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Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

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Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#21

Post by patio11 »

DanHulton wrote: post #14
johns wrote: post #7

The golf one sounds easy, but most of those web sites are directly integrated with POS systems. A lot of courses buy it all together as a package. Plus the biggest golf course management software vendor in my area aggregates all the golf courses they serve into a single web site, so you only have one account. Also, as much as I love Open ID, trying to get your average Joe Schmoe golfer to use it is not going to work.

The easiest way for people to remember their logins for sites is not to USE logins. Use EMAIL ADDRESSES instead. Then, if they forget their login, they just enter their email address and it auto-generates a "reset password" link. Open ID is cool and all, but it's nowhere near frictionless enough for average people yet.

Words cannot express how much I agree with this advice for non-technical people. My users love it because its easy. (Really. They send letters.)

I love it because failed logins are minimal and requests to reset password even smaller. (Incidentally, rather than "reset password", I give people auto-login links which are guaranteed to be usable for at least one day, and then pop up a message on login telling them how to change their password. This eliminates any needless copy/pasting and supports my ~10 users who prefer to ALWAYS log in via the forgotten password feature. Hey, two of them paid money, I'm not about to complain.)

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#22

Post by warfangle »

DanHulton wrote: post #15

Problem you'll run into with scanning bar codes displayed on mobile phones - it won't work. In general, barcode scanners can't scan digital screens for barcodes.

Unless they don't use typical barcode scanners. I'm thinking photo recognition scanners - they point the camera on their smartphone at the screen of the barcode to be scanned; the app sends the decoded data to the server and gets a success or denied along with ticketholder info (name, etc)....

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#23

Post by Cantdog »

One More Idea: A super simple dating mobile app. Your profile consists of a picture of yourself and the question , "Ask me about....?", filled in. There would be a list of bars organized by cities and people could choose to share which bar they were at. Potential suitors could browse all the singles at a bar and decide which person to talk to (in real life).

The goal is to solve the awkwardness of cold openings at a bar. It's much easier if you can use something as a conversation starter. Also, one of the problems I see with online dating is the stigma attached to it. Hopefully, since this app is to be used in aiding real life dating, the stigma will not be there.

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#24

Post by icey »

We've been seeing a lot of these idea threads lately. Maybe someone should make an "I have an idea" site :D

It would be nice to have a page per idea, plus commenting, and maybe some sections for research (other competitors in the area, probable market sizes, etc).

If I had unlimited funds, I always thought it would be cool to start a company that did nothing but churn out little ideas. People could put idea synopses on a big board on one wall and either grab the idea off the wall when they wanted to build it, or write their name under it to let people know they were working on it. Then other people who were also interested in the idea could collaborate. Or compete, whatever.

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#25

Post by run4yourlives »

Cantdog wrote: post #23

One More Idea: A super simple dating mobile app. Your profile consists of a picture of yourself and the question , "Ask me about....?", filled in. There would be a list of bars organized by cities and people could choose to share which bar they were at. Potential suitors could browse all the singles at a bar and decide which person to talk to (in real life). The goal is to solve the awkwardness of cold openings at a…

Chicken and egg, but kinda neat.

Screw the whole bar scene though and just make it "geo-aware". You pre-define picks and as you travel throughout town, it let's you know when one of those picks is close by.

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#26

Post by jamesbritt »

Some years back I was occasionally involved with the OTA (Open Travel alliance), and ended up attending a meeting to discuss specs. Along with a largely enterprisey view of XML, I was amazed by the amount of attention given to defining markup to handle golf tee times.

I'd worked in hotels for many years by then, but never at a resort; I first thought they were talking about tea times, which seemed just plain bizarre. But no more bizarre than their love for W3C Schemas.

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#27

Post by vilya »

icey wrote: post #24

We've been seeing a lot of these idea threads lately. Maybe someone should make an "I have an idea" site :D It would be nice to have a page per idea, plus commenting, and maybe some sections for research (other competitors in the area, probable market sizes, etc). If I had unlimited funds, I always thought it would be cool to start a company that did nothing but churn out little ideas. People could put idea synopses…

Have a look at http://www.halfbakery.com/ - it's pretty much exactly what you describe in terms of an ideas site.

Also, there are companies which churn out little ideas - my girlfriend works for one. It's pitched as an innovation consultancy, aimed at opening up new markets for companies big enough to afford their fees. Not sure if that's exactly what you were talking about, but maybe kind of similar?

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#28

Post by icey »

vilya wrote: post #27
icey wrote: post #24

We've been seeing a lot of these idea threads lately. Maybe someone should make an "I have an idea" site :D It would be nice to have a page per idea, plus commenting, and maybe some sections for research (other competitors in the area, probable market sizes, etc). If I had unlimited funds, I always thought it would be cool to start a company that did nothing but churn out little ideas. People could put idea synopses…

Have a look at http://www.halfbakery.com/ - it's pretty much exactly what you describe in terms of an ideas site. Also, there are companies which churn out little ideas - my girlfriend works for one. It's pitched as an innovation consultancy, aimed at opening up new markets for companies big enough to afford their fees. Not sure if that's exactly what you were talking about, but maybe kind of similar?

I'd always thought halfbakery was mostly use for joke ideas; but looking at it again makes me think perhaps it is being used more seriously than I thought.

I want to go work where your girlfriend works, it sounds like fun (and yes, that's roughly what I was talking about :D )

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#29

Post by mseebach »

I have an idea that's related to (4) - actual last minute flight deals.

You go to the airport you want to travel from, and go to a "last minute" lounge, preferably behind security. Then, every time a flight is about to leave that has empty seats, the seats appear in an auction (available on smartphone devices or via wifi in the lounge) that will last maybe 10 minutes. The winner gets a digital boarding pass and is required to report to the gate within 10 minutes, or the flight is lost. The idea is that almost any revenue from an otherwise empty seat goes directly in the contribution margin.

There are any number of problems, especially getting not-yet-travellers through security, as well as baggage, but the essense of selling a very-soon expiring product is the same.

Re: Ask HN: Steal my Ideas (or help me)

#30

Post by weirdwes »

dminor wrote: post #11

The shopping thing seems ripe for fraud. Put in a fake order, get a discount.

I agree with this, but it would be nice to hear some opinions on how fraud could be limited as well. Reason being that I like this idea and would love to see other people's take on it.

I used to manage a pizza shop and we would run into issues from time to time where we would have extra food. Occassionally it was due to fake orders, but more often it was due to mix ups in the prep area where our cooks would forget to take down a ticket after putting a pie in the oven and the next cook would make it again. If we didn't eat it ourselves, we would call up the local bars, fire stations, police stations, repeat customers or anyone who had a large order in the past and offer it to them at a substantial discount or free. We generated a lot of repeat business that way. We were a small, horribly unorganized shop, so I don't how much that would spill over into the average food business - but it does happen.

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