Ask HN: What is something you built but never marketed?

This was an extension of a bot I made years back, that constructed a 6s trailer for every single game on Steam as it's launched (https://twitter.com/microtrailers), which later became part of a thing I did officially at Valve (https://store.steampowered.com/labs).

The @playfullyauto one was my most recent (post Steam Labs) thing, and it's my favorite, because it unearths a bunch of games people like. But I never really spread the word about it.

The truly abandoned project is FountainCards.com. It accepts typed input, converts it to a “handwritten” SVG, sends to a pen plotter, and mails the card. I built the whole app, bought two pen plotters and was ready for production. the reason I stopped was because I didn’t care enough about marketing to the clientele who needs that kind of thing - mortgage brokers, car salesmen, etc. It felt like I was helping the client act like they cared about their customer by sending “heartfelt” notes without _actually_ caring about their customer. In other words, I was helping them send really nice spam.

After that, I spent some significant time thinking about what project I would really care about, which leads to the second app…

I’ve been working on MoneyHabitsHQ.com in my free time since January. It is a simple take on a personal finance app. The idea is to try to get the maximum benefit from 3 minutes of budgeting per week. There are a bunch of features which will make the app nearly “invisible”, while still helping people keep track of their money.

I haven’t started marketing it because getting the UX right on a budget app is incredibly difficult. I’ve been in quiet beta for a few months, and if anyone wants to try it out, feel free to email me: Stephen@bate-man.com and I’ll get you a promo code.

I lose stuff a lot. It started as a URL (https://www.lost-item.com/eric/) that I can put on a sticker on my stuff so that when people find my phone, wallet, credit card, keys they can contact me.

I preferred that over my phone number or email address because I didn't want to put anything that identifies me on the items, so a form on the internet acts as a barrier.

In general, I find that people are really nice about it. I've recovered my full wallet at least 3 times and my phone probably 5 times.

Yes, I am forgetful. If I were smarter, I would just not lose stuff. But because I'm not, I have that.

Hosted on github pages and uses firebase, so basically it costs me $1 a year + the domain registration fee. So after I recovered my cell phone just once, I basically figured it's been paid for for life.

Lifetime revenue from strangers on it is less than $100. Value of items recovered to myself, probably $3k.

That being said, if you have any informations on Russian color meanings, you might consider contributing here (https://github.com/tfrere/colours-in-culture#contribute)