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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.

#61

Post by shalmanese »

I've always thought about a system for teaching kids about programming by building AI players for online games. The system would consist of 3 components:

1. A screen scraping/computer vision toolkit that would supply most of the AI primitives to interpret games 2. An interpreter for each game that would provide an machine usable API to interact with the game 3. An AI program that would then play the game

Component 1 would only need to be built once, Component 2 would need to be built once per game and then Component 3 is what the kids would get to build.

I always thought this would be an excellent, gentle introduction into the world of programming.

Take Fishy (http://www.xgenstudios.com/game.php?keyword=fishy) for example. It would be really simple to build a dumb AI that could do ok but to build a really great AI would involve some really sophisticated path planning and optimization algorithms.

What better way to get kids inspired and wanting to learn about programming than have them solve the games they're already playing?

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

#64

Post by huhtenberg »

decadentcactus wrote: post #45
tocomment wrote: post #34

Room service robot for hotels. It could basically be a motorized cart. It would be easy for it to get around in big hotels with elevators.

Might it be easier to just build a dedicated sort of line for each room? Like a part of the wall that opens up and is connected to the kitchen/wherever, to deliver your food. Would be harder at first but it'd be much easier down the line, and more efficient.

It is WAY cheaper to use a human to deliver the orders.

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

#65

Post by akronim »

dcurtis wrote: post #41
tocomment wrote: post #37

Scan in ISBN of a book, have it posted for sale on Amazon and craigslist.

Amazon already does this. Actually, I think it's required to list an item on Amazon.

You need the ISBN, but it's not as simple as scan it and you're done.

Delicious Library might do what you want?

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

#66

Post by apsurd »

I've always wondered why social networks don't ally with music labels and promote/sell music. Small networks can contact indie labels, and huge networks can work with sony, etc ...

It just seems to me that music is the perfect social product...

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

#68

Post by toisanji »

huhtenberg wrote: post #64
decadentcactus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might it be easier to just build a dedicated sort of line for each room? Like a part of the wall that opens up and is connected to the kitchen/wherever, to deliver your food. Would be harder at first but it'd be much easier down the line, and more efficient.

It is WAY cheaper to use a human to deliver the orders.

I actually worked in a hospital where they paid for robots to deliver medical records to doctors/nurses. The nurse would request records, and then the medical records department would fill it up and send them out. I think that didnt last too long, not efficient enough.

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

#70

Post by Tichy »

pudo wrote: post #58
goodgoblin wrote: post #4

I would love something that aggregated all your karma points into an exchange of some kind. I would use it, but I would never build it.

I have been coding a prototype of this in my free time over the past couple of weeks. It's fun, but I'm not sure it actually makes lots of sense. Not only is it really hard come up with a model to convert currency from many places into a "standardized" format (or even to allow for OpenID-style distribution) - it'll also not be easy to provide data to other sites that allows them to do useful things easily. Tags might…

I just don't see how it is technically feasible, as most sites don't provide a way to transfer karma? Or is the idea more that of an independent karma service that other sites could plug in to (like gravatar does for profile pictures)?
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