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Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#411

Post by funkaster »

westoncb wrote: post #139

I've maxed out a couple credit cards and spent all my severance pay etc. trying to finish building this '3D abstract visual debugger,' which I'm calling Lucidity [video]: http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd I started working on it in 2014 and it's been on my mind ever since. I applied to YC with it a long time ago (was not accepted, and I can see so much wrong with the application I sent now...) I was laid off in Nove…

Nice! It would be interesting to visualize a React hierarchy this way. Is your display client using some sort of "open" protocol that you could hook other things?

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#412

Post by daveguy »

bdukic wrote: post #205
daveguy wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This project looks very interesting and monetizeable (by reaching out to venues for very targeted advertising). One thing that doesn't seem quite right though. Shouldn't location, not activity, be the first bit of information requested from the user?

>This project looks very interesting and monetizeable (by reaching out to venues for very targeted advertising). Yeah, that was the idea -- provide a high quality database of outdoors activities to the end users and then charge the providers / venues a fee for some extended information etc. But in order to even approach the providers / venues I had to have some kind of traction from the end users, which I failed to a…

I would say, explicitly enter zip code as a first approximation. Easy and not something people generally have an issue with (they can enter work or nearby). The site put me in California, which I am not. I think you could get better traction with more accuracy, and zipcode will do it.

That and an easy way to add your favorite venue near you (since it looks like there is only one venue in the US outside of CA).

Visually and concept wise it looks interesting. I bet there are outdoor adventure meetups in most cities that would be interested.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#413

Post by ineptech »

victorhooi wrote: post #374
ineptech wrote: post #89

I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form. Lessons learned: * I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design" * Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal…

I really wanted to check out your website. However, I think you just exceeded your hoster's bandwidth quota...(error message when I try to access it).

Whoops! Did not expect just being in the comments of a post to /. it that bad. It's hosted with a friend on a not-so-modern platform so the bandwidth limit is not that high.

Back up now, and I broke the path to the silly stock photos, should help keep it up.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#414

Post by bpicolo »

danieltillett wrote: post #371
acreux wrote: post #289

https://theothermail.com TheOtherMail generates throwaway email addresses so you can try new products and services with no risk. We deliver all emails from your generated accounts to your personal email address so you don't have to remember stupidly long emails. We spend a few dollars per month to run it, and we haven't made any money yet. Give it a try!

Have you thought about building the reverse application? A service that screens out all throwaway emails so only users who register with a real email address can use a service.

That's pretty much an impossible to win game of cat and mouse

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#415

Post by dejv »

stereobit wrote: post #392
dejv wrote: post #103

I've build complex app for managing vineyards and wineries. It has tons of features: time tracking, input tracking, harvest and production features, mapping, tons of budget/cost analysis. It turned out, it is hard to convince farmers to ditch their trusty excel sheets and notepads and start typing all those info into computer program. I managed to find few customers, but they haven't stick for longer than one year. I…

I've build a wine tasting event app a couple month ago. Replacing the tasting sheet for tasting events with a simple web app to make it easier for the organizer to collect and analyze feedback and market after the tasting. Got a few hundred users but no real traction yet :-/

Can you share a link? Would like to check it out.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#416

Post by wheresvic1 »

dotmanish wrote: post #393
wheresvic1 wrote: post #132

I'm building https://ewolo.fitness/ - it's a no-frills workout tracker that's built from the ground-up to be mobile friendly. I decided to do it after seeing a total lack of decent workout trackers that work well on mobile and provide a web interface. It's made using React, Redux and I don't expect it to make any money :)

I liked the simple page. If you can articulate on that page what you saw lacking in the space, it will help convince users who are just starting to start using it.

Thanks I will try and improve the tag line then!

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#417

Post by kyle-rb »

roryisok wrote: post #243
ineptech wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those checking out the ineptech site, please don't miss the poetry compiler joke! It's the bit I'm the most proud of. It's in an unlinkable modal so actually I'll just paste it here: Upon a stack of bits, about so tall, // Boolean[] isprime = new Boolean[n]; just think, O traveller, what we could do // Arrays.fill(isprime, true); if every other bit was set to false // for (int i = 4; i (You may have figured out t…

+1 for jokes in code. I have a thesaurus plugin with an ASCII T-Rex in the source.

You'd probably appreciate the ascii pterodactyl in the source of http://theoatmeal.com

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#419

Post by westoncb »

lukego wrote: post #400
westoncb wrote: post #139

I've maxed out a couple credit cards and spent all my severance pay etc. trying to finish building this '3D abstract visual debugger,' which I'm calling Lucidity [video]: http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd I started working on it in 2014 and it's been on my mind ever since. I applied to YC with it a long time ago (was not accepted, and I can see so much wrong with the application I sent now...) I was laid off in Nove…

Cool project, with beautiful presentation! I'm working on something similar, with similar motivation. I often need application-specific diagnostics and I haven't had a framework for building them. So I decided to make one. I'm approaching LuaJIT diagnostics in a really similar way to you. I instrument the VM to snapshot key data structures (e.g. JIT code) and log them to a file. Then I make a UI that visualizes them…

Hey Luke, that's very cool—first thing I've come across that seems to value visualizing that same kinds of things I think are important.

You are correct that for the moment I am attempting to be more targeted and find a good niche. My first priority is to generate some passive income so I can relax a little and work on things at a reasonable pace. From there, I have some more grand ideas for this project, though I will probably remain focused on abstractions of program state. I'm curious to see what other useful things you find to visualize—I liked the execution time/trace trees. I could definitely use that.

Thanks for the comment—feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you ever feel inclined: westoncb[at Google's email service].

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#420

Post by westoncb »

archit3cture wrote: post #376
westoncb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy to comprehend visualization of business data is a lot more valuable than visualization of internal program data structures I agree that must be true in an absolute sense, but part of the reason I'm making this is that I find visualization of internal program data to be valuable. I have other things I want to use this to help me build. But it's definitely a gamble whether I'll be able to convince many other dev…

maybe try to see if your tool makes it easy to understand viruses, malwares, ransomwares, etc.. Usually there is a time-race to understand how they work in order to find protections quickly. Also the code path is usually convoluted to make them hard to understand. A visualisation could be helpful and have a lot of value for clients

Very interesting idea... I'll look into this. I know nothing about the domain, so if you had any additional resource(s) that might be useful, I'd be glad to see 'em :) Thanks for the suggestion!
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