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Comment by Frocer | Hacker News Reader

I wish there were a web app that recommends me gift ideas that doesn't suck. Because every holiday season, I struggle for days to find gifts.

Hey, there's an idea for the adventurous :P

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Here's a thought: you tell it your budget, who you want to send stuff to, some categories they're likely to be interested in, and what dates/holidays. It nags you x days beforehand to pick a gift from the ones it's selected. If you don't it sends the highest ranked one within your budget. It would be cool if xmas/birthday cards could be semiautomated too.

Brilliant idea. To top it off, let's put it at verypersonalgifts.com

Sounds like something potentially very profitable, but very sad. After cards are automated, someone would be working on automating their contents.

I can't recall the last time I bought a card for someone. I can, however, recall the last time I made a card for someone.

That's probably overdoing it (especially the semi-automatic sending of gifts) but I genuinely think that a "help you select gifts" application would be a nice idea.

The way I see it working is that you start off by telling it basic data about your recipient (e.g. 55 year old male), and it makes suggestions one at a time, which you can rank from "not bad" to "terrible" depending on whether you think they'd like it. Every ten suggestions it gives you a list of "the best so far", and hopefully you'll eventually be sent off to Amazon or whatever to buy one.

This is actually a really good idea. It's not too impersonal, it's useful to a lot of people (much better than just browsing the shops looking for inspiration), it has a clear revenue stream, and people could be prompted to use it several times a year.

Here's a variant:

savemyass.com

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