Ask HN: What API to the physical world do you wish existed?
Inspired by the recent post on the startup that turns your emails into physical letters, I was wondering what other opportunities exist like this. What service do you wish you could initiate online (through an API or otherwise) that would have a real-world outcome?
83 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadFull geolocation would be quite a bit harder, what would be the use case where you'd need to, say, plot the location of your keys on a map?
I'd like a digital wall paper on my walls so that I could change how my walls look every day.
If you are truly God, please implement ASAP
And, because I'm in Seattle....a Weather API (with CRUD capabilities.)
OK, I'm thinking as I type. The API must represent a functional system (i.e. function calls do no have side effects, produce the same output given the same environment) for RE to work. The first million iterations of such an API would not 'feel' functional because humans tend away from rationality (insert gender-prejudiced joke here.)
I suspect that once you get down into the tiniest bits of the human system (quantum behavior in brains, if indeed that's even necessary for consciousness), you can get much more functional results. Then, that gets us into eliminating chaos (replacing it with knowledge) in complex systems.
Consider: knowing how that precise collection of molecules (that tasty roasted meat, whose chicken was raised on marigold petals but once ate a bug or three) will affect the digestive, circulatory and nervous systems of a human; initially when the odor affects the receptors in the nose and ultimately after digestion has done its job and delivered all the tiny chicken bits to cells in the human body. And between those times, how anticipation from delayed gratification ("we'll wait for Grandma to arrive before we eat") affects the effects of the food on the human. And from here, chaos theory...
I pontificate muchly and pointlessly, but it was fun.
I would love to hear more about the kinds of things you'd find useful (email in profile). I am also based in the UK.
I do like the idea of a system that learns recipes that you [probably] like, and sends you their ingredients and a recipe every few days.
Phone water company X on phone number N Close my account Information you might need: My name is Y, my account number is Z, my address is A and my password is B
I hate having to speak to people whos job it is to try and stop me achieving my goal, ie cancelling accounts. And having to wait on hold, and having to phone back when the call queue is shorter. etc
I guess you could create a dedicated API wrapped around Mechanical Turk, and then stick a website in front of it.
Oh, and the mail company has a service to forward your mail, and change your addresses for various companies when you move. Part of the deal...
Sure, I probably just need to get Google TV or Tivo, but you'd think it wouldn't be a Herculean task, y'know?
We need cheap, mini(or sticker like)RFID/GPS systems, so that we can just stick it to the items we want to track.
I suspect that most of this stuff will have to wait for nanobots. Any way we can do this sooner?
I'm not sure that I've done a good job articulating what I want, in part because I only have a vague notion of what would help me out. I do know that keeping all sorts of "polling lists" in my head (or even in a calendar/todo list) is very stressful. I'd love to offload the work of remembering this stuff to a trusted assistant.
What other things in life are missing async callbacks?
- Cancelling X service before it auto-renews next month/year/whatever - Generally, any task with the word "confirm" in it - Audit-related tasks such as making sure my client writes me a check for the amount I invoiced.
One could implement basic "tickler" functionality at first without any back-end integrations and then build one-off interfaces for common use cases -- for example, use the eBay API to observe purchases I've made and add ticklers based on the auction's stated delivery dates. Maybe this service also grabs tracking numbers and digs a level deeper for you. "Remember to grab your package from the front porch -- there's a 90% chance of rain tonight!"
Probably wouldn't happen as cities are addicted to parking ticket revenue, and there are unionized meter readers.