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Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

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Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#21

Post by GFischer »

atgm wrote: post #7

Sending money internationally. Comparing products across brands (they all have specs but the way they sort the specs is different and it's a pain to flip through tons of tabs). Finding a chair to fit my kitchen table (given the dimensions of both). Diagramming my bedroom to try to figure out if I can build a better bed. Finding furniture that fits in a given volume (in my case, I want to find a trolley or counter tha…

Y combinator startup regalii is working on the first point.

https://www.regalii.com/en

On point 3, have you tried Autodesk Homestyler? I used it for a similar purpose :)

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#22

Post by maresca »

Lottery Pools.

The lottery pool manager where we work keeps a physical list of who has paid up. Email invites were being sent through our company emails, but the higher-ups put the squash on that. She then scans the tickets, makes copies, and hands them out.

I decided to build something that would automate all of this except the buying of tickets.

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#24

Post by stevekemp »

ceeK wrote: post #19

A system for better communication during different crises. People always complain when things go wrong and the authorities in charge don't give away information, or give it away in such a way that all people involved don't receive it. I.e. my girlfriend was on a train recently, which stopped for one hour outside of the station. No information was given until nearer the end of that. Why? A system that everyone could u…

Trains in the UK are a nightmare when they're delayed.

I spent seven years working from home, making a trip from my home to company-HQ every few weeks. The train information board would also say "Train Late: ETA $(current time + 1 minute)".

Even if they knew in advance it had to be 30+ minutes behind schedule it would always say something like "Time: 13:30, ETA: 13:32" or so. Then keep updating. It meant you never had any idea if the train would genuinely turn up in a minute, or if it would still be lying to you an hour later.

I did seem to suffer from bad luck on the days I travelled, due to land-slides, rain, wind, or power-failures on various parts of the line. I usually kept waiting, but some days you could tell there would be no useful service. (i.e. They'd offer buses instead of trains, and that meant a 2 hour trip down, a working day, and a 2 hour trip back was just written off because a bus might take 4-5 hours to make one leg of the journey.)

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#25

Post by natdempk »

workhere-io wrote: post #18
User8712 wrote: post #13

I mentioned this in another topic, but grocery shopping. The entire process seems inefficient. New idea... You place an order online or on your mobile phone while you're at work, or on the bus. After you decide on your order, the app generates a unique code. The grocery store is now replaced with an automated warehouse, with pickup or drive-through windows. You walk up to a window, scan your unique code that was gene…

Or even better, you could order your food in a mobile app (or on a website), and the supermarket would deliver to your home later at a time you choose, e.g. between 4 and 5 PM. Several supermarkets such as http://www.nemlig.com/ do this in Denmark for a delivery price of just $3.5.

This exists for certain stores/markets in the US. Its called Peapod and is available for Ahold subsidiaries. (mainly Stop and Shop) The problem with it is their interface/website is terrible and I would rather not get my groceries from Stop and Shop, so if you could provide this for arbitrary stores that would be awesome. I know other startups have tried in this area since the dot-com boom. (the semi-infamous Webvan) Currently it seems like Instacart is the lead contender in this area. I haven't tried them, but it looks like they just came to my area recently, so I might in the future.

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#26

Post by AznHisoka »

ckelly wrote: post #3

I want a content marketing platform that let's you easily turn blog posts into other units of content (videos, infographics, slideshows, whitepapers) without going to 9 different systems.

Not sure how a blog post can turn into a video... or an infographic if it's not visual. A slideshow - that's doable.

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#27

Post by danlev »

sevilo wrote: post #12
danlev wrote: post #6

I've been wanting an easy way to gauge opinions and ideas on a topic between a small group of friends/co-workers without creating accounts on a service. For example, I want to ask "what are your thoughts on the new logo?" and have my co-workers leave comments and upvote/downvote each other's opinions. Ideally, like a HN/Reddit-style upvote/downvote comment system where they could just type their name in and comment/v…

Hmm, just out of curiosity, what do you find not sufficient enough to support this with existing systems like facebook?

One of my main use cases are company email chains of 50 or so employees where I think it'd be annoying to send a link asking for everyone's opinion but requiring them to sign-up for a quick, one-time voting.

For Facebook, not all of us are friends, and a few of them don't have Facebook, so it might seem a little rude to request that.

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#28

Post by anywherenotes »

workhere-io wrote: post #18
User8712 wrote: post #13

I mentioned this in another topic, but grocery shopping. The entire process seems inefficient. New idea... You place an order online or on your mobile phone while you're at work, or on the bus. After you decide on your order, the app generates a unique code. The grocery store is now replaced with an automated warehouse, with pickup or drive-through windows. You walk up to a window, scan your unique code that was gene…

Or even better, you could order your food in a mobile app (or on a website), and the supermarket would deliver to your home later at a time you choose, e.g. between 4 and 5 PM. Several supermarkets such as http://www.nemlig.com/ do this in Denmark for a delivery price of just $3.5.

Shop Rite delivers: http://www.shoprite.com/srfh_delivery/ I'm pretty sure we ordered once from there, and I don't see that store listed here.

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#29

Post by anywherenotes »

Well here's my idea:

A shopping list, but the trick is it knows where the food is in store, and arranges the list so that items on list are located close in store. For example, this is original list: apples, milk, hotdogs, chips. Lets say store has milk and meat on one side, and apples and chips on the other side. The app will rearrange to: apples, chips, milk, hotdogs. And perhaps give you a little map of store to show you were things are.

Re: Ask HN: What has recently pissed you off that ideally a product could solve?

#30

Post by bglazer »

jeremyriney wrote: post #10

I get pissed when reading an article on CNN and end up clicking a few click-bait type articles or videos in the right column. It takes ALL of my self control to avoid some of these. Maybe a browser plug-in that removes all these annoying recommended things which have NOTHING to do with the article.

https://www.readability.com/‎

Have you ever heard of readability? It's a plugin that removes link-bait crap and reformats articles into a standard format.

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