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.
How many apps can you install? How many profiles can you maintain? How many inbox can you empty? How many activity feeds can you go through? How many shopping apps do you use until you buy that one thing? How many times have you seen the exact same article/story posted across your social networks? How many "share your startup ideas" communities does it take for humanity to find the meaning of life? After how long and how much are you going to realize that nobody will ever use your niche social network?
We need to look at the big picture. We need to rethink all of this. We're doing it wrong, and now is the time to fix it. Everything else is distraction.
To build on top of this mess is a sure way to increase complexity to new heights. Not in a good way.
I believe we need a new language, a new way to structure knowledge. Of course, AI will benefit from that, but I don't believe it's a precondition.
The natural interface to order pizza from Pizza Hut or Domino's is mostly the same. The interface to order a cab is intuitively similar. Why is it that once try to do these things digitally, things get a lot more complicated? Shouldn't it make things easier?
Even though I'm not a big fan of natural languages as an interface, Magic [1] is a great example of what we should aim for in term of unification and flow. No need to install every pizzeria apps (if they have one) to start ordering pizza. You just need to ask.
> But people still love this old-new thing.
Can you tell me more about that? I can't seem to relate even though I'm a person.
And what's wrong with niche social networks? You're on HN, this is a fairly niche place. Did you want it merged with Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, etc?
There are many things to consider.
1. I don't believe in giving people what they ask for. People don't know what they want. If you give people what they need, they will eventually want it.
2. It is not possible for software that's designed with a user in mind to cover the needs of everyone. Even with 1000 different to-do list applications, nobody will truly feel it's perfect for them. We need generic and dynamic software that can adapt to users needs and context.
Don't you think it's sad that we have to endure HN's horrible UI/UX to access its community and content? Shouldn't we be able to have this discussion through a client that's made for us and respect our individual needs?
The current paradigm is full of unecessary trade-offs. If we stopped assuming and accepting that every user interaction should be manually designed by some UI person, and embraced a framework that automates that process, we would be a lot more advanced as a society.
Build the perfect social network and nobody will use it. Build a shitty one with a gimmick and people will come in droves. Unless you hit their sweet spot, people will not support you. They pay for value out of need, not because they want to.
Most people want toys, not tools. The market is just delivering.
Most consumers are satisfied with "the Internet", and as far as I know, not many are looking for alternatives. Most people use Google, they don't change their search engine every few months. People in the US speak English, and I don't see many people learn other languages based on trends.
In a world of apps, where people can't think in any other way, sure the gimmicky app is going to win. They know that they will never find what they need, why not having fun doing so? With a slightly different mindsets, one in which you realize that there's no point in having so many apps, you think differently and your values change. People will find diversity in content, not containers.
Are all businesses writing their own crappy internal management systems because it's trendy? Are banks spending millions to build a crappy banking system that's more or less a clone of any other bank's for fun? Are the millions of different "User" classes programmed by people who thought theirs was better/cooler?
Society has taught people to think wrong. Instead of thinking about what they need, they go straight to thinking about how they need it. Then, once they're offered a solution that does exactly what they need, they reject it because it doesn't match the solution they imagined. And we're talking about people that can't think of a solution themselves, and can only pick examples from their past. We're in a world where people ask "I want to buy an iPad from Amazon.com" instead of asking "I want an iPad", or better "I want to browse the web and watch movies in my bed".
That said, I would still like to understand why you believe that people want toys and trendy. Is it a symptom of something else, or are these features intrinsically valuable to them?
Regarding the way things get built now, it's just pure greed. Business people promise bullshit to each other. And then they hire engineers to build something to fulfill the contract. The engineers are pressed by time and lack resources. So the product ends up shitty. Quality is never considered because it costs too much.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with you. I'm currently in my third year of building an awesome product. And where everybody else decided to cut corners, I'm polishing like crazy. And guess what. It takes huge amounts of time and energy. And everybody is saying how great it is, but very few actually get their wallets out.
People say they want perfection. But they aren't willing to pay for it. Instead, they are more than willing to shell out money for a pipe dream. This is why a shitty product with great marketing will bankrupt an amazing product with shitty marketing. It's all about what people dream about. Not what they hold in their hands.
How we could change this? Probably by having a technocratic society. Where execution is valued and promises are ignored.
On a more abstract level, the problem here is that people and organizations often create some data and basically Ctrl+C Ctrl+V it to different services. Couple of examples:
- RSS subscriptions. If I want to try a new reader, I have to export subscriptions from my current reader and import it to the new one.
- Calendar events. Same problem. Yes, some services can sync with each other but it's a messy situation. Calendar apps must separately implement sync with several calendar services.
- Whenever I want to buy something from a new eshop, I need to enter my email and address.
- Restaurants publish their location, opening hours or photos on Yelp, Google Maps and others. When opening hours change, they need to separately update every service.
- Public transport operators send their timetables to Google and other services.
The solution I suggest is to store this data at the source. People and organizations would have something that's sort of similar to Dropbox, let's call it databox. You have a databox url, such as databox.org/1. Your avatar is available at databox.org/1/avatar. Your RSS subscriptions are at databox.org/1/rss/subscriptions. Opening hours of some company are inside a JSON that's on databox.org/2/restaurants.
The databox URL also serves as a login. So the workflow when trying a new RSS reader is like this. 1) You click on "register". 2) Enter your databox URL. 3) The reader requests a read and write permission to your RSS data. 4) You allow it and the reader fetches your subscriptions.
There are some standardized "subdirectories" (e.g. /rss, /calendar, /tasks) but anyone can create a new standard. For example, a bunch of Linux distributions can decide they will save desktop background and other desktop settings to /linux-desktop.
I wish Mozilla would create something like this, they have the power to push it.
For the record I think it's a good idea if it can be standardized and federated so you can choose and move between providers
Yes, ideally this would be an open standard and you should be able to run this on your server.
Another thing I didn't mention was that for better privacy: the service should receive some autogenerated alias of databox.org/1, e.g. databox.org/1a4b2f4.
Here's a solution that is like Gravatar, but for microformatted data in each people's own websites: http://webvatar.com/
This reminds me of an old blog post, Charles’ Rules of Argument [1]:
“5. DO NOT argue with Lisp programmers, believers in the Semantic Web, or furries”
1. http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/03/21/charles_rules_of_arg...
The service could work like a hub, parsing private addresses people where indie-people would host their own preferences (for example, their own websites) and giving this data to external services; and, for common people, the website would host the data for them, also in a microformatted way (so other hubs and parsers could grab data from it).
It would be beneficial to be able to test at least monthly in order to avoid risks associated with various deficiencies, to detect possible diseases early, to monitor relevant parameters while on a diet or exercising etc.. Also, we'd like to keep our results confidential to avoid trouble with insurances and other interested parties.
Labs have large, expensive devices tuned for throughput (e.g. http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia-...). They can probably be reduced in size and cost to something comparable with a laser printer. Newer testing methods would work with single drops of blood (e.g. Theranos) so no special skills would be required.
(personal motivation: discovered an extreme Vitamin D3 deficiency, supplements seem to have a dramatic effect)
Edit: rereading your answer, you might have less explicitly said this.
This is kind-of-anonymous (won't help if the feds are after you)
Write the code into a web-page and you get status updates when it is received, when the results arrive etc.
If you want to you might register to get email updates.
That would work well for a while, but if your service got really big, and became a target for enforcement, you (or your users) might have serious tax problems.
It's also explicity forbidden by most insurance policies.
One obvious thing is the trackpad surface should be smooth. I don't know, maybe not everyone feels uncomfortable with coarse surfaces, but everyone definitely should feel OK with smooth ones. As simple as that. But there may be something else too that Apple got right, such as sensitivity.
You might want to set up an account just for posting these threads. That helps avoids a bunch of different people starting the threads as Sunday rolls around to their timezone.
EDIT: To expand on this a bit: True lean development, every month focused on delivering a working product. Initially using third party applications like Firebase and Parse, gradually increasing features, but the product must launch by the end of the first month.
The team is able to make websites, iOS/Android apps (that talk to the sites), pretty much anything that you'd want an MVP to do. We know how AWS works (can make things scale ready), and how the app launch/approval process works. We can integrate all manner of components, including push messaging, databases, pictures, social media integration, etc.
The core team are two HFT developers who've moved into the web space over the years, and a number of associates who can do things like design work.
I've also got a member who has 15 years online marketing experience, if that's considered part of MVP.
I started charging people $3k for 2 weeks of development. http://christopherdbui.com/i-will-build-your-mvp/
My understanding though, is that it's not hard, just expensive. Therefore, everyone just end up using illegal content. There should be an easy way way to track views and pay per 1K/M, etc. Or better, pay with revenue share of commercials alongside.
One use case would be tutorials on deploying to IAAS/PAAS providers. Deploying always seems to be the hard part after I build something; I don't like using the same language and IAAS/PAAS twice for learning purposes. It's complicated even more so as many tutorials don't reference when they were written or which code versions they used. The site would require this information, and then use it to periodically attempt to deploy that sample to AWS/Digital Ocean/etc (whichever the tutorial is covering), and prominently display whether the tutorial currently works.
I'm thinking like a CI for tutorials. For example, I create an account on Tutorial CI (or whatever), give it the environment of the tutorial's code. It spits out a badge that I can put on my tutorial that says whether the build is passing or not. Pretty much exactly like the Travis badges you see on Github. That way, someone can verify before they even start reading that the tutorial is valid.
I actually like this idea a lot.
But would love to exchange ideas on the topic.
Then again, perhaps the best thing about hackernews is the simplicity of the system without having these complex scenarios tied to posts.
HN itself identifies towards the tech-centric crowd, so most of these ideas are already focused around some market + tech (or just tech for some marginal utility).
Granted, some of these ideas sound cool. But why so? It's because of the echo-chamber in that "we" all find them cool on some level, and thus they become niche ideas in fragmented markets with demanding users and no possible financial gain.
This is probably why it was stopped in the first place.
any such money is shared with the founders who posted the idea (30% site, 70% them) and they can use it to help roll out their MVP.
I would argue it is also not a platform for ideas (i.e. in the way that this thread is, though few people have incentive to post their genuine ideas here.) For example, computer renderings are prohibited on KS - only working products may be shown.
Many shows are not available in countries where they are as a result, vastly downloaded. Sometimes they're available 6 months later. Sometimes you need bundles with various companies in order to get the shows you like. Sometimes, they're only available with so much advertisement that you lose the plot, while the same ad has been served 3 times in 40 minutes. These shows are GOOD. They deserve people's money, other than being split by an equal length of advertising to content ratio.
If a website had most TV show cast / writers represented, with a trusted authority overseeing, and an anonymous donate buttons; I can think of many shows to which people would donate their monthly entertainment-budget to.
TV is greater than ever. Writers are brilliant. Casts are amazing. But the whole system is rigged and barely functional. I realize the system cannot be flipped suddenly, but an initiative such as this one could drive to fundamental changes in modern TV production.
Type in the long-tail search phrases and it goes off and does as much market research automatically for you as possible, and comes back with a yes/no on whether you should bother pursuing it. Perhaps including a list of statistics like: how much it would cost to get into that market, how many competitors there appear to be, etc. etc.
Solution: an equity crowdfunding site for early stage biotech/medtech ventures focused on gaining backing from doctors and other knowledgeable medical professionals. Those same life sciences entrepreneurs who are having a hard time raising $5-10M in VC funding are often in a hospital environment, surrounded by doctors who both deeply understand the problems they're trying to solve and whose pooled capital could easily add up to $5-10M.
Not only would this counteract scams in this industry made possible by information asymmetry (http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug-hearing-a...), many medical professionals already meet the (pre-JOBS Act) income or wealth requirements to be an accredited investor.
One major concern with this idea is whether the VCs who weren't willing to invest in a series A-stage life sciences ventures would be willing to come in at a later stage. They typically prefer tranched investments (http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections-on-...) and don't necessarily see later stage ventures as less risky (http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late-stage-vs-ea...). If that turns out to be a problem, another scalable source of follow-on investment will have to be tapped in order to prevent a "series B crunch" for these non-traditionally funded biotech/medtech ventures.
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-ele...
TENS are currently kind of expensive and hard to use. People typically only use them when prescribed by a doctor and the devices are actually quite useful.
Many people get pain somehow or could use some sort of recreational relaxation, and a intuitive TENS machine for a smart phone could have a good market.
There are lots of expenses saas apps out there, but the pain with expenses is scanning in all the receipts. I should be able to do this by just taking a picture of the receipt at the time I get it. Perhaps include some computer vision stuff to pick the numbers off the receipt and let me choose which one was cost (incl./excl. VAT). Include other fields for project, time, date, reason, etc.
Then when I'm finished I click a button and it emails the expenses so I can forward it onto my accounts department.
We recently wanted to create a page to list all mentions of our product. So, we duct taped a JotForm form with the JotForm api and created one. But if there was a service that created and maintained the list and let you manually edit the list, I am sure many startups would pay $20/month for it. http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/
At the moment I'm working on a prototype using Python and Flask, which seems like Django without all the cruft. Pretty much the only other options would be Ruby, Go, and Javascript. But I really like Python. :)
This will provide a single place where you data exists and other companies will only be able to use it as need be. Security would become a big problem however... But it could get around a lot of privacy concerns at the moment.
OpenPDS is a service acting as a middle datastore, between the user (who can even host the service themselves), and the data consumers. The key issue here is to guarantee privacy, by responding with ‘SafeAnswers’ to the queries of external services. It's a WIP, but free and open source.
Can this idea be a worth giving a go at it?
One solution could be to have different types of callers (similar to freelance marketplaces) to chose from. You could pick a less experienced/expensive caller for stuff that isn't really important and pick a more qualified/expensive caller for stuff that really matters. Callers could even specialise in certain industries.
Another solution could be to let users listen in on calls and provide live feedback to the caller but then most people would just opt to do the calls by themselves. Personally, I might still use such a service simply because I hate talking on the phone and am not good at sales.
If the calls being outsourced are sales calls, you could pay a commission. That would lead to more motivated sellers at least, although perhaps too motivated and too short sighted.
Companies can use it to understand their actual customers better, people who are actually willing to pay. I was thinking it would be used to prioritized features but it could be used just to raise money. Customers would get a voice with the company, and would not get drowned out by potential customers who are not commited enough to pay a small amount.
I thought of this from the companies perspective so I'm having trouble thinking about it from the customers point of view. Would there be enough incentive for customers to pay?
In a word, no. Companies will often pay a lot to survey their customers. Getting the customers to pay to be surveyed sounds like a very tall request. And any incentive of value the company could add would run counter to the value proposition you've outlined for the company.
http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language-processi...
The Idea: Gravatar but for resumes. Raw data that you fill out online and can be updated as you work on projects. Companies (or you) can pull this data into usable formats or to fill out online forms.
Additionally it'd be cool if it had a "condensed" option that either you fill out with terse explanation for each project, or it ignores the descriptions of projects entirely and just shows the project name,date,and role. This would give interviewers something to glance down at for reference, but would save the functionality of the resume as a complete document of experiences.
Idk the idea that only our most recent projects (that can still fit on one sheet of paper) is the only relevant info is absurd to me; there is a lot to be learned from seeing the growth of a person over time.
To me the resume fails on every goal that it SHOULD accomplish except for maybe your ability to choose your best work, which i can see as important but there could even be a feature where you select the three works you are most proud of or something.
So there are file hosting sites for that matter, but they're far from ideal - because they are centralized with all the problems that come with that.
That creates a lack of accessibility to rare files.
Not sure what would be the best solution that won't hurt the bittorent network(by splitting it), and that will have a reasonable monetization source.
Context: I realised recently that a lot of film/series music is processed, compared to the album version. Specifically, I noticed blues tracks on Suits sound so much deeper than their album versions. I'd like to know how was that result achieved and how to make a chosen track sound as if it was processed for that series.
It's simply a monthly meetup for idea sharing, validation, and collaboration. Helping each other make our ideas happen, be it an art project, community project, business, or social enterprise.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149 (4 points, 105 days ago, 1 comment)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657 (18 points, 111 days ago, 12 comments)
Here's where to start: https://assembly.com/start
And if you mention @awwstn anywhere on Assembly I'm more than happy to help out.
That said, iirc it have been a year since the last popular "Idea Sunday" was on (I started working on a project from that thread!), it seems like a good idea to do it a week or two ... unless someone decide to kill it off early again.
On topic: I think there might be a need for Website-for-SaaS-as-a-service. What I meant is that whenever a developer decide to start a SaaS, you have to have a website for that service (that has info, landing page, billing, account management etc.). Of course, if the website itself is the service, then you have to develop it, but alot of SaaS is more of the backend stuffs, which the website is merely a presence for sign up and customer support. I think it's just a natural progression from Landing-page-as-a-service and Document-as-a-service (that we already had). The value you providing would be the design of the site, A/B for conversion testing etc.
Another idea: "What could go wrong when I do X?". You see, in modern time, it seems like every thing can cause cancer, every other tools you have in your household is out to get you. And people tend to be in one of the two camp: "whatever, you can't avoid everything" or just being freak out by any, and everything (those that use gluten free vegan organic computer mouse, for example). I believe neither of those behavior is optimal, but unless you're an expert in the field, you really can't tell whether a risk is real or not. It would be nice to have a place where you can come and look for common scenario and see if anything is worth being concerned about (I see black mold, is that a drop everything and move out, or contact the landlord and wait? My roommate is sanding his old car paint in the garage and we have kid around the house, isn't it bad because of ... lead or something? How bad it is if I lick a bar of metal lead? Which kind of cleaning supplies is absolutely dangerous, and which is just essentially ethanol?). A lot of those might sounds like just "common sense" to you, but when I first move (from South East Asia) to the US, I had none of that "common sense" , and it was a nuisance trying to be careful. It's also noticeable when you're living with people that have a different idea of what constitutes "toxic" than you -- and then realize that you're actually not sure if you're overreacting or the other party being a big fat idiot. Google is not suffice, as even though you might find a few articles with advice, "being careful" doesn't help with a risk assessment. The info will have to be qualified quantitatively, or at the very least, very specific.
Also, for any of you go (the board game) player out there, we need a new tsumego solver!
so, what was the project you started working on? Were you able to finish it?
Yeah I like this idea. You can get so far with Bower, before you inevitably start spending so much time working on "product boilerplate". I remember being dismayed by this when I wanted to launch my invoice management app, I thought I was at "the last 90%" and I was -- of my product implementation. But then came the billing integration, legally required unsubscribe stuff, privacy policy, t&c's, blah blah blah.
"license": "MIT"
edited: mopboards (?!) in german called "Fussleisten"
Let me know your thoughts!