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Ask HN: A product you would like to see built?

18 points by ideahacker ↗ HN
Hi,

I have been doing a consumer Internet startup for last 3 years and have reached a point where I wanna try out something else. The startup is Ramen profitable so I can work on another idea without worrying about money.

My strengths are coding, usability and interaction design (for consumer facing sites). I don't know much about enterprise software etc. I wanted to ask the community what product they wish existed. Since I am a bootstrapper, monetizability is important. Ideally I should be able to charge people a subscription fees (monthly/yearly).

27 comments

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jasonlbaptiste
im drawing a blank (its late), but don't worry about us. What would you like to see built?
ideahacker
I always find it hard to organize my reading (for most part technical reading). Do you think a service can help there? Like I can keep a track of books and papers I want to read and also get ideas from other people based on what I am currently reading/learning.
bhousel
amazon.com, shelfari.com, anobii.com?
ideahacker
I am thinking more like a site that can help you stay focused and also provide motivation (by hooking you up with real people who are learning/learned what you are learning right now).

So yes .. its like shelfari but more focused on learning than casual reading

aymeric
As Jason suggests, you should try to find the answer to your questions in your own frustrations. Where there is frustration, there is a market (usually).

I went through the exercise myself and blogged the results: http://aymeric.gaurat.net/index.php/2010/my-frustrations/

I would love to hear people's frustrations too.

grease
Agree with Jason .. scratch an itch .. that way, even if nothing worked out, you would still have one loyal user -> You

In good probability, there'll be others who share the same itch.

http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html

rampr
or try contributing to an opensource project that interests you
Flemlord
My wife would like an iPad/iPhone app for tracking baby milestones. When is the first time she rolls over, smiles, holds her head up, makes eye contact, etc. Keep a centralized (anonymous) database so we can compare to the average stats of the other users.

She's downloaded several apps so far, paid $4 for one, $6 for another. They were all unusably bad. I wish there was a return policy for apps.

chubs
What were the apps she already downloaded? Is there a market for baby-related iphone apps? This could be interesting, in that i've recently started dabbling in making iApps, and i've recently started being a dad.
mahipal
I would love to hear more too. I'm not in the target market, but I think there's a large market for baby-related apps (and, equally good, apps for young kids). I had some thoughts about how a "baby milestone" app might work, but the lack of a camera on the iPad is a big obstacle.
Zev
They were all unusably bad. I wish there was a return policy for apps.

Not really a "policy", but, in iTunes, if you:

  1. Go to Purchase History
  2. Report a problem
  3. Fill out the form with the for your refund request
You can probably get a refund. AFAIK, thats the process that people who i know that have gotten refunds before have had to do.
dumb_account_
Do you have a resume / credentials? I'd like to make sure my idea reaches a capable person.
tjmc
High bandwidth proxy service. I can't watch Hulu in Australia and free proxies are too slow. I'd pay to use a proxy service along the backbone somewhere.
baskinghobo
Use FreeVPN.
tjmc
Is it fast enough?
baskinghobo
Don't know the exact speed but around 80kbps which is basically just enough to stream Hulu.
nzmsv
You could run a proxy on a VPS. A basic Linode has 200GB bandwidth (which is the same as the monthly cap on my home connection). Tinyproxy is easy to set up.

But this is an interesting idea for a service.

maushu
Wouldn't it be illegal to serve hulu content to the outside of US?
nzmsv
This is probably why most businesses offering proxies, newsgroup access, etc. have very shady looking websites :)

That's the problem with such a business. You can't advertise "get Hulu from outside the US". You can only advertise "fast proxy servers", which only the technically inclined people will now what to do with.

schindyguy
Nzmsv, let's talk Bryan at schindyguy dot com
herrherr
- Get a cheap development box (Linode, Slicehost, etc.)

- Set Firefox to use Socks Host 127.0.0.1:8080

- Open up your terminal and enter this: ssh -C2qTnN -D 8080 your-user@example.com

Et voilà, you're tunneling all your browser traffic through the development box.

Note: I'm on a Mac, so things might differ under Windows.

jay_kyburz
I want to know what is going on in the world, but don't want editorial spin on my news. I want to have a better perspective about what is important.

Perhaps it's that I want to make up my own mind about what's important rather than trusting it to the current news organisations.

How about some kind of fact based news service where stories bubble to the top based on the "severity" or impact on the world or my community.

So for example, on the front page of the international section, global events of the last 7 days are sorted in order of "severity".

We may have to make some assumptions about what severity means, perhaps lives lost, financial loss, environmental impact. Perhaps a user can sort by a preference. Users could also filter by Global, County, State, City ect.

Clicking on one of these news events could present a nice collection of links to standard editorial content on the net, or relevant Wikipedia pages.

I guess the content would be community driven, and you would add some game mechanics to encourage adoption. (Karma ect)

I'd like to do this myself for fun, perhaps as a side project one day.

rms
$5000 a year for a virtual personal assistant that only helps you deal with email overload.
ochekurishvili
If not relate to the internet then it's a time machine...
petervandijck
OS forum software (simple, think vanilla forums, not phpbb) that I can easily run on google appengine so it's basically free to host.