HN Explorer

Ask HN: Idea Sunday

249 points by _hoa8 ↗ HN
Continuing the series! Go...

A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.

522 comments

[ 26.6 ms ] story [ 8885 ms ] thread
Bootvis
A bit lame maybe but here it goes:

The "Ready for Battle alarm clock". An alarm clock that wakes you up with your favourite quotes from video games or movies such as:

- Rise and shine, Mister Freeman. Rise and... shine. Not that I... wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No one is more deserving of a rest, and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until... well, let's just say your hour has... come again. (or part of this one).

- It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum

This idea would work best when you always wear your Google Glass like device. Then the audio can be combined with a nice visual of for instance the G-Man.

For now, without the glass integration, it's easy to do make this with your own phone. A nice service could be to personalize the message, i.e. "Wake up Mr. Bootvis...".

The big problem here is that just copying these audio samples isn't allowed and so it will be hard to build a company out of this.

kbar13
that would be cool, but wearing glasses while sleeping is not recommended.
a3n
Contacts and cochlear implants.
mcintyre1994
Contacts are worse (..other than the ones you can sleep in). Seriously though, sleeping with your alarm clock makes it too easy to snooze anyway - we should just project the image and go hologram later. :)
digikata
micro-projector to cast the image on your ceiling
z3phyr
The right man at the wrong place makes all the difference!! ;)
siruva07
I'm responsible for purchasing our computer equipment for our startup. Every time I make a purchase on our company (@MakeSpace) credit card, I have to remember to send an email to our accountants (record the purchase as an asset, depreciation for taxes, etc).

More importantly, it's hard to keep track of what equipment was given to each employee. I imagine at a larger company this would be handled by an IT department, but sub 50 people I'm doing this on a spreadsheet myself. Would love a simple web app to record serial # of machine, receipt (that I could upload PDF), date purchased, employee, etc.

Happily would pay monthly SaaS. Please message me if anyone knows of this type of product. I'd happily be your first customer if you want to build it.

edit: Happy Easter!

dsfreed
I'm not positive, but perhaps expensify would suit your needs?

https://www.expensify.com/

siruva07
More along the lines of an application that would do inventory management:

http://www.businessbee.com/resources/technology/essential-el...

I've been googling but can't find anything

jhardcastle
Most of the enterprise applications that do inventory management (Spiceworks, Altiris, etc.) have clients that run on your network that can poll the hardware for detailed specifics. They track the logged-on user, the serial number, the BIOS date, etc. Obviously some do this better than others (I have yet to see one that does networked printers, projectors, smart TVs, etc).

What would you pay for this service, annually? What are the features you would find most useful?

  Forward an email receipt to yourcompanyA87y5@trackmyreceipts.com and have it auto-create a purchase record
  Upload a PDF invoice or receipt
  Manually create a purchase
  Track purchase orders
  Enter serial numbers
  Track depreciation
  Produce reports of in-service equipment
  Enter a comment about deployed location (e.g. John Smith, or Board Room)
  Track service history?
Inventory management is a big topic. It sounds like you want a niche product, or that you perhaps need to look at some of the players in the space.
siruva07
There's a clear gap in my mind between enterprise and SMB. I don't need the features of a Spiceworks (yet). Look at what Resumator did (big space but found the 'niche' to allow the CEO/COO to act like head of HR).

All the Features you mentioned, plus multi user access (for bookkeeper / accountants).

I'd pay $3-500 annually (maybe do something like $X per device > 5 devices).

heartbreak
Asset tracking software is probably more along the lines of what you're looking for.
ape4
I'd like it if the buyer could add a note to credit card purchases - that show up in the monthly bill. PO number is the most obvious thing to add. But for your typical customer you might also want to add "lunch with mom" or anything.
siruva07
This is less about expense tracking than it is about actually keeping track of all the equipment we've purchased for our startup.
HeyLaughingBoy
If you google "asset management software" you should have tons to choose from.
piratebroadcast
I could build this in Rails in like, a day.
siruva07
please do! hit me up sam at makespace dot com. and i'd be the first to pay
Theodores
Someone can sell/make you a tool for that however you can also do it yourself with a simple Google Docs spreadsheet. Your accountant will understand it as will anyone else that has to maintain it. You get versioning built in so you can see who has changed what. Plus you can make it read only.

Regarding the receipts, have a folder and just give the receipts a simple date-supplier-what-for filename. You could probably paste the hyperlinks into your spreadsheet if you could be bothered. If you can't then they are easy enough to find.

siruva07
"you can do it yourself with a simple Google Doc"

Isn't this how ZeroCater got started?

The features for this (act 2) make it very interesting. Imagine one slick sell to post to CL / Ebay.

mbrock
At Silk, we dogfood our own product for this purpose, as part of our internal knowledge base site. Here's a step-by-step for setting it up:

Register for an account.

Follow the little tutorial balloons to create your first collection: "Employees." Create some basic employee pages.

Create another collection, "Equipment," with pages named after serial numbers, and add some facts: perhaps "Used By," "Purchase Date," and "Type."

This will probably take no more than a couple of minutes. What you get is a wiki-like site with permissions; an easy way to create and present charts, distributions, overviews, etc; and a newsfeed showing fact changes, like "Owner changed to X from Y."

Once you see how the product works, you can upload your existing data as CSV. You will need to upload existing receipts by hand, or use our API (we can help you with this).

Example queries that you can build trivially with the "explore" view, and then store on a page or embed:

- Equipment with "Used By" nonempty, grouped by memory amount

- Table of equipment with owner, price, date purchased

- Pie chart of equipment's memory size distribution

Check out https://www.silk.co/teams and write an email if you want some help setting it up. Or send me a message.

karangoeluw
Ok I'll go first.

It's an "Imgur for audio files".

Now there's times when you record an audio and want to share it. What do you do? Uhh,, umm.... Yup. exactly. There's no reliable, easy-to-use app to share audio files (not music).

So, this is a web/mobile app for easily uploading and sharing audio files, and playing them. I don't have a full plan laid out, but I'll work on it for sure.

(If you'd like to be notified when it's done, let me know: http://eepurl.com/SRIPT)

ape4
Folks seem to use SoundCloud for that. But its mostly music.
wxm
In what way would it be different from SoundCloud? No fancy commenting? Anonymous uploads?
karangoeluw
Yes. And a single use - upload and share. And SoundCloud is mostly for music, this is for random audio files only.

Also, I'd like to make the service free, ad free, and maybe add a very cheap pro option.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
4ngle
The big thing about imgur is the community. Consider the front page of imgur. I think that's the cool thing about the idea.

You usually go to Soundcloud because you're linked there, it's not something that easily builds its own culture.

dwiel
Soundcloud has a nice culture. I go there both to discover music and to listen to music I've liked. It's different than imgur but I think that partly is just due to the fact that it takes anywhere from 3 minutes to an hour to experience each 'piece' compared to an image which you can digest in a few seconds and flip through a bunch when you need to burn a minute or two.
kbar13
debatable. soundcloud has community as well, you just might not have gotten into it yet if you simply get linked or listen to stuff from the embedded player.
patothon
could soundcloud help with this?
karangoeluw
Maybe? I mean I could use their API and provide a simpler interface. Maybe not? I'd like this to be a standalone service though.
mc_hammer
ytmnd.com
OzzyB
And the blast-from-the-past award goes to you!

Sean sends his regards :)

yarri
My 12-yr-old had a similar idea of "snap chat audio" which he and a buddy published as an app [0]. Seems a bit different than what you're looking for, which is more like Soundcloud?

[0] http://snapradioapp.com

ekmartin
Your 12-year old son made that? Looks great!
hsx
Audio-ur is already out there. http://audiour.com/
morganherlocker
I first read that as ardour[1], which seemed like a terrible way to pass audio around (big project files in email?). I wonder if that confusion is what motivated them to change their name.

[1]

chourobin
Dropbox share link
spaboleo
The issue with this is the increasing number of people on mobile devices and variety of device types.

Worst case (and sadly most common one): You share the dropbox link, the recipient clicks on it, it opens the browser, triggers a download, he has to choose a download location, download vanishes or takes a few seconds that are spent doing something else, worst case: the person forgets about the file / best case: he digs ups a file manager, navigates to the downloaded file and opens it, player selection...maybe...and all that for a 5-15s just audio-greeting message :/

It should just work out of the box.

People seem to use Messengers for that. Like Whatsapp, which play back recorded or attached Audio. But yet this is only mobile.

pikachu_is_cool
The reason why this doesn't exist, and can't exist at the scale of imgur is because of piracy.
karangoeluw
again not music but audio files. sure there isn't a sure shot way of stopping people from sharing music, but there are some things that can be done. for example, max time limit can be set to 60 sec for each audio file.
vishaldpatel
Here's one I've had for a little while: Say you're playing a sport with your friends. You're yelling at each other.. commands likes, "pass the ball here". Or if you're out playing paintball and trying to coordinate an attack - your sound, and your opponent's sound are both pretty important.

As far as I know, such use of voice does not exist in any game. Player's voice does not really interact with the environment. So, say someone says, "come to me!" through voice-chat.. you still have to look at the map to see where they actually are.

DanBC
It is odd that sound plays very little part in actual gameplay other than rhythm style games.

There was "Enemy Zero" for Sega Saturn. I remember being amazed by the pre-rendered scenes, and mostly enjoying the game. But it wasn't great and even in that game sound wasn't super important part of gameplay.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_Zero

Having said all that my ideas for games that use sound as a key part of play are a bit, uhm, not good.

== Cat Detective ==

You play the part of a cat who is also a detective. You are investigating crimes. You use analogue sticks to generate meows and purrs - this is a cat language that you use to question suspects and witnesses. How well you ask the question governs what kind of i formation you get back.

radikalus
Dolby Axon had something similar-ish:

You and others on voice chat were in a 'virtual' room and the sound was stereo/volume adjusted accordingly.

I remember that when people misbehaved on group voice chat we used to "put them in the corner"

It didn't map to the game environment but the execution was pretty nice; I fear that, if you use the game's physics, you'll quickly realize why radio-comm became such a thing

vishaldpatel
Yes for sure.. but one would have to be close to the enemy player and then he'd be dead. And ally players.. well.. maybe there can be a way to mute allies ;).
Buetol
An anonymous and representative group discussion and voting system

Practical example: Attending a conf as a woman

- You want to ask questions during the talks but you are afraid that because you are a woman your answer will be "dumbed-down" or just different

- Also, the guy doing the talk would like to answer the best possible question (or a random one)

So, there can be a lot of solutions to this problem, here is mine:

- Every attendee get an anonymous account on discuss.confname.org

- So everyone can ask questions anonymously and also it's fair because everyone has only one account

Except, that I made up this example in 5 minutes. This problem is effectively on every possible group in the world. People would like to express their opinions inside the group without risking differentiation.

I tried to describe this idea and the implementation ( http://kioto.io ), but it's really hard to explain. So I'm just implementing a prototype right now to better explain this idea.

hunvreus
Something like Secret would do the trick no?
Buetol
Yes, it's exactly what I'm looking for
dzink
This does exactly that and you don't even create an account, so it's really anonymous: http://www.gosoapbox.com/ . All you have to get is a shared url for the dicussion. Their primary use case is for classroom discussion, but functionality is what you described.
A_COMPUTER
SSL record to long, can't get in. Broken.
greggman
I'm not sure this fits but there's google moderator.

You make a topic, people submit questions, people can vote up the questions, people giving talk can answer the top questions. There's a space for some discussion below each question.

Google uses this both internally at company wide meetings and at Google I/O

https://www.google.com/moderator/

ddorian43
html5+flash video player all in one with reasonable pricing and no revenue-share for vast/google ads
vishaldpatel
I used Projekktor. The paid version has VAST support and works quite well: http://www.projekktor.com/
ddorian43
does vast also work in flash-mode ?
vishaldpatel
I'm not sure - I made sure that the videos I'm hosting were webm and mp4, and I've only tested it in html5 browsers.
personlurking
Just going to throw this one out there. I live in Lisbon, it's tourist-central (I'm from SF and I've never seen so many tourists). Since I see a ton of lost people every single day there should be a way to digitally leave comments on things and places and a free one-stop shop to find such info (like Wikitravel). This info, although having a central repository, should be pushed out to an app that connects to one's phone (in particular, GPS) so that when you need help with figuring out where you are, what statue you're standing in front of, etc, you can open the app and it tell you (no entering anything...only if you want to get to another location).

By entering what you want to do beforehand, the app would know where you are and have a list of places you said you want to go, and tell you how to get to the next closest place, or alert you if one on your list is about to close for the day. Perhaps each city version is done by locals and in case of bad actors, there can be a voting system so the right info goes to the top. Plus, there could be integration with Google Maps so you can see if you're going the right way.

jhardcastle
Reddit for real places rather than links? Upvotes and downvotes, comments (with upvotes and downvotes). A search function (that actually works) laid over Google Maps rather than textual links? Interesting.
personlurking
Yeah, that could very well work. It would need an app, though, and some Google Now-type tech.

There's a guy out of Brazil who has a site called Viagens Maneiras (aka Trip to Brazil) and he goes to different locations in Brazil with his dog and takes pictures and offers info on each place. At the bottom of each location page, he has tips listed. These tips are usually comments by his site visitors (on what to do, what not to miss, etc). Anyways, I'm imagining part of his site but with improved functionality and a redesign.

[1] http://www.triptobrazil.com/

I hadn't visited the site in a long time and it seems to have a few navigational issues (like two-finger scrolling on my track pad required my mouse to be on the text/picture area rather than anywhere on the page).

raldi
I thought reddit fixed its search function sometime in, like, 2010. What have you searched for recently that didn't give the results you were looking for?
raldi
(sound of crickets)
jhardcastle
You are right. I was unjustly unfair, and my information is outdated. As a longtime user of the site, I suppose old biases die hard. Thanks for all you've done to improve things over there.
ma2rten
I've used the tripadvisour app for this purpose. It can give you a list of attractions nearby.

That said there is definitely something that can be done in that space.

jasoncartwright
Have it work offline to avoid massive roaming charges.
stonecrops
Get close to this with BLE beacons at travel points of entry?
jasallen
I really love this idea. Reddit-ish, but sort by proximity to location as well as quality score. That way, if you are in a densely commented area, you will see comments about your surrounding few meters/yards, but if you are in a less trafficked area you might see comments on your feed about something a few miles/km away, giving you a destination.

Rather than 'fencing' regions then, if it could be done to just sort proximity that way, it would be incredibly useful even while sparsely populated.

personlurking
Nice!

The other issue is what occupies people's hands. It's surprising for me to see how many tourists use traditional maps (though, on the flip side, one never knows when someone is looking at a map on their smartphone), and how many people don't ask passers-by questions in order to get help. A dedicated app would mean less happenstance intereaction while abroad but it would also help not waste time (and give more time for more sights to see).

Another HN commenter mentioned offline capability, in this sense it could be like Wikipedia's make an e-book function, where you'd get, in the case of my idea, the pertinent street view photos, together with the right info downloaded to your phone. For ex, "give me top 10 comments on the Mona Lisa, 5 levels deep and for the Moulin Rouge, which I'm more interested in, give me the top 20 comments, 10 levels deep."

If a 'chapter' is to be added while on your trip, because you heard about something new and cool, then all that's needed is a wifi connection to download the right info and add it to the multimedia 'book'.

vecio
Really enjoy this idea, have implemented a similar prototype last year.

Another useful feature would be suggest me the best food list for the city I should eat.

hrvbr
I think it's being done by Caterina Fake's current startup: https://findery.com/

I'm not sure, though. The main page isn't clear about what it does exactly, and I haven't created an account.

bhoomit
Yes, I guess it does exactly same thing
rhizome
For geofenced commenting, how would you deal with the "BILLY IS A FAG" problem?
[dead] rhizome
For geofenced commenting, how would you deal with the "BILLY IS A FAG" problem?
[dead] rhizome
For geofenced commenting, how would you deal with the "BILLY IS A FAG" problem?
[dead] rhizome
For geofenced commenting, how would you deal with the "BILLY IS A FAG" problem?
ebiester
I started on a similar idea in 2006, but wasn't good enough to execute it at the time.

My original idea was that you do it ahead of time. It would have general ideas of how long it takes to complete an activity and would essentially provide you a list of maps relative to your hotel. Then, you'd have that information beforehand on your smartphone so that you could avoid roaming charges (which is an issue for international travel.)

The revenue model was funneling to travel sites and possibly travel agents who could provide more customized itineraries.

But now, with OpenStreetMap, you could have an app on the phone. On top of it, it could use the GPS to figure out where you were and put together a slide show for your friends. You could rate when you were there and provide more feedback later if you wanted -- just a simple thumbs up/thumbs down.

I've resigned myself to never getting around to it -- If I'm to found a company, it's going to be in the b2b arena instead.

nbardy
I was thinking this exact same thing while traveling. Location based wikitravel essentially.
personlurking
You got it, more than a Reddit-style thing, I think a location based wikitravel is what my original idea was leaning towards.
xerophtye
I think someone made this with augmented reality. Don't remember name of app though, it was a few years ago. It let contributors have their own "streams" so at any given location you can focus on content by a certain user. Like following a tourist trail, or a scavenger hunt. That kinda solves the cluttered comments problem
2511
I always wonder. How do you get people to use these kind of apps? How do you cold start this? For people to use this, you need content. For content, you need people. Chicken and egg.
rdl
Free network (data, voice, mobile) monitoring in exchange for personalized and general/statistical data based recommendations (which plan to change, which ISPs in the area are best, etc.)
spaboleo
Yeah it is a total hassle to research that and don't get screwed. One can basically spend days researching on that topic and in the end you'll still feel like you made the wrong decision.

The problem with this is that you (as a customer) mostly are locked down by... a) a long-term commitment (2 year contract) b) the process of changing is made so complicated (30 day grace period, waiting for technicians)

All that makes it hard for the customer to adapt to the ever so fast changing market.

The only way I see is to virtualize this. So that you would no longer be a customer of cellular provider X and internet service provider Y, but you'd be a fixed-fee customer of Z-ALL. The company Z-All then acts as a customer for provider X and Y.

It would be interesting nevertheless!

refrigerator
[X-post from the previous Idea Sunday thread that didn't make it to the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616132]

Idea: a new way to purchase and set up a fish tank. Currently, you have two options:

a) Buy everything separately - tank, filter, heater, plants, fish. You have to find out whether your fish and plants are compatible and your tank is big enough for what you want etc. You have to figure out where to put the heater and filter so that it doesn't look unsightly.

b) Buy a prebuilt tank with the filter and heater etc. pre-installed somewhere not too ugly. You still have to figure out which livestock you can keep, based on tank size, filter type, plants, and whether they can live with the other livestock you want. You also have to live with the prebuilt tank company's design decisions, which you might not like.

The solution: a company that offers minimalistic, sleek tanks with a modular system for adding filters, heaters, skimmers, lighting, etc. that keeps the equipment out of the way and not looking ugly. Also, an online service where they can select and order the modular tank and equipment that they want, and be allowed to choose from compatible livestock and plants. Alternatively, they can start with livestock that they want and they can be recommended the right modular tank and equipment etc. They can pay for everything all together and the items would be delivered as they are needed (with marine tanks, for example, you have to let the tank 'cycle' for a few weeks so that the water parameters normalise before you can add livestock).

What do you guys think?

keehun
Is the market size worth it? How will you reach the every-day regular-John-Smith families who aren't going to be keeping an eye out for a service like this?
refrigerator
I think there's definitely a market for it. Before people go out and buy fish, they usually do some research first on what it will entail, so if this site can also become a really good source of fishkeeping info and shows up on page 1 when people search for something like 'fishkeeping' or 'fish tanks' then that could be good
keehun
I guess I'm not totally aware of who the "they" are in "they usually do some research first" because I feel like a significant chunk of fish purchases come from parents of little children who are already sleep deprived and go to the nearest pet store or (God forbid,) Walmart or any other shop where they know there are fish.

If you're correct that "they usually" actually do research beforehand, there would probably be a market big enough to sustain a small online business.

Alex3917
Why not just have something like pcpartpicker.com, where every time you select a component it only shows other components that are compatible with the ones you've already selected? I think that would be the most useful, so that way you could either start with the fish and it would show you what hardware you can get, or else you could start with the hardware and it would show you what fish you can get.
genericsteele
Idea: StackOverflow for comebacks

I've always had a hard time coming up with a good comeback in conversations. It would be great to have a site where I could post a situation and have the community suggest and upvote/downvote insults and comebacks. Maybe introduce a real-time element so I could use it in an actual conversation.

karangoeluw
Twitter?
genericsteele
Yes, but I think it would be fun to gamify it somehow.
clarry
Reddit.

EDDIT: Re gamifying, karma does it.

genericsteele
But then how could I monetize it? I don't think I could run adverts on someone else's service?
conductr
Real time? Good comebacks are immediate. Taking just 5s to consult your phone and deliver the comeback is just going to give the other guy more ammunition
rokhayakebe
I suggest you pick up books on Rhetoric, the art of persuasive speaking. There exist some people who will win any argument regardless of how sound their logic is.
egypturnash
Here's an analog solution to your problem: Find some of the collections of "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions", a long-running series Al Jaffee did in MAD. It took the format of a cartoon drawing setting up the situation, with one person asking a question, and another offering three funny answers, plus a blank to write your own. Which is super valuable, because a lot of having a good comeback is rehearsing a bunch of them beforehand, so you have something ready.

(For instance sometimes I like to wear little horns glued to my forehead while looking otherwise normal. People regularly ask me "are those real?" By repeatedly answering that question, I now know that some variant of "yeah, I used to file them down, but I've been letting them grow out because I've been busy" will get a laugh.)

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
Lambdanaut
Let's take 3D printing to the circuit board world.

A consumer machine that can be configured to takes as inputs:

1. A set of different electrical part. (Perhaps self-contained in a large box like printer ink is)

2. A circuit board schematic file

The machine cuts the board and solders the parts in.

And there you have it! Your own computer factory! (For limited definitions of "computer")

If this idea ever piques anyone's interest, I'd love to lend a hand with it.

monk_e_boy
It'd so cool to use these printed boards to fit a laptop shell. So you could choose from a bunch of components, gps, extra cooling, ssd, hdd, video chips, and get them custom fit for a case.
DanBC
It would perhaps be better if only one person posted these threads.
sambeau
A meetings clock that counts UP the price of a meeting based on the the salaries of the people in the room.
3rd3
What would be the effect of it?
DanBC
Make people realise that many meetings are pointless and very very expensive?
kbar13
to keep aware of how long meetings affect productivity in $ sense for business/management-minded people, I would assume.
OzzyB
Ha! I had this exact same idea when I was sitting in one too many meetings.

It was more an idea for the "snark" category though.

andrewtbham
so if you want to know how much someone makes, schedule a one on one meeting.
sambeau
I confess, I'm one of those people who believes all salaries should be public within a company—compensation should be based on real worth rather than negotiation skill.

That said, for it to work properly, the staff would need to watching the clock too so it couldn't just be a managerial thing.

All staff would need to at least know the wage bands of each other's salaries.

flomo
Related to this, a cost estimator for adding a cc: to an email. Some people might think twice if they knew what their mail really cost the company.
curlyreggie
Good Idea. But I'd say it should be the other way around. Focussing on developers (the lower salary cream), higher the developers in the meeting, greater the loss. (Higher people are busy in meetings throughout anyway..)
nathanathan
[X-post from the previous Idea Sunday thread that didn't make it to the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616132]

Idea: Git-story, a website that generates summary narratives from git commit histories and other github data.

Here's a brain-dump with some ideas for the specifics:

Use foreshadowing: "It all started with one person, X, spending months to gradually build what would one day become Y, a project forked by hundreds and starred by thousands."

When someone makes their first contribution to a project give them a brief introduction, like a shorter version of http://osrc.dfm.io/

Use sentiment analysis on commit messages to say things like "Frustrations mount as...", "the developers rejoice after..."

When people work on multiple concurrent branches use use phrases like: Meanwhile, X and Y toil away on the new Z feature.

Use the time between commits to chunk them into single sentences/paragraphs. Also, add comments if the project goes dormant, or if there is a spike in development.

Use keywords in commit messages like merge, revert, resolve to generate events in the story.

When bugs are resolved look for linked issues and use the age of the bug and number of comments to say thinks like "X finally fixed the controversial Y bug"

danohuiginn
Neat idea. It's a bit like that facebook auto-generated video, but for github.

Include a decent plugin architecture, and you could get lots of contributions to add in data from everyone's pet CI system, bugtracker, download counter, etc.

[actually, if you started with something like Rails, you could launch versions from old code, take screenshots, and stitch together a video]

pubby
A twitter/imageboard system where it takes 2 weeks for messages to appear once posted. The idea being that messages still relevant in 2 weeks are important and interesting ones.
kbar13
This is an interesting idea. However, it's not always the case that timeless messages are more important than messages that are important during a specific timeframe.

In addition, most people nowadays expect things to have instant feedback. How would you address that concern?

NoodleIncident
I had a similar idea a while ago.

Basically: a reddit/HN clone, but at any given time only one article can be commented on. That article is replaced every day or every hour (whatever interval makes sense) with the highest-upvoted submission that doesn't have comments yet.

The goal would be to encourage deeper discussion of matters, rather than fleeting posts. I have no idea if tree-style comments would be better than just a simple forum thread. A major part of the site would also be scrolling through all of the past articles, and being able to read all of the previous discussions.

notduncansmith
Very interesting. Kinda like Woot (a daily deal site) for discussions. I like it! Could do a super-lean MVP implementation with Wordpress + Disqus or Branch.
Spittie
That's a really nice idea, I'm sure such a site has the potential to generate very high-quality discussions about a topic.

The only problem I see, is that the audience of HN (and Reddit even more) is big and has many different interests. It's very hard to cover those interests with only an article a day, and many might just lose interests after a bunch of days without anything interesting for them. Moving the cadence down would probably help, I think the sweet spot might be around 4/6 articles a day.

I think I'd also try to bring down the number of submissions compared to HN. HN gets a lot of those, and it's good, but I don't think it would be healthy for such a site. I can think off limiting the number of submissions an account can do every day/week, limiting submissions to accounts older than X days (this is mostly to avoid spam) and/or having a pay-for-submission system (not real money, but karma or other similar things).

dpix
I've thought about the opposite of this idea for a while, a social media platform where your posts/updates only last for a few days or perhaps longer based on engagement. How many people really look at your Facebook profile / Twitter feed from years ago, or even a few weeks ago? People are really only interested in what's happening right now. I guess this has kinda been filled by snapchat but only for photos, why not everything
rjf1990
Airbnb, but paid with labor.

Many travelers are short on cash but would love to trade services for a night's stay. Me, I would be happy to host a guest for free provided they did my dishes or laundry.

Many homeowners, especially empty-nesters, have homes with plenty of space that they still have to maintain. This would provide benefits to both parties.

kbar13
hm, this could have some legal / human rights issues potentially.
spellboots
So does Airbnb...
kbar13
afaik, airbnb requests that the travelers pay using fiat money, not labor.
arb99
so a mix between couchsurfing.org and airbnb.com?
ape4
zipcar/uber: A service that delivers a car you drive to where you are when you want it. Maybe you call up an hour before or via an app. And/or the opposite: you have driven somewhere can don't want the car anymore - eg drinking.
endeavour
Taxi?
ape4
Taxis are great for some situations but not others. 1. Say you are working late (the train service has closed) and know you'll leave in the next 3 hours. Order a car to be delivered to your parking lot and just get into it whenever your finish work. 2. How about the dreaded: other people offering you a ride since you don't have a car. You would be very happy to take a taxi but they insist. No problem; order up a car and its waiting for you when you leave the meeting and nobody will have to take "help you out".
kmeil
Valet anywhere? Valetanywhere.com
monk_e_boy
Web filter. I love F1 and there is a race today, so I can't look at 99% of the internet as they will show the result. I will watch the race later when the kids have gone to bed.

This problem is so big that i have to avoid facebook becaue they also show trending news.

So a filter that filters F1 or any selectable sports news. Then when i turn it off after watching the race the filter shows me a list of what news it found and filtered for me.

Added extra, while i'm watching the race it could show me tweets in real time, but back shifted so as to make sense with the race.

My football loving buddie also agrees he'd pay for this filter.

Theodores
Can you do this with a simple squid reverse proxy into which you simply add in the names of the 22 drivers, then set a cron job so that the reverse proxy only runs with the f1 deny list on race weekends? Sure the results won't affect the radio/tv but it just might work for f1.
covercash
I don't have HBO, so filtering all Game of Thrones references every Sunday and Monday would be fantastic.

Not sure I'd pay for that service since it's probably easier to just pay for HBO and watch it "live" like everyone else.

kayge
I thought the same thing, but unfortunately a lot of spoilers come in the form of images. Or maybe fortunately, since it adds an interesting layer of complexity to this idea.
fffffffffffffff
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
notfoss
Sometimes, I wonder if there really are cats and dogs messing around with computers...
dotBen
I have exactly the same dilemma (but because I download the coverage from back home in the UK rather than suffer the terrible American coverage).

I thought about building a proxy but simple name-blocking is too broad given names like "Button", and some headlines don't contain other easily matched patterns like "grand prix". EG "Button wins thrilling battle" or "Williams duo take epic one-two"

Varcht
Is our coverage really that bad? Afaik we all watch the same feed so I guess it's down to commentary? I like Hobbs, cool old racer. Will Buxton on the other hand...
mobiplayer
That sounds like the job for a GreaseMonkey script :)
jarofgreen
> Added extra, while i'm watching the race it could show me tweets in real time, but back shifted so as to make sense with the race.

I wrote that years ago, and I read last year that a kid had won a hackathon with this. I think some of the TV apps do this?

I never updated the code for the new Twitter API, could fish it out but it wasn't that hard to write really.

manish_gill
I suppose a Chrome/firefox plugin can take care of the text. Just hide any text that might seem relevant to the filter. But yeah, as someone said, the problem will be in pictures. Also, it won't work 100%, as often, there is no direct spoiler but things that allude to something which you can then infer or guess. So how to apply the filter against those types of messages?

Interesting nonetheless. :)

Varcht
I feel your pain. I try to watch the race live when I can but waking up at 3 AM is not going to happen even then I fell asleep with 5 to go last night. Might be a way for governments to monetize their net nanny infrastructure, provide "FAAS" an IIB (Ignorance is Bliss) Filter as a Service. In your specific case it might work well to declare Sunday a tech free day during F1 season, no spoilers and more time for the kids.
marpalmin
A kind of task rabbit that will connect expats ( who don't speak the language) with locals. The idea is that the local will help the expat in small tasks like understanding an insurance policy, housing contract, employment receipt.
sounds
Sounds interesting!

But would the company be able to build brand? First, to find expats would be somewhat difficult as they tend to blend in! Second, the company would need to be careful which people they hired, so they might be able to start at the top end of the market (high rates, high quality service) and work down from there...

That gives me the idea that it could start from an already existing service-oriented company, whether that's landscaping, security, legal services, accounting, etc. and they could just add translation and a more taskrabbit-like approach (phone app, etc.)

marpalmin
Yea you got a point. However, I think you should pay a small fee, let's say 10 euros for the help. I used to live in the netherlands and it happened to me many times that I didnt understand contracts, bills, etc and I got tired to ask friends/coworkers to help me with that. I would pay a small fee to have an external part to do it. I think it would work better targetting high skilled expats in European cities with lot of them where the native language is not English like Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin.
keithwarren
RAID Arrays for online storage services.

So many services offer a free tier, maybe 5gb for free and then you pay after that. Some are much higher. Build sort of a proxy to these services so that you have a distributed and large free online storage system.

This was an idea my team had last year when we were looking closely at a photo organization and management startup. We had won a startup competition, had investors tender offers but in the end we decided not to pursue the idea primarily because the storage business absolutely sucks, and photo systems are inherently storage businesses. This idea of 'BYOS' (Bring your own storage) was one of the hacks we thought up to get around the problem but in the end customer discovery taught us that the idea had too much friction for most people. Tech folks loved it, 35 year old moms didn't.

You can simply start with a few of the larger players, use the service to connect your free DropBox, Google Drive and OneDrive accounts. There may even be a monetization option wherein as you approach saturation of the storage you push the user to sign up with a specific vendor for a discounted deal and that other vendor can be a partner company or your own storage medium.

It has to be simple and transparent though, you still want people to have that simply sync experience regardless of where the file is stored and they should be able to view all the files across all the services at one time, regardless of where they are physically stored.

kiliankoe
If I'm not mistaken OwnCloud provides Dropbox and S3 integration (uploading your files from OwnCloud to these services). Of course this is nowhere close to what you propose, but it appears they take a step into this direction.
jarofgreen
Seen https://trovebox.com/ ? It started out as a thing kind like this, an Open Source photo service that could use any backend you configured, but now appears to be some kinda B2B service .... shame.
akg_67
NASUNI http://www.nasuni.com started out with the same idea but now has become much bigger focused on enterprise market. As a Storage Product Manager managing a Storage Virtualization software product over a decade ago, I researched this idea. Also, my first startup was addressing similar problem - consolidation of unused storage space within a geographically dispersed enterprise. Both happened before "cloud" term became popular and S3 wasn't even a service.

Technically, it is a difficult problem to solve if the product need to be software based, simple, transparent and targeted at consumer market so that user can install on their laptops/workstations. The product will need to sit in the middle and capture every operation between OS and DropBox, GDrive, and OneDrive etc. It is not a trivial problem to solve.

A solution that uses a target storage device on a network which in the background sync with different online storage service providers is a better alternative and that is what NASUNI and a few others pursued. But now you are in consumer/SMB storage hardware business. Another better solution option is for users to only install one piece of software (ex: OwnCloud) which uploads to one cloud and then sync with other services in the background. Overall, my impression is that online storage providers offer very little support for such services that try to consolidate storage from different service providers.

On business side, it will be very difficult to make money of people who want to consolidate "free" space from different services. Such people are inherently cheap and wouldn't pay for your service either. So this will lead you to target SMB/enterprise market where typical mindset is to use one service like S3, Box, or Dropbox. So your value proposition has to change from distributed and large online storage system to redundancy, disaster recover, data access and data protection. Such solutions still have the single point of failure - your service. You will need to somehow need to be overcome.

Overall, I believe it is a good idea in principle, figuring out a business model, distribution and customer discovery may be a larger challenge.

miguelrochefort
An IDE for ideas. Intellisense for thoughts.

For those of you who develop using powerful IDEs (such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, ...), it's hard to imagine going back to a basic notepad.

Most people, most of the time, don't write software. They exchange ideas, express wishes, share their feelings. And to do that, they use tools that are not more powerful than a basic notepad.

This forces them to be explicit, to explain what they mean, to repeat ideas, to think linearly.

I believe it's time for the average person to have access to tools that are just as expressive (if not more) than the ones developers have been using for years. It's time to break the speech metaphor and develop a completely new way to communicate. It's time for a UI-driven, computer-assisted, general-purpose language.

What I suggest we build is an IDE for ideas. Intellisense for thoughts.

rch
I'd enjoy chipping away at this project. Have you started on anything?
miguelrochefort
I've been talking about it for years. I have not done anything.
andrey-p
Interesting idea, but could you elaborate on the practical side of this?

Here's my take on this, in the form a ramble:

Intellisense works really well for code because there's a finite set of, for instance, methods you can call on a certain object - so I'm assuming you mean something that's more than just autocompletion.

I'm not really sure language on its own is powerful enough to handle ideas. When I think of organising thoughts and ideas I normally think of a mind map type of thing.

However, mind map software is too restrictive in terms of what you can create. A sheet of paper + pen is an excellent tool for noting down ideas and thoughts, but paper is finite and ink is irreversible: you can't move around/delete stuff.

I also sometimes have trouble with situations where idea A and idea B are related, but are situated at two completely ends of a mind map graph. So this might mean dispensing with two-dimensional mind maps entirely, but I struggle to imagine a non-annoying way of displaying a mind map in 3D.

miguelrochefort
"Thought" might be a better term than "ideas". The purpose of such a tool is not to brainstorm, but to communicate.

We communicate using natural languages. If you check Twitter, you'll see people write down all kind of thoughts and information. But this information is not semantic, and only a human (or NLP) can make sense of what is said.

When people communicate, it's either to make a statement about the past ("I ate sushis"), about the present ("I'm in Las Vegas"), or about the future ("I want to watch Terminator 2").

The past and present (which actually are the same) are simple declaration about reality. The future is all about wishes and intents.

Of course, you could add another dimension/mode (reality/fiction). In fiction, past/present could be "I wish Hitler wasn't born" and the future could be "I want to work at Google". In reality, you would say "Dinosaurs existed" (past/present) and "There will be an hurricane tomorrow" (future). The difference is that the future is no longer a wish, but a prediction (as we're dealing with reality).

I want people to be able to communicate the following ideas without just relying on boring text:

- The Lego Movie was great.

- I want to be in NYC by noon.

- I'm interested in Bitcoin.

- Lock my house's doors.

- I want to wake up at 7AM every monday.

- I'd love to attent to the next Metallica concert in Barcelona.

- It's rainy in Vancouver.

- Where is my car?

- Turn on the oven to high.

The above statements should be purely semantic. I should be able to click on "Metallica" and get more information about them. I should be able to click on "event" and see where and when it takes place. I should be able to click on "car" and see exactly what car he's referring to. I want statements to be elevated to a level where they have meaning, and that text only is a single representation of these ideas.

You're in Vancouver? You won't see "It's rainy in Vancouver". You'll see "It's rainy (here)". If you don't know what Bitcoin is, you might see "John Doe is interested in [insert a short summary about what Bitcoin is]". If you're metallica, you'll probably see "3723 people want to see you in Barcelona". If you're the oven, you'll probably understand "Heat up to 500 F".

Now, the above statements are simple and don't show why someone would need an IDE for thoughts (NLP + manual confirmation would be enough in many cases). But people shouldn't limit what they think to 140 characters either. They should be able to express complex ideas such as (a product review):

    "iphone" -> "Do you mean iPhone 5S ..." -> Yes

    "display" -> "Are you referring to the display of the iPhone ..." -> Yes

    - Glossy
    - Cracked
    - Too Dim             ->     Yes
    - _____________

    ...
As you can see above, it's not easy to express complex interactions with text. But the idea is that you can input any keyword representing a "thing" (object, attribute, value), and continue adding nodes by searching for them with keywords until you have the elements you want to refer to. Then, you can drag relations between them and see suggestions based on likeliness and what not. It would of course infer things based on past statements and what it knows about you.

When writing a product review, people don't always know where to start, and often repeat things that other have said. By being able to refer to specific aspects of a product, see what others have said and confirm/infirm their statement (upvote/downvote), as well as build on top of it is probably a better way to converge meaning than to ask potential buyers to read through all of them manually. Maybe this should have his o...

sitkack
I see it doing reverse stemming so that the nouns and verbs in the AST are more simple, like annotating verbs and nouns with a temporal tag.

You type in english, and it generates an AST on the fly. This would allow conversations to line up and be searchable by content rather than just text.

If the software isn't continually improved I could see it dumbing down the grammar that the group uses. It could enforce a defacto double-speak.

Another nice side effect, is that you could search by concept. I find this very very difficult with current search tools.

pjbrunet
"sometimes have trouble with situations where idea A and idea B are related, but are situated at two completely ends of a mind map"

Freemind has an arrow that can jump branches. Also you can drag A to B, flip a branch up, down, to either side, etc. No such thing as opposite ends. Also I think you can hyperlink A to B.

tomek_zemla
There is probably an interesting opportunity in this idea and many ways to execute it. There are also existing products trying to address the problem. DEVONthink and Scrivener come to mind - both seem to have customers, but they are not what my dream product in this area is... In my daily routine I use Moleskine with two colour pens where I put both textual notes and many sketches and diagrams. The act of noting down what I learn/think is helpful in remembering it, but I would love a digital version of such 'idea journal' with all the modern tagging, searching, indexing, filtering and editing digital options!
ebiester
It's called Emacs. :)

More seriously, what would this IDE have in it?

Have you seen Scrivener? That's what many of my friends both in academia and in fiction use. What does it have that you would expect otherwise?

S4M
Isn't Google's instant answer - I don't use Google anymore, so my terminology might be wrong, what I mean by "instant answer" is the auto suggestion on the search box - the equivalent of intellisense (or at least auto completion) for ideas?
ram_rattle
My friends has started a startup around this, feel free to visit germ.io
pjbrunet
Sounds like a mindmap, try Freemind.
Dwolb
From my perspective (automotive product development), this is called 'system design' or even 'product development'. We start from a use case, idea, feature 'want', whatever, and we move both up and down from the idea to arrive at customer use models(up) or requirements (down).

The documents for this development start to look like hierarchies with many cross-dependencies (the solution starts to 'fall-out'). For example, if the 'want' were "I want to make routine repairs easier for customers" we'd work up to different customer use models such as "Customer is notified on head unit radio that timing belt routine maintenance is suggested" to functional objectives (or functional requirements) "Customer shall be notified of suggested maintenance 1000 miles, 500 miles, and 100 miles before timing belt suggested maintenance" to non-functional requirements "Head unit connected cell shall notify timing belt status every hour" to performance specifications "Connected cell shall meet 3G bandwidth specifications for xMbps when within xmile range of cell tower with x specification" that then get tested to our test flow requirements.

The interesting thing is this design follows a 'V' engineering model [1] and the documents and requirements do not always have the best correspondence. In fact, the user models can sometimes be captured in Microsoft Word whereas the technical specifications can be captured in DOORs. Also, the use case is not clearly delineated to a performance specification 100% of the time. In large organizations it's difficult to communicate requirements and development milestones if this correspondence isn't clearly drawn. e.g. An executive that manages user experience (UX) may not understand why technology X is in the vehicle and what it gives them. This can lead to communication issues.

So, I believe the IDE for ideas has a data structure that is hierarchical and the IDE resembles an FPGA IDE feature such as Xilinx ISE RTL schematic. In this RTL schematic, the designer can show a 'black box' such as 'My CPU Design'. The black box can be double-clicked to show black boxes that make up 'My CPU Design' such as Instruction Memory, Data Memory, a program counter, an ALU, etc... Furthermore the user can click Instruction Memory to see which FPGA elements make up Instruction Memory, etc.

In such a way, different team members in product development can see different levels of abstraction according to their own interests and responsibilities. The user model can be the top-level 'black box'. A manager can double-click the black box to see which features create the use case. The manager can further double-click the feature set to see which functional objectives create the features, etc. This would be possible all the way down to performance requirements and can even include data for 'validation' and 'verification' activities (e.g. This is the feature I wanted, are all the functional objectives that make up the feature set fully validated?).

Anyway, that would be my ideal IDE for ideas. The IDE would be cross-functional and many people could have input for multiple user models that drive the initial feature 'want'. This IDE could even help control costs of large systems "Which feature set is driving the most cost?".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model

sahil_videology
I second the need for something like this. This kind of tool can be used for clearly communicating scope and even aid estimation of timelines because it shows all the complexity.
Dwolb
Cool that you agree. Are your projects structured similarly?
sahil_videology
When I worked in the defense industry doing development using the waterfall software process methodology, we did stuff that fit the V-model. We used DOORS / Excel for requirements tracking, wrote long design documents, and had a QA person who wrote lots of HTML test documentation with clearly defined acceptance test procedures. All of these tools don't talk to each other.

An IDE like this could be applicable to any multi-month project with sufficient requirements complexity.

Dwolb
It's funny that defense and automotive are so similar in terms of tool chains for requirements.

I like this IDE from an engineer standpoint, but I think the killer app will be automatic report-outs. I wouldn't have to spend hours making status updates in powerpoint for every type of audience in the corporation.

qvikr
That's what we're building with our startup germ.io [http://germ.io] - as a product to help you log your ideas, evolve them with more detailed sub-ideas, and move them through incubation to execution.

Why? I think the key is exactly what you've said - to think linearly. Ideas often mushroom to end us up in a place drastically different from where we started, so the end result is not really linear. But we need to think about the next step in an idea linearly if we ever want to get something done. That is where mind maps (non-linear all the way) and traditional task-based tools (too linear) fall short.

Check out what we have at germ.io, signup and if you'd like in on what we're building right now just ding me a message.

caseyash2
As a part of my venture into user interface and user experience design (http://www.caseyash.com), I created a few concepts. It would be excellent if I could implement them, however technical individuals are rare in Tennessee.

Below are the concepts:

Pack - A travel planning tool that integrates weather information to stay alert on what to pack.

RQRES - A real estate search that uses a collaborative algorithm to quickly find a home. The application pulls 10 homes; user rates them and then are shown results that are highly relevant.

Pattern - A more difficult game of Simon. Instead of four tiles, there are nine. The game also features ways to manipulate the game board.

Wonder - Hyper-local network.