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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

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Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#391

Post by archagon »

A DOM aggregator/filter browser plugin.

Let's say I'm looking for a room on AirBNB. The filter they have on their website isn't specific enough: if I want to find a room that's $32 or less and that has at least 20 reviews, I have to use my eyeballs to filter all the 20"), and puts all the results in a single window, probably using CSS copied from the original page. All I'd have to do in the AirBNB case is plug in the classes and comparators listed above and quickly cycle through each page of the listings with "gather mode" turned on. I'd then have all my preferred results in one place. Perhaps the plugin could even allow you to identify your classes by simply pointing and clicking on the desired nodes, much like the inspector in developer tools!

Ultimately, with this idea as the basis, I think you could make a great Automator-style tool that streamlines your research. Is there some information that's missing in the search results? Make it follow the links and filter the full listing descriptions! Looking for listings with specific kinds of owners? Do some keyword matching on each profile! Want a map of all your filtered locations? Gather the GPS data and display it in a beautiful native map interface! (Maybe you could even interface with external services like Wolfram or Yelp: crime statistics, nearby restaurant reviews, Amazon ratings?) Kind of like a web scraper, but with a very user-friendly UI specifically tailored for filtering and aggregating search results. You wouldn't have to keep 100 tabs open anymore when you're doing research: everything would be saved and synced in a handy Evernote-like interface.

I've run into this problem frequently enough with comparison shopping that I think there's value in this idea. I'm not really all that inclined to make it unless I can make some money, but I made a little Javascript rough draft script that can filter a webpage's DOM if you manually enter all the classes and comparators and copy/paste it into the dev console. A lot more work than the browser plugin I described, but still very useful for my purposes.

https://gist.github.com/archagon/10233251

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#392

Post by hershel »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #373
hershel wrote: post #29

Dynamic search anonimizer: most of the times google's personalized search is much better than anonimized search services like duckduckgo. But in certain query types anonimized search is highly preferable. What about a service/browser extension that understands thoses difference and guide the search accordingly ?

how about Startpage.com

It isn't dynamic as far as i know.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#393

Post by archagon »

bliker wrote: post #111
netcan wrote: post #19

Fix podcasts. I was helping someone set up her android phone for podcasts and noticed how problematic the whole process is. First, the android apps aren't very good. More problematic is the process of getting a feed into it. Sometimes searching by name works. Often it doesn't. Getting from podcast's website to the app is a problem. Discovery is also quite poor.

I am using http://www.shiftyjelly.com/pocketcasts . That is really amazing. And the discovery have not failed me yet.

Plus, the devs are awesome and have fantastic release notes. :)

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#394

Post by thom »

archagon wrote: post #391

A DOM aggregator/filter browser plugin. Let's say I'm looking for a room on AirBNB. The filter they have on their website isn't specific enough: if I want to find a room that's $32 or less and that has at least 20 reviews, I have to use my eyeballs to filter all the 20"), and puts all the results in a single window, probably using CSS copied from the original page. All I'd have to do in the AirBNB case is plug in the…

import.io might be close to what you want here. You create a custom web scraper with a nice visual interface, it extracts the data for you.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#395

Post by archagon »

thom wrote: post #394
archagon wrote: post #391

A DOM aggregator/filter browser plugin. Let's say I'm looking for a room on AirBNB. The filter they have on their website isn't specific enough: if I want to find a room that's $32 or less and that has at least 20 reviews, I have to use my eyeballs to filter all the 20"), and puts all the results in a single window, probably using CSS copied from the original page. All I'd have to do in the AirBNB case is plug in the…

import.io might be close to what you want here. You create a custom web scraper with a nice visual interface, it extracts the data for you.

That looks really promising! I will have to look into that.

The previous discussion on HN[1] has a few more interesting leads. A lot of people there are advocating writing their own scraper, but the point of this sort of idea is to allow you to get going in just a few seconds, without ever having to poke around in the dev tools, debug custom scripts, or even look at the HTML source. If you're going to be doing research for an hour, spending half an hour on writing your own scraper just feels like a waste.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582858

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#396

Post by ashray »

koliber wrote: post #380
d0m wrote: post #299

I have a hard time explaining this idea, so please bear with me. As a founder and hacker, I want to know how my users use my web and mobile apps. But I haven't found an intuitive and dead-simple way to do it. Mixpanel and google analytic are way more complex than what I have in mind. What I would like to have is more similar to Facebook, but instead of looking at my friends activity, I'd like to see what's happening…

I believe KISSmetrics is what you may be interested in. You send in events, and then are able to see who has done which event, create graphs, and do more powerful analysis.

Seconded. I've used KISSmetrics for this exact use case. There's a bit of groundwork required to setup 'events' but once that's done they will track every user and you can see how the user ended up using your app.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#397

Post by ronaldx »

nmrm wrote: post #156
crusso wrote: post #102

I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments supporting various political and non-political views. I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less popular but logically consistent argumentation. As an end pr…

Edit for down-voters: I'm not trolling/insulting (people who post on) internet boards. I'm hypothesizing that on most topics (esp. politically charged topics, which tend to rely on hard-to-assess factual claims), a high-quality argument for or against an opinion might require years of experience, and that often communicating that experience often requires journal-article-length explanations without drawn-out review p…

Right: being able to read and write an argument doesn't make people acceptably qualified experts on a subject.

Compare this to Yahoo Answers: Somewhere where everybody has an opinion, but nobody is expert enough to give a straightforwardly correct answer to the most basic questions.

If your target is to have more intellectual questions, I don't think it follows that it will be straightforward to attract more informed opinion.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#398

Post by ronaldx »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #55

Offline navigation map for mobile. Small thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7171919 The entire OpenStreetMap dataset is 23 GiB with moderate compression. With some optimization/truncuation the whole world should fit comfortably on most phones. This is very useful, for the times you're lost with a slow connection, no connection, in a foreign country, or with roaming charges. Also it's a fun algorithm-he…

>for the times you're lost with a slow connection, no connection, in a foreign country, or with roaming charges.

I have had exactly this problem this week, so it's been at the top of my mind.

Algorithm-heavy is an understatement. Tasks that are more naturally done by the server (geocoding, routing) have to be shifted onto the client.

Bear in mind that the cases you describe probably are also limited-battery and limited-memory.

There is also some existing competition in this space that you would have to catch up to. Since UI acts as the main differentiator to users in my opinion, that probably ought to be your primary concern at first.

Having said all of that, I would be super-excited to be involved with an Open Source/copyleft project like this.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#399

Post by danohuiginn »

ldonley wrote: post #256
sadfnjksdf wrote: post #141

While we're at it * : Funding Monday - where everyone pitches to VC's in the same HN thread. Trial Tuesday - where everyone provides a link to their demo in the same HN thread. Writing Wednesday - where everyone writes an informative hacker-related topic on their blog and shares a link to it in the same HN thread. Throwback Thursday - where people all share something informative about past experiences or past apps/et…

I like some of these ideas. The Trial Tuesday could be a nice way for people to get feedback on their WIP projects and perhaps motivate them to keep up and have weekly updates.

that's a great idea. get together a community who will each publish an update/demo on their project each week on the same thread. I'd certainly be up for joining in; it might shame me out of letting side-projects sit untouched for a month at a time.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#400

Post by cstefanovici »

dethstar wrote: post #37

A craiglist like site to find projects/people to work with. It could connect to tools e.g Trello and give you a rough estimate of how this persons delivers e.g closes their cards almost always on time.

http://builditwith.me/ has been around for a while but without much success
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