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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

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Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#351

Post by joeclark77 »

Crowdsourced gardening. You create an account, taking pictures of your garden. A cloud service stitches them together into a 3D model. GPS location and the height of the various house/trees/walls are used to predict sunlight and shade. Historical weather is recorded and predictions of future weather are built in. Optionally the user can use cheap sensors or manual test kits to measure soil contents, moisture, acidity etc.

Once the data is put in, the garden becomes part of the user's "profile" on the site. Others can examine it and make suggestions about what to plant, how to amend the soil, etc. User can log the things they do and upload photos (or use automated sensors and webcam to send periodic updates). You can "star" someone's garden to keep track of it and see how well their decisions worked.

Would be a great tool for experienced gardeners with too much time on their hands, and busy newbies (who are nerds like me) to get free access to distributed knowledge to learn how to grow food in the back yard.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#352

Post by nathan_f77 »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #240

I frequently wonder if there is a place on the planet I'd be happier in. The idea is a site that allows me to select a wide variety of attributes and then search for places in the world that match those attributes. For attributes that I only care about only generally, I'd be able to select from a broad category. For those that I care a lot about, I'd be able to drill in to highly granular selections. For example, I m…

I would love this, too.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#354

Post by cabalamat »

Something like Wordpress but including a wiki as well as a group blog. The blog entries would also be viewable based on recentness/score (like on reddit or HN) or by topic (like on forum software).

It would be possible to have a local mirror of the site on one's PC which would automatically sync with the live site; this mirror could also be used to set up other live sites. Thgis would be an anti-censorship measure if the site went down, someonre else could mirror it easily.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#355

Post by olegp »

siruva07 wrote: post #4

I'm responsible for purchasing our computer equipment for our startup. Every time I make a purchase on our company (@MakeSpace) credit card, I have to remember to send an email to our accountants (record the purchase as an asset, depreciation for taxes, etc). More importantly, it's hard to keep track of what equipment was given to each employee. I imagine at a larger company this would be handled by an IT department,…

First couple of results should do what you want: https://starthq.com/apps/search?q=assets

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#356

Post by wittjeff »

keithwarren wrote: post #186
avalaunch wrote: post #174

A major pain point in my life is house maintenance and repair. I really miss having a (good) landlord. That's what I want - a single point of contact to manage the upkeep of and fix any issues related to my home. There's so much friction in the process of finding the various contractors needed to keep a home in good order. First you have to search on craigslist, angieslist, or google for contractors that service your…

I love this because bootstrapping the concept is far simpler than an infrastructure build out, this is a super-service which can start out by sub-contracting all the individual services. I am game, when do we start! update: Some further thoughts on cost. Looking at what I pay for my home (some of these I use, some I have had quoted; I also factored a monthly cost out of some of these which are quarterly). My home is…

I think the main weakness in this business model, which is the same one with condos, is that people don't like to think about the really expensive things that they don't need to pay for regularly. When you need a new furnace/roof/fence/siding/driveway/etc., it's a multiple-$K hit. If you haven't budgeted for it (and I think most people don't), then the tendency will be to put it off for another year or three. I would guess the regular maintenance you outline takes care of perhaps only half the larger long-term upkeep problem. So prompt comprehensive maintenance with a flat monthly rate requires what seem like very high rates and some escrow, and also involves lower margins than it may appear to the customer. You may also become a magnet for customers who have already accrued a lot of "maintenance debt". So maybe you'd just need a long list of major unpredictable maintenance exclusions? Would that still be a satisfactory value proposition?

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#357

Post by notduncansmith »

olegp wrote: post #200
sakai wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Well said. It would definitely need to include: * Web code editor for jobs (JS, Python, Ruby, Perl, Go, etc., etc.) * Results served over an authenticated API (e.g., servicename.com/api/ / /files/result.csv would get you the latest result.csv file generated by your script, .../ /20140419/files/result.csv would get you yesterday's, etc.) * Jobs could probably be both scheduled (i.e., cron-like) or triggered via a…

Might make sense to stick with JS to start with for the sake of simplicity. I actually wrote a Node.js PaaS that I never open sourced & periodic short lived jobs was one of my use-cases. Let's continue via email.

Hey guys, too late to get in on this discussion? Sounds really cool and something I could see myself using a lot.

hello at duncanmsmith.com

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#358

Post by notduncansmith »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #114
pubby wrote: post #39

A twitter/imageboard system where it takes 2 weeks for messages to appear once posted. The idea being that messages still relevant in 2 weeks are important and interesting ones.

I had a similar idea a while ago. Basically: a reddit/HN clone, but at any given time only one article can be commented on. That article is replaced every day or every hour (whatever interval makes sense) with the highest-upvoted submission that doesn't have comments yet. The goal would be to encourage deeper discussion of matters, rather than fleeting posts. I have no idea if tree-style comments would be better than…

Very interesting. Kinda like Woot (a daily deal site) for discussions. I like it! Could do a super-lean MVP implementation with Wordpress + Disqus or Branch.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#359

Post by poppingtonic »

cabalamat wrote: post #354

Something like Wordpress but including a wiki as well as a group blog. The blog entries would also be viewable based on recentness/score (like on reddit or HN) or by topic (like on forum software). It would be possible to have a local mirror of the site on one's PC which would automatically sync with the live site; this mirror could also be used to set up other live sites. Thgis would be an anti-censorship measure if…

Look at the blog lesswrong.com. It's a community blog built from reddit's code. It has a wiki as well.

https://github.com/tricycle/lesswrong‎

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#360

Post by pnathan »

hopefulwebdev wrote: post #318
pnathan wrote: post #216

Chores service. For $X, we will come and do Y chores, quickly and professionally, relatively flat rate. Y job is a typical household chore. Particular pain point: cleaning the litterbox. I don't really like it, so it gets delayed a bit more than it should. Garbage can be a pain when the apartment building is poorly laid out. I don't mean a maid or cleaning service. If I lived in a house, I'd want someone for random h…

Similar? https://www.taskrabbit.com/

Yes, that's similar. I don't think it's the same. Definiately in the same space though.

Task Rabbit presents a very "sanitized", very "Apple", "Industrialized Clean" overall. It's also "tasks" (vs. someone regularly showing).

I want to hire for "Detroit", "dirty", "Dirty Jobs". Services: My "labor" shows up 3x a week and cleans cat crap up & takes garbage out.

Task Rabbit is also one-off hires, it seems like. My "labor" would be the same couple people every time.

I think this could be really efficient for the labor in, say, the same condo or skyscraper. Also, this would be a relatively traditional employment situation, not a sharing economy/one-off model like TaskRabbit. Could even make it unionized if the thing works. That'd be a fun twist. :)

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