"I don't have anything against hot new technologies, but a lot of useful work comes from plugging boring technologies together and doing the obvious thing."
"I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly."
"Starting this week, drivers of select new Audis who approach more than 600 intersections in the District, can know when the light will turn green, by glancing at their dashboards."
"VT Says It Is Behind ‘Driverless’ Van — The “driverless” van seen driving around Clarendon over the past week was actually a Virginia Tech research project designed to record the “real world reactions” to a vehicle without a driver. However, there was a driver: a man dressed as a car seat. The mystery was solved in real time on Twitter yesterday and quickly went viral."
I attended one of the regional competitions held in Northern Virginia over the weekend and it was great to see so many 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students participate in MathCounts.
I consumed product data feeds from companies that ran affiliate programs through companies like Commission Junction, filtered/stored the product data offline, indexed it, and displayed it in any number of ways through the web.
In retrospect, I should have spent more time marketing the site and getting feedback from users instead of focusing on the technical infrastructure :-)
I worked on a similar side project a little while ago that focused on items that were below ten dollars. Like 1 Dollar Things, I used your typical affiliate data feeds. It was an interesting development exercise, but I failed to get any steady traffic/interest in the site.
I think the idea has some merit, but my execution wasn't good enough. Good luck with 1 Dollar Things!