71–80 of 130 posts
Consequently, my current side project is a task and information management app, so I'll never not be able to capture any ideas I trip over it in the morning :) It has a wiki and systems for note taking, spaced repetition, a DSL and plugin system.
At this point, it's turned into the dwarf fortress of todo apps, pretty much :)
This is a cliché but honest answer — I was using a similar tool and thought to myself “man, I could make something better than this.” I have this impulse a lot, and usually I stop myself from actually following through (there is always so much complication hiding below the surface!) but I kept coming back to it. Eventually, I set a deadline for myself; I said if, six months later, I couldn’t scratch the itch to make…
My side projects tend to be libraries for other programmers. I usually get ideas by using existing libraries but being unhappy with the interface / api they offer. I love designing good apis that express the underlying concepts well, while hiding implementation details, and while many niche libraries have a good solution for their problem domain, many are lacking in api / UX.
Be naturally and deeply engaged in a community. This could be anything that you naturally find interesting - books, art, armadillos, roofing etc. Engage with other people that also find this topic interesting. It'll take several months, but you'll uncover more problems than you'll have time for. And the best part - you now get to pick a problem you care about, and build a solution for it.
Publishing? There are big companies or now you can self-publish. There are many video tutorials, courses, and blogs all dedicated to self-publishing, so even the online education realm of things seems to be taken.
Writing books? Ok sure you can write a book just like you can produce a single piece of any kind of content, so that can't count. Software to assist in writing books? From my quick search, there's Scrivener, and a bunch of other platforms and apps.
Want to write a book without typing? Hmm, there's already a bunch of speech-to-text apps like Dragon.
Buying books? Amazon. Audio books? Audible.
Collecting books? Hmm ok, may be something in there. Site that lists the top 100 books from prior years? Or a top 10 per genre, per year (historical).
The reality is coming up with an idea is already hard. Coming up with a business is much harder. Would love an idea in this space.
So I made https://www.remotepassword.com where you can store a GPG encrypted version of the password and then call-decrypt-passthrough the password to the command line. If the device is compromised, you can deactivate the online password and no-one can get access to your data.
As an employee, I saw my past bosses making the same mistakes over and over. The problems stem from the fact that they are usually engineers promoted to a management role, but they get no training whatsoever. So I did some research, and I'm writing a short book discussing the essentials of day to day management; with a focus on communication.
That would be an interesting read. Where do I subscribe to get notified on release?
I'm happy to hear any kind of feedback and criticism.
This is a cliché but honest answer — I was using a similar tool and thought to myself “man, I could make something better than this.” I have this impulse a lot, and usually I stop myself from actually following through (there is always so much complication hiding below the surface!) but I kept coming back to it. Eventually, I set a deadline for myself; I said if, six months later, I couldn’t scratch the itch to make…
Heads up there are a couple of broken images on the home page on mobile.
I solved a problem that I had at work. I needed a tool to make interacting with HTTP APIs easier, and didn't like any of the existing ones, so I created Insomnia [ https://insomnia.rest/ ]. It took a weekend to build a proof of concept, then I released it to the public. As I improved it, the user base grew slowly. Then, a year later, I was able to quit my job to pursue it full-time. If you're curious, I have an Inter…
https://insomnia.rest/eula/ > You agree that Floating Keyboard Software may collect and use information gathered in any manner as part of the product support services provided to you, if any, related to Insomnia REST Client. Floating Keyboard Software may also use this information to provide notices to you which may be of use or interest to you. Wait what? I guess I won't be going anywhere near this thing.
The app is completely open source, and you can see everything it's doing here: http://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia
I solved a problem that I had at work. I needed a tool to make interacting with HTTP APIs easier, and didn't like any of the existing ones, so I created Insomnia [ https://insomnia.rest/ ]. It took a weekend to build a proof of concept, then I released it to the public. As I improved it, the user base grew slowly. Then, a year later, I was able to quit my job to pursue it full-time. If you're curious, I have an Inter…
What a great story. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your early success - best of luck for more success to come!