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Products I Wish Existed

blog.eladgil.com

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Re: Products I Wish Existed

#371

Post by worldsayshi »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #311
worldsayshi wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to separate the data layer from the app layer to allow free competition again. I don't think that Facebook will be replaced with something so similar. I think what we need is an open data-platform that can contain (in a controlled way) social media data along with other kinds of data and then allow building social media apps on top of it. Otherwise we'll always be stuck using whatever the biggest supplier bui…

Nah, this is what Facebook built and it caused Cambridge analytica.

"controlled" is a key word here

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#372

Post by kevinflo »

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…

You can easily do this today, just start a mastodon instance and restrict the signups. I run a > 100 user instance on just a $10 digital ocean VPS. I'm seeing small tight-knit community instances popping up all over the place. You can tweak the settings or or even add customizations from forks that cater more to a siloed instance.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#373

Post by nojvek »

henryfjordan wrote: post #279
nojvek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome. Thanks for Validating. I'm going to spend the next year of my life building exactly that. Right now I've just put it a manifesto with some ideas at http://orows.com , but will be coming out with a proof of concept very soon.

Cool! I'll add one more thought that I think might be particularly useful > Granular permissions not only at row level but field level too. You can share parts of data with others for editing or have it view-only with ability for commenting and accepting suggestions In my org (and I suspect many), many of the Sales/Operations people maintain Google Sheets with links into our internal apps. Generally it's TODO lists o…

That makes total sense. Yeah you want to see tables with relationships/hyperlink to other tables. Deffo don’t want to be manually joining ids everytime.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#374

Post by jpswade »

dsalzman wrote: post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

How would this be a product? Isn't this just research?

Why would a Fortune 500 give up such information, which is pretty much how they make money.

Also, if they did map out any tasks that could be automated, they would automate them themselves.

Good idea, but not a product.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#375

Post by Pamar »

wpietri wrote: post #354
Lramseyer wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

There was also something called "Framework" that went a bit farther than spreadsheets. Of course when I write Spreadsheet here I mean "Spreadsheet products available in the 80s": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_(office_suite)

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#376

Post by pas »

jonshariat wrote: post #244
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…

To add to this concept, it would be great if the elements of a quality argument[1] (i.g. Claims, Counterclaims, Reasons, Evidence, etc.) were built in. Also people could flag a comment (or parts of it) with a specific logical fallacy[2]. It would help guide people into arguing more fruitfully and better digesting what they read. 1. https://study.com/academy/lesson/parts-of-an-argument-claims... 2. https://yourlogical…

It would be great to show arguments as processes (data, model(s), evaluation/claims), and other arguments as specific problems with the process (logical problem, bias, low quality data, bad statistics, etc..)

Ultimately everyone should be able to agree on the data, the model and the evaluation separately. The differences should boil down to differences in personal assumptions (different Bayesian apriori distributions, eg. different morals, worldview, thresholds for things, etc.)

This should lead to questions about stuff that is either subjective and thus people can agree to disagree, or to simpler objective problems. (For example that data collection methodology leads to higher uncertainty than claimed, hence the whole argument becomes inconclusive.)

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#377

Post by davedx »

80386 wrote: post #336
davedx wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe... but a regular spreadsheet doesn't map very well to a RDBMS due to its variable and flat structure. It might map to a column data store like Cassandra I guess, wonder if anyone has looked at that? What I'm working on though is more about taking the core of existing spreadsheets and building powerful integrations on top of it. Like in the sibling comments, building a webapp, or something else. I really think t…

What about a spreadsheet program that can be scripted with Javascript? JS is nice because all you need to write it is a text editor and a web browser, both of which just about all computers have. I had an entry-level job that involved a computer once and automated a lot of the painful stuff with JS - I bet that if more people knew JS, more people would do the same. I don't know if that'd be a good business propositio…

Google Sheets uses JavaScript as its scripting language. The problems I've had there are related to how complicated it is to get data in and out of Sheets. If you want to update a sheet you own, you need to do a full blown OAuth2 implementation.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#378

Post by pas »

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…

What's missing is organizing and breaking down big questions in a structural way. And naturally quality controlling smaller parts should be easier. (Especially if QC itself becomes structured, eg. show someone a simple argument and ask whether it is biased or not; then meta check the bias moderators and update weights accordingly. This will probably show polarization, so maybe then that might allow to algorithmically pick sane centrist moderators.)

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#379

Post by hobofan »

reasonattlm wrote: post #328
hobofan wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love your blog! Recently got interested in longevity research, as I was surprised how much closer to reality it is than I imagined, and also as a possible future industry to work in, and your blog has been one of the best resources to both get up to speed on the topic and also keep up to date! As you are as familiar as few people are with the topic, I'd like to ask you for some advice, if possible: What do you think…

Any bio* field can lead to working on treating aging; at undergraduate level you have tremendous flexibility as to which direction you take. For now build connections. Go to the conferences where industry meets science and meet people (Undoing Aging, Ending Age-Related Diseases, Longevity Therapeutics, Longevity Leaders, etc). Figure out who the people are you'd like to work with. Either for the corporate path of int…

Thanks for the response!

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#380

Post by befictious »

petrocrat wrote: post #369
_gx8n wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can already see it, imagine people who have their list full, removing people and replacing them would be a public passive aggressive "thing" people would do and the such drama that would follow. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I think this would actually be a selling point of the platform, however could possibly turn into a negative part of the social culture.

What if it automatically populated the list of your "close friends" by some algorithm that ranks your overall interaction with them. So you can't arbitrarily add or remove the friends. You could "game" it but only by actually interacting with the person. If they include sentiment analysis on the interactions, then you couldn't "game" it by spamming or being a cyber bully either. You'd actually have to be friendly tow…

you just described facebook's feed algorithm
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