Technical books using https://learning.oreilly.com/home/. I have been a subscriber for more than 10 years, dicontinued for a few years and resumed about a year ago.
Also use Amazon Kindle, Google Play books if I can't find the book on Safari.
There are lots of good resources as mentioned by others. Here are some starting points.
Start with a list of ideas
- These ideas should be solutions of problems either you face or you see others face
- Find 10 people you can talk to about your solution and make a list of features
- Pick the core ones and build a functional prototype that people can use and give feedback
Start with a problem (space)
- Look for problems that people complain about or ask questions (an analysis of Ask HN is a good source to start with)
Here is one story I read today (I think I found it on HN!)
Some companies do provide a technical track in which you can become a Principal Engineer with no management responsibility. But if you have experience in solving problems, you may be good as a mentor/coach to other devs.
The longer term solution to this problem may be technical consulting.
Blockly is an example of no-code app that generates code. It is a good starting point to understand how you can build a no code framework. Blockly is...
1. A workspace
2. A set of pre-defined componets that map to functions or statements
3. A way to connect components to back-ends (like spreadsheets or database columns)
4. Some semantics(behavior) for connections.
5. An implied or explicit sequence of interactions between components.
"find your first 1-10 paying customers yourself". I agree with this. Going through this will show you whether your product is really ready for the market and customers perceive enough value to pay for it. This part cannot be outsourced. This is the founding teams job and is as important as creating a product (sometimes even more important).
The current search engine has very limited context (your profile and the sites you visited and the searches you have done).
What if the next incremental improvement is asking you questions about the search to get better context before actually doing the search and giving you a smaller set of usable results?
- SciFi - Foundation Triology, 2001 Space Odessey and Ring World
- Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand - I never read anything like that before
- Leon Uris' books (Qb VII and a host of others) showed how scary humanity can be
- The Magic of Thinking Big was a breath of fresh air
- Edward De Bono's books
1. Charge a subscription fee one rate for consumers and a higher rate for businesses
2. Get rid of all inactive accounts
3. Charge a fee for tweetstreams
4. Fix the rate limit of APIs and create tools for developers
5. Add a features for event tweets/group accounts
6. Talk to developers, add features for Twitter app development
7. Fix the 140 character limitation
Check out http://idebate.org/debatabase I knew it as debatepedia a while ago. Choose a topic and click on a subtopic. The old version had a argument map style debates. There is already a mention of argument maps in one of the comments which is another great tool.
I am taking the following:
A Brief History of Humankind
Video Games and Learning
Model Thinking
I am enjoying every one of those courses. Besides learning something new, they certainly provoke you to think. Model Thinking for example, is kind of refreshingly different from some of the other stuff I do.
I am mostly listening to the video lectures, read notes. Doing it for fun, mostly.
Do you have any stats on what percentage of people click on all those options on the left? One option may be to divide the page into two columns one for paid search results and the other for organic search results.
1. Create a simple prototype that demonstrates the core ideas of the concept and show it to a few people (you trust). You may be able to attract some good developers if it appeals to them.
2. Start a blog and talk about how your idea may benefit some potential customers. See whether any one shows interest.
3. Go to one of the startup meet ups (www.meetup.com) in your area and informally discuss it or present it to the group.
4. You may not need to build the entire software. Most of the good developers know how to reuse existing software (libraries) to quickly build a version 1 of the product.
5. Try a few interns from your local computer school and let them build the first version of the product. Let a few friends try it out. If there is enough interest, you may be able to find some supporters in funding it or developers interested in developing it further.
6. You can start a project in one of the open source communities like sourceforge put some high level specs and see whether any one will be interested in joining you.
7. If you strongly believe in the idea and do not want to go open source, prepare a simple plan and approach some angels. Many angel investors may also have a good rolodex of development resources.
I think having a good idea for a great app is cool. But you need to go to the next step of prototyping or let others visualize it so that you can get some reactions. This will help improve the idea and also hear if such an idea is already implemented somewhere else.
Also use Amazon Kindle, Google Play books if I can't find the book on Safari.