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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

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31–40 of 453 posts

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#31
SocialPower: Complain about a bad service in a store by adding in the map the location of it. After that other customers of the store receive notifications to vote if the complain is valid (by using background location and push). If many users backup the complain, then the business gets an e-mail stating that they have been featured in SocialComplaint and they can work to solve the problem. The complains are alive for x days in the map in they continue unresolved. After that they go to the archive and statistics of business complains.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#32
post #23

Venmo Receipt bill splitter: Mobile app that analyzes a picture of a receipt using tesseract or something similar and allows the user to charge Venmo friends for certain items on the receipt. I would pay for this because then I wouldn't have to create a Venmo payment for each user.

Friend of mine was working on this. Don't know if they are still active or if/when they launch. http://pennapps2014s.challengepost.com/submissions/20858-div...

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#33
Commitment device app that works on a dead man's switch. The idea is to use the discipline you have now to discipline your future self.

eg1 - Enter your weight every month. If you go over a predetermined weight, it does something punitive. Posts embarrassing pictures online, emails your mom, donates $50 to the Klu klux Klan.

eg2 Create a todo list with due dates, goals or somesuch. Failing to complete them does something punitive.

eg3 Create out a challenge (exercise 5 times per week). Failure to complete challenge does something punitive.

The key is to get the psychological component right. I think if someone's daily task is 100 or more pushups they are more likely to fraudulently push a complete button than they are to enter a fraudulent number of pushups.

Could be a fun project.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#34

Email Link: A simple browser plugin which allows me to click it once and it emails me the current url. It would be nice if it gives me the option to email it to others. Resuscitate Xoopit, a much much better gmail search. Have you ever wondered why gmail search sucks when its parent company is the supposedly the best search engine in the world. Xoopit was a nifty addon that mine your inbox and 1) organize every file…

I just wrote a rudimentary version of “Email Link”. You can use it for free. You just need a few lines of JS in a bookmarklet:

  var myEmail = "my-email@example.com";
  var url = window.location.href;
  var subject = "Link: " + document.title;
  window.location = "mailto:"+encodeURIComponent(myEmail)+"?subject="+encodeURIComponent(subject)+"&body="+encodeURIComponent(url);
To install it, change the email address in the code, URL-escape the code (with `encodeURIComponent(…)` in a JS console), prepend “javascript:”, and save it as the URL of a browser bookmark with the title “Email Link to Self”. Put the bookmark in your bookmarks bar or somewhere else convenient.

When you want to use it, open that bookmark to open a new message in your mail client, then click Send without changing anything and switch back to your browser. To send the link to others, edit the To field in your mail client before clicking Send.

P.S. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all have a menu item for this built-in, except they don’t prefill the To field with your email address for you. The menu item is in the File menu, about 3/4 of the way down.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#35
post #30

Soylent bars.* I like the idea of Soylent as a complete food, but instead of a nutritional drink, I believe a power bar would be a better idea, for portability, storage, and consumption. * Not tech related.

Someone is working on that! (I have no relationship with this company) http://www.mealsquares.com/

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#37
A craiglist like site to find projects/people to work with. It could connect to tools e.g Trello and give you a rough estimate of how this persons delivers e.g closes their cards almost always on time.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#38
post #19

Fix podcasts. I was helping someone set up her android phone for podcasts and noticed how problematic the whole process is. First, the android apps aren't very good. More problematic is the process of getting a feed into it. Sometimes searching by name works. Often it doesn't. Getting from podcast's website to the app is a problem. Discovery is also quite poor.

On iOS it's not much better, most apps are too granualar (e.g. Downcast) or not enough (Apple Podcasts). Pegging some hope on http://overcast.fm/ fixing the situation but it's not a great ecosystem...yet.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#39
Lower ligature risk USB charging cables. These would be used by mental health hospitals to allow (risk assessed) patient to charge their devices without introducing ligature risk.

To go along with this:

Bulk USB charger. Imagine a 20 port USB hub, but this has no USB connectivity. It only has USB power. It would be kept in a secure place in a mental health ward and would allow them to charge patient's devices. This would mean that patients get electronic devices but without having access to cords (ligature risk) or mains plugs (self harm risk).

(Take a UK 3 pin plug. Place it on floor with prongs up. Jump off bed onto plug with weight on one foot. That's an unpleasant injury. Removing that risk is useful).

Advantages:

You don't need to PAT test each charger coming into the hospital. You reduce (slightly) fire risk from bad quality chargers.

You reduce ligature and self harm risk.

You allow patients access to electronic devices which has some "safeguarding of liberties" benefits.

Disadvantages: selling to the NHS is possibly hell, and selling electrical equipment to the NHS is possibly even harder.

You're creating a vigh value stash of easy to steal equipment. MH hospitals already have lots of IT and stealable medication so they should be able to keep it safe but maybe a ventilated safe would be part of the package.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#40
post #33

Commitment device app that works on a dead man's switch. The idea is to use the discipline you have now to discipline your future self. eg1 - Enter your weight every month. If you go over a predetermined weight, it does something punitive. Posts embarrassing pictures online, emails your mom, donates $50 to the Klu klux Klan. eg2 Create a todo list with due dates, goals or somesuch. Failing to complete them does somet…

See also, Gym Pact [0]. An app that lets you earn rewards (versus payout cash) for hitting gym goals. Similar idea of adverse motivation.

[0] http://www.gym-pact.com/

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