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Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#161

Post by djfergus »

zevv wrote: post #129

A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a physical keyboard, running android or Linux. These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text. Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC…

The market, not the marketing department.

>> Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC Desire-Z. These were the last of their species.

Yes, but not the pinnacle of keyboard - Nokia 9300i for me...

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#162

Post by easychris »

GFischer wrote: post #23

Sports (and events) Netflix/live streaming. That would kill cable for sure. A curated "channel-like" experience for Netflix/YouTube shows. There's a LOT of good content out there, but it's hard to filter. And the "channel" experience of surfing and switching between programs has been kind of lost. A different kind of smartphone, with actual buttons. Or maybe even what one manufacturer (Samsung?) tried to do, splittin…

Last week a friend recommended http://www.dazn.com to me which aims to become "Netflix for Sports" (AFAIK available in Germany only).

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#163

Post by NotUsingLinux »

mrsteveman1 wrote: post #21

Something web or smartphone based that can automate the process of examining various health/exercise/diet event data points over time, and learn from them until it can highlight patterns and events that may be related.

Personal AI assistant which securely can handle your personal data.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#164

Post by cm2187 »

jessriedel wrote: post #153
sssilver wrote: post #30

A single IM platform through which everyone can talk to everyone regardless of their IM service, and I mean I wanna be able to send a message to someone's iMessage from my Battle.net account, and then receive someone's Facebook message on my Slack or something. Obviously IDK how this would be possible, but IM is now broken beyond repair by companies that tried to "fix" it. The list of IM apps on my iPhone keeps growi…

Honest question: what's wrong with email? Not in the sense of "you should just email rather than IM and stop complaining". In the sense of "Why doesn't someone build a dead-simple overlay that exploits the email protocol?" I'm thinking a simple tag at the beginning of the subject line that causes it to be auto-archieved in gmail. Is the latency too large?

The fact that the identity of the sender is not verifiable is a pretty major flaw. SMTP is also too often unencrypted. And it is not designed for real time.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#167

Post by dnautics »

Disclaimer: I sort of tried to do this but keep running into problems- an Android app that registers an intent that intercepts Facebook's messenger play store nag and uses injected js in a WebView to reformat desktop fb messaging to fit my phone. If you want to collaborate let me know.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#169

Post by fimdomeio »

zevv wrote: post #129

A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a physical keyboard, running android or Linux. These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text. Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC…

Well it's kind of a geek's toy, not a productivity champion, but there's PocketChip.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#170

Post by kyriakos »

vinchuco wrote: post #109
kyriakos wrote: post #67

An automated ironing appliance. Drop unsorted clothes in, they come out ironed on the other side.

Sounds easy in theory but the machine would need to figure out how to sort any kind of clothing and may require a lot of space. How about restricting only to dress shirts and having an automated inflatable dummy that uses steam to "iron" from inside out?

There is an automated shirt ironing machine I believe it's targeted to dry cleaners though. Even if someone creates one for home use it will take a considerable amount of space. Ideally we need something that can identify the type of garment (maybe even material) and then apply a particular ironing strategy. The only way a generic ironing appliance can be made is if it replicates a human ironing in a press. At the end of the day though wearing ironed clothes is a matter of fashion and materials. Might be easier to switch to materials that require minimal effort to be straightened or just people stop being concerned if their clothes are wrinkled.
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