Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build? (ie: free ideas to hack on)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3163554

by famousactress • 15 years ago

17 37 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm not asking because I want ideas, I'm asking cause I keep having them. Seems like plenty of folks want weekend projects and I keep stubbing my toes on something I'd love to see show up as a Show HN post in the near future. I figured maybe other folks could toss some of their lingering projects-I-won't-get-to in the pile as well. I'll leave projects in the comments and let things get voted around on their own merit.

famousactress4• 15 years ago

TV has changed. Tell me when/where new episodes are available.

I watch TV on cable, hulu, netflix, individual network's websites, or increasingly on internet tv stations like vbs.tv, etc. I'd love a service that tells me when new episodes are available of things I want to see across all of this cruft. The individual source generally do an awful job, and it's become a job for an aggregator.

jeffool3• 15 years ago

Try Clicker.com, they do this!

nodata3• 15 years ago

We kind of covered this the other day: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3153290

famousactress4• 15 years ago

Oh sweet, thanks! Missed that. [Edit: Doesn't look like that thread got past 'build a better toaster' and 'build a better toilet']

Jun8• 15 years ago

Fix the computer projector stupidity: Almost every conference, meeting I attend has at least one case of a person connecting their laptop and the display not working because of some incompatibility between the projector and laptop.

eec• 15 years ago

I was just at a conference where our "leader" spent 20 minutes trying to get the sound to work on his presentation while we all sat there fighting to stay awake. When the sound emerged we were forced to watch a video clip from the movie, "Any Given Sunday". -In this case, I wish the incompatibility had existed permanently.

On a serious note though, this IS a problem that arises often.

mooism2• 15 years ago

A graphical repl. Would be great for kids learning to program.

e.g.

    Prelude> 3 + 4
    7
    Prelude> \x -> x * x

    <interactive>:1:0:
        No instance for (Show (a -> a))
          arising from a use of `print' at <interactive>:1:0-10
        Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Show (a -> a))
        In a stmt of a 'do' expression: print it

Would be great if it could display a scrollable graph of y = x² instead.

bartonfink2• 15 years ago

The equivalent of MouseFree for complex programs. MouseFree is an Eclipse plugin that displays the keyboard shortcut for any action you initiate with the mouse. It's meant to train you to learn the hotkeys for things you do frequently so you can be more efficient. It requires less effort than reading a manual and I think it gets better results because it offers immediate feedback.

I'd like to see this concept extended further to more software.

thematt3• 15 years ago

Do you mean MouseFeed?

bartonfink2• 15 years ago

Yeah, I do. My mistake.

mathiasben2• 15 years ago

crowdsourced data driven smart phone app that lets you know when your program comes back from commercial. just tap the screen reapetdley once the program is back on. when signing on the user selects what they are watching, which network, locality, etc.. If you are the first person to sign on for that program, you would have to type in the details so others could follow it. use some sort of averging equation to cancel out the early tappers and the late tappers. no need to mess with synching scheduling data, the users do all the work. offer some incentive for those that inform the rest of the users that the commercial break is over. it's a dopey idea.

dkokelley2• 15 years ago

I've thought about this before. In reality, this doesn't require a crowd sourced solution if users are willing to pay in some way for the data. One person could keep track of a few channels at a time, and the most popular channels would be the first ones to track.

What would be really interesting is a device that can understand the difference between commercials and programming and make the alert automatically.

mathiasben2• 15 years ago

I can't imagine anyone willing to pay for the service, beyond paying to download the app. cable television has cue marks inserted to indicate where to place the commercials. dvrs know where the commercials are, maybe there's a way to siphon off that info and redirect it.

nodata3• 15 years ago

Doesn't the black square in the corner of the screen tell you this? or maybe that doesn't exist any more.

famousactress4• 15 years ago

A tool that evaluates which flights are most likely to be on time. I've noticed from travelling for business that there are clearly routes that you can have more confidence in than others. Add in weather, current events, etc.. It seems like it ought to be possible to give these trips a confidence indicator. Similar work could be used to indicate flights likely to be overbooked. I'd liket that too, because I like to get bumped for free tickets.

thematt3• 15 years ago

http://www.flightcaster.com

joe_bleau• 15 years ago

iOS app to count points on dominoes using the camera. Relatives like to play, especially over the holidays, but they use those double-twelve sets and keeping score can be a significant bit of work.

sathishmanohar6• 15 years ago

I have tons of ideas, that I'm probably never going to work on. I was planning on writing some idea giveaway series in my blog, and post the links here. Anyway I'll just list my ideas.

1. A Backup Service for all Cloud Data. Eg: Imagine if you google account stops working, then all your gmail, gdocs, blog posts all gone, But, services like google give access to your data, but its not easy to figure out for users, so, a service with monthly or yearly subscription, that backups all users data from multiple sites, automatically and periodically.

2. A Market Place for T-Shirts, I love the customink, Just stumbled upon it today. But, I was looking for a market place to sell T-Shirts, Like, I create a T-shirt with some wording, which is inexpensive. Then, the site prints and sells/ships it to costumers, who want one. Money is shared in profit shared basis.

I'll post more ideas, soon.

thematt3• 15 years ago

At #1: I really like that idea, but then how would you restore it?

dkokelley2• 15 years ago

I don't know of any major import functions for all account data, but things like contacts can be interchanged, and emails can be archived outside of an email service. I think the real benefit to a cloud service backup is an interface to browse and search your data (specifically the data that can't really be restored).

sathishmanohar6• 15 years ago

We cannot restore the data, but, we'll have the data. We can always mail our new e-mail to contacts, or import docs to say zoho docs.

sathishmanohar6• 15 years ago

While I was thinking about it, I also thought how to market the idea#1, basically you have google account login page in the website, when users enter their email and password (for whatever password it, may be), It'll just say, you account is disabled. Then a modal box appears, Say the catch line, "What if this is real? Better safe than sorry!! Signup Here". Easy sell ;)

Technically this may be considered phishing, but I can't come to a conclusion, that its evil or not.

nodata3• 15 years ago

If a huge provider goes bust, someone will come along who can restore it.

Besides, what's the difficulty? E-mail - restore via IMAP. Contacts - vcard. Photo galleries - photos and munge some metadata.

macca321• 15 years ago

So many HN'ers side projects die because they have no customers, and developers are rubbish at getting the first ten customers, so...

...a site where people who are wanting some particular SAAS app but can't find the right one- (or can't afford one the right one) can conglomerate and become the first customers for startups.

anujkk• 15 years ago

I like this idea. Basically, a site connecting startups and early adopters. Ineedanapp.com?

md1515• 15 years ago

I was thinking it might be cool for a job recruiting software program.

The software would pull data from Facebook and find people that are graduating the upcoming academic year, find the correct major for the job, and then send the applicant a job proposal.

It reverses the job search, helps students leaving college have options immediately after school, and makes companies bid on the best and brightest - i.e: Stanford grads would perhaps have many offers and would require bids from companies.

Just thought of it - probably not THAT viable of a program.

findm• 15 years ago

I want to see a better cable/TV company. Where instead of paying for 500+ channels. You get 10 personalized channels. Where each particular channel learns what you like and suggests content that you might like. So I can program a channel for my kids and using some web based ui preload the channel with content I approve.Think pandora + TV content.

I'd imagine on the business side of things you can collect some of these preferences and then in turn serve ads based on my preferences rather than blindly trying to get someone to look at your ad.

Remove the slow step top boxes the complicated remotes the tv guide channel. Simplify everything to the basics. I think hulu is a nice start but this is what I think are looking for.

Mankhool2• 15 years ago

Cable/IPTV companies are some of the last surviving tech dinosaurs. When will they wake up and tell the content providers that they will not carry their content bundled? A la carte channel selection is the only way I would ever have traditional TV in my home. Charge me $X.XX per channel and let me choose just the ones I want. I thought that IPTV would provide this, but the content producers are the kings.

sathishmanohar6• 15 years ago

3. Online sellers can include QR code in each physical items they sell, say Books, T-Shirts, Coffe Cup, to its URL on the site. That way, if your friend wants the exact same thing, he just scan the qr code, go the link and buy. It may be even awesome if, each qr code is custom qr code, which has user data in it, that way, if a friend buys a book through the qr code from my book, I get the referal bucks, but, It will be touch to implement a custom qr code in each product.

sathishmanohar6• 15 years ago

4. Forum Application for Facebook, I used Orkut in the days, It has the best online communities and discussion, ever. There is something to users with similar interest interacting with each other, with real names/identity instead of pseudonyms.

Mankhool2• 15 years ago

Location-based anonymous tasking with anonymous payment. Like a crowd sourced Wikileaks for professional information gatherers (journalists, videographers, photographers, audio recorders etc.). A global network to facilitate the buying and selling of all kinds of information.

congaqueue• 15 years ago

Reminds me of the CIC in Stephenson's Snow Crash.

sathishmanohar6• 15 years ago

5. Computer screens, starts to dim after a certain time, which can be brought back up by blinking our eyes, by, this feature, we can get users into habit of blinking every now and then, while working. Good for Eyes.

famousactress4• 15 years ago

A better 'Buy me a beer' site. It should be more frictionless, and you can take advantage of the low spending to prevent fraud. I want to a one or two click 'Buy me a beer' link to send someone 5$ for answering a forum question, or an awesome pull request or whatever. Maybe if I use it more than twice in a day it re-challenges me for a password, or something. Send me confirmation emails, or a text every day I use it, or for each event. I dunno. Something about the paypal workflow causes me too much hesitation and friction.

ig1• 15 years ago

A shared calendaring app, where multiple people can have rights to edit their own events but not other peoples events.

See discussion at:

http://www.quora.com/Calendar-Software-Online-Calendars/What...

jeffool3• 15 years ago

I'd like to see the bastard child of an iPad and a Wacom pad. My computer us stronger than your tablet; give me a light-weight touchscreen wireless monitor I can carry around my house.

Make the charging dock a stand do it functions as a normal monitor as well. Bonus points if you include: mic, cameras (the more the merrier, even two in and two out,) and IR (so I can use it on my tv.)

Of course, I'm sure the bandwidth required to get the video to/from such a device would be insane.

jeffool3• 15 years ago

Oh, something I would've like when working in an office? A tie-in to our phone system that let me type in someone's name to get their number/info, and click on a button (well, tab then tap enter) to make my phone ring, and them call that person.

Sure, I could use Google Voice or whatnot, but a single database for everyone would've been handy.

Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build? (ie: free ideas to hack on)

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