HN: Share an unused idea
I'm always seeing people with tons of skills, but don't have any ideas to execute! But then I see a lot of people with a lot of ideas! So I thought that the people with plenty of left over ideas should share them, get critique on them, and let others build them if they like 'em!
16 comments
UserVoice for congressional districts as an alternative to lobbyists.
The idea is to use technology to disrupt traditional lobbying to the point that it is more difficult for the bad lobbyists to have a negative impact.
With the science of reputation and filtering systems getting better by the day, one solution might be a service that makes everyone a potential lobbyist. There are about 118,000 citizens per pair of ears in Washington according to Clay Johnson, author of the blog InfoVegan. The website I am suggesting would allow all 118,000 people an equal chance to voice their opinion. Those 118,000 opinions are then voted one by those same 118,000 people. The most upvoted items "float" to the top and get past the filter to the Congressman or Congresswoman's ears.
If you also make it so that people can't link and vote for opinions directly, you remove the one major avenue used to game the system: one person with too much time or influence spreads the link to their idea to those likely to upvote it.
Instead the system can be designed like a double-blind experiment. Ideas are stripped of names of people and organizations. The system randomly assigns ideas already submitted to be upvoted or downvoted to all participants. A participants ideas does not get submitted for voting by others until they have "bought" that right by voting on the ideas of others. Participants get a limited number of upvotes and downvotes to use, thus preventing them from giving out too many of one or the other and being forced to make a judgment call.
Those are a few ideas, but there is no reason the mechanics of voting and reputation systems can't be used for this end.
As I said above, this is a bit like UserVoice for government in that it allows users (citizens) to "lobby" the product managers (congressmen and congresswomen) for product feature requests and improvements.
The idea is to use technology to disrupt traditional lobbying to the point that it is more difficult for the bad lobbyists to have a negative impact.
With the science of reputation and filtering systems getting better by the day, one solution might be a service that makes everyone a potential lobbyist. There are about 118,000 citizens per pair of ears in Washington according to Clay Johnson, author of the blog InfoVegan. The website I am suggesting would allow all 118,000 people an equal chance to voice their opinion. Those 118,000 opinions are then voted one by those same 118,000 people. The most upvoted items "float" to the top and get past the filter to the Congressman or Congresswoman's ears.
If you also make it so that people can't link and vote for opinions directly, you remove the one major avenue used to game the system: one person with too much time or influence spreads the link to their idea to those likely to upvote it.
Instead the system can be designed like a double-blind experiment. Ideas are stripped of names of people and organizations. The system randomly assigns ideas already submitted to be upvoted or downvoted to all participants. A participants ideas does not get submitted for voting by others until they have "bought" that right by voting on the ideas of others. Participants get a limited number of upvotes and downvotes to use, thus preventing them from giving out too many of one or the other and being forced to make a judgment call.
Those are a few ideas, but there is no reason the mechanics of voting and reputation systems can't be used for this end.
As I said above, this is a bit like UserVoice for government in that it allows users (citizens) to "lobby" the product managers (congressmen and congresswomen) for product feature requests and improvements.
This would be really, really great. The biggest challenge would be to get people really using it, but if it was as widely used as UserVoice is today, it would definitely get attention. And webapps that would change society for the better would be really exciting to work on.
To be honest, I don't think that would be all that hard if you use the bowling pin strategy (naming credit goes to Chris Dixon.
Open up the system for only one congressional district at a time. Opening it up countrywide could kill it due to perceived inactivity. Instead you start with the congressional district where Silicon Valley is located. There's a lot of very smart people there, who typically have strong political views and are active about them. Those are prime early adopters.
Those early adopters will also include many of the best and brightest tech and product minds who will give the best feedback early in the life of the product (just like with Quora, Forrst and Dribbble).
Once it has a high level of adoption there, it should be making national news already. You then roll it out slowly over the most politically active congressional districts one by one until it's used all over the country. I would also choose strategic "trend setting" cities with high levels of political activism such as NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. shortly after the congressional district where Silicon Valley is located.
Open up the system for only one congressional district at a time. Opening it up countrywide could kill it due to perceived inactivity. Instead you start with the congressional district where Silicon Valley is located. There's a lot of very smart people there, who typically have strong political views and are active about them. Those are prime early adopters.
Those early adopters will also include many of the best and brightest tech and product minds who will give the best feedback early in the life of the product (just like with Quora, Forrst and Dribbble).
Once it has a high level of adoption there, it should be making national news already. You then roll it out slowly over the most politically active congressional districts one by one until it's used all over the country. I would also choose strategic "trend setting" cities with high levels of political activism such as NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. shortly after the congressional district where Silicon Valley is located.
Sounds like a great strategy, and trying to target the early adopter crowd would definitely be the best way to get buzz going early. With it being 2 years before the next presidential election now, it'd be a great time to start getting it going. When are you releasing it? :)
Unfortunately I'm not working on this idea. I gave it and the others in this thread away to community because I'm currently working to make one of my ideas a reality and I already have a second one planned for when I'm done with this one.
On top of that I'm not living in the United States right now. I plan to return one day, but at the moment I live in São Paulo, Brazil.
By all means feel free to work on it, share it with others or whatever. I'd be more than happy to advise anyone who wants to work on it.
I have way more time than ideas. New ideas appear daily. I wish I had as many skills as ideas.
On top of that I'm not living in the United States right now. I plan to return one day, but at the moment I live in São Paulo, Brazil.
By all means feel free to work on it, share it with others or whatever. I'd be more than happy to advise anyone who wants to work on it.
I have way more time than ideas. New ideas appear daily. I wish I had as many skills as ideas.
Very funny ... I'm in Thailand right now myself. So hey :)
And I actually have more ideas than time myself. The hard thing is picking the things that will payoff the most over time, knowing what's most important to tackle first. The best step, I guess, is just to get started and see how it pans out :)
And I actually have more ideas than time myself. The hard thing is picking the things that will payoff the most over time, knowing what's most important to tackle first. The best step, I guess, is just to get started and see how it pans out :)
Getting started is the hardest part. After that you just need to pick up momentum.
Social Babysitting.
A social network where parents fill out a profile of themselves and their child and the site tries to match up parents with children of similar ages and interests. The parents then can meet one another, check out each others homes and introduce the kids to each other to confirm compatibility. Once that is done, these mutually compatible parents can rely on each other to babysit each others kids when necessary.
The site would keep track of karma points between parents.
This would permit couples to have more alone time together without having to spend lots on babysitters.
A social network where parents fill out a profile of themselves and their child and the site tries to match up parents with children of similar ages and interests. The parents then can meet one another, check out each others homes and introduce the kids to each other to confirm compatibility. Once that is done, these mutually compatible parents can rely on each other to babysit each others kids when necessary.
The site would keep track of karma points between parents.
This would permit couples to have more alone time together without having to spend lots on babysitters.
That could be a very cool ideal. Might even end up being a way to meet like-minded people in your age range ... slight side bonus. As with any social project involving people, it could backfire, but definitely should be something that could scale big over time.
Very cool idea. Like couch surfing.
To be honest, I think one of the hottest spaces today is social sharing in the real world. There are so many possibilities it's mind-boggling. In this case and the dog one I posted below, you are sharing personal responsibilities. However, I think most of the potential is in sharing personal capital expenditures that are almost always at a low-level of utilization for most of the population. For example:
-- Sharing cars/bikes
-- Sharing toolboxes (in an apartment building for example)
In fact, I think the apartment building is the perfect size unit of sharing for a lot of goods. The key challenge is developing the interfaces and mechanism that prevent the tragedy of the commons.
-- Sharing cars/bikes
-- Sharing toolboxes (in an apartment building for example)
In fact, I think the apartment building is the perfect size unit of sharing for a lot of goods. The key challenge is developing the interfaces and mechanism that prevent the tragedy of the commons.
An online reputation/credibility aggregator. Do the same for credibility that TransUnion, Experian and Equifax have done for financial credit. Aggregate the reputation of one user across many sites. Here are some examples of sites and reputation metrics to use:
-- Hacker News upvotes/downvotes
-- Quora upvotes/downvotes/followers/Endorsements
-- Twitter followers/retweets
-- Disqus Likes
-- Facebook Likes
-- LinkedIn Connections and Endorsements
-- GitHub Followers
-- Forrst Followers/Likes
-- Dribbble Likes
-- Etc.
All the pieces are falling into place to establish an online credibility rating. Possibly even multiple credit ratings for difference dimensions like coding, graphic design, business advice, life advice, career advice, etc.
Here's a possible use case of such data:
Imagine a debate erupts between two users who claim to be authority. Maybe they are arguing on climate change. Each argues his side of the issue and makes claims. One has a high credibility rating of 720 and the other has a low credibility rating of 590. Others watching the debate can then take the credibility rating into account when considering which side to trust/support.
That may not be the best example, but I honestly think such a credibility rating would have value and that we really won't understand the value of such a system until you put it out there and start seeing what others do with it.
-- Hacker News upvotes/downvotes
-- Quora upvotes/downvotes/followers/Endorsements
-- Twitter followers/retweets
-- Disqus Likes
-- Facebook Likes
-- LinkedIn Connections and Endorsements
-- GitHub Followers
-- Forrst Followers/Likes
-- Dribbble Likes
-- Etc.
All the pieces are falling into place to establish an online credibility rating. Possibly even multiple credit ratings for difference dimensions like coding, graphic design, business advice, life advice, career advice, etc.
Here's a possible use case of such data:
Imagine a debate erupts between two users who claim to be authority. Maybe they are arguing on climate change. Each argues his side of the issue and makes claims. One has a high credibility rating of 720 and the other has a low credibility rating of 590. Others watching the debate can then take the credibility rating into account when considering which side to trust/support.
That may not be the best example, but I honestly think such a credibility rating would have value and that we really won't understand the value of such a system until you put it out there and start seeing what others do with it.
Can the person who downvoted this please explain why?
Skills - a site, where you split up and clearly define your skills, offering them to the public for sale or trade, if order for people to find what ever skills they need in the vicinity.
max. three skills registered pr. person. Professionals need to register as such, but log in on equal terms with every one else.
Everyone is judged by those helped, on their assistance, from a decimal valuesystem. Friends inside the system can recommend skilled people.
Suggestet intro: SKILL - a skill can be anything, you do very, very well. You don't have to be a chef with a restaurant in order to be a good cook, but quite possibly you don't know as much about hygiene as the professional chef, and should restrict your skill to specifics. Like "Couisine of XX country". Or "The best kitchen utensils at any given price".
"Will aid for - cash contribution to me, a charity, my church etc. - DVDs, LPs, Comics, whatever collectable" - assistance with my car (a xx model yy 19zz) - food in the fridge - minimum wage for max. xx days - a homecooked meal - a friendly/intelligent chat - and so on
If you use it, credit me, or mail me krabat a menneske dot dk with willingness to jam more on topic. If it already exists, please let me know.
max. three skills registered pr. person. Professionals need to register as such, but log in on equal terms with every one else.
Everyone is judged by those helped, on their assistance, from a decimal valuesystem. Friends inside the system can recommend skilled people.
Suggestet intro: SKILL - a skill can be anything, you do very, very well. You don't have to be a chef with a restaurant in order to be a good cook, but quite possibly you don't know as much about hygiene as the professional chef, and should restrict your skill to specifics. Like "Couisine of XX country". Or "The best kitchen utensils at any given price".
"Will aid for - cash contribution to me, a charity, my church etc. - DVDs, LPs, Comics, whatever collectable" - assistance with my car (a xx model yy 19zz) - food in the fridge - minimum wage for max. xx days - a homecooked meal - a friendly/intelligent chat - and so on
If you use it, credit me, or mail me krabat a menneske dot dk with willingness to jam more on topic. If it already exists, please let me know.
Learning Paths: compile a database where you specify a goal, possibly a fairly vague one, and users contribute the bits of knowledge that would be useful to accomplish it, all the way down to the very basics.
So if the goal were "Write a 3D graphics engine", users would collaboratively add items going all the way back to, say, basic geometry or trig.
I was thinking that llvm sounds pretty interesting, but I don't know anything much about compilers or interpreters, so not only do I not know how I could use llvm, but I'm not clear on what it could do. Another 'learning path' could lay out what knowledge and/or experience I'd need to build to get to the point of being able to understand and use llvm for an interesting project.
This could also be useful for teachers. A kid interested in video games could see the things they ought to learn and master, and would see how they build on each other. That would help answer the "when am I ever going to use this" question.
So if the goal were "Write a 3D graphics engine", users would collaboratively add items going all the way back to, say, basic geometry or trig.
I was thinking that llvm sounds pretty interesting, but I don't know anything much about compilers or interpreters, so not only do I not know how I could use llvm, but I'm not clear on what it could do. Another 'learning path' could lay out what knowledge and/or experience I'd need to build to get to the point of being able to understand and use llvm for an interesting project.
This could also be useful for teachers. A kid interested in video games could see the things they ought to learn and master, and would see how they build on each other. That would help answer the "when am I ever going to use this" question.
I've been working on a simple graph based UI called ConceptsMap that creates a map of all the topics involved in a concept, and how they're connected. Users then submit materials that are related to each node on the graph, and vote on existing submissions. So if you want to learn about LLVM, it'll show you all the branching topics, and you can pick the 5-6 best resources for that concept.
Funny, i've been thinking about the same idea for some months now
Social dog kenneling and dog walking. Basically AirBnB for dogs.
Basically when you go out of town you can leave your dog with other users on the site who have dogs and vice versa. Every time you take in a dog of another user you earn karma points. When you kennel a dog with another user you spend karma points. Users get a certain number of karma points for free upon signing up, but once they've used them, they much take in the dogs of others to get more back.
This site could also be used for dog walking as well. Maybe even bathing dogs could be included.
The site would need a Terms of Use that limits the liability of those that participate and those running the site.
Basically when you go out of town you can leave your dog with other users on the site who have dogs and vice versa. Every time you take in a dog of another user you earn karma points. When you kennel a dog with another user you spend karma points. Users get a certain number of karma points for free upon signing up, but once they've used them, they much take in the dogs of others to get more back.
This site could also be used for dog walking as well. Maybe even bathing dogs could be included.
The site would need a Terms of Use that limits the liability of those that participate and those running the site.
I started coding this idea a while back, but had to abandon it for lack of time: A site for civic associations that allows them to post announcements, coordinate events, and collect dues via a credit card.
Because civic associations in my area are voluntary but handle essential services such as snow plowing, I came up with a novel way to guilt residents into paying their dues: A Google Map showing which households were up to date on their dues -- a way to subtly pressure neighbors to pay their fair share.
Site could also include a neighborhood marketplace -- sort of a hyper-local version of Craigslist -- and other tools useful to civic associations.
Because civic associations in my area are voluntary but handle essential services such as snow plowing, I came up with a novel way to guilt residents into paying their dues: A Google Map showing which households were up to date on their dues -- a way to subtly pressure neighbors to pay their fair share.
Site could also include a neighborhood marketplace -- sort of a hyper-local version of Craigslist -- and other tools useful to civic associations.
Great idea! You could probably do the collecting dues stuff with the WePay API. I'm using it for a project right now and it's pretty awesome.
A mobile app that allows users to create ad-hoc points-of-interest maps, both public and private, based around events.
My inspiration came from spending time at the Brimfield Antique Show this year. My lady wanted an easy way to note specific vendors with items she liked and wanted to revisit, but the iPhone Maps app only let me drop one pin at a time, for some unknown reason. This lead me to imagining a map of the area with dozens of pins dropped by all sorts of people, with tips ("this lady is willing to haggle", "don't get your hopes up, this guy wants twice what his stuff is worth") and recommendations ("avoid the seafood place. trust me."). It's a little Foursquare-y, but less about, "I'm here" and more about, "let me tell you what I've discovered."
I imagine something like this could be used for all sorts of things, from large concerts like Coachella or Lollapalooza to keeping track of where one parked in a parking garage. The idea scales from personal location tracking to a sort of event-focused hive mind of wisdom.
Of course, it is entirely possible this already exists, and I just didn't check the App Store throughly enough. But if it doesn't, it should. I'd use it. We were at the Topsfield Fair last night; it would have been wonderful to know exactly where the maple cotton candy vendor was, or to expect an unbelievable wait before riding the ferris wheel.
My inspiration came from spending time at the Brimfield Antique Show this year. My lady wanted an easy way to note specific vendors with items she liked and wanted to revisit, but the iPhone Maps app only let me drop one pin at a time, for some unknown reason. This lead me to imagining a map of the area with dozens of pins dropped by all sorts of people, with tips ("this lady is willing to haggle", "don't get your hopes up, this guy wants twice what his stuff is worth") and recommendations ("avoid the seafood place. trust me."). It's a little Foursquare-y, but less about, "I'm here" and more about, "let me tell you what I've discovered."
I imagine something like this could be used for all sorts of things, from large concerts like Coachella or Lollapalooza to keeping track of where one parked in a parking garage. The idea scales from personal location tracking to a sort of event-focused hive mind of wisdom.
Of course, it is entirely possible this already exists, and I just didn't check the App Store throughly enough. But if it doesn't, it should. I'd use it. We were at the Topsfield Fair last night; it would have been wonderful to know exactly where the maple cotton candy vendor was, or to expect an unbelievable wait before riding the ferris wheel.
groups.
create a group by setting it´s name.
join a group by knowing its name.
send messages to everybody in the group.
get contact info of everybody in the group.
create/accept/reject dates/deadlines.
share comments/links/files
this is for people who where at camps, workshops, classes, university, play in bands, work on any type of project together,...
sounds interesting?
create a group by setting it´s name.
join a group by knowing its name.
send messages to everybody in the group.
get contact info of everybody in the group.
create/accept/reject dates/deadlines.
share comments/links/files
this is for people who where at camps, workshops, classes, university, play in bands, work on any type of project together,...
sounds interesting?
Yes. I've been infatuated with this idea for 3 years now. Specifically, having the groups centered around threaded forum-like discussion. So many times I've wanted to throw up a temporary forum online, and I just could never find an easy enough way to do it that didn't require lengthy registration and administration.
It would be nice if I could just tell someone, go to "foobar.com/<some word>" and we'll discuss it there.
I have a killer domain for the idea, but sadly have always been too busy working on other projects. To tell the truth, I'm a bit intimidated by working on forum software. Last time I tried, I feature-creeped myself to burn-out.
It would be nice if I could just tell someone, go to "foobar.com/<some word>" and we'll discuss it there.
I have a killer domain for the idea, but sadly have always been too busy working on other projects. To tell the truth, I'm a bit intimidated by working on forum software. Last time I tried, I feature-creeped myself to burn-out.
Check out http://MicroMobs.com. They do almost exactly what you're talking about.
http://groupspaces.com/ does most of what you mention.
thanks for the link!
i didn´t know it yet though i researched a while on the topic. :)
Outsourced giveaways. Basically a blogger/podcaster/company pays me a fee to give something away for them (a book, an iPad etc) and I handle all the backend stuff like contest rules, entries, selecting a winner, contacting and shipping the prize. Eventually the site could match up companies who want to give stuff away for free with people who want to run a contest/giveaway (for a fee of course)
I gave up on this idea because you'd need massive lawyer involvement as game/contest rules are different everywhere and not well understood. You would probably need a lawyer co-founder to make this work.
Exchanging contact information with new people you have just met is still not as easy as one thinks. I'm not going to convince someone I've just met to install some contact mobile app that I have that the other person does not have.
http://times.jayliew.com/2010/10/05/half-baked-idea-of-the-d...
http://times.jayliew.com/2010/10/05/half-baked-idea-of-the-d...
So if anyones interested, I'll kick it off:
A tab candy-esque site to share tabs, or specific sites with friends, instead of bookmarking, you can share a site with a friend, or a group of friends. Your friends could also allow you the option of automatically opening tabs that come from you. Would also be an interesting social experiment!
A tab candy-esque site to share tabs, or specific sites with friends, instead of bookmarking, you can share a site with a friend, or a group of friends. Your friends could also allow you the option of automatically opening tabs that come from you. Would also be an interesting social experiment!
I actually brainstormed a similiar idea about 6 months ago.
A site for parents/grandparents who live away from their kids to read stories to their children.
It should be really easy for the parent to record a story in their voice - ideally a mobile app. The kids go to a website or even just run a desktop app, say iTunes, which receives the recorded stories as a podcast.
It should be really easy for the parent to record a story in their voice - ideally a mobile app. The kids go to a website or even just run a desktop app, say iTunes, which receives the recorded stories as a podcast.
A Story before bed (http://www.astorybeforebed.com/) already does this. It's a webapp but also has an iOS app for mobile reading and playback. They don't offer receiving the stories as a podcast, though, but you can play them back online or on your app forever.
Awesome! I'm really happy someone made it.
A product that aids you when you browse the web: the moment you land on a page, it warns you if it thinks the article you are about to read might be a waste of your time:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1776409
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1776409
I am looking for feedback on my own ideas - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773435