My entire product of doing in-image advertising[1] was created in order to build a new concept website for my uncle's nautical antique store[2]. He has a store built out of an old lighthouse in Old Town San Diego, and it's basically a museum (where you can buy the stuff inside it). When he came to me, he asked me if I could build a website that has the feel of his museum-like store, so I said, "Why don't we just take pictures inside of the store itself, and let your customers browse the pictures by hovering their mouse over the products and getting more info on the products they're interested in!".
The punchline: I spent months building a pretty amazing site, to have him say that his audience was probably too old to understand how to use the site I built. So far, that technology has led to two granted patents and my startup![3]
I've posted it here several times before, but I made this stream-of-consciousness journalling tool for myself: http://write.itskrish.co
The differentiator is that you choose a fixed duration, and if you stop typing within that duration, all your writing is erased. Such a constraint has been effective at getting me to pour out everything on my mind, without hesitation.
I only check my email 3x a day. But, I had such a hard time maintaining the will power to NOT check email, I had to build a tool to help. The service holds my email outside of my inbox and only delivers it at the three times a day I specify.
It has helped me focus on my real to do list, and not on email.
I am also working on an AI/ML bot that plays Out of the Park Baseball -- a baseball sim where you play as the team manager. The AI manages the roster and lineups and makes the big in game decisions. It does not handle pitches or batting (that is not part of the game).
When searching for an apartment in Switzerland a few years ago I found no good listing aggregator. So I built https://www.immomapper.ch/map which crawls the largest providers and currently shows over 100'000 listings on a big map with filtering, email alerts etc
Unwaffle (https://unwaffle.com) started as an admin feature of S3stat. I use it on a daily basis, and it has actually added enough revenue that I'm no longer worried that it would have been a waste of time to build it, should it turn out not to be commercially viable.
Like I said, it started internal, but it was so apparent after a few days that it could be useful for other businesses that I separated it out with an API and stuck it at a different URL, in case it turned out (which it did) that I wanted to polish it into a product of its own.
Public transit schedule checker that took into account wait times for connecting links from light rail (Silicon Valley) to CalTrain. So it would tell me stuff like:
- leave in 3 minutes for 32 minute wait connecting to bullet train
- leave in 3 minutes for 10 minute wait connecting to slow train
- leave in 33 minutes for 2 minute wait connecting to bullet train
- leave in 10 minutes for 3 minute wait connecting to slow train
Then I could see clearly my options in the way I preferred. I cared less about what time I would get home, and more about how much time I would spend waiting and sitting on a train, so this let me optimize for that.
I wanted to be able to quickly & easily resize images to particular sizes, so I made Bulk Resize Photos (https://bulkresizephotos.com); image resizing in your web browser without uploading the images, and without downloading/installing anything. Works best in Chrome.
I've built/building Orchestra (http://orchestrahq.com) to help me build better professional relationships. It helps me keep track of details of my interactions and also reminds me when I've not spoken to someone for a while.
I used to spend a bunch of time bouncing between HN and Reddit looking at headlines. So I built myself a tiny aggregator with React and socket.io that auto refreshes so I can glance at it throughout the day.
Some of these are just hacked-together tools, but I can think of several:
Turn on/off Dropcam inside home when security system is armed/disarmed.
Quick way to launch baby announcement website from within delivery room, depending on sex/name of my child, plus birth stats – my wife was thrilled ;)
My best "personal" product that I have also made available for others is http://footballpickempool.net. There are now great mobile apps for a pool like this, which are preferable for scoring and season-long rankings, but some still need paper. I was putting these together for our office each week, so I automated it.
Many webapps used internally for my job, so not personal, but a few that are hosted on their own domains and see public traffic.
Having to work a lot across timezones, I created a web app to track time and weather around the world and quickly find a good time to meet across multiple zones:
We had a large number of cron jobs at my regular employer that ran across multiple servers and applications. Things started to get a bit unwieldy and insight into any issues was negligible, so I built a cron job monitoring tool for internal use. Eventually I figured that if we found it useful maybe others would too. So I looked around and realized there were a few others already in existence that seemed to be making money. Mine offered some features the others didn't so I figured I'd go for it. It's been a lot of fun.
I wanted to better discover nearby architecture when walking around the city (Chicago) on weekends, so I made https://chicagoarchitecturedata.com/
Over 13,000 Chicago buildings with architecture style, architect (sometimes), year built, and other data points. Uses GeoDjango and browser location api to show stuff around you when you use on a phone or you computer. Also serves as a guide to learning about architecture styles and neighborhoods.
I write tiny programs in the Unix tradition: (mostly) stream based primitives that fit together with other tools, like format conversion (json-yaml) or command repeater rept(1), which is great together with lam(1).
I also enjoy writing the man pages, porting to very old compilers, creating packages, etc. It's a refreshing distraction from working with enterprise CMSes.
Ctrl-F Video (https://video.loud.red/) to look for keywords in YouTube videos. Needed it to quickly jump to relevant places in videos. Works well, even with YouTube's auto-generated CC, which surprised me. For some reason it is really popular in China.
I made an app that notifies family when a QR code is scanned. It also provides information for ems providers and allows for several levels of interaction between the two. It works well for the few people that use it. https://emsinfo.me.
[+] [-] bazillion|8 years ago|reply
The punchline: I spent months building a pretty amazing site, to have him say that his audience was probably too old to understand how to use the site I built. So far, that technology has led to two granted patents and my startup![3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf4pE0xtYTo
[2] http://westsea.com
[3] http://pleenq.com
[+] [-] krrishd|8 years ago|reply
The differentiator is that you choose a fixed duration, and if you stop typing within that duration, all your writing is erased. Such a constraint has been effective at getting me to pour out everything on my mind, without hesitation.
Built w React and open source @ https://github.com/krrishd/write
[+] [-] mezod|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busymichael|8 years ago|reply
I only check my email 3x a day. But, I had such a hard time maintaining the will power to NOT check email, I had to build a tool to help. The service holds my email outside of my inbox and only delivers it at the three times a day I specify.
It has helped me focus on my real to do list, and not on email.
I am also working on an AI/ML bot that plays Out of the Park Baseball -- a baseball sim where you play as the team manager. The AI manages the roster and lineups and makes the big in game decisions. It does not handle pitches or batting (that is not part of the game).
[+] [-] darndt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|8 years ago|reply
Like I said, it started internal, but it was so apparent after a few days that it could be useful for other businesses that I separated it out with an API and stuck it at a different URL, in case it turned out (which it did) that I wanted to polish it into a product of its own.
[+] [-] natch|8 years ago|reply
- leave in 3 minutes for 32 minute wait connecting to bullet train
- leave in 3 minutes for 10 minute wait connecting to slow train
- leave in 33 minutes for 2 minute wait connecting to bullet train
- leave in 10 minutes for 3 minute wait connecting to slow train
Then I could see clearly my options in the way I preferred. I cared less about what time I would get home, and more about how much time I would spend waiting and sitting on a train, so this let me optimize for that.
[+] [-] znpy|8 years ago|reply
The nice thing is that it lets you create offline web apps that you can actually print on paper (double sided) and cut.
It is a simple web app that basically wraps the flashcards latex package, while giving you a nearly-complete preview using mathjax.
http://flashcards.dokku.santoro.tk/
[+] [-] jfoster|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rismay|8 years ago|reply
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/helvetica-neue-native-open/i...
[+] [-] tixocloud|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpeden|8 years ago|reply
I used to spend a bunch of time bouncing between HN and Reddit looking at headlines. So I built myself a tiny aggregator with React and socket.io that auto refreshes so I can glance at it throughout the day.
[+] [-] shanecleveland|8 years ago|reply
Turn on/off Dropcam inside home when security system is armed/disarmed.
Quick way to launch baby announcement website from within delivery room, depending on sex/name of my child, plus birth stats – my wife was thrilled ;)
My best "personal" product that I have also made available for others is http://footballpickempool.net. There are now great mobile apps for a pool like this, which are preferable for scoring and season-long rankings, but some still need paper. I was putting these together for our office each week, so I automated it.
Many webapps used internally for my job, so not personal, but a few that are hosted on their own domains and see public traffic.
[+] [-] theak|8 years ago|reply
https://www.iwantthetime.com
[+] [-] pigpen34|8 years ago|reply
We had a large number of cron jobs at my regular employer that ran across multiple servers and applications. Things started to get a bit unwieldy and insight into any issues was negligible, so I built a cron job monitoring tool for internal use. Eventually I figured that if we found it useful maybe others would too. So I looked around and realized there were a few others already in existence that seemed to be making money. Mine offered some features the others didn't so I figured I'd go for it. It's been a lot of fun.
[+] [-] influxed|8 years ago|reply
Over 13,000 Chicago buildings with architecture style, architect (sometimes), year built, and other data points. Uses GeoDjango and browser location api to show stuff around you when you use on a phone or you computer. Also serves as a guide to learning about architecture styles and neighborhoods.
[+] [-] ry_ry|8 years ago|reply
Kinda underwhelming, but I have simple tastes :D
[+] [-] SN76477|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dthakur|8 years ago|reply
Interesting timing for this question, as I just released it _today_[1].
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momento-for-hacker...
[+] [-] mezod|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjmulder|8 years ago|reply
I also enjoy writing the man pages, porting to very old compilers, creating packages, etc. It's a refreshing distraction from working with enterprise CMSes.
[+] [-] jaflo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenkstom|8 years ago|reply