue-Time for Intranets (stand alone would do too).

Ideally it would be able to track not only what applications you are using or
URL are looking at, but also which files you are working with. Then you can
tag entire directories in order to keep track of projects.

Pretty reports is a must

Bonus points if you provide programmatic hooks to automate filling of damned
time tracking, ticket trackig and TPS tracking 3rd party solutions.

------
betageek
Global Tabbing - I have a lot of windows open (as do you all i'm sure) and i'd
really to be able to bundle them into one tabbed window in a Firefox stylee.

Look at something like Coda (www.panic.com) and think instead of having all
the apps built in to the app you just have a tabbed window container that you
add app windows to that allows you to quickly switch from one to the other
(eg. tabs for text editor,terminal,version control gui,ftp client, pdf viewer)

~~~
rotw
Try the tab feature of Fluxbox (www.fluxbox.org).

~~~
timf
Yeah fluxbox is nice. I use (eight) virtual desktops to group things by what
I'm doing logically. And then within each desktop tab things together when it
works -- and automatically if it is the same program (very helpful for
terminals etc.).

------
DanielBMarkham
Here's one I spent a month researching last year and couldn't find a partner
-- a virtual commodities exchange. An online commodities market for WoW gold,
HotOrNot flowers, anything else that only exists in virtual reality.

This would be complete with futures trading and derivatives.

(Lots of other details required to make it work. Email me if you'd like to
hear more)

------
old-gregg
A botnet that 100% autonomously opens a bunch of honeypot email accounts,
publishes them somewhere, reads every single spam message and organizes DOS-
attacks on pharmacy sites that pay for spam advertising.

~~~
d0mine
If it were legal it could be implemented as a collaboration system such as

<http://fold.it/portal/>

<http://galaxyzoo.org/>

<http://noisetube.net/>

<http://qcn.stanford.edu/>

<http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/>

------
goodgoblin
I would love something that aggregated all your karma points into an exchange
of some kind. I would use it, but I would never build it.

~~~
pudo
I have been coding a prototype of this in my free time over the past couple of
weeks. It's fun, but I'm not sure it actually makes lots of sense.

Not only is it really hard come up with a model to convert currency from many
places into a "standardized" format (or even to allow for OpenID-style
distribution) - it'll also not be easy to provide data to other sites that
allows them to do useful things easily. Tags might be as good as it gets.

One other thing Y-people might not like: this SHOULD NOT have a revenue model,
I think. Freemium completely screws you and ads on a reputation site would
just feel wrong. Besides, it's a platform.

That's why I keep thinking about open-sourcing what I have, especially in
order to try to solve the distribution problem before an alpha site might go
online. Being a hopeless idealist I really want to see a service-decoupled
reputation service that is NOT facebook/google FC.

Please let me know if any of you'd be interested to join me in playing around
with this.

~~~
Tichy
I just don't see how it is technically feasible, as most sites don't provide a
way to transfer karma? Or is the idea more that of an independent karma
service that other sites could plug in to (like gravatar does for profile
pictures)?

------
mattdennewitz
fwiw, perfectlygoodideas.com is available right now. perhaps someone could use
the uclassify api to classify & cluster similar ideas & recommend
partnerships. no idea how well it would work, but it might be worth a an hour
or two on a weekend to find out. im just thinking out loud here :)

~~~
aneesh
I really like that idea. domain name taken :) -- i presume you didn't want to
do this since you didn't buy it yourself.

If I get to it this weekend, I'll submit to HN when I have something ready.
Thanks for mentioning uclassify -- I hadn't heard of it.

~~~
mattdennewitz
awesome! put it to good use :)

ive pared down my list of "want to dos" to a single choice, but i definitely
want to use uclassify. if i hadn't buckled down, i'd have a half-working
django prototype in ~/src/ right now that i'd revisit to burn some time on
every 3 months.

------
imgabe
A visual dictionary/wiki for finding the names of obscure things. Users could
submit definitions and pictures. They could also tag pictures with the names
of related things so you could search based on objects that are commonly found
near or work with the thing you're looking for. The picture would help you
confirm you found the right thing.

For example, suppose you didn't know what the little plastic thing on the end
of your shoelace was called and you wanted to buy more of them. You could
search for "shoelace" or "end of shoelace" and find a picture of an aglet.
Maybe even some ads to where you could buy a supply of aglets. Now, no more
frayed shoelace ends for you, and life is a little better. :)

~~~
jjs
Visual dictionaries (including online ones) already exist, although according
to one ( <http://visual.merriam-webster.com/> ), the aglet is actually called
a "tag".

------
gijs
A 1-on-1 clone of GMail, but installable on any webserver. I love the GMail
interface but I hate to have my mail on their servers for obvious reasons.
Same goes for Reader, Calendar and Docs.

~~~
juliend2
Ever tried Zimbra?

<http://www.zimbra.com/products/collaboration.html>

------
paul7986
Have this idea/started web design, but busy with work. It's a crazy out there
possibly good idea or bad.

<http://fornicatur.com> \- a new way to meet people for well...

Though tech could be white labeled for any topic - beyond theme of domain
above (GPS locate hiking buddies in central park, people who like your
favorite movie, tons of stuff... interesting new way to meet people).

~~~
euccastro
_Though tech could be white labeled for any topic_ [...]

<http://www.loopt.com/> ?

------
guruz
An app that increases the number of hours a day has, e.g. makes time flow
slower. That way I could accomplish more ;)

~~~
rokhayakebe
So far the closest thing to this would be to hire someone else.

------
coolnewtoy
A twitter-like feed that sends text messages to cell phones that let first
responders like police and ambulance folks recruit helpful bystanders to
assist in managing emergencies.

For instance - I need an entrance ramp blocked so no more cars get on this
highway - is there someone nearby who can park their car to block it and wave
people around?

Or - how many people are stranded on the other side of this flooded road - can
someone nearby give me an estimate?

There should be some well-known way to subscribe to the feed, and it should be
able to recognize your physical location.

------
yargseiks
Ha. We were required to use Poseidon for UML, but it was such a pain and
crashed so often that we ended up making all our UML Diagrams in Dia (which is
a nice enough and lightweight program, if slightly clunky; you might want to
check it out). Yet instead of being pleased or even just ambivalent about the
entire enterprise, our teacher got mad that we used a tool other than the
prescribed one. I never really understood why people would get pissy about
what tools you used instead of focusing on the actual output.

~~~
owkaye
Maybe your teacher's goal was to encourage people in the class to learn
Poseidon so he could hire them on a private project. Or maybe he/she was
looking for a genius who would be able to figure out how to code Poseidon in
such a way that it would not crash.

There are lots of other reasons why a teacher might set specific rules for an
exercise such as this, too. Unfortunately you chose to ignore the instructions
-- and you made the mistake of second-guessing him/her -- assuming that the
teacher's goal was the end result and not the process of getting there.

------
dcminter
This thread (with some excellent ideas in it) reminds me of the half bakery:
<http://www.halfbakery.com/>

The half bakery has some good idea, some mediocre ideas, and some very
entertaining bad ones.

Already submitted here it seems but evidently didn't get voted up at the time
- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135677>

------
jgrahamc
Nappies (diapers) for babies that have a little pocket with a couple of wipes
in it. Basically I want to be able to stuff a couple of nappies in by jacket
pocket or bag and then when the baby needs changing I've got a fresh nappy and
a couple of wipes.

~~~
robfitz
i'd rather manufacture wipes into a sealed pocket, instead of making people do
it by hand every time

~~~
t0pj
Pre-sealed pocket of wipes; good idea!

The wipes would be warmed by the baby's body heat as well; babies don't like a
cold wipe on their tushies.

~~~
jgrahamc
That's basically my idea, I didn't describe it well enough. The wipes would be
in a little tiny sealed packet attached to the outside of the nappy.

------
Timothee
Something that produces iPhone code out of Flex/Flash code and vice-versa?
That sounds impossible (I don't know either one) but if it were, it could be
cash cow, no?

~~~
derefr
There's a library called CoreAnimation that's similar in some ways to Flash,
supporting keyframes and tweening and such. The iPhone also has (an
unofficial) port of Rhino, to run the needed ActionScript. (Compiling that to
native code would be a whole 'nother matter.)

------
bemmu
Sometimes I've had the idea of making a sort of "fan page" for my university
(Tampere University), because their own homepage is so horrible. On the
surface it looks OK, but actually it is quite difficult to use in actually
planning which classes to take. The fan page would be maintained by students
who are actually taking those classes, combined with pressuring the teachers
to take part. This is where I think it wouldn't really work, people couldn't
be arsed to help, so I haven't attempted it.

I feel so embarrassed for our faculty. I mean they have classes on UI design
and usability, yet it's beyond them to make their own pages usable. This is
the home page of our logic programming class:
<http://www.cs.uta.fi/~tn/LOGO_kotisivu_2009.htm> I wouldn't mind the yellow
background and the all-caps text, if every other course would just have the
same information in the same place in the same format so that some sort of
study planning could be done.

~~~
rms
I'm surprised no one has tried to sell your school a system like Blackboard.
Is penetration of such systems low outside of the USA? Sounds like there is
quite a marketing opportunity there, if you were to develop a competitor to
Blackboard. Their software isn't great, it wouldn't be hard to do better,
though integrating with the university's existing IT infrastructure could be
tricky.

Be warned though, Blackboard basically has their whole system patented, though
I think their patent for "using a CMS for school" was recently overturned. The
patents may be less important outside of the USA.

~~~
inglorian
If anyone wants to make a competitor to Blackboard, please do. My school uses
it and it is terrible: the UI is awful, response time is slow, and professors
across the board hate it and prefer to use their own websites to upload files.
Shouldn't be too hard to make a better version.

------
iamelgringo
Just a thought, have you tried www.dabbleboard.com? It might be what you're
looking for to do your diagraming.

Otherwise, Viso has a steeper learning curve, but probably has more tools for
what you're doing. I know it's expensive to buy, but with a Bizspark
membership (get sponsored and only pay $100 after 3 years) it's free for the
downloading along with your MSDN membership.

------
noodle
<http://www.gliffy.com/>

~~~
zhyder
<http://www.dabbleboard.com> :)

~~~
whatusername
love dabbleboard. (Not that I use it much - but have always been impressed)

~~~
zhyder
thanks!

------
tocomment
Video games for dogs?

~~~
aamar
Yes! Clearly: a harness with a slot for a Wii-mote. Implement for cats also,
branded "MWii-ow."

~~~
Prrometheus
On a related note:

Porn games for the Wii.

~~~
Tichy
Hm, know of any interesting porn games? My own venture into erotic games
wasn't a big hit: <http://3boobs.de>

It works on the Wii, btw (website in Opera).

------
gsiener
While listening to the (IMHO) uninspired Jaydiohead album, I thought it would
be neat to create an automated system for creating and rating remixes.

1\. Upload a ton of music to serve as seed data

2\. Run a beat rate algorithm

3\. Mix the vocals from one song with the rest from the other.

4\. Present clips of two such mixes to users, who pick the better one.

5\. Repeat until you have a best selling album of remixes.

------
there
a reverse of friendfeed.com that pushes updates to all of your services.

if someone changes their avatar picture, email address, name (marriage),
location, etc., they should be able to do it on one site and have it pushed to
all of the other sites that user is a member of.

authentication would be a big problem, but you're smart, figure it out.

~~~
lehmannro
<http://ping.fm/> is not there yet but you two are heading into the same
direction I think.

------
amichail
[http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from:amichail+reactions+O...](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from:amichail+reactions+OR+expression)

------
jodrellblank
A remote control program like FogCreek Copilot designed for OMG-SLOW
connections.

I want to be able to disable screen updates except for manually triggered
refreshes of certain areas, or to block out areas I don't want to refresh
until instructed otherwise. I want extremely low bandwidth low detail options
that fill in like progressive JPG instead of line-by-line from the top. I want
to be able to cancel data transfer and reset to nothing. I want the remote
client to screen-scrape and send compressed text and outlines of windows and
to be able to send it high level Windows support instructions like "open the
control panel" and have it not refresh the screen until that's done.

I can orient myself in a Windows desktop with a small amount of information,
but I can't stand hideously slow remote control connections.

------
jcjohnson
Free Cell phone usage and phone. Must use Advertisers ringtones and ringback
tones or jingles. Same for text messages. Add embedded java advertising in
background.

------
utnick
on demand telephone opinion polling.

have a mechanical turk type group calling people over voip...

customers submit polls online, charge a few hundred $, promise really quick
turnaround, have 'turks' make the calls for less than you charge.

------
cglee
A device that twitpics from my dog's collar every X minutes. I'd like to take
a glance at what my dog's day is filled with. He seems very busy. This may be
more fun with a cat though. Especially one that goes outside (though you'd
need an EVDO connection, probably).

~~~
joshwa
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0017T7Q00/>

<http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/index.htm>

------
paraschopra
1\. A T-shirt recommendation system. I have been toying with this idea for the
past, but never got the time to implement it.

2\. An aggregator of free lectures (video/audio/text) on the internet

------
gills
N-party barter settling platform.

~~~
patio11
I think currency.com is already taken.

~~~
khafra
Relevant point, but money was created to abstract before we had general-
purpose abstracting machines like computers with their associated tools. If it
wouldn't get you in trouble with the IRS (big "if"), I think it'd be
fascinating to see the new tool applied to the old problem. It might create an
entirely new kind of market.

~~~
patio11
Bartering doesn't get you in trouble with the IRS, as long as any income you
earn from it (be that a cow, an hour-long massage, or sixteen clay beads) gets
declared on your tax return at "fair market value". And then, obviously, you
pay income tax on it. The IRS will accept just about anything to satisfy your
tax obligations, as long as "anything" is US dollars.

 _The Internet has provided a medium for new growth in the bartering exchange
industry. This growth prompts the following reminder: Barter exchanges are
required to file Form 1099-B for all transactions unless certain exceptions
are met._

See: <http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html>

~~~
natrius
If people like the new bartering system enough, trying to enforce such onerous
reporting requirements will incite a tax revolt.

------
stcredzero
How about a proxy server I can use to block or partially block sites for
myself? (Procrastination preventer) Since I'm not administering a corporate
WAN, this should be lightweight and simple to use. It should let me set
everything with a GUI. It should present the top 10 sites I visit as a list
and let me block each with a click. The parital block feature can limit my use
to 15 minute blocks or something like that.

~~~
khafra
I've been thinking about this one for a while, with half an eye to coding it
up: Mousehole or some other lightweight proxy with a list of sites. When you
go to one of those sites, it redirects you to your "to-do" list; google
notebook or rememberTheMilk or something with similar capabilities. There's a
button to continue to your intended site, but you've got the reminders right
there of what you really intended to do instead of spending time on a site you
have marked as a time waster.

Could have priority markings and due dates integrated if it were a customized
task list instead of google or RTM, and pop up the interstitial less often or
less obtrusively when there's no important deadlines approaching, etc.

------
mariorz
something that takes my last.fm played feed and outputs a feed of new album
releases I would like.

really last.fm should do this.

------
alrex021
A site dedicated to connecting Technical Business Analysts with Software
Developers.

~~~
alrexx
What kind of connection, like what purpose and what environment?

Edit: Cool name :P

------
tocomment
Room service robot for hotels. It could basically be a motorized cart. It
would be easy for it to get around in big hotels with elevators.

~~~
decadentcactus
Might it be easier to just build a dedicated sort of line for each room? Like
a part of the wall that opens up and is connected to the kitchen/wherever, to
deliver your food. Would be harder at first but it'd be much easier down the
line, and more efficient.

~~~
huhtenberg
It is WAY cheaper to use a human to deliver the orders.

~~~
toisanji
I actually worked in a hospital where they paid for robots to deliver medical
records to doctors/nurses. The nurse would request records, and then the
medical records department would fill it up and send them out. I think that
didnt last too long, not efficient enough.

------
tocomment
Scan in ISBN of a book, have it posted for sale on Amazon and craigslist.

~~~
dcurtis
Amazon already does this. Actually, I think it's required to list an item on
Amazon.

~~~
akronim
You need the ISBN, but it's not as simple as scan it and you're done.

Delicious Library might do what you want?

~~~
jgrahamc
I have a hand scanner for barcodes that works fine with Amazon.com. It looks
like a keyboard to my PC and so when I scan a barcode it simply 'types' the
ISBN into the appropriate box on Amazon.

~~~
akronim
Delicious Library does it with the camera in the mac, you just hold up the
book.

------
symptic
An app that tracks your forum activity and displays all your private messages,
thread subscriptions, etc. all in one app.

~~~
Timothee
Kind of like a mint.com of internet activities? I like the idea. I'm not sure
how easy it would be to be exhaustive. I can see how you could add the regular
places you hang out at. Casual comments would be harder to track but a
bookmarklet could help there.

But isn't that kind of like a YC startup? I forgot the name though but I
remember the website being a place where you could follow people's comments on
blogs. Is your idea focused on forums?

I like the idea.

~~~
divia
I think you mean <http://www.backtype.com/>.

~~~
Timothee
Yes I was thinking about this one. Thanks!

------
DaniFong
Pandora/last.fm for Articles/News/RSS. Stations, skipping, shared traits, etc.
More topic centered than FriendFeed.

~~~
chadgeidel
I've thought of this too, but I can't get around my "moral" (not really, but
that's the best description) qualms about this. We already self-select news to
reinforce our bias. This idea would just reinforce the bias. Still I'm
thinking about doing it. With the caveat that I would occasionally put in a
"opposite opinion" article or piece of news.

~~~
DaniFong
But on Pandora I often hear music I never would have otherwise heard. Also, I
think that news can be more related to topic over perspective...

------
jodrellblank
A way to replicate data over the copious amounts of spare disk space in a
roomfull of standard office computers, including implicit duplication such
that some machines being off or broken doesn't matter.

I saw a link here a while ago about encoding redundant copies of data with
less duplication than you'd think...

------
anthony_barker
Service compare engine Service check - a cost comparison engine for various
services with a mobile front end - average cost in your area. So when the
mechanic says - it'll be $2000 for the break job - you know how many hours it
should take and how much it should be

~~~
bmelton
That's a good idea, and one I've actually kind of piddled around with,
however, I have the nagging feeling that it isn't the costs themselves that
are egregious, but the diagnosis.

Example: I take my car in for a squealing noise it makes. Obviously, I'm not
going to pay $3000 for a belt replacement, but I have no assurance that the
"Miscalibrated Magnetostat" isn't the correct diagnosis. I'm willing to pay
$3000 for a magnetostat recalibration, and the going rate may well be $3k, but
all the mechanic really does is replace a belt.

Though, saying it out loud, perhaps I should just implement some kind of
rating system for mechanics as well.

------
revorad
ff plugin/addon that saves the state of my browsing session online, so that i
don't lose my open tabs when i move from one computer to another. it probably
won't work for sites which require login but i don't mind.

~~~
euccastro
Don't Google Browser Sync or Mozilla Weave do that?

~~~
revorad
weave probably does but it is in closed alpha now.

------
xtimesninety
a simple iphone book/html reader that downloads my latest bookmarks on
delicious tagged 'read' so I could read them offline.

This way I don't have to sync and stuff ;) does instapaper already do this? I
tried it once before.. I forgot the reason why I got back to ruBooks and a
custom python script to download websites from my delicious feed.

------
vivekamn
A location aware twitter app, which will filter tweets based on where I am
right now. It can figure out the location relevance of a tweet by scanning its
content or by its origin(if the senders are using your client which will geo
tag it?). In short, if I am in SFO, I want to hear only about tweets relevant
to SFO.

------
apsurd
I've always wondered why social networks don't ally with music labels and
promote/sell music. Small networks can contact indie labels, and huge networks
can work with sony, etc ...

It just seems to me that music is the perfect social product...

~~~
bemmu
Isn't this basically what Myspace is doing?

~~~
apsurd
Yeah but I think it has taken them a long time to realize. What I am getting
at is a music advertising/sales marketplace where "any" social network could
sign up and promote/sell music. This would be another possible solution to
monetizing social networks. So if I maintained a 100k high school football
network, There would be an easy way to integrate music ads. And when I say
music I mean new acts in general, tours, specific shows, and of course actual
product releases/merch sales. As I said, music is very social and everyone
likes some kind of music.

------
tocomment
FF extension - Search within a textbox.

(I hope I'm not posting too many ideas)

~~~
midnightmonster
page search searches in text boxes, too

------
aupajo
It already exists. Try <http://www.gskinner.com/gmodeler/app/run.html>

------
kleneway
<http://astartupaday.wordpress.com>

------
TweedHeads
A magnifying glass with bluetooth to project the images on your pc, with a
shutter to take snapshots of what you're looking at, with different zoom
levels and as powerful as a microscope.

Imagine the kids running around the house taking shots of worms, spiders,
ants, etc. and sharing them online.

~~~
almost
You can buy a USB microscope at my local Maplins store.

~~~
TweedHeads
I know, but I mean something more portable. You can't take the microscope
around looking for stuff. Bring the lens to the bug, not the bug to the lens.

------
opticksversi
Telenurse.com . Webnurse.com . Netnurse.com . Plentyofnurses.com

<http://news.google.com/news?q=aging+population+health>

------
ddemchuk
I want to do this one day, but have no plans of doing it any time soon: a
playlist generator for different sized mp3 players. An app I install locally
that will scan my music library and then I select a song and the app mashes up
with last.fm and generates a playlist of the best similar songs that I
currently have that is a maximum total size in MB so all I have to do is put
that playlist into whatever I transfer my music to mp3 player with and
everythings done. Easy way to fill up my mp3 player with fresh music every
day.

------
vidioradeo
a working email to sms app, a better wifi caller for the itouch

