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Ask HN: What is the problem you face everyday and can't find a solutions 4 yet?

8 points by karimo ↗ HN
As A User - not developer - What is the problem that you face everyday and you couldn't find a solutions for yet?<p>Example: Information Overload, there is a lot of news and feeds that you don't have time to read every day

7 comments

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mikecane
Bookmark organization. I use Firefox. But I've also used other browsers. ALL of their Bookmark managers and way of doing Bookmarks suck. I can never find anything in hundreds of Bookmarks.
cbaleanu
I totally agree. It's like time stopped in the bookmark managers world.
lelele
What about delicious.com?
mikecane
I used FURL, which stored copies of pages. Then FURL was bought by Diigo and deleted those saved pages (not the URLs). You really think I'll trust something like that again?

Anyway, I like things stored locally on my machine. With paranoia driving the gov't, I don't want to make it easy for them to root around in my life. Let them serve me with a search warrant, not a Cloud firm behind my back and without my knowledge.

WTPayne
Information overload is definitely a problem; too many disparate pieces of information, too many new languages and technologies to learn, too many priorities at work; too many interruptions... (too much caffeine) all of this leaves me in a constant state of near-panic. What I feel I really need is a sort of automated PA / life coach; to help prioritize (home & work), schedule; simplify and motivate. Something that takes the clutter and noise of the world and blocks most of it out, most of the time, feeding me what I need to know, when I need to know it, and keeping me on track.

Yesterday, Joel Spolsky talked about Software Inventory (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/07/09.html), and mentioned a minimalistic project management tool that he would like to see made called "Five Things". Well, I think that we have a bigger problem of Intellectual Inventory - a glut of information, too many books, academic papers and articles that sit on the to-read list, all relevant, all interesting, and not enough time left in our life to digest it all. (It is true ... I did the sums - I have about 300 years worth of reading in my backlog)

So here is my problem: Intellectual Inventory management; productivity optimization; focus management.

kfk
As a finance guy and programming hobbist, I say the whole business reporting thing is a big fat problem I deal with. I get bored easily, especially when updating power points or excel reports. Besides, when things get messy (data scattered all over), there is always a sort of fear that you might put some wrong numbers here and there.

Beware, there are solutions (Hyperion for financials, Business Objects for BI, etc.), but those are all too low level and they have no decent way to build views or to consolidate information from different sources, so people resort to the dreaded Excel, a piece of tech 20 yrs old.

I am pretty sure that technically this is not a big problem, there is no need for Big Data or real time or the like, but anything worth considering has to have a great user experience as Excel has got people used to click their ways out of troubles all the time (at cost of wasting hours on things that should take a couple of minutes).

thatusertwo
Figuring out how to make a living without having to get a traditional job.