Ask HN: Suggesting next actions | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Suggesting next actions

3 pointscrizCraig6 comments

It seems that from the first day I used a computer, I've wanted it to suggest I do something based on what I've done already. Whether it be click a button, change a setting, or open something, it seems that some actions could easily be guessed and suggested.

Is this pie in the sky or something that seems feasible and useful to the you guys? I know HN has some of the most brilliant people responding to questions and feel that someone has to have thought about this or know of a current project or why there isn't one.

View on HN

If I'm understanding your question correctly, (applications of machine learning) there are plenty of examples of this.

See google search suggestions, facebook's news stream, google ad suggestions, last.fm and pandora's music suggestions, etc.

Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning, and you too can know as much about machine learning as I do!

(edit): actually if you read the wiki article you will know an infinite amount more about machine learning than me.

Seems like online shopping's suggested items (such as shopping on Amazon) would fit the bill, or maybe the recently opened menus common on many programs provide suggested actions (even context-specific menu options). Am I misunderstanding your question?

These are domain specific examples of what I mean, yes. However, my vision would span the entirety of what you do on the web, suggesting for example that you go to a certain page after visiting a sequence of pages, or click a certain button after performing some sequence of actions.

I guess that's why I'm asking if it's pie in the sky. Is this too hard of a problem to generalize? My gut says it isn't. Thanks for your responses.

I'd agree with your gut. I think the limiting factor is a common/shared platform for historic data aggregation and dissemination of possible sites to visit or actions to take for example.

That's a great point. It's very sensitive data, so I'm not quite sure if anyone will want to participate. I'm currently building a chrome extension that will store all of my mouse movements and keystrokes to a database. After a while, I'll see if I can create some useful suggestions and if so, allow other people try it out.

I hope you let us know how that turns out. If its anything like my patterns, it will include opening Gmail, HN, and Weather.gov in the morning. As an example, Chrome should figure that out and open them when I start Chrome at 6am every morning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com