Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Startup idea list

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 174 posts

Re: Startup idea list

#101

Post by dyu »

mdemare wrote: post #92
mdemare wrote: post #29

A social music site / including music client and music store for classical music. Both last.fm and iTunes suck for classical music, which has a completely different set of concepts from pop music. Composers, conductors, orchestras, choirs, movements, etc. It's a smaller market, and the people are less technically inclined, but they're richer and less likely to pirate music.

Oh, why a social music site? Because discovering new (to you) music is a harder problem than playing, organizing or buying music.

I was thinking of something like that, but I am not familiar with the copyright laws etc even for test listening music. How does last.fm deal with that? Loyalty fees to the big four?

Re: Startup idea list

#103

Post by bct »

Goladus wrote: post #94
alex_c wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm curious. Want to try explaining anyway? :)

'Tradeskill' engines don't really reward creativity. With some minor exceptions here and there, they all follow the model of: (combine X Y Z) -> ItemXYZ, where X, Y, and Z are constants and ItemXYZ is an element in a (relatively small) finite set of predetermined items. Instead of adventuring to obtain ItemXYZ, you adventure to obtain X, Y, and Z component pieces that you combine to get ItemXYZ, assuming you have eno…

So what's the solution?

(ah, this article describes Horizons' system: http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/378/378346p1.html )

Re: Startup idea list

#104

Post by cosmin »

rms wrote: post #30
randallsquared wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked out pretty well for my father, who's 80. It probably ruins the experiment that he had been using (well, failing to use) Windows for years previously, however.

How does he do with the mouse? From my experience, people over a certain age just never quite get the mouse. Touch screens are the ideal solution, touch pads would be fine except the ones on laptops are too small, and trackballs are a whole lot better than mice because they let you seperate the action of clicking and moving... too often I see older computer users accidentally moving the pointer when they want to clic…

Touch screens can be good for a lot of things but a desktop just isn't one of them unless the monitor is laid flat on the desk. Having to reach out your arm to the monitor constantly is not comfortable.

Re: Startup idea list

#105

Post by cosmin »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #88
ivankirigin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the list would be more valuable to those looking to steal identities. How do you think I win all my elections?

Hey -- if the money's there, it's a business :) Seriously. That what makes this exercise a little dubious. It's never version 1.0 of the idea. Sometimes it might be version 23 For example, here's v2.0 of my idea. Identity Life Insurance. For a fee, either use the internet and/or a physical inspection of people's computers after death to shut down online accounts and notify correspondents that you are deceased (and pe…

So this would work for people with no relatives, close friends or at least a lawyer? I imagine for most folks someone must know when they died and having some instructions for what to do when you pass away shouldn't be too difficult.

Re: Startup idea list

#106

Post by rms »

randallsquared wrote: post #22
rms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sit your grandfather (or person of similar age) in front of OSX by himself after only an hour of instructions and see what happens. It's intuitive to those of us who grew up with computing. To everyone else, it isn't.

It worked out pretty well for my father, who's 80. It probably ruins the experiment that he had been using (well, failing to use) Windows for years previously, however.

Someone modded most of the posts down in this thread, which is just odd. Ideological disagreement about the ease of use of OS X?

Re: Startup idea list

#107

Post by rms »

cosmin wrote: post #104
rms wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does he do with the mouse? From my experience, people over a certain age just never quite get the mouse. Touch screens are the ideal solution, touch pads would be fine except the ones on laptops are too small, and trackballs are a whole lot better than mice because they let you seperate the action of clicking and moving... too often I see older computer users accidentally moving the pointer when they want to clic…

Touch screens can be good for a lot of things but a desktop just isn't one of them unless the monitor is laid flat on the desk. Having to reach out your arm to the monitor constantly is not comfortable.

That's true. The ergonomics of a laptop touch screen/tablet PC are better.

Re: Startup idea list

#108

Post by iamwil »

iamwil wrote: post #96
mdemare wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measuring performance doesn't work, Joel says: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/July2002.html

I think it's both Joe Krause and Max Levin that both quote the HP founder that, "You make what you measure" The problem is that sometimes it's not obvious what you measure, since what you might be interested is something vague like "effectiveness" or "progress". And, like all pattern classification problems, if you pick features that don't give a good signal to noise ratio, your assessment could be way off. Even wors…

when I say photons, I mean, using photos to measure the position of a particle.

Re: Startup idea list

#109

Post by rms »

Leon wrote: post #100
rms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sit your grandfather (or person of similar age) in front of OSX by himself after only an hour of instructions and see what happens. It's intuitive to those of us who grew up with computing. To everyone else, it isn't.

My grandfather can't understand how his DVD player has more than one disc. He just doesn't have any the technical ability nor does he really care about anything but how to get email. I've tried multiple operating systems and instructed him on computer use. He's just from another generation (he's really old), even though he has an engineering degree from Notre Dame. It would be nice if there was some OS that would boo…

Yes. I applied and got an interview with YC for what was more or less this idea... among other reasons for our rejection, one was that we failed the flexibility test by strongly disagreeing with Paul Graham's suggestion that the simplified subset of our problem to focus on was an "internet picture frame with email" which conflicted with our stated goals of not trivializing the internet appliance.

I would go so far as to not give the user access to low level storage, but only give them access to their files in the context of specific tasks that used them (unless they were in advanced mode). Email me if you'd like to talk about this more.

Re: Startup idea list

#110

Post by Dalgar »

amichail wrote: post #14

I have some ideas on my blog: http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/ See for example this discussion on using lifecasting to encourage good behavior in a world where few people are genuinely religious (you could also combine this method with a traditional religion): http://mindrosity.blogspot.com/2007/07/justintv-vs-god_07.ht... http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board...

"in a world where few people are genuinely religious"

I would argue the vast majority of the world is genuinely religious.

Post reply on HN