What do you wish someone would start a startup to build for you?
I guess I should expect that parsing the English output of programming language designers would be difficult.
Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
21–30 of 130 posts
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#22I like the comedy website idea. If tracks or "bits" were tagged it would be even better.
"clean", "family", "kids" (for example)
And then I could hear Bill Cosby's cookie jar bit, or Bill Engvall's I.G.Joe bootcamp bit, I'd be in listening heaven.
HOWEVER, I know for a fact there used to be something out there similar to this. I think it was called "haha" or something like that. I don't know if it exists or went away, but I used to use it back in 2005 (I think).
How about a StackOverflow.com for Indie Game development?
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#23Two things I would love to see: 1. Kayak.com for ground transportation. Trains, buses, ferries, etc. are a pain to compare prices and book right now. Admittedly there probably isn't as much of a business case for this. 2. A music site where I could collaborate on a playlist with my friends and listen to the music at the same time. Currently there are sites that let you share playlists, but not listen at the same time…
re #2...where do you see the music being sourced from? Allowing listens on shared music via user uploads would be a legal nightmare and the major APIs only provide 30 second clips.
What about a service that acted as a relay for a remote user streaming their own collection of music?
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to try neighborgoods.net
I'll be damned! Amazing, nobody in my zip yet exists.. I hope they gain traction. Thanks for sharing
This is a space that's starting to heat up a bit, but out of all the ones I've seen, I think I like neighborgoods the best.
Regardless, 'sharing stuff with people near you' is one of those things I'm keeping my eye on.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#25Personally, for that type of time/budget size, I would probably start a company that make mobile (android) widgets. I would like to see full screen ones made with more to offer than the ones that are out there.
Things like niche news portals (gaming, restaurants, real estate, music industry, auto news, etc...), stock trading info, local offline shopping sales, etc...
Basically, the stuff that has been done in this area is pretty crappy imo and you could take it quite a bit further. The development for something like this shouldn't be too tough either compared to making normal mobile apps because you're mostly just aggregating existing data.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#26I like the comedy website idea. If tracks or "bits" were tagged it would be even better. "clean", "family", "kids" (for example) And then I could hear Bill Cosby's cookie jar bit, or Bill Engvall's I.G.Joe bootcamp bit, I'd be in listening heaven. HOWEVER, I know for a fact there used to be something out there similar to this. I think it was called "haha" or something like that. I don't know if it exists or went away…
I like the comedy website idea as well.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#27[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#28One idea I've had that I'll never get around to actually doing anything with is playing with Amazon's Spot Instances. I think that the cheap cloud computing they offer can open up some new possibilities and also just save people money.
I think the best idea that I've had come out of it is some kind of spot instance guide where someone could say "I need this job done by 10am Monday. It'll take ~5 hours on 10 large instances. Get it done for me as cheaply as possible while still having a 95% chance that it gets done in time." You would know enough about the patterns of spot instance pricing that you could instantly estimate the cost for them, and they could play around with the confidence that they want of it finishing as they see the price vs. chance that it doesn't get done trade-off.
Now, there are definitely some issues with that idea. It may be a terrible idea. But I think there are opportunities to build businesses like that that exploit the cheap computing that spot instances offer.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#29I would try looking here (if you haven't already): http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
A slight addendum to this, show this list to someone you know who isn't a techie. I mailed this list to my parents and was amazed at what their problems were in many of these fields.
I've always figured that people outside the 18-35 male geek demographic have itches that need scratching that we can't even imagine.
Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea
#30How about a website for people who want to lose weight? I know this kind of thing already exists, but there are still lots of overweight people out there. I figure the existing ones don't attract all the target population, or they don't work for whatever users they can attract.
Incidentally you will be helping people to get laid.