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Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

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Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#211

Post by bemmu »

Sometimes I've had the idea of making a sort of "fan page" for my university (Tampere University), because their own homepage is so horrible. On the surface it looks OK, but actually it is quite difficult to use in actually planning which classes to take. The fan page would be maintained by students who are actually taking those classes, combined with pressuring the teachers to take part. This is where I think it wouldn't really work, people couldn't be arsed to help, so I haven't attempted it.

I feel so embarrassed for our faculty. I mean they have classes on UI design and usability, yet it's beyond them to make their own pages usable. This is the home page of our logic programming class: http://www.cs.uta.fi/~tn/LOGO_kotisivu_2009.htm I wouldn't mind the yellow background and the all-caps text, if every other course would just have the same information in the same place in the same format so that some sort of study planning could be done.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#212

Post by bemmu »

limmeau wrote: post #77

A first-aid application for e.g. iPhone which shouts at me what to do when finding an unconscious person. With clear voice and pictures that I can even understand if my head's in "omg omg he's dying what to do what to do" mode. (Perhaps such an app exists; I'm too far away from an iTunes-capable computer right now to check.)

It exists and it seems very good.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#213

Post by rms »

bemmu wrote: post #211

Sometimes I've had the idea of making a sort of "fan page" for my university (Tampere University), because their own homepage is so horrible. On the surface it looks OK, but actually it is quite difficult to use in actually planning which classes to take. The fan page would be maintained by students who are actually taking those classes, combined with pressuring the teachers to take part. This is where I think it wou…

I'm surprised no one has tried to sell your school a system like Blackboard. Is penetration of such systems low outside of the USA? Sounds like there is quite a marketing opportunity there, if you were to develop a competitor to Blackboard. Their software isn't great, it wouldn't be hard to do better, though integrating with the university's existing IT infrastructure could be tricky.

Be warned though, Blackboard basically has their whole system patented, though I think their patent for "using a CMS for school" was recently overturned. The patents may be less important outside of the USA.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#214

Post by bemmu »

theantidote wrote: post #54

A Taxi service site and iPhone app. Lets you send your current location to the cab company with your iPhone and then track the cab as it arrives. Maybe even offer a prepay option so you can pay with your paypal account and just read off a confirmation number to the cab driver or something at the end of the trip for them to bill you with. Maybe in order to prevent confusion over more than one cab being called from the…

Why are you disappointed that it exists? My reaction is more like "great, that problem is solved, now I can make something else".

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#215

Post by bemmu »

rms wrote: post #213
bemmu wrote: post #211

Sometimes I've had the idea of making a sort of "fan page" for my university (Tampere University), because their own homepage is so horrible. On the surface it looks OK, but actually it is quite difficult to use in actually planning which classes to take. The fan page would be maintained by students who are actually taking those classes, combined with pressuring the teachers to take part. This is where I think it wou…

I'm surprised no one has tried to sell your school a system like Blackboard. Is penetration of such systems low outside of the USA? Sounds like there is quite a marketing opportunity there, if you were to develop a competitor to Blackboard. Their software isn't great, it wouldn't be hard to do better, though integrating with the university's existing IT infrastructure could be tricky. Be warned though, Blackboard bas…

Well I posted about this here, because I have no intention of doing this. I don't really want to work with an entity whose income isn't really determined by the satisfaction of their customers. Finnish universities are supported by the government, there are no tuition fees. The system is nice for us students, but perhaps leads to them not really caring very much if their homepages are hard to use.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#216

Post by inglorian »

rms wrote: post #213
bemmu wrote: post #211

Sometimes I've had the idea of making a sort of "fan page" for my university (Tampere University), because their own homepage is so horrible. On the surface it looks OK, but actually it is quite difficult to use in actually planning which classes to take. The fan page would be maintained by students who are actually taking those classes, combined with pressuring the teachers to take part. This is where I think it wou…

I'm surprised no one has tried to sell your school a system like Blackboard. Is penetration of such systems low outside of the USA? Sounds like there is quite a marketing opportunity there, if you were to develop a competitor to Blackboard. Their software isn't great, it wouldn't be hard to do better, though integrating with the university's existing IT infrastructure could be tricky. Be warned though, Blackboard bas…

If anyone wants to make a competitor to Blackboard, please do. My school uses it and it is terrible: the UI is awful, response time is slow, and professors across the board hate it and prefer to use their own websites to upload files. Shouldn't be too hard to make a better version.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#217

Post by inglorian »

zupatol wrote: post #190

I would like a shopping list on my mobile phone. The main inconvenience I have with my shopping list on paper is that the things I forget to buy are not automatically on next week's shopping list. And I might forget less things if I could easily delete the items I buy while I'm in the supermarket. This sounds like a small easy-to-write application. The application should also have the advantages of my paper shopping…

Whoops, sorry. Meant to upvote and downvoted accidentally instead. Am upvoting two of your other comments to make up for it.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#218

Post by gcheong »

c1sc0 wrote: post #83
limmeau wrote: post #77

A first-aid application for e.g. iPhone which shouts at me what to do when finding an unconscious person. With clear voice and pictures that I can even understand if my head's in "omg omg he's dying what to do what to do" mode. (Perhaps such an app exists; I'm too far away from an iTunes-capable computer right now to check.)

That's a pretty cool idea, but aren't you better off calling 911 or your local equivalent? What about liability issues? What about responsiveness? This thing needs to be fast and non-intrusive ! I was in a (non-life-threatening) accident last week and I can think of a couple of useful first-aid pointers lots of people overlook, like: * so what is the local emergency number? (based on GPS position) * "let's give him s…

When you take a first aid course they often give you cards with these kinds of instructions to carry with you so I don't think there would be a problem liability-wise with the app itself.

Re: Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself.

#220

Post by xtimesninety »

a simple iphone book/html reader that downloads my latest bookmarks on delicious tagged 'read' so I could read them offline.

This way I don't have to sync and stuff ;) does instapaper already do this? I tried it once before.. I forgot the reason why I got back to ruBooks and a custom python script to download websites from my delicious feed.

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