What awesome idea did you have that never went anywhere?

Back in 2004/2005 (pre-youtube era) I created a site with a voting system similar to Digg/Reddit where instead of links or text people could upload video files. My servers were able re-encode any video format into flash, and queue the videos into the voting system. I would grab the videos at the top of the stack (the ones with the most votes) and broadcast it on a streaming video channel shown in the front page. The streaming would've been non-stop granted that I had at least 24 hours of material uploaded each day, and guaranteed to only show the best videos voted by people.

It never took off because I was a scrappy student in the middle of nowhere (Italy) and 180$+/month for a dedicated server somewhere in PA was hurting my savings. I ran the prototype for a few months and then I decided to go back to my engineering classes. Sometimes I have the feeling that if I were born in SV I could've built something serious out of it.

I wanted to build a public database of mechanics and motion. Using some web-based 3d modelling script like Copperlicht and (unknwown magic) I would set up a wiki like site with some standard human and machine models and people could add animations for those models, like martial arts moves, or dance moves, or... whatever.

It's either a stupid idea or a brilliant multimillion dollar idea for someone who isn't working off of their mother's old Dell.

I built a site : https://bootstrapthemes.me (offline) it was a marketplace for buying and selling twitter bootstrap themes, but I couldn't get get quality designers in the network, so it failed, probably due to lack of quality themes.

The other one is : http://domainexchanger.net - a site for exchanging unused domain names.

I created edgeyo, which was a kickstarter before kickstarter. It didn't take off because the model was kickstarter + stock exchange made it extremely complicated to use. Then we found out there were laws everywhere about running a stock exchange, and there are laws about company funding... it ended up being too much to handle

I built a site called makeitpersonal (http://makeitpersonal.co) where you can highlight, annotate and maybe share song lyrics. Although I use it a lot, I'm probably the only active user (which by the way is OK, I built a tool for myself).

Thought my mate and I had a winner with http://www.ultimategiftlists.com - basically create your own wishlist (by adding any item you stumble on across the web) and then share a link so people can buy it. But it never really flew..

I built an internet advertising network like Doubleclick back in the 90s — when they launched, they did it so well that I became discouraged and stopped working on it.

In retrospect, if I had kept it going for the past 15 years, I'm sure it'd be a big business now.

I spent a lot of time on http://buildafund.com/ which is a tool to create and track custom mutual funds. The end goal is to allow other users to invest in funds they can see are doing well.

I own ekfolio.com domain. The idea was to be able to create a single page professional bio/profile. i know many others are doing it even though I have always wanted to do it just for me. Never took off though.

Mine would be daymealdeal.com. It was going to be a Groupon of lunch specials. I had it about 75% completed, but then I got a new job so it got backburnered, and now it is in the abyss.

i have build http://cygamerentals.com/ Although i have a few customers it is nowhere near a successful as i would want it to be. I blame my partner as he did absolutely nothing. I designed, redesigned, advertised (ads,social), told people about, personally delivered games while he did nothing.

This is where a good partner would have helped a lot !

But seriously, how about a site that manages agreements between people/companies etc.. we could do away with a lot of lawyers... :-)

How about we had PKI to GPS signals..? That way we could trust they are correct..

What about that idea involving harvesting energy from people shagging?