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Ask HN: What are you working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#291

Problem: My experience taking audio tours at various museums showed the use of antiquated and expensive hardware. Most alternate solutions used mobile apps which are inconvenient to download and take more time to release. Project: I went about developing a web app that allows anyone to quickly create an audio tour for free: https://www.youraudiotour.com/create I also integrated Amazon Polly to automatically generate…

I like this idea but extending it to the whole world based on geolocation. Use an app and earphones to find voice/text descriptions of places and landmarks, monuments, sculptures, buildings, etc. Everything can be geo-toured. Of course in a museum is perfect but based on geolocation it doesn't have to be linear, you can go anywhere in the museum and get voice/text about that particular place/masterpiece and when they…

Really cool idea, I think people would love that! The biggest hurdle would be getting enough interesting content. You would almost need to create a Wikipedia for real world locations.

If you were able to get enough content I think that would be an incredible app/service.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#292

Problem: I don't know when the optimal times to go to Krispy Kreme for hot donuts are. Solution: http://hotdonuts.info/ And yes, this is the most important problem in the world.

I'd love to use this, but due to an even bigger problem, unfortunately my body can't handle Krispy Kreme donuts: they're way too high in calories.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#293
Software defined radios that can work in extreme conditions (like during or just after a giant disaster), an IoT kernel that does useful work in a mesh network without a back haul, a personal 'internet radio' that can stream your home market AM/FM stations to you anywhere, and computer system to teach the mid-levels of computer science between programming and and database design.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#295
Problem: I write reStructuredText notes and essays to myself (and run rst2html) about things I'm learning, exploring or have learned, e.g "Cool shell tricks" or "How to manage my diabetes." Managing lots of rst and html files becomes a mess, especially links to other pages if you refactor, or just finding your stuff.

Project: Miki - Makefile Wiki. A small, personal wiki to manage the above. No software written, just a makefile that coordinates tools you already have or are easy to install. The README emphasizes using the navigation features that your browser already has, rather than writing navigation pages.

https://github.com/a3n/miki

You can use any or each of reStructuredText, Markdown or AsciiDoc.

It produces any or all of .html, .pdf and .txt.

Also produces a bare-bones book/media catalog in .json format. Because I sometimes link to my books in my wiki pages.

The refactor problem is "solved" by "make badlinks", which prints out any bad internal links it finds.

In your markup pages, you end your links in the markup suffix of the link's destination (if it's to an internal page). This way you can easily use your text editor's "go to file under cursor" feature to open the destination's source (who wants to open a pdf in Vim?); Miki transforms that into a .html, or .pdf or .txt suffix during output generation, as appropriate

Coincidentally, yesterday I decided that it's "done enough," barring bugs or feature suggestions, and I recorded that observation in the Journal page in my local Miki-based wiki. That feels very slightly like a self-hosting compiler.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#298

Problem: Finding newly-registered companies (to market services to them) in the UK is hard. The government releases an updated registry of all four million UK companies once every month, but they come in a huge five-part spreadsheet. It's difficult and painful to sort and filter through this data. Project: I constantly poll the UK government's databases for newly-registered companies. I also geocode each company's re…

nice. Have you had much traction? b2b sales can be hard.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#299
http://bsnip.com - A screenshot and annotation utility. I wasn't happy with any of the available options, either the price was too high, or the feature set was lacking so I decided to make my own.

I believe BetterSnipper stands out in its ability to dock to the side of the screen, making it especially good at taking/editing/uploading multiple screenshots.

I've been working on this side project for a few years now and it's starting to become more mature, but still a lot of work left and features to add, but a ton of fun to learn and see it come together.

I'd love to get any feedback or suggestions :-)

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