Ask HN: Idea Sunday

* Hearing aids that run off body heat. They have watches that do it, why not hearing aids? Or at least helps recharge the batteries... I dunno. I spend a lot of money on hearing aid batteries...

* A better credit rating system. The current one kinda sucks, no offense to Transunion, Experian, and whatever that other one is. Just because Joe Schmoe was unemployed 18 months ago and struggled to pay the rent, much less pay the bills, does not mean that Joe Schmoe is currently unable to do so. A creditor can claim a debt from Sally Schmoe, and Sally has little recourse in fighting it -- it's ridiculously complicated to combat something you know nothing about. Usually she winds up just paying the bogus bill to get it off her credit report. The whole thing is a racket.

* A better job candidate review systems. Companies spend a lot of money hiring recruiters, but recruiters just spam the crap out of people and then send all the resumes in anyway. What if there were an app that could pre-qualify candidates? Cut out the middle man -- death to recruiters! (figuratively, of course)

* A good, interactive environment for remote calls with kids (or anyone, I guess). I'm thinking Skype meets building blocks. Maybe we have to wait for Oculus Rift, or maybe Kinect is enough to get started. For example, I live in San Francisco, and my niece lives in Atlanta. I don't want her to not know who I am. I want to be able to Facetime/Skype with her -- and as she grows, I want to be able to interact with her, play games with her on a shared screen, teach her new words and phrases, and so on. My girlfriend's nephews live 8 hours away, and her parents live even farther away. The nephews are growing up quick, and we Facetime as much as possible, but even so, it's limited to just talking and pointing at a screen. You can make this better. As grandparents, aunts, and uncles increasingly get used to technology, they will want more ways to interact with their young family members without breaking the bank on plane tickets to visit -- and they'll spend money to do it! A small subscription and microtransactions (new games/books!) would be infinitely cheaper than flying across the country. Someone make this happen.

* An app that maps out disc golf courses (please start with the one in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park... please). Using GPS on a map, show me where the hole is from the starting point, and let me record my score. Once I put my score in, show me the next hole.

something like mightyspring for #3?

You mean Rosetta Code[0]?

[0] http://rosettacode.org/

There is an experimental Firefox add-on that attempts to sort out the ask HN, show HN, who's hiring and polls in their own tabs. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-r...

Google Navigation for Cooking. So as Google Maps gives you turn by turn instructions for driving, an app could give you line by line instructions for cooking. So often when following a recipe, I have to read the next item on the instruction list for a recipe. I think it would be great if I could have these read out as a line - by - line item that I (or whoever i'm cooking with) can then follow. I love cooking with people, but sometimes having to stop conversation mid-sentence to read what we next have to do is cumbersome/awkward, and having an auto-pilot for new recipes that would read the next "task" for cooking would be awesome.