Ask HN: What is your side project for 2018?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15977685

by panching • 9 years ago

47 87 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I just started learning Developing application and I am looking for passive income ideas. I'm actively looking for income sources and my skills. I just launched https://www.cmyport.com/ as a side project and adding new feature soon. I am learning php/mysql and looking for suggestions.

unknown1111• 9 years ago

I've two side projects that I plan on working on in 2018:

- A "Travel Guide" for Physics, which collects the best explanations for any physics topic and sorts them depending on the required level of sophistication: https://physicstravelguide.com/

- A platform, where students and researchers can publish their notes: https://physicsnotes.org/

sdangol2• 9 years ago

We are a software development company from Nepal. We launched http://www.99leave.com/, a complete attendance and leave management system.

panching3• 9 years ago

is it based on saas??

jmnicolas• 9 years ago

No exactly a "side project".

bluena• 9 years ago

My antivirus marked this as malware!

sdangol2• 9 years ago

how do you prevent on https://www.cmyport.com/ which is allowing someone to port scan another IP?

Tom4hawk• 9 years ago

Why would he try to prevent that? If you have computer/device facing the internet with public IP you have to acknowledge that anyone can poke at it.

panching3• 9 years ago

Thank you sdangol, the only way I can do is to limit the scanning to origin IP.

Random_Person• 9 years ago

I don't know yet. For me "side project" means significantly less planning. My method is to listen to people around me, "I wish I had a tool that could do x."

If it's simple enough, I don't bother Googling for a solution, I build it for them. Exactly as they request. Nothing more, nothing less.

NicoJuicy• 9 years ago

ECommerce platform for myselve and some sort of AI for stocks, i'm not sure if it will be profitable though. But that's why i'll backtest it and give it a go.

falsedan• 9 years ago

For backtesting, try https://www.quantopian.com/tutorials/getting-started

caser• 9 years ago

If any of you are interested in working on side projects full time, we're starting a community in NYC of people doing just that.

Check us out if interested: recesslabs.com

For me, my last side project was a crypto-related joke site (sendcryptopeopletulips.com).

I think the next one will also be a humor + tech project. I'm really interested to explore tech as a medium for comedy.

louisswiss2• 9 years ago

This sounds interesting - working on side projects full time sounds like a contradiction in terms however...

ejanus5• 9 years ago

I will work for you if you allow remote worker

louisswiss2• 9 years ago

As a side project to learn React and Firebase I threw together a side project in an afternoon to help couples spice up their bedroom time (very slightly NSFW, no nudity). https://pairful.com

Obviously a lot of CSS work to do, however with some better SEO and animations, it could be a useful tool with affiliate possibilities. This isn't an area I know much about/care for, however.

superkalo2• 9 years ago

I'm working on a browser extension that replaces the New Tab page with a Bitcoin price chart: https://crypto-tab.com

Ftuuky• 9 years ago

This is neat! Can we have an option to change from USD to EUR and select a preferred exchange? I'd like to see Bitstamp prices in euros if possible.

superkalo2• 9 years ago

Not yet. Currently I'm working on adding Ether and Litecoin. But I'm adding this suggestion on my suggestions list! Stay tuned :-)

adnanh2• 9 years ago

Hookdoo: SaaS that allows you to create incoming webhook endpoints to run shell scripts on your remote servers. https://www.hookdoo.com/

And of course my open-source webhook server project: https://github.com/adnanh/webhook

icedchai• 9 years ago

How does Hookdoo differ from plain old CGI scripts? I have no idea why I would need it.

adnanh2• 9 years ago

Hookdoo allows you to execute the same script on multiple servers. It's centralized, and you don't have to maintain multiple versions of the same script on multiple hosts. You can easily add or remove servers where the script should be executed etc...

It also adds the concurrency control feature so you don't have to worry if you want only one instance of the script running, or want to kill the currently running one, or run them in parallel etc...

Another feature would be generic trigger rules where you can use values from payload to see if the script should be run at all (i.e. push to the feature branch, but you want to run the script on merges to master...).

As a developer, all of this might sound easy to implement, but whatever you make, you also have to maintain... And as you know, the business requirements tend to change quite often and you'll get to a point where you have to generalize your custom CGI scripts, and you end up spending more time maintaining infrastructure than doing development on the actual product.

Webhook on other hand is pretty much a CGI server with a few handy features :-)

nikivi• 9 years ago

I am working on an Open Source website to visualise most efficient learning paths.

Website: https://learn-anything.xyz

Code: https://github.com/learn-anything/learn-anything

Currently trying to move to a new design and format.

AquiGorka• 9 years ago

I've seen your project before, amazing! keep up the good work.

everling• 9 years ago

If I have time it will be updating my last project, http://cinetrii.com , with a more sophisticated algorithm.

It infers inspirations for queried movies using their reviews: http://cinetrii.com?i=tt5580390

pleasecalllater• 9 years ago

Changing my job. As I'm looking for remote only in European hours - it will be quite challenging. Family issues don't allow me to work in US hours from Europe. I think this will be my full time project, as such a position is quite unique in Europe.

Besides I'm going to read a lot, and finally understand Haskell.

As for the programming stuff: write a book about databases, and write some Postgres patches for fun.

ejanus5• 9 years ago

I won't mine hanging around, reading your book, and testing your patch

mezod• 9 years ago

The v2 of my habit tracker https://everydaycheck.com :P Already on the works! Every day it gets a little easier!

ainiriand2• 9 years ago

12 smart contract projects, one for each month. So far I have a list of 9 projects to do, easy stuff. The usual, lottery, auction... But I want to do it from the point of view of a python backend server, so I plan to use Viper.

dukeflukem• 9 years ago

I'm interested in doing similar. Due to time constraints might be be per 2 months.

Some ideas:

Poker variant - quite hard but thought of a way to do it without a trusted oracle.

Hodl contract - forces you to hold for X months

Simple asset price contract where 2 parties bet each way. Requires an oracle.

Sports betting. Oracle.

Reputation coin - prove your general rep by aggregating HN, SO, Reddit etc. scores. Oracle.

The usual lottery

A "ponzi"

Let me know if you want to get in touch and I'll stick an email in my profile. Would like someone to bounce ideas and help each other if stuck.

ainiriand2• 9 years ago

I am really interested! I particularly like your idea about the simple asset price contract. Could be really cool to get in touch.

gghyslain• 9 years ago

I will keep working on CryptoProphet.co - a smart alert system to keep you updated on any unusual changes of prices of your favourite cryptocurrencies. We send our cryptocurrency price alerts through Telegram.

https://cryptoprophet.co/

xcubic• 9 years ago

What kind of algo are you using to detect changes?

joekinley• 9 years ago

porting and finishing a game I made to the nintendo switch

pawelkomarnicki• 9 years ago

I will keep working on CookArr, and maybe get my 2nd game out :-)

http://cookarr.com

sreyaNotfilc2• 9 years ago

Gosh, those marshmallows looks devine! I'll make sure to link to it within my side-project (once the new version is up).

rayalez2• 9 years ago

I have 3 big ones.

- Nulis - a tree text editor for writers

https://nulis.io/

I have built a beta that was very well received, now it's time to clean up the code(rewriting it from scratch), add some cool features, and follow the roadmap to complete v1.0.

- Helix - a habit tracking app

https://helix.startuplab.io

Designed this app mostly for myself, but I think it turned out great, has a lot of potential, and users seem to love it. My goal here is also to complete all the functionality I've set out to complete with my roadmap and reach a solid v1.0.

- Startup Lab - blog

https://startuplab.io/blog

I want to seriously pick up the pace and quality of my blogging. I want to finally develop a sustainable daily writing habit, and make some successful posts.

====

If I succeed, I will have two awesome SaaS projects to sell, and a great traction channel(articles + medium publications + reddit) to promote them.

I've estimated that I will need 40k total visitors(or 9 months of 150 daily visitors) to reach my goal of $1k MRR

(40k visitors * ~5% retention * ~10% conversion to paying customers = 200 paying users. 200 users * $5/mo = $1k/mo).

If I successfully accomplish my plan - I will finally achieve my dream and become a successful startup founder.

====

As a bonus, I would love to find a good voiceover actor and produce YouTube videos out of my articles(or learn to speak better and do voiceover myself); and I would also experiment with engineering as marketing(I have 3 smaller projects I could promote and use as a traction channel).

monaghanboy2• 9 years ago

Is there a "long-term" view for Helix where you can zoom out and see a map of your activity? Kind of like GitHub's contribution graph.

I'd use this, looking forward to a V1.

rayalez2• 9 years ago

Yep, there is! Open the menu and click "Calendar".

frading• 9 years ago

Hi Rayalez,

Nulis seems very interesting. I just played with it a bit. I certainly like your approach on creating an outline.

I'm also working on an app for writers: https://mediatag.io. It is more general for all creatives and filmmakers, but I wrote a use case for screenwriters: https://mediatag.io/use_cases/filmmaking/screenwriting

alphadevx• 9 years ago

Add more features to my personal todo-list app, while still keeping it simple: https://five.today/

Q_the_Novice• 9 years ago

I will continue working on NodeZA: https://nodeza.co.za - will focus on content creation and interaction between members.

tokyokawasemi• 9 years ago

I started out trying to figure out what a weekly sprint kanban board might look like if it were a pocket notebook. Ended up somewhere a little different (https://1rick.github.io/bluebird/), but it suits me ok for my own pocket task manager.

ronbeltran• 9 years ago

I have been developing https://useragentinfo.co/ as a side project. It's a simple device, browser and OS detection. Currently it's running in a single server setup over linode. By Jan2018 I'll be migrating it to AWS Elastic Beanstalk for stability. This will be my weekend timesink.

geekodour• 9 years ago

I'll try adding few more feature to my static blog generator https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog

MrDresden• 9 years ago

I've just started a native Android project for wrapping Wakatime operations (I find current offerings not good enough). So that will be a project going forward into 2018.

Also going to create some free example applications for hopefully teaching more advanced native concept on Android to any who want.

veli_joza2• 9 years ago

Last few months I've been building digital musical instruments for Android [0], I guess I'll continue working on that. So far I've built a few 'instruments' that emulate traditional instruments (guitar, organ, choir...) that you can play in real time on your phone. During next year I would like to take advantage of interactive platform, to make the instrument actually respond to your playing (and then to augment it).

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.castlewrat...

catbird• 9 years ago

Very cool! I love the guitar mode especially (as long as I'm leaning far to the left to get a clean sound haha).

I was wondering, what are you using to make this? Are the sounds sampled, or is there digital synthesis going on?

veli_joza2• 9 years ago

Thanks. I'm using free samples I find around (common source being decompiled soundfonts). I also plan to integrate Faust audio processing which would enable true digital synthesis and HiFi sound effects. Next version of guitar should have wah-wah effect.

vram22• 9 years ago

Last few months I've been building digital musical instruments

Ha ha, that's a fun area. I had written this Python "piano" app for PCs a while ago; it's simple, but the comments on it about Western classical music theory (which I am a newb at) were interesting:

https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2013/04/play-piano-on-your-comput...

Edit: In fact, I had first written a BASIC version of this same program on my first personal computer, an IBM PC Jr., which I wrote about here:

Lissajous hippo, retrocomputing and the IBM PC Jr.:

https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2012/09/lissajous-hippo.html

mightyranger572• 9 years ago

I will be definitely working on Appure ( https://appure.io ) - screenshot generator for App and Play stores, adding new features, improving existing stuff. Still, have a lot of hopes for this app

mightyranger572• 9 years ago

... And even though i don't have a lot of users, existing ones are very loyal and happy with the tool. It gives me a boost every day knowing that someone actually benefits from what i'm doing.

teemu47• 9 years ago

Same as last year. New publishing platform for independent journalists https://www.demotico.com.

Looking for beta testers to give feedback at the moment.

ortuman• 9 years ago

To finish the implementation of an XMPP server written in Go (Golang) https://github.com/ortuman/jackal

mxuribe• 9 years ago

Curious, why not instead contribute your valuable Go expertise towards matrix (specifically the homeserver called Dendrite)? Certainly don't want to take away any of your passion for xmpp...but if you haven't read up on on matrix in general, I encourage you to do so.

For matrix in general, see: https://matrix.org/

For diff. between matrix and xmpp, see: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-the-differen...

For Dendrite - matrix's homeserver written in Go - see: https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite

Cheers!

tstieff• 9 years ago

Mainly I'm devoting my free time to a native REST client in the vain of Postman or Insomnia. It's also been an excuse to learn the Qt framework and brush up on my C++ skills. So far, I've found C++ to be insane, but I quite like Qt.

https://github.com/tmstieff/Woke

gdiocarez• 9 years ago

I have a point of sale system for mobile devices. https://posangel.com

Dowwie• 9 years ago

I'd like to port the entire authorization module from my open source Python project, Yosai, to Rust and use it as a shared library from Python. I PoC'd this work last January, resulting in the release of my first crate and Rust tutorial. I haven't touched Rust since, though, but intend to push on further.

A complete Rust implementation has the benefit that it can be adapted to myriad other languages and thus has a much wider audience appeal. It's also about 10x faster than cpython, but pypy may eliminate that gap entirely. Of course there are the usual other benefits, as well.

Since Rust is in its infancy for application development, such an authorization library would address a growing need by the Rust ecosystem.

If any programmers want in, email me.

References:

Yosai: https://github.com/YosaiProject

Python-Rust adapter: https://github.com/YosaiProject/yosai_libauthz

authz.rs: https://github.com/Dowwie/rust-authz

blog post: http://daringordon.com/rust_tutorials/

ejanus5• 9 years ago

I can't find your email.

peterbraden• 9 years ago

I need to improve the write up, but I'm coming to the end of my current iteration of a genetic algorithm to evolve the Mona Lisa from polygons.

This year I reimplemented it in rust and did some low level optimization to make it fast.

https://github.com/peterbraden/genetic-lisa

jozi9• 9 years ago

Getting users on my just-launched REST API Monitoring SaaS:

http://www.apilope.com

Initially I thought it'd be easy to acquire users since I'm speaking to my own kind - but it's pretty hard to get into developers' head :) No instagram influencers can be used, that's for sure.

Anybody have any ideas?

if_by_whisky• 9 years ago

Work on governed.io, a native app that makes it easy to fax and manage your communication with your congressional reps.

toisanji• 9 years ago

I am teaching computers how to interact with the environment via touch, its a machine learning project: github.com/jtoy/sensenet

zjfroot• 9 years ago

I will continue working on "The Better Wiki", which is a proxy to Wikipedia with better readability. Inspired by "Reader View" of Safari.

https://thebetter.wiki/en/

wallflower• 9 years ago

Learning video editing and video production to a level somewhere between OK/meh Facebook video and Casey Neistat. I know it can be more an art than a science, and I am learning from every videographer/producer/tech person that I talk to. Just getting a workflow down is a WIP. No one reads blog posts anymore, and I think this is a good skill to cultivate. I've done my share of volunteering as a teacher/tutor, and I'm beginning to believe I can better bring value to these organizations by helping them share what they are doing through snappy, informative short videos. I don't think I am a good teacher/tutor, and I am a natural storyteller. Does anyone have tips, suggestions, recommended sites/books? I will be using Adobe Premiere Pro.

ambewas• 9 years ago

I'll be continuing work on Jam Together.

Jam Together is a web application which you can use to play some music together with your friends, remotely. Right now it's possible to play with a midi keyboard as well as just your laptop keys.

I've got a piano, a synth and a drum kit working (if you create a free account. Piano only without an account).

I'll be adding more instruments, work on reducing latency (anyone here with multiplayer game development experience that would like to help out?), different jamming modes, and most importantly work on some marketing to get more feedback on the app so I can evolve it in the right direction.

Check it out on the link below. A couple of disclaimers though... Chrome only, optimised for people residing in the EU for now, otherwise latency is too much of an issue to reliably play.

http://jamtogether.eu

mariushop• 9 years ago

I recently found a book for children featuring "NLP" for making them sleep. Apparently it's a best seller on Amazon. I think I'll buy it and adapt it for spicing up relationships. It's gonna be huge. Sigh.

thecolorblue• 9 years ago

Hydroponics.

Between farmbot and MIT openAg, it feels like there is momentum to disrupt the food industry. From my first tests this year, it is way cheaper and gives better results, to grow my own food either in the small plot in my back yard or inside in some sort of hydroponic setup. My goal is to make it super simple.

DougWebb• 9 years ago

I just finished my latest Hacker News reader. I usually read HN on my phone, so over the years I've written several wrappers to improve the layout on mobile devices, and also to test out new tech. This version uses Bootstrap 4 for the frontend and ASP.Net MVC Core 2 on the backend, running on a Linux server. http://webbindustries.com/hackernews

For 2018 I'm hoping to make progress on an app I've started, which handles Project Management specifically for software development consultants. The difference from most other PM tools is going to be handling multiple projects for multiple clients, client/role-restricted views, separate-but-linked requirements and task+time tracking, and separate-but-linked budgeting and estimating. I'm designing this primarily for myself, but also so that it can become a SaaS product I can offer as either a hosted service or self-hosted product.

krapp• 9 years ago

My side project for 2018 is to finish my side projects for 2017, some of which were also side projects for 2016.

I swear I'd end up late for my own funeral.

ejanus5• 9 years ago

I will stop you from attending your funeral.

vfulco• 9 years ago

Building an API based quick report service (around Typeform, Zapier, Mailgun, and R-Project's Plumber service) for my professional and academic businesses focused on essay editing and resume writing. People don't have the time or inclination to do final edit themselves so these tools will tell them how bad their doc is and whether they need a professional service like ours. Will mostly be for Asian clients who find me on China's Taobao and Weidian where we have our electronic shops.

robodale• 9 years ago

A business guide (ebook), leading to a more in-depth online course, leading to my SaaS offering which automates what the course entails.

originof2• 9 years ago

new DE

originof2• 9 years ago

new linux DE

kanwisher• 9 years ago

Been working on this game to teach people how to code on the blockchain, Ethereum and Solidity. https://cryptozombies.io

panching3• 9 years ago

awesome, Projects like this make me excited to learn.

ejanus5• 9 years ago

Would you allow someone to work with you ??

yehosef• 9 years ago

https://elastic.news/ - soon with 100% more elasticsearch!

mabynogy• 9 years ago

A small programming language, lisp-inspired (no parens with python's offside rule) targeting js (and lua later). An example:

- input: https://p.sicp.me/gti5L.lisp

- output: https://p.sicp.me/bRaaf.js

It's written in lua (915 lines at the moment). I do that to help me with the building of a programmable voice assistant (https://github.com/slasheva).

BTW this topic is a great idea. 4chan has a daily programming thread like that.

sreyaNotfilc2• 9 years ago

I'm working on a little project I've been tinkering with for the past 9 or so years. Its a club-house of sorts for artists so that they can learn and discuss art.

One of the features is called 'Lightbox' where you can draw overtop a picture and follow steps of a tutorial. Another feature would be to help artists find resources related to your niche with 'LinkKit'.

Right now its very old code and I've been working on a much cleaner update during the past year. So, once its ready I'll do the show 'Show HN' thing for feedback.

Here's a taste of the old code.

Lightbox http://artjutsu.com/lightbox/canvas/Default.aspx?q=3

LinkKit http://artjutsu.com/beta/linkkit.aspx

muertaugh• 9 years ago

I'm currently working on a sort of mind mapping system at the moment, with the idea that I can use it as a sort of personal database.

I'm using ArangoDB (https://www.arangodb.com/) to store ideas as collections of nodes, where the properties and details of those ideas (or objects) can be connected to eachother. The properties can be simple descriptions of the node, or documents such as html, pdf, or images.

Im doing this because my memory is terrible (ADHD), and I want to make a system that lets me take notes and record ideas in a way thats more... organic in the way that I think about things. I also tend to use a lot of documentation from the web, and have no way of sorting it other than through bookmarks. Being able to pull webpages off of the internet and reference them within notes is a powerful tool, I have found.

I'm excited for the project for a lot of reasons, but what excites me the most is what I can do once I have this personal database filled out enough. I will essentially have a graph based model of what is typically floating around my head, like a network of thoughts, interconnected by both objective and subjective properties. I aim to use this database to build a sort of personal assistant, personalized for the user.

I think that this is something that we are kind of missing today, where a lot of our interactions come from the internet, this ephemeral space where you can't exactly organize everything that you see and interact with. As an example, imagine that you saw a neat article about cancer research that you wanted to tell someone about later. You send the URL to your database server where it is downloaded, parsed, tagged, and linked to other articles or notes that you may have (this would start out being manual, but I hope to automate it). Once that info is in the database, you can have it recalled through either a direct request for that record, or through implicit actions such as looking for scientific papers in the database and narrowing it down to the one you want.

I have nothing to show for the project so far, it still in it's infancy, but I really think that this is something that will be useful to people, if at the least just myself.

crisopolis• 9 years ago

I'm working on a freight brokerage to compete against Uber Freight and the likes...

Using Elixir, PostgreSQL, Vue.js, Stripe Connect probably hosted at Packet, Vultr or DO and maybe GCP.

Not a fan of AWS or Serverless-hype.

lulz42• 9 years ago

I've made an android app, 2 months ago, to keep track of your coins (Bitcoin & altcoins). I'm still developing the app and new features will come in 2018 ! Don't hesitate to give me your feedbacks. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.juniper.wa...

kiwicopple• 9 years ago

I'm working on a multilingual CMS that bundles all the core services that startups have to sign up for:

https://pollygot.com/

It's more of a full-time project until it succeeds or fails. If it takes off then I'd love to build SEO recommendations and Digital Marketing tools into it. These are 2 industries in the content world that really need to be commoditised.

As a side-project to Pollygot, I'd love to do an RSS reader app where you can view discussions from both HN and Reddit within the same app. If this one takes off, then I'd love to do a Flattr/Brave type model of micropayments within the app

smittysahn75• 9 years ago

I started a website for my final capstone project for my Bachelors degree in software/mobile development application and website design.

I am going to be working on finishing that up in 2018.

It's a huge project that is going to take me quite some time. I want to keep the site 100% ad free, so I trying to put together some ideas on how to monetize it. For now I an just asking for donations. But at some point I might need to figure out some kind of way to monetize it.

- United States Ghost Towns http://unitedstatesghosttowns.com

tkarandi• 9 years ago

Release finally my timetable generator application for highschools/universities https://github.com/karandit/confetti/

2. Finish my other long pending project, a REST API game inspired by the detective game Cluedo https://github.com/karandit/rest_dojo_web

It was used as a motivation for me to learn elm http://elm-lang.org/

Ask HN: What is your side project for 2018?

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