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Products I Wish Existed

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Re: Products I Wish Existed

#351

Post by alexbouchard »

theo44 wrote: post #320
davedx wrote: post #32

> NoCode/LowCode (letting anyone build an app with a spreadsheet as a database representation) AirTable has made huge inroads here. I'm also building something in this area ( https://lightsheets.app/ ), turning slightly back towards spreadsheets instead of databases but then building enhancements and modern integrations on top. I think there's still lots of potential in this area, despite spreadsheets being 50 years…

That's what we are building over at https://clay.run (free preview at the moment). We built a programmable spreadsheet.

Been using Clay for some while. It has some nice advantages over Airtable. The developer experience is much nicer with unrestricted row colums, full sql query etc. Does a better job at bridging the gap between technical requirements and business requirements.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#352

Post by greedo »

ghaff wrote: post #90
NikolaNovak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>SaaS can be on-premises. True; the distinction between SaaS and COTS becomes moot in practical terms then, and all of my comment still applies. >>The tools need to adapt to the user, the user shouldn't need to adapt to the tool. Again, that's: - True for an IT project whose goal is to support whatever the user is currently doing (and what many of us are trained to do / think in current IT paradigm). - Not True for…

Quite a few years ago, I was at a very small company and we made the decision to move from hosting our own Microsoft Exchange to Gmail--partly for cost reasons and partly because we had had a couple of serious mail outages. A couple of people at the time were really unhappy about the change because there were some differences, at least at the time, in the ability to create nested folders/labels like they were accusto…

In my first startup, I switched our email from an ISP hosted offering to an self-hosted system. We were ramen poor, and this was projected to save us around $1K/month. The replacement system was postfix with dovecot, worked like a champ. Got buyoff from CEO/CTO/CFO, deployed it; transitioned everyone over. One of the CEO's pet employees was pissed because of some problem with Mozilla/Firefox not working the way he liked. So the entire system was switched back, the very same day. Mail was messed up for a few days as we didn't control our DNS, and that was added to the blame game. Fun times.

No matter how much buy-in you get, people can be unreasonable about making any accommodation for change.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#353

Post by jborden13 »

romwell wrote: post #335
ckosidows wrote: post #248

#2. I've had an idea I've mulled around for a couple of years now about a new social network. One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. 25 might even be too high (or potentially too low; the number is arbitrary), but the general idea is that in your life there are only a handful of people who you should really care to keep tabs on. You can "friend" more than 25 people but you can only see the activit…

>there are only a handful of people who you should really care to keep tabs on I don't consider myself an extreme socialite, but as someone who has lived in 3 states in the US and whose friends are scattered around the world after getting a degree here, this sounds really, really, really perverse. That said, most of my use of Facebook is not to keep tabs on the people I care about (a lot of them don't use Facebook mu…

Reminds me of Google+ circles

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#354

Post by wpietri »

Lramseyer wrote: post #348
wpietri wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! But the trouble for me with Excel is that it has an incredibly low ceiling. There are so many people out there doing what is essentially app development but with terrible tools. Tools that give them the wrong habits and mental models for working at scale. I would love to see the spreadsheet reinvented to be a) collaboration-oriented, and b) a good on-ramp to ever-growing programming skills. So that when Bob i…

I have thought about this myself too, so I'll offer my two cents: Spreadsheets are really versatile, but they're a victim of their own versatility. You need to build something that is similar enough that people understand the concepts, but different enough so that people don't get frustrated by the fact that it's not Excel/Google Docs. I always envisioned something that functioned like a Jupyter notebook, and pulled…

We're definitely thinking along the same lines. I agree entirely about many small spreadsheets and the like. Another inspiration for me here is the long-lost Lotus Improv, which instead of being a blank page was more like a table, with explicit, named rows and columns. For me a general principle is to look at what people mostly do with spreadsheets and make explicit support for that.

You're very right that choosing the right language is important. As much as I love the languages I know, most of them are incredibly fiddly. E.g., things like dealing with "if a=b" are fine for those of us steeped in the mysteries, but a nightmare for more casual users. I'll have to check Julia out. Thanks for mentioning it!

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#355

Post by harrisreynolds »

henryfjordan wrote: post #251
davedx wrote: post #32

> NoCode/LowCode (letting anyone build an app with a spreadsheet as a database representation) AirTable has made huge inroads here. I'm also building something in this area ( https://lightsheets.app/ ), turning slightly back towards spreadsheets instead of databases but then building enhancements and modern integrations on top. I think there's still lots of potential in this area, despite spreadsheets being 50 years…

Airtable did some great work on the UX. Introducing people to table schemas with typed columns is pretty awesome, and the creative way they've leveraged that with the little tab that comes out of the side for either a nice view over the data (e.g. a map for an address column) or for showing Pivot Tables/Aggregations. They deserve some design awards for those ideas. But it's not a great alternative to a DB. It's reall…

Airtable has done a great job with their UX!

I've started working on a similar platform where the goal is to make building CRUD apps wildly simple. The plan going forward will be to layer on more sophistication after the core foundation is extremely solid.

The platform uses Mongo for the dynamic data tables which is a game changer for tools like this. Postgres jsonb data would also work, but Mongo just feels more natural to me.

I've named the platform Webase. Check it out here: https://www.webase.com

Note: this is very basic currently but consistently getting better!

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#356

Post by stretchwithme »

I would like to see security get into guarding the entrances of convenience stores using AI. If someone could potentially robbing the store, wearing a mask or carrying a gun, why should the door remain unlocked?

Lock it, alert a human at the company to review the situation and either open the door for them or call the police. Loop in the clerk if the network goes down.

Also, along these lines, created an AI doorman for a building, with a similar review process. Have the residents also help with reviews if the network is done.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#357

Post by wpietri »

monch1962 wrote: post #339
wpietri wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! But the trouble for me with Excel is that it has an incredibly low ceiling. There are so many people out there doing what is essentially app development but with terrible tools. Tools that give them the wrong habits and mental models for working at scale. I would love to see the spreadsheet reinvented to be a) collaboration-oriented, and b) a good on-ramp to ever-growing programming skills. So that when Bob i…

If you haven't used it, Google Sheets is worth looking at closely. It's good for collaboration (within the boundaries of a "normal" spreadsheet interface), and has a lot of options for integrating with external systems

I have used it, and it's definitely a step in the right direction. But it lacks a lot for me, in that the meaning of the system somebody builds is implicit and contingent.

E.g., in an OO language, I can be very clear about what a MailingAddress is. I can say what makes it well-formed. I can give rules about how it can be changed, and what happens when it does change.

But in a spreadsheet, that concept is mostly implicit. A human can look at it and say, "Oh, the mailing address is columns C-G, starting at row 2 and down to just before the first blank line." Until somebody edits the spreadsheet and inserts a phone number column, anyhow.

That means a Google Sheet can't really serve as a reliable microservice that knows about all the customer addresses, letting one's colleague's sheets read and update things. Sheet authors have all the necessary domain knowledge, but not enough of the technical knowledge, so at some point they have to bring in a professional programmer to re-express the domain knowledge in a language inaccessible to the people who formerly had control over their data and business processes.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#358

Post by Jedd »

mabbo wrote: post #347
Jedd wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear also has a lot of fearmongering and red tape around it. Plants are reaching their EOL and in many cases new ones are not being built due to the cost of getting through all the red tape (getting approval from the feds down to local government, dealing with inevitable NIMBY lawsuits, etc). Renewables are the future, but we aren't fully in the future yet. This is a common trope. I can't work out where you live…

http://www.ieso.ca/power-data Ontario sits at about 2/3 nuclear. We have for a long time. And our electricity is relatively cheap.

I was going to point out that Ontario, at 15m, accounts for 0.002% of the population, and suggest it may be a statistical blip.

But -- and thanks for the link, it's fascinating -- diving into that page raises some questions. The nuclear component is very steady at 11MW, which I suppose is a function of the technology, to provide a reliable base load.

Nuclear fission accounts for 12MW -- while Hydro seems to consistently provide about a third that figure, with wind averaging just over 1MW, but peaking up to 4MW.

Canada has 19 nuclear fission power plants, with all but one being in Ontario.

Seemingly [1] several were / will be shutdown, as refurbishment is too expensive, and no plans to construct new plants in the province.

Storage of spent fuel is expected to cost ~$30B ... but that project hasn't found a site yet, and that's a projected figure circa 2005.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Canada

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#359

Post by danfang »

ckosidows wrote: post #248

#2. I've had an idea I've mulled around for a couple of years now about a new social network. One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. 25 might even be too high (or potentially too low; the number is arbitrary), but the general idea is that in your life there are only a handful of people who you should really care to keep tabs on. You can "friend" more than 25 people but you can only see the activit…

This is exactly what I'm aiming to do with Thread - an alternative social network that focuses on tight-knit groups and building more intimate relationships, for the purpose of improving our mental health.

One important thing to note is that it will be monetized through a subscription, not by selling consumer data or driving sales of targeted ads.

Check it out @ https://get.thread-app.com/

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#360

Post by cheschire »

busymom0 wrote: post #264
Zhyl wrote: post #43

>What would be a network which allowed for more thoughtful discourse? Or at least the ability to more actively mute topics, threads, and groups of users while surfacing better content algorithmically? I would be interested in a parliament-like protocol for discussion, structured debate and reaching consensus. We currently have tools for proposing changes to text documents (such as pull requests) which could be applie…

Won’t votekicks lead to echo chambers?

Every single system you come up with to stop trolls and other abusive behavior will enable echo chambers. Even upvote systems.
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