This one's easy: Facebook-killer!
Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
101–110 of 130 posts
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#102Some software to help trucks travel always full
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Competitive landscape: 1. rentalic.com - US startup, based in Silicon Valley, founder appears to have technical and business chops and some social networking cred. Some traction, and imho, the most promising. 2. neighborgoods.net - LA-based, founder does not appear to be very technical. Limited traction around the LA area. 3. zilok.com - EU-based, looks like they are trying to reproduce their EU model of the same thi…
4. http://www.divvy.com/
imho, sites like this are great in concept, but the chicken-and-egg problem becomes more intractable the more "broad" it is. The trouble is getting just some traction, in just 1 niche. It almost seems easier again in my opinion, to conquer a specific niche/vertical first, then adjacent areas, one at a time (as opposed to attempting to do a land-grab but see nothing stick)
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#104I don't make music but I love music. This is a way to potentially help every indie artist/label in the world. I have an entire database of music industry listings. These types of databases usually cost lots of money and therefore independent artists have been excluded from using them. We're talking 50,000 listings spanning across the united states and canada. Lots of independent labels and artists I've spoken to are…
This reminds me, Derek Sivers seems to be putting together a project along similar lines: http://karmalist.com/
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#105Make an improved version of etherpad! This was a great project/company, that ~ended when Google bought them. Would love to see someone run with this.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#106Distributed, decentralized, redundant, encrypted online file storage with the ability to share information with specific groups and individuals. From the user standpoint, a user would access their content primarily through client software that would ask for their id & password (or perform other authentication). The authentication process fetches a small file from the network and decrypts it using the user's identific…
Interesting idea, but I wonder how many copies of my data would need to be stored across the system to guarantee that at least one copy is available when I want it?
Many people don't leave their personal computers switched on all the time, especially if they go away for a few days, then there are network outages, people deciding to leave the network, ...
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
4. http://www.divvy.com/
imho, sites like this are great in concept, but the chicken-and-egg problem becomes more intractable the more "broad" it is. The trouble is getting just some traction, in just 1 niche. It almost seems easier again in my opinion, to conquer a specific niche/vertical first, then adjacent areas, one at a time (as opposed to attempting to do a land-grab but see nothing stick)
I agree completely. If they saw opportunity, I'm sure ebay could clean up in this space.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#108"trying to edge my way into point of sale restaurant software/hardware"
Having ventured into this realm, Just Say No. Or, at least don't think about the problem like, "Restaurants pay much too much for POS systems...I could build something cheaper and better." Contact me if you want to know more or would like an intro to some people in that space.
Having said this, here's what I want.....
I just bought what is, at least for me, a kick ass USB microphone from M-Audio for $60. Even as the world has become more accepting of telecommuting, the conference call still sucks from an audio standpoint. Skype seems optimized for modems. [Still true?] POTS lines are, of course, awful. Instead of compressing my voice from a cheap microphone into a 2Kbit upstream, what if my voice was recorded with a good microphone and sent upstream at, say 64Kbit? What sort of set-up should I have so that I can collaborate with someone and have the same audio efficiency (meaning, I don't have to expend brain cycles on a bad S/N ratio) as being in the same room?
On a much broader scale, I think that there are huge opportunities for companies who can produce better A/V collaboration tools, and I think that audio is much more important than video from an efficiency of human interaction standpoint. I'd be willing to spend my day in studio headphones and speaking into a mic -- much like a radio DJ -- if it meant I could have effortless conversations.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#109I would try looking here (if you haven't already): http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
Or you could try their Request for Startups: http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#110Distributed, decentralized, redundant, encrypted online file storage with the ability to share information with specific groups and individuals. From the user standpoint, a user would access their content primarily through client software that would ask for their id & password (or perform other authentication). The authentication process fetches a small file from the network and decrypts it using the user's identific…
Interesting idea, but I wonder how many copies of my data would need to be stored across the system to guarantee that at least one copy is available when I want it? Many people don't leave their personal computers switched on all the time, especially if they go away for a few days, then there are network outages, people deciding to leave the network, ...
You could always run a CDN to add your own guarenteed-up nodes for this scenario.