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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

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Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#361

Post by rwillmer »

salgernon wrote: post #5

Waiforpaperback.com Informs you when alternatives printings are available could monetize by showing similar titles in monthly summary emails

Luzme.com does similar for ebooks (audiobooks and deadtree books coming soon). Shows availability and prices for ebooks across all major stores in 8 countries; use your existing watch list at Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing or setup a new one and we'll email you price drop alerts; register an interest in an author and we'll tell you when they release a new book.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#362

Post by rokhayakebe »

rahilsondhi wrote: post #79

A website for employees in a company to share SQL queries and their results, like Heroku Dataclips. You can write your query in your browser, the results will be shown, and you can just copy/paste the URL to a coworker for him/her to see the results. I'm already working on this, contact me if you're interested!

Rahil, have you thought about extending this idea to a place where you would post a DB schema and SQL queries and let the community optimize it. Companies will use this to tap into the expertise of many database engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#363

Post by necrodome »

Spittie wrote: post #158

I've been having this in my mind for a while: A nice way to organize & share my knowledge. I know that lots of people have a self-hosted wiki or similar where they write nice tricks, something that they learned about and might be useful in the future, nice ideas... Well, I'd like something like this, but more "social". Pages could be shared (or public), anyone could write a comments on something (I'd love to see comm…

You might want to take a look at Smallest Federated Wiki (https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki)

example wikis: https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki/wi...

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#364

Post by callmeed »

API documentation tool: If you have a REST(ish) API, the tool would allow you to:

* Describe the authentication

* Enter all the objects, methods, URL endpoints, and parameters of your API

The tool would then:

* Generate pretty documentation, including example requests/responses

* Include a working web-based API console (like Mashery has)

* Auto-generates client libraries in Ruby, Python, PHP, Node, Obj-C, etc. and keep them updated in GitHub

Bonus points for bootstrapping the API information from your Rails routes file.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#365

Post by greggman »

plaxis wrote: post #86

Search function for browser tabs. So hard to find pandora in the haystack, and I need a short cut to search through all the interesting things.

I would also like a search function for browsing history. Most browsers let me search titles but I want to search content as in "show me the page I read 3 days ago with the words 'foo bar baz'".

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#366

Post by Jonovono »

d0m wrote: post #343
Jonovono wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hah. I am surprised you have not heard of any of these!! http://www.quora.com/Food-Tech-Startups/What-companies-are-d...

Ha, yes well, I guess "Airbnb for food" might not be the best explanation then. The pain point I was focusing on was to provide good food at cheap price for neighbors, less about "Living an experience with another family".

Oh I see. I actually like that! I don't think I would ever use one of these services to eat at a strangers house. However, if I could go on and see a list of what people in my area are planning to make (oh boy my neighbour is planning to make a batch of brownies this weekend). Then I could opt in and pay for a certain amount before some deadline.

Then the person making the food sees that they need to make an extra x amount of brownies (but they were already planning to make them, but now can make some extra money!). Then when they are ready you get an alert and can go pick it up.

That would be pretty sweet! I'd use that.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#367

Post by petersouth »

edw519 wrote: post #84

- When will the next bus/train be at this spot? - a non-DRM ebook reader with Project Gutenburg installed - auto convert from client/server to webapp or phoneapp - grocery delivery for us not in SV,Seattle,etc - reservation-only restaurants that have tables avail now - auto turn cell phone to vibrate in certain locations - auto forward cell phone to close land line (work/home) - old Google maps - a no wifi or cell Pa…

I had an errand service and a lady would pay me to get her groceries every week. I think I charged $10/hr. She would also give me a stack of coupon items to pick up. Her way of rationalizing the expense was that the coupon savings was usually more than she paid me. I would buy all the crap and she'd just write me a check for that amount plus my fee.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#368

Post by ryandrake »

raldi wrote: post #44

A way for employees to push back against their coworkers when they email too much crap to too wide an audience. In other words, I wish my Inbox had a little voting widget next to each message: +------------------------------------+ | 4,376 people received this message | | | | [Cool, it was ] [It was a waste] | | [important and] [of my time to ] | | [worthy of our] [ read this ] | | [ time ] [ message ] | | | +-------…

On the other hand, some E-mails are actually not crap and get lost in the waves of mailing list spam and build reports. While we're fixing E-mail, here are a few suggestions that would correct a major problem with E-mail, the ability to miss/ignore it:

1. Non-optional delivery/read receipts Various clients have these, but it would be nice if these were universally supported and could be made non optional. This is useful so that when I don't get a response and have to go hound someone, my first question doesn't always have to be "Hey, did you get that E-mail??"

Speaking of responses...

2. Response required flag Be able to mark an E-mail as requiring a response from a specific recipient. Such E-mails could be presented differently in the recipient's client, highlighted or called out in a different color. Client software could generate a TODO list out of them, issue reminders if the E-mail has been un-replied-to for more than some configurable period of time, etc. The longer the message is ignored, the more annoying the presentation might be. This highlighting could be silenced by either a. replying to the E-mail, or b. clicking an "ignore" button (which also sends notice of the ignore action back to the sender). The sender could also cancel the flag after the message is sent.

3. Response required by date As an enhancement to the above, instead of a flag, a date/time by which a response is needed. This could allow the recipient's client software to display these E-mails in a sane priority order.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#369

Post by brudgers »

ams6110 wrote: post #288
raldi wrote: post #44

A way for employees to push back against their coworkers when they email too much crap to too wide an audience. In other words, I wish my Inbox had a little voting widget next to each message: +------------------------------------+ | 4,376 people received this message | | | | [Cool, it was ] [It was a waste] | | [important and] [of my time to ] | | [worthy of our] [ read this ] | | [ time ] [ message ] | | | +-------…

:) reminds me of the "warning" message that used to appear in "rn" before you posted a message to a usenet group: This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. You message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing. Ah the old days.....

When I am wistful for particular aspects of the Usenet, the degree of self control exhibited in its threads is clearly not among them. Audience size fueled many a flame war, and reliance on self control by contributors allowed spam to overwhelm most communities.
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