Ask HN: Idea Sunday • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#391

Post by phillijw » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 11:58 PM UTC

realrocker wrote: post #170

A mobile app to gamify recruitment. Users can win small amounts of credit by 1) referring friends(from phonebook) for a job 2) reviewing jobs to put them in the baskets of: not applicable, interested but not actively looking, interested and applying.This credit can be redeemed for non-cash items like: gift cards and coupons. Recruiters pay a fee(in-app payment) to post jobs. In return they get: 1) leads to candidates…

I think providing value other than simple "networking" would pay off more in the end. I would rather see software focusing on matching quality candidates with the right jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#392

Post by nols » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:00 AM UTC

maxcan wrote: post #224

egypturnash wrote: post #190

Basically Yelp for transgender surgeons. I've been working on making the decision as to who I'll get to sculpt new genitals for me, and researching this on the web is a mess - every site comparing them is out of date, triggers my mental sketchy spam site detectors, or both. It'd be great to be able to go to a nice-looking site and say "all I'm interested in right now is MtF genital surgery", then see doctors who do t…

I feel like this is a symptom of a far larger problem, the need for yelp for medical care in general. Its kind of shitty that there is absolutely no way to quality and price compare medical providers. Also, good luck with the transition, I have a friend going through something similar, its definitely not an easy thing.

There is a problem in that in the US at least pricing isn't very transparent, and changes depending on any number of variables. I remember an article a few weeks ago about the problems with doctor reviews online, and especially the inability of doctors to respond because of privacy concerns. I tried to find it but found an older but good article explaining the issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/your-money/why-the-web-lac...

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#393

Post by notduncansmith » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:00 AM UTC

One idea I saw posted last week that I'm scoping out and considering working on: Dataclips for everyone.

Heroku Dataclips allow you to share the results of a SQL query against your database with a simple URL. It'd be really cool as a standalone service that you could hook up to your non-Heroku DBs (local, QA, production, etc). An API would be sweet as well (imagine having a dataclip with your stack traces during QA).

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#394

Post by cheepin » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:09 AM UTC

bnchrch wrote: post #178

Hey, I created a little meteor app today just for this. http://thoughts.meteor.com/

.. and here comes the spam

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#395

Post by spaboleo » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:18 AM UTC

ld00d wrote: post #369

A system of homeless charity. I never have cash. What if I could scan a QR code to donate? What if that donation was better distributed through a central agency instead of directly to the person on the street corner? The guy on the corner gets a bigger piece as an incentive. A distributed peer to peer encrypted chat system. No dependencies on Google or whoever for hosting. No middle channel holding private keys. Thre…

Regarding the first topic: Check out Handup (https://handup.us/) – It's not exactly what you described, but they are kind of a middle man between the homeless, charities and you as a potential donator.

I dig the peer 2 peer chat.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#396

Post by A_COMPUTER » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:26 AM UTC

miguelrochefort wrote: post #191

Semantic version of Twitter. Every tweet is RDF.

I would love this. i have often thought of Twitter as a "global message bus" but wished it could hold structured data.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#397

Post by A_COMPUTER » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:29 AM UTC

dzink wrote: post #99

Buetol wrote: post #17

An anonymous and representative group discussion and voting system Practical example: Attending a conf as a woman - You want to ask questions during the talks but you are afraid that because you are a woman your answer will be "dumbed-down" or just different - Also, the guy doing the talk would like to answer the best possible question (or a random one) So, there can be a lot of solutions to this problem, here is min…

This does exactly that and you don't even create an account, so it's really anonymous: http://www.gosoapbox.com/ . All you have to get is a shared url for the dicussion. Their primary use case is for classroom discussion, but functionality is what you described.

SSL record to long, can't get in. Broken.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#398

Post by spaboleo » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:36 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #22

Free network (data, voice, mobile) monitoring in exchange for personalized and general/statistical data based recommendations (which plan to change, which ISPs in the area are best, etc.)

Yeah it is a total hassle to research that and don't get screwed. One can basically spend days researching on that topic and in the end you'll still feel like you made the wrong decision.

The problem with this is that you (as a customer) mostly are locked down by... a) a long-term commitment (2 year contract) b) the process of changing is made so complicated (30 day grace period, waiting for technicians)

All that makes it hard for the customer to adapt to the ever so fast changing market.

The only way I see is to virtualize this. So that you would no longer be a customer of cellular provider X and internet service provider Y, but you'd be a fixed-fee customer of Z-ALL. The company Z-All then acts as a customer for provider X and Y.

It would be interesting nevertheless!

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#399

Post by BjoernKW » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:38 AM UTC

notduncansmith wrote: post #393

One idea I saw posted last week that I'm scoping out and considering working on: Dataclips for everyone. Heroku Dataclips allow you to share the results of a SQL query against your database with a simple URL. It'd be really cool as a standalone service that you could hook up to your non-Heroku DBs (local, QA, production, etc). An API would be sweet as well (imagine having a dataclip with your stack traces during QA).

I'm working on this right now. If you're interested shoot me a message.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#400

Post by Alex_MJ » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 12:39 AM UTC

neilsharma wrote: post #289

Problem: Completion rates for online courses are dismal and engagement with other students and faculty is low. Idea: Weekly online, live discussion sections to accompany self-paced video lectures. Discussion sections have 5-10 students and are facilitated by Teaching Assistants How it works: Students taking a MOOC course sign up each week for a discussion section. There can be multiple discussion sections to accommod…

I have a different approach to the same problem, although I'm actively building out a solution involving creating geographically local communities around MOOCs and finding study partners (Coursera/meetup have attempted this but it isn't very good IMO).

If anyone in SF is interested in helping out, I could totally use a collaborator or two if skillsets/personalities mesh well. (I'm doing all the coding right now but the project could greatly benefit from a second developer with good design sense and some web dev experience)