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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

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331–340 of 589 posts

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#331
post #236

An app that allows you to have a meeting with someone anytime both of you're available for the meeting. So it's schedule-less. Example: You want to talk to Paul. Paul wants to talk to you. But not as much. Paul is ranked "a1" in your book and you are ranked "b5" in Paul's book. Paul notes that he is in a "b5 and above" time period. Maybe he just got done exercise so he is more interested in talking to anyone (you are…

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/will-someone-please...

That's a bit different in that it requires you to map out specific times. And people's mood and availability changes for various reasons. Things come up. People need to cancel. Maybe a more important thing comes along. This actually encourages more "iffy" meetings for that matter. Since you aren't obligated for a specific time. [1]

Imagine needing speak with your doctor. You doctor might grab a minute sometime and then call you. You, with anxiety waiting for your test results, might take that call anytime (and in fact people do). But the doctor does not want to map out a specific time to call you as he might just have a few minutes between patients. And he will dial those from a note he has. And many will not be there when he calls. (This could in fact pre queue up just as if you are the President and you tell your secretary "get so and so on the line I will be out of this meeting in 5 minutes".)

So really this solves another problem but is not necessarily a replacement for a separate general scheduling issue.

Same concept could be adapted to, say, a handyman. He might have two hours in between fixed jobs and say "what job can I pull of where the person is home and within 3 miles from where I am right now".

(Although to be clear that wasn't the original point of the idea but now I'm thinking of that twist to it.)

[1] For example a salesman calling is normally interuptive and scheduling a meeting for something that you have only trivial interest in is not going to happen. Otoh sitting waiting for a plane which is delayed opens up the potential desire to possibly take meetings and conversations over things that you don't necessarily want to schedule.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#332
post #44

A way for employees to push back against their coworkers when they email too much crap to too wide an audience. In other words, I wish my Inbox had a little voting widget next to each message: +------------------------------------+ | 4,376 people received this message | | | | [Cool, it was ] [It was a waste] | | [important and] [of my time to ] | | [worthy of our] [ read this ] | | [ time ] [ message ] | | | +-------…

Great idea and I think this would be awesome as a GMail extension/addon (ala Rapportive). You could even have it only appear for messages from the same work domain.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#333
post #329

Fair warning, I'm kind of a sarcastic person, and most of my ideas tend to reflect that... If you actually want to work on one of these, go for it! Just please let me know as I'd like to hear about it (and if you'd like, maybe help out where I can). Contact details in my profile page. My three latest ideas with variations: #1: Kitty cooker social game (please don't actually build this): Basically Cow Clicker meets pr…

#3: Do farmers have the time or inclination to photo, name, and update the status of individual sheep?

You'd have to solve this for them. Short answer is, I think if you make it as automated as possible, and I think if the margin from RAS is much better than sales to wool buyers, they'd do it. Farmers here are very happy to include technology so long as it comes with a simple-to-calculate ROI.

Edit: I don't think that this is mandatory or that it has to be super frequent. Could substitute photos with cartoon images - but include a photo from "shearing day." Could also find a way to automate the content of status updates. Maybe have the sheep wear a logging GPS collar which is scanned once a week or something (have to bake this into the pricing, of course)?

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#334
post #236

An app that allows you to have a meeting with someone anytime both of you're available for the meeting. So it's schedule-less. Example: You want to talk to Paul. Paul wants to talk to you. But not as much. Paul is ranked "a1" in your book and you are ranked "b5" in Paul's book. Paul notes that he is in a "b5 and above" time period. Maybe he just got done exercise so he is more interested in talking to anyone (you are…

I really like this idea, although I'd be unlikely to mark my availability often. Maybe have a 'get me a meeting now' button, which raises your availability until a meeting matches.

That's part of the idea. You don't map anything out. You hit a button that says literally "get me a meeting now" but further you can give it an idea of the level of importance of the meeting you want "now".

Using the example I have given elsewhere if you are waiting for a plane that might take off in 10 minutes you don't want to call someone that you can't quickly get off the phone with. (You don't want to be rude to someone important). Otoh the person pitching you or the local realtor that you know that you need to check in with is the type that you can say "hey have to catch my plane talk to you later" (or your aunt). Or the guy at Home Depot with the size of the garden hose.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#335
post #261

I've been having this in my mind for a while: A nice way to organize & share my knowledge. I know that lots of people have a self-hosted wiki or similar where they write nice tricks, something that they learned about and might be useful in the future, nice ideas... Well, I'd like something like this, but more "social". Pages could be shared (or public), anyone could write a comments on something (I'd love to see comm…

It isn't really the normal use for it, but I made my own subreddit for this - I only use it as a personal repository of information, but it would suit pretty much all of your requirements, and it has stats on usage etc built in :P

This went over my mind, but I've read about other people using a subreddit for that. Indeed, it looks like a nice option - free, can add content (using markdown!), other people can comment/vote on it, easy searchable.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#336
post #217
post #72

A solution for the "too many tabs open" problem. Need a way to save my history in an organized and interactive manner, with a nice looking UI. Sort of like the old WebMynd ( http://webmynd.com ). I find that most of my tabs are open as a form of reminder. If I close it, I'll forget it and might as well not have seen it. Same if I hide it away in some kind of bookmarking app. I think it would be best to apply a UI lay…

If you use Chrome, check out OneTab. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...

I love how OneTab works, and it was something I used very frequently. But one day, not sure why exactly my chrome profile folder (osx mac) got corrupted. I cannot give technical details about it really, but not a single one of the chrome addons I had worked any longer. And I tried to recover the tab sessions but was unsuccessful.

If there is a feature OneTab is missing, it's to sync your tabs/sessions to a certain location. Or at least that's a feature I'd really appreciate!

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#337

I have a strange fascination with knowing exactly how I discovered a particular artist, film, website, etc. I'd really love a browser extension that could keep track of how the user reached a given site. Then they could go back later and input, say, a YouTube URL, and it would show exactly what lead them to that song. I started writing such an extension myself, but I was clearly out of my element. So when Mozilla shu…

I have this exact same fascination and the need to know how exactly I discovered a website, etc. I used to think I was alone, finally I know I'm not. I guess I gotta make something for this, as I would not only be helping myself, but others as well.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#338
post #206
post #162

I want to search for furniture, and other products, based on dimensions. My girlfriend and I furnished a new apartment recently, and had to be space conscious.. This spot next to the couch could fit a 10" wide table. It's not easy to search for that, yet the information is there. My original plan was going to use the Amazon API and take a search term and page through looking for dimensions that fit. I still think it'…

Taking a pic of your room and seeing nice furniture virtually added so you can easily test different styles.

Somebody wrote an app for that :) http://reorganize.amberfeng.com/

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#339
post #97

A voting system based on the Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System behind Bitcoin. The major reasons votes couldn't be conducted electronically is because of trust issues and today we have a technology that solves that. I think this could potentially disrupt voting if properly executed.

I have not looked too much into this project but I think this is the goal it is after: http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~clark/projects/commitcoin/

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#340
"Pay for friendly email".

I would pay for faked friendly emails and messages. You'd need to price it low enough to be sensible. There would have to be strict no sex rules; and protection against scamming. I imagine it workin a bit like camming does now - there's a "menu" of available people with mini biographies and the user picks one and selects what kind of service they want (early morning motivational; late night inquisitive; etc) and pays up front for X messages. The message writer sends the messages and the site takes a cut of the payment.

This is a service, it is not an i troduction or dating or real friend site.

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