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Ask HN: What small software do you wish existed?

7 points by traverseda ↗ HN
I'm talking things that are relatively small projects, projects that are maybe outside of your area of expertise but could realistically be done by one developer. Not things like open source CAD software.

14 comments

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traverseda
I wish that I could access my PIM data through a filesystem, and ideally synchronize using regular file sync features. I'm talking things like contacts, calendar events, bookmarks, etc. Give me semi-structured (probably yaml, I know it has issues but I like it) data and let me add arbitrary notes and fields.
bhu1st
Data Logging App for personal use.

Define form fields per line

Auto detect data types (date, location etc)

Execute - shows a form for logging data.

Define as many forms as required

Tabular/Chart views of recorded data.

I would pay for this app.

paulvorobyev
Doesn't Google Forms roughly do this? It outputs responses to a spreadsheet
bhu1st
I wanted it more as a fully mobile based end to end solution. Not public facing forms / switching context to sheets but personal ones where I can log anything with a little bit of structure.
missedthecue
I wish there were a way to screenshare with customers while I troubleshoot that didn't involve more than one click. I currently use GoToAssist which is good software, but I have to screenshare with a lot of elderly users for my company's products, and most of them have no idea what "download" means. God help us if they're on Mac, because then I have to guide them through permissions settings over the phone to let me see their screen.

I would pay good money for something like this.

kesslykaes
Do you troubleshoot desktop apps or web apps?
missedthecue
Both. Usually when I'm helping a customer troubleshoot, I need to see their desktop files, so the solutions on the market that allow me to see their current webpage by implementing a snippet into our site's HTML are not sufficient.

The problem here is that I'm basically asking for something equivalent to a one click exploit. There are good security and privacy reasons to make screensharing a little difficult, but it makes my team's job so hard especially when trying to assist a customer who simply have no idea how use a computer.

kesslykaes
Makes sense. My mind immediately went to one of those webpage snippet screen controllers, but that won't work for you.

I struggle as well with this, especially since my dad is blind which makes it even harder to use the computer (even with screen reading software).

mod
You want to share your screen? Or see theirs?

The first is relatively simple. The second will never happen in one-click.

missedthecue
Yep. I need to see theirs.
mod
In theory, someone could exploit a 0-day and write this software for you.

So, I recant my position that it will never happen. It could happen if you found a really talented developer who was naive enough to do it, or a nihilist or something.

BizarroLand
An app that intercepts the personal data that I generate and allows me to dictate what the computer transmits, for instance I could tell it to say that I am a poor 20-year old white woman and then advertisers who target on that stuff would more likely advertise stuff to me that I genuinely couldn't care about if I tried to.

This would waste their time and money and cause me to giggle when I see an ad for something very girly knowing that the me they think they're selling to isn't real.

gradschool
I'm not the only HN reader who claims to use a different email alias for each recipient, but mail user agents require me to remember to set the return address manually to the right alias on each outgoing message and risk leaking the wrong one if I forget. Some kind of email middleware that maintains a mapping from recipients to aliases and automatically slaps the right alias onto each outgoing message seems like it should be feasible for a single developer, but I can never find the motivation to do it myself. Apologies if I'm overlooking some well known application or service that already does.