Maybe something related to "Fixed the current problems?"
New Requests for Startups
361–370 of 407 posts
Re: New Requests for Startups
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is that one thing that future software will have is automatic generation of user interfaces. I think "naked objects" or "apache isis" are the best examples we've got for that for now , but they are rooted in somewhat complex java code, instead of being rooted in an easy to use tool, such that lets the business analyst who had some course , sit with the client and fully define a running system , step by step.…
The assumption that UI design must be done by hand is probably one of the most important "bottleneck" in software development. When you think about it, the job of a designer is often quite systematic. You have some entities/data you need to communicate to the user, through whatever interface/device that's available to him. A touchscreen, a keyboard, knobs, LEDs, microphone, speaker, paper, etc. When your "user" is a…
What you're saying is reasonable, and there are lots of people attempting to make RAD systems. Unfortunately, they always place severe limitations on the kind of software that can be created with them, and hence none of them have become particularly popular.
It seems that there's something missing from all the existing implementations of your suggestion. Perhaps it is that the UI and data flow primitives that we have aren't flexible enough to express a lot of business models, thus requiring custom implementations.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter that a student can't afford their books on $7/hour. No one seriously expects a kid to make even a dent in the cost of his education anymore, because relative to cost of attendance (except at community colleges) kids in general just don't have the earning power. Cost of attendance at my state flagship is $24,000. Full time at minimum wage is $15,080. Any education worth that kind of money is hard eno…
A large proportion of my students work part time jobs for 20+ hours a week. I don't really understand how they can afford tuition + room + board but need the $140 (less taxes) a week, but as it turns out this is very common. It made a big impression on me when a student walked in to turn in his homework wearing a Chick-Fil-A cap. Asking around, I learned that this is typical at the university where I teach. So, yes,…
When I was a working student, I was maximizing my student loans every quarter. My wages were going toward rent, credit card payments, and anything else I couldn't pay with credit cards.
I also worked 40-50 hours per week during the summer. Between that and loan distributions, I could just barely keep up with my typical costs. If anything went wrong--e.g., an injury (yep!), car repairs (yep!), fines (yep!)--the credit card debt didn't get paid off.
You might predict that I would graduate with a lot of debt. You would be right. In spite of having a merit scholarship for full tuition and $4500/year, I had over $35,000 in student loans and another $5000-10,000 in credit card debt when I graduated.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#364An important trend is the API-ification of everything. As more and more businesses are accessible with a web API, the Internet becomes more and more powerful. I'd like to invite people to try the early release of Empire API, which is one API for every enterprise SaaS: http://empiredata.co Empire is an API for accessing enterprise SaaS services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Apps, etc. It provides a uniform, data…
I looked at a few companies in this space when I was at a VC, and the fundamental problem was that they didn't provide enough value to the end developer.
Aggregator APIs tend to provide extremely reduced functionality compared to the source API, and the ease-of-use doesn't compensate for this. In most cases it just makes more sense for the developer to spend a day building a custom adaptor for the API.
That said I think the SQL front-end is an interesting twist. While developers find it easier to use the source API there are many people (i.e. business analysts, etc.) who can't program but can use SQL and that might be an interesting market to go after (and also a market more willing to pay).
Re: New Requests for Startups
#365> HUMAN AUGMENTATION Oh yes, yes, yes. Everyone is talking about the quantified self but human augmentation would be so much cooler. I don't care if a watch can tell me my heart rate at all times (I know when my body is tired, or out of breath, because I live in it !!!) But there are so many senses that I would like to have; for example, be able to always know where the North is relative to me. A device that would le…
http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?cur... Watches and wearable things are just the tip there. The issues with implants is that they are 100% against the Hippocratic oath. No doctor would ever do one if you are healthy. Implants are a long way off, and wearable enhancers may ease the road to them, however a new ethical system for doctors, or an extension of doctors without such oaths, would be re…
No different from Breast Implants or other enhancement surgeries which are already mainstream.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#366- INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE "An important trend is the API-ification of everything. As more and more businesses are accessible with a web API, the Internet becomes more and more powerful." I think a POSTman style Zapier, love-child would go down very well. Also products like Mashery where you provide APIs as a service and charge. Notably missing from the list... - Anything related to travel. - Anything related to stora…
Let me reply regarding travel: - is full 99% of so established players, with lots of money. To enter this marked requires either equally amount of money or something truly truly innovative...which brings to point 2: - what is left to invent in this area to be so disruptive so that a start-up in this area makes sense? I'd love to be contradicted, but I think all important things in travel have been invented.
You're travelling to a new city you've never been to before and you're looking for a hotel that's cheap but decent quality, in a safe area and well connected via public transport to the tourist areas.
How many steps does it take you to find a hotel ?
How many steps should it take ?
Re: New Requests for Startups
#367> What comes after programming languages? I've been working on this for several years, though a startup seems the wrong vehicle for it. I think the description in the RFS is misguided: "We’re interested in helping developers create better software, faster. This includes new ways to write, understand, and collaborate on code, and the next generation of tools and infrastructure for delivering software continuously and…
With any improvement in programming language technology, we narrow the disparity between human and computer representations of logic. In it's simplest form, this is the premise of language designers. The biggest difficulty with current languages is their reliance on absolute determinacy. Programmers must express in exact form what computations ought be performs, and the languages possesses no intelligence in themselv…
Declarative approaches (like answer set programming, or satisfiability modulo theories) revolve around expressing what the final result should look like, with no regard for how the result is achieved.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes times 1,000! This is what we're trying to address at Sourcegraph ( https://sourcegraph.com/ ). 80% of programming is about reading and understanding code, not writing code. Why don't existing tools focus more on helping people read and understand code--and, more broadly, collaborate on a development team? Things like: * seeing everywhere a function or class is used, in context (like https://sourcegraph.com/github…
FWIW, I think this is absolutely fucking genius and everyone should check it out... ...but I can't give you money without Java/Scala support. Roadmap? Pleeeeease? =)
The site doesn't seem to list which languages are supported.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#369Maybe something related to "Fixed the current problems?"
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Re: New Requests for Startups
#370Would somebody please disrupt the textbook publishing industry? http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susa... $264.39, for students that work part time jobs at $7.00 an hour (before taxes). Not only students are angry about this. Professors are angry, and authors are angry too. Bitter fights between professors and publishers are common. Everybody wants to see the big players in this industry fail .…
Screw the unversity, at this level people stop buying books anyway; if the book is too expensive, it's better to get a bootleg PDF or just borrow one from a library and xerox it for the whole year. No one cares, you don't need a textbook on lectures anyway.
But please oh please disrupt textbooks for schools. Parents are forced to buy new books every year because of social pressure. After all, you wouldn't want your kid to be known in class as "the one with parents too poor to even buy a textbook" and bullied for it. Not that adults would care about someone having a copied book - but the kids do. Recognition and respect of their classmates is of paramount importance to every kid in the school; publishers know this and they can charge whatever they like, and parents have to pay.