Ask HN: What small problems do you face frequently? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What small problems do you face frequently?

15 pointswindsurfer28 comments

I really am looking for small rants about a problem, and a possible solution to the problem.

Example: "I have trouble figuring out where all my time goes. I need an application that makes it really quick for me to keep a log of my activities."

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Oh, I have a rant. I have trouble hanging up on telemarketers who prey on entrepreneurs (VC associates, recruiters, biz dev, consulting firms). My problem was that hanging up violently put me in a violent mood. So I went as far as writing up scripts that were polite but moved toward hanging up within 10 seconds. Full rant/solution here:

http://www.stubbleblog.com/index.php/2009/03/productivity-ha...

Why did you ask the question?

I'm trying to think up some sort of quick project I could complete in a couple of months that would solve someone's problem :)

Also, it's kind of neat to hear how people would/have solve[d] these problems.

I have trouble finding the "Programming Pearls" of various topics. For example I'd like to find a book of similar quality and style that deals w/ networking computers. This applies to non-computer related subjects too... for example I'd love to find great books/lectures etc about caring for animals but I don't want to search a lot. Maybe my problem is I'm lazy :-p

I've noticed a recurring pattern where I'll find something really interesting every once in a while... for example I just discovered the Graphics Programming Black Book by accident. Would be nice to just have a list of learning materials that are highly likely to be good matches for me.

I read most of the Graphics Programming Black Book by Abrash in high school. I read through the first section on assembly optimization almost completely in order, and used some of the graphics algorithms in an ancient Linux framebuffer project. Great book for learning about performance considerations. Unfortunately the included CD-ROM was crushed early in my ownership of the book.

This was an idea I had for a website I while back - basically an aggregator for grouping learning resources by topic then ranking them by skill level and quality. (So you could find the best "beginner's guides to x" or "expert tips for x" and so on).

You can take a look at www.nohao.co.uk. It's very basic, and I haven't developed it for a while, mostly because no-one seemed interested. Wasn't sure if it was because the problem it attempted to solve wasn't really a problem, or lack of features, or just not promoting it to the right people.

What could be cool is a site that (using algorithms/crowdsourcing/whatever) generated guides like this one: http://ruby-metaprogramming.heroku.com/ , where multiple resources are compiled into a programme you can follow. I had a few other ideas for the site, such as automatically setting up study groups. Though as I said, I'm not sure if I'd just be building something that no-one would use, so I haven't worked on it for a while.

If you're looking for good startup ideas watch Mixergy. Each episode gives me a few.

I have a problem hooking up my TV to my PC

I have a problem making my playlist play good songs, but not just then keep repeating those songs till I got sick of them

I have a problem finding good accessories for my home that match the color, tone and style.

Socks & Underwear. Regular delivery. Cheap price.

Daily Expenditure: Hassle free non-detailed tracking.

Easy & short reading material for travelling. Something that pushes only interesting and current reading material based off an interest of mine - "business", "science fiction", "humour" and so on

I have trouble finding interesting and attractive girls to go drinking with ;)

if your looking for a Web solution there is always dating sites ;)

True, but he/she said "interesting and attractive."

windsurfer, are you trying to find startup ideas? ;)

looks around

Is that a bad thing? ;)

Nope, not at all! Though this particular crowd may be a suboptimal one to ask that question of, as we are more likely than most to start our own startup (or at least write our own shell script) to solve our problems... :-)

Maybe next time you're at your local dry cleaner, ask this same question.

I find that this crowd would be more willing to use or pay for a solution, as opposed to the average person would would just slug their way through the problem, ignoring any better or easier way of doing things. Most people aren't even aware of something being a problem until they are shown a solution. People here on HN are more apt to be thinking of easier and faster ways of doing things.

As I sometimes say: Most people don't know what they want.

i wonder about your example. is it that i don't know where my time goes, or that i lack the means to change my habits? perhaps both are occurring, since sometimes knowing just how much time is wasted on <foo> provides motivation to stop....but really, the means are the tough part.

how can we motivate positive change beyond simple tracking?

Presumably one could store the data in an accessible format and create some interesting projects around it.

I have one problem - Recently launched products are always in need of spreading the word about them. One of the better ways to do it would be find blogs, articles or discussions going on to related to the product. I would like to setup a service which sends me some N urls everyday where I can go and add some useful insights to the discussions as well as put my service url there, so that it brings in some new users to my site. Let me know if you are interested in this.

Yeah. That is cool and I was thinking the same thing. I also thought that the more real time it will be the better, so you can get into the discussion while people are still reading it :).

I would love to talk more about it.

Hi Kleine2,

Please mail me at pk@roorky.com. We can discuss more on the same idea. :)

I would like one spot to go to remind me of when everything is going to expire. I have warranties, domain names, web services, SVN services, email accounts, airline miles -- all kinds of crap that has some sort of expiration date on it. And I can't keep track of any of it.

And I want the machine to do all the work -- heck if I want to go around entering everything. I want to answer a few questions, maybe have it "follow me" around as I surf, and then keep a list of when things are going to run out.

Can't deny it's a problem for you, but I add all that sort of stuff to my Google Calendar as it crops up. I have lots of things in my calendar years in advance. Works a treat.

I suppose a Firefox plugin that would automatically hook up to your Google Calender would be perfect.

Just trying to help out with a rant. As you said, there are lots of easy solutions to this.

But I find it hard to believe you track everything this way. Things like airline miles expire 2 years from the last time you flew. Do you update Google every time you fly? When you buy a toaster, do you note whether it has a 90-day full replacement or a 30-day parts warranty? We got an email from Google last month with coupons for free AdSense -- they expired in a couple of weeks or so. Amazon sends out sale notices all the time. Little stuff like that adds up over time. It's easy for me to catch the big stuff, but do you really catch all the little stuff on Google calendar as well?

It's easy for me to catch the big stuff, but do you really catch all the little stuff on Google calendar as well?

Not always, but if I didn't already add it to Google Calendar, I didn't catch it at all (let alone to any other place). I imagine such things could be automated but that'd require collaboration with the producers/retailers/etc.

Though, I wouldn't track warranties since they're not typically renewable and all products in my country have a 1 year warranty. The expiry doesn't matter much. Something either breaks before they expire or after.

Do you update Google every time you fly?

No, but I don't make up flights just to use airmiles anyway. I have about 40k airmiles but if they expire, well, I wouldn't go any place I didn't want to go already just to use them up :-)

I agree that this would be an interesting problem to solve.

But I doubt it could be made conclusive without manual data-entry. Even a tool following you around the web can't possibly understand "Ah, he just ordered a toaster" - much less when that toaster actually arrives, gets returned etc.

I think at the bottom of this lies an interesting UI challenge. How to make data-entry painless enough so that you, me and others would actually use it?

Or, perhaps, instead of data entry, a more universal data format and communication protocol for exchanging and synchronizing date information, so that supermarket purchases, websites etc. automatically add the data to a person's centralized calendaring system. This is something I want to make a (small) part of my current project, so someone please beat me to it, and then you can make a plugin for my project once I've launched :).

But I doubt it could be made conclusive without manual data-entry.

Thought.. it could be made semi-automated. Perhaps this sort of data could be in a QR bar code that when scanned (maybe even using the webcam that comes with most machines now) results in a program tracking the event as Daniel suggested.

www.warrantyelephant.com is a site designed to solve your warranty problem. Won't help with the others though.

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