Startup idea list • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup idea list

#21

Post by mpc » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:05 AM UTC

rms wrote: post #16

mpc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called OSX. What could be better than a powerful unix machine with a beautiful and intuitive GUI? And also "just works" out of the box.

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.

There is a learning curve no matter what. Otherwise you have a tutorial and not an OS.

Re: Startup idea list

#22

Post by randallsquared » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:11 AM UTC

rms wrote: post #16

mpc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called OSX. What could be better than a powerful unix machine with a beautiful and intuitive GUI? And also "just works" out of the box.

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.

Re: Startup idea list

#23

Post by paulgb » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:17 AM UTC

Try looking for places where there is quality content and people who would enjoy that content if only they could find it. Where this occurs, there should be lots of potential to generate value, by matching people with content they might like.

For example, last.fm does this for music, del.icio.us/digg/reddit/news.yc for content, and I'm sure there are lots of other examples of services like this.

Here are two areas where such services, to my knowledge, don't exist: web comics and blogs.

Re: Startup idea list

#24

Post by greendestiny » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:17 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #17

Here's one I wish someone would take from me and spend lots of time perfecting. I've been trying to get around to it, but have other stuff to do. It's on my "fun weekend hacks" list. I have a commute that's about 30 minutes each way and 1 hour lunch every day. That's two hours I want to fill by reading printouts of interesting text and listening to interesting audio on my iPod. For me PG essays would be the ultimate…

Check out http://dailylit.com it does a little of that for a fairly small amount of books.

Re: Startup idea list

#25

Post by jpalacio486 » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:26 AM UTC

deltapoint wrote: post #7

jpalacio486 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just bustin your balls. Can you elaborate on your 43things-like idea?

read this http://paulgraham.com/die.html Paul Graham argues the fear of looking bad is what motivates people. Based off of that concept I thought of the idea of a social network kind of like 43things with the major differences being: - you can set a timeline of when you want to accomplish the goals -people could rate the difficulty of the goals and you have a reputation based on how many goals you complete and the di…

I have to say i like the idea. Have you applied to YC?

Re: Startup idea list

#26

Post by nextmoveone » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:30 AM UTC

id like to see an extension to expensr.com's app, to text message my expenses in!

Re: Startup idea list

#27

Post by nextmoveone » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:32 AM UTC

I'd also like to see visual voicemail integrated into gmail or yahoo mail or aol or any client, but real visual voicemail...with voice-to-text technology for the message to be right in your inbox and a click to call back link or button.

Re: Startup idea list

#28

Post by mdemare » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:33 AM UTC

Location based gaming: playing games while moving around in your town with an iphone-like device (and having your location matter in-game.) You could port any kind of game to this concept: counterstrike, racing, even monopoly. Or pac-man, chasing your friends around the block. Or Sokoban, pushing giant boulders through Fifth Avenue.

I had this idea six years ago. I'm appalled that it still hasn't happened. Of course, very few devices have GPS chips, and operators are wary of sharing the location of their customers with random companies. But still!

Anyway, Loopt is a step in the right direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_game

Re: Startup idea list

#29

Post by mdemare » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:40 AM UTC

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.

Re: Startup idea list

#30

Post by rms » Tue, Sep 18, 2007, 2:40 AM UTC

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.

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 click.