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Products I Wish Existed

blog.eladgil.com

221–230 of 434 posts

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#221
post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

>Global 2000 company IT needs. Splunk is a good example of this. I've worked at several public and private muti-billion dollar orgs, and they all rant and rave about how good Splunk is over whatever else they were using. So, build more splunks. Maybe something that aggregates monitoring multiple servers. A plug and play Status Dashboard for a company's internal apps. Like this: https://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en…

Splunk is good, but it is expensive too, and given how - as you wrote - widespread is seems to be in big corporations, it must be a gold mine.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#222
#4 is disturbing.

Humans in large swaths (most?) of the world live without stealing from one another.

Safe communities are not built on policing and monitoring (or guns), they're built by people who have basic communitarian values, basic education, who are conscientious, honest etc..

Obviously, macro issues are important (jobs, economy, credible judicial/civic systems) and that's part of the equation.

But none of this is new, it's downright ancient - and I'm wary to think of any technology that can be directly applicable. We have to raise our kids well, and there won't be any software to do that for us.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Needing to safeguard your possessions lest they get stolen is a sign of a broken society? By that yardstick, every human society past and present is broken. Leaving aside small sleepy towns, everyone locks up their house, car, bicycles, and other possessions, even the people complaining about stolen packages. That's not considered an unreasonable burden, but the minute unattended packages get taken off porches everyo…

> Needing to safeguard your possessions lest they get stolen is a sign of a broken society? Yes. You are just probably too used to it to notice. Decades before it didn't happen as often in places it does now (yes, it did happen in other places. No excuse for a neighbourhood to go bad though, e.g. through tons of meth/opioid addicted piling to the crime rate). In nicer neighbourhoods it doesn't happen still. In whole…

In other countries (like Italy where I currently live) leaving a package unattended is unthinkable. If there is nobody home they leave a slip of paper that says there will be another attempt at delivery the next day or else you have to fetch the package in some remote dispatch center (things are getting better now and many couriers are now taking their time to call you on the phone a few minutes before they drop by; sometimes you can ask them to drop the package at neighbors or at some small shop nearby, if the owner is willing)

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#224
post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

This goes back to my old quip of the easiest way to increase GDP to 5% would be to force everyone to learn how to actually use Excel. HT "You Suck at Excel" - JS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, a road to my parents’ used to be riddled with potholes and uneven sewer grates (Canadian winters + drainage issues probably). The city spent months ripping it up and paving it nice and smooth. Then a couple months later they put up speed bumps. We spent a lot of money to get back to the speeds people already drove.

I once lived on a street that was incredibly badly maintained. The city informed the residents that they would be repaving the street and the residents campaigned hard for the city not to do that, for precisely the reasons you're talking about here. Their campaign was successful, in no small measure because a poll of the residents showed 95% of them opposed the repaving, and that the local paper wrote a big story abo…

I hate how pervasive this degenerate thinking is in local politics. "we don't want a nice thing because then people would use it."

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#226
post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

This goes back to my old quip of the easiest way to increase GDP to 5% would be to force everyone to learn how to actually use Excel. HT "You Suck at Excel" - JS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

Perhaps it should become a part of public middle school curriculum?

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#227
post #6

Products I'm glad do NOT exist: 4. ADT 2.0: Digital neighborhood watch. Ring is gross enough, thank you very much.

I think the key term is "consumer-centric". Ring and other home cams are necessary peace of mind for a lot of people.

Eventually it's going to come to a head that these cams do little at all for security. I have a wyze cam that I use to watch my pet, but I'm well aware that even if it caught a burglar in the act that the LAPD isn't going to do anything with that video or the case.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#228
post #55

About new social networks, I am building one that I am calling "a quiet social network" . Copy/pasting from my landing what it means: A personal journal and a social network that will provide a quiet space to reflect about yourself and also to nurture your long term relationships with the people that you care about. Why “quiet”? Because this social network won't have the frenetic rhythm of news and updates of all oth…

Your web site isn't loading at all for me. Glancing at the console it looks like you have a timeout error, and the loading gif just runs forever.

Chrome Version 79.0.3945.88 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#229
post #68

Purple Air hits on a bit of the neighborhood pollution sensor idea: https://www2.purpleair.com/ I've used their API to look at California wildfire data.

Their API is great. I found their site a little slow for something I want to check regularly so I built a faster one based on the API: https://aqi.today If there's a PurpleAir sensor near you, it will show you the reading instantly. It also updates the favicon so you can leave it open in the background and check the reading just by glancing at the tab.

This is great! saved to home screen on iOS for convenience

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#230
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices. Are you sure? How can we as citizens verify it?

> Are you sure? I'm not. Do I think it's likely that they are? No. > How can we as citizens verify it? The same way we verify that Google isn't producing broad-scale AI systems looking for specific subsets of people across the GMail data. Investigative reporting, whistle-blowers, regulation/lawmaking, and looking closely at the evidence presented when the government acts. This is why parallel construction is pernicio…

Although I find your answer upsetting, I also find it reasonable. +1.
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