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Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

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Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#121

Post by thaumaturgy »

rmc wrote: post #120
thaumaturgy wrote: post #47

Distributed, decentralized, redundant, encrypted online file storage with the ability to share information with specific groups and individuals. From the user standpoint, a user would access their content primarily through client software that would ask for their id & password (or perform other authentication). The authentication process fetches a small file from the network and decrypts it using the user's identific…

Sounds like Freenet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNet

Oh wow, thanks! It's been a very long time since I've looked at Freenet; it looks like they've come a long way. Good to see that it's been done.

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#123

Post by [deleted] »

faramarz wrote: post #8

Why don't you build an airbnb for Tools and Equipments. In winter, I'd pay to borrow someones snow blower once a week instead of buying it out-right. People with specialized machinery will flock to your system if you manage the bookings and payment processing, and make it easy for locals/neighbours to meet each others needs. That's something I would personally find value in, but it might not be so technologically cha…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#124

Post by DEADBEEF »

An idea I had was a site where members can make a list of all their possessions and how much it'd take for them to part with each item.

They then have the opportunity to search the stuff other people own and see much they'd want for it, and can make offers if it's something they'd be willing to pay the asking price for.

Basically a classified ads site for stuff you aren't really bothered about selling, but would do if the price was right.

Don't know how you'd monetize it though as most transactions would probably be done cash, in person.

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#125

Post by semanticist »

lzw wrote: post #9

It takes some training to get to the state where you can sense and recognize when there's a problem where something sucks. I've thought banks really sucked for two decades, but never had the idea of doing something like simplebank. The best ideas are ones where there is pain you can relieve. Here's one: Web development sucks profoundly. People actually write CSS and HTML by hand, using text editors. That is a complet…

Isn't DashCode almost literally Interface Builder for the web?

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#126

Post by mathgladiator »

icey wrote: post #100
mattmanser wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were you, run screaming from this idea. I've seen this done a few times on varying scales (from form gen to whole app gen) and it's never been pretty. Invariably, if you've got no previous experience with real business software, you'll get it wrong. Even if you have experience, you'll get it wrong. The database will probably be where you go wrong the most. Also consider some of the basic hurdles. As soon as you'…

The idea isn't to keep the generated version blessed; it's to get up to a minimum product as fast as possible instead of wasting time issuing generation commands over and over again. This is all pseudo-implemented already; I'm just talking about adding a little more automation to an already repetitive process. Either way, it's a problem that needs solving; just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth trying to…

http://blogs.tedneward.com/2006/06/26/The+Vietnam+Of+Compute...

I've tried for years working on it, and I even wrote a programming language (Kira: http://www.mathgladiator.com/projects/kira/ ) to solve this problem. I can attest that the problem... well, sucks.

If you want to get off the ground, then using a RDBMS isn't the way to go. The way I would recommend is to use object graph serialization then as the problems arise, use a database to index. I wrote about this here: http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/08/guide-to-databases-in-...

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#128

Post by superchink »

kljensen wrote: post #88

A Mint.com for managing your frequent flier miles instead of money. It alerts you to deals, expiring miles, and ties-in with the infinite affiliate programs for travel in order to generate revenue. (Credit to my mom on that idea.)

Does anything like this exist (that's actually helpful/usable)?

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#129

Post by RACNicole »

You might want to peruse the submissions over at ideaaday.org. I submitted several ideas to this site years ago and am pleased to see a Japanese company recently picked one of them and manufactured it. All the ideas at that site are provided with no strings attached what-so-ever. But there's a warning: some ideas are just plain whacky.

Re: Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

#130

Post by kljensen »

superchink wrote: post #128
kljensen wrote: post #88

A Mint.com for managing your frequent flier miles instead of money. It alerts you to deals, expiring miles, and ties-in with the infinite affiliate programs for travel in order to generate revenue. (Credit to my mom on that idea.)

Does anything like this exist (that's actually helpful/usable)?

Not that I've seen, but haven't done much research.
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