An online-only bank (with ATM support of course) that lets you have as many "virtual" accounts as you want, and lets you set up programmatic rules for transferring money in between accounts on certain days/times, or triggered by events ("transfer $100 from B to A if account A goes below $100, and notify me by email"; "on overdraft from A, withdraw from B instead"). Then have a debit card that you can use to charge to any of your accounts, and an app that lets you configure which account it's drawing from.
This would make "budgeting" very easy. Have a "food" account, an "entertainment" account, etc. Do weekly or monthly budgets by transferring money into your mini-accounts, and denying transactions for each account when it goes over budget. (Or let the transaction go through from a backup account, but notify you that you went over budget.)
Also, have an API that anyone can write apps for.
Of course, I'll never do this because starting a bank is really hard.
I'd like to see a not for profit bank in the sense that the profit the bank does make, goes directly back into the local community surrounding the bank. The bank would have a physical presence but strong and modern on-line support.
Github for travel planning. You can collaborate with your co-travelers on creating an itinerary but then like github you can fork other peoples completed itineraries and make them your own.
Wow, that really is a great idea. It would be a great way to discover new places based on where people have actually gone and not just people in your friend circle. Please someone work on this!
Although I guess you could do it on github if you had technically inclined people doing the traveling and wanting to post about it.
Love this thread idea, had been considering posting one myself.
- Tablets for seniors: when the elderly population sees an iPad ad, they're not captivated or entranced; they're intimidated and disappointed that they're left behind by technology. I envision the "jitterbug for tablets" -- built on Android with big, tactile buttons; a 'never get lost, take me home' feature; remotely controlled functionality (IE turn on/off apps); etc. They wouldn't use much bandwidth, so you could build 3G right into the device and charge a significant monthly premium -- after all, it's a dramatic quality-of-life improvement for someone sitting in a retirement home.
GE and a few other companies are doing similar projects, but no one is really executing all that well IMO. Problems: would be super hard to get off the ground / defend, and the market is becoming increasingly obsolete.
We bought a tactile desktop computer designed for elder people (www.ordimemo.com) for my grandmother 3 years ago. She loved it... at first. The idea of receiving emails and pictures from all of us and having access to "the internet" really pleased her.
But after a few months she kind of stopped using it because it had too many issues. I'm going to list some of them in case it gave ideas to people:
* based on IE7 so a lot of websites don't work/render properly. This does not seem important when the core of your users go on google/wikipedia and that's it. But my grandmother loves to order online but is limited to amazon because most of the other websites don't work properly. She would gladly pay more to be able to simplify most of the main websites UI for her and ease her order flow.
* Impossible to have more than one tab. This seems logical at first because it simplifies everything, but when she is ordering something as a gift and wants to look for an address she has to close the whole application and go in "notebook" and start over again. Same with the idea of having multiple tabs in IE.
* Email services really limited. Their idea is to avoid spam you have to whitelist every email address. But this is not negotiable, so when you order for the first time online you can't use your system's email because you'll never get the "confirm your email address". Or you use a gmail account for this which immediately make things too complicated for her.
* Most of the other features (games especially) are really limited/dumb such as having to recognize a banana. Creating games for her is something I'm planning to do but with the old browser inside the machine it makes things harder.
* Pictures management! We all send pictures to her by email but she can't organize them at all. I've been thinking of a UI for this but when I draw it/explain it I immediately see she would be completely lost. She needs a simple UI on top of explorer of something that would do "delete, crop, move, rename, add comments". And on top of that the main feature she needs is "print it for me and mail it to me". Websites already exist for this feature but she would have to understand how to upload photos and then use them which is clearly impossible.
* Keyboard! Another big issue for her is being able to raise her arms high enough for a long period of time to type an email on the screen with the tactile keyboard. At the same time, the keyboard delivered with the computer is not in alphabetical order. I've been trying to teach her but it takes her a long time to write so she mostly gives up and limit herself to a few words!
Something that pipelines charitable donations through micro-financing. Say someone needs a payday loan, and Bill Gates is going to donate a billion dollars to some charity. Instead, that person gets the loan with no interest or penalties and sets up a payment plan with that charity for the amount. Should create more efficient spending patterns for low-income families, particular those that encounter short-term deficits, while still getting the charities the same amount of money in the long run.
The charity doesn't get the same amount of money though. Even setting aside the reduced value of getting money in the future instead of now, you're not going to get 100% payments and you have no interest or penalties to make up for it.
I have boxes and boxes of tapes, disks, notebooks, books, and photos. All of which I'd prefer to have digital. Other physical things could be digitized with video, photographs, and scans. I would take them to my street corner and a driver would pick them up and deliver them to a digitizer. They could show up in the cloud a week later, or be delivered back to me in a hard drive.
Once the digital copies are received, the customer can request to have the goods responsibly disposed of. The service could also cover long term storage for customers who want the originals to remain intact. Possessions can be returned to the owner within a day or two's notice.
A service like this would allow people to minimize their physical existence while preserving the memories associated with physical possessions.
Uber for hiring a undocumented worker/day laborer. Sometimes I hire these guys[0,1] and I have to go pick them up [2], try to find one that speaks decent English, negotiate pricing, explain the job, and manage the quality of work[3].
There is actually a huge potential to improve the worker side of the current status quo. Right now, these guys have a ton of idle time[4] and there is a pricing opportunity[5]. There's a lot of other opportunities in this, I've been mulling it over for the past few years, I can build it just don't want to market/grow it[6]
[0] for projects that I don't necessarily need a contractor for
[1] or, work that a regular contractor doesn't do, like; my lawn guy doesn't clean gutters, my housekeeper doesn't clean windows
[2] taking them home is worse - they're probably dirty & sweaty and I don't that in my car
[3] can't have high expectations, these are generalists don't expect them to do high quality tile or carpentry
[4] they sit in front of hardware stores for hours just waiting, some days they have no work, there is never a guarantee of work
[5] they would take less money for guaranteed work, they could build a reputation and charge more for work, they could have their own transportation; saving the buyer the hassle of playing taxi service (often the buyer is a contractor, not a lone home owner like me)
[6] if you do, let's talk
Still seems like a massive opportunity. $24 billion market in the US. Inconvenient locations (for many people). People have (collectively) a massive amount of under-utilized space. Not without its challenges but neither was AirBnB when it started.
A service for freelancers that automatically withdraws projected income tax and puts it into a safe money market fund so that they can make a little change on it (more in better times).
Order while you wait infrastructure at restaurants. Basically pull up the menu via wifi while waiting for your table to clear. Take the order, and maybe even pay ahead. Orchestrate the order so that the food is available shortly after you sit down.
This lets the restaurant increase their profits by serving more parties through their tables at peak times - maybe 10-15 min per table that uses the order system.
Some variant of this might also work for busy bars too.
A store-to-kitchen cart. I carry it in store, checkout items from within the cart - mos t current carts are clunky, heavy - one that you can push onto your car trunk and carry out into your pantry/kitchen. Basically the iPod of shopping carts. Would save billion of shopping bags, no more "paper or plastic?"
It doesn't let you check out from within the cart itself (is that really necessary? If that is what you need, why not just create an app like the Apple Store has?), but it does let you use the same cart both in and outside the store. I bought mine since it makes it a lot easier to walk my groceries home.
Hahaha, I love it. I had this exact idea this morning! Never expected to see it posted, and so soon after. Great minds... ;)
Was thinking more along the lines of direct to fridge and freezer options. Ideally with cooling or refrigeration properties so cold food can stay cool on the ride home, and the whole thing can pop into the fridge.
I had this random idea today, that I'd totally do if I had any free time. There may already be somebody doing this - I haven't looked. But here ya go:
An "eliza bot" like service that doles out Freudian dream analysis when you tell it about your dreams. Maybe even combine a logging service so you can log your dreams (ala the way some people keep dream journals).
I really have few ideas for monetizing the thing, I mostly just think it would be fun to do. But possibly you could do some cool targeted advertising based on the "discussions" you have with the dream-analysis-bot.
A specialst book store or lending library or archive in hard to find new and seconhand books. For some subjects, amazon and its secondhand book site Abe books (?) sucks if you delve into narrow neiches. They are enthuaists out there who crave a book which will teach them something. These books are published in areas which may not be as commercial as they once were.
The neiches are small. One for example is model engineering and related subjects. Books with plans, drawings etc. Construction methods.
Recipes based on the content of your pantry/fridge. The ideal solution would provide a db based on sensors/user input to know what ingredients and amount of those ingredients you have. Additionally, you can hook it into some calorie counter or diet tracking/fitness apps and it will make decisions based off of that.
Then you simply specify: "I want to make dinner, what can I cook?" The app links you to the recipe and any videos for making that recipe right to your device.
I've thought of this too and there seem to be a few companies trying something like it. The difficult part seems to be keeping your stock up to date. You'd basically have to update it after every meal.
Maybe a smart refrigerator will figure it out some day or Amazon with their automated service/scanner combo. It certainly could prevent food waste.
So many people throw themselves at this space and then no one really uses their offering.
I have a loyalty card for my supermarket so they'd know almost everything I buy. If they made that data available to their users, this space might be more accessible.
No names are coming to mind right now, but I do recall several sites solving the problem of what to cook with a given set of ingredients. Tracking what you have on hand would certainly be useful.
Might be something here - the design of most fitness apps leaves something to be desired for the geek crowd. The only well done one I've ever found is Stronglifts.
Instead of just makers saying what they can do it would be based more on what people say they want, and attach a value to say they'd pay a certain amount for it. You could also declare that given x, y and z you could do a, b or c and thus giant chains could be resolved.
All a bit GOSPLAN like though.
I've also considered Tinder crossed with auctions: bid according to how hot you think they are, with highest bids getting to meet (and pay!)
In CeeBot you learn programming concepts and whole languages by writing instructions for virtual robots. You can see how they move around and perform different tasks. (Actually Mehran Sahami from Stanford teaches the programming methodology course with a little virtual robot named Karel with exactly the same principle).
The player in my game would be a spacecraft captain. But unlike in other games, where you just press a button and the vessel goes to any direction, this ship had been hit by a meteoroid and its main computer is broken. Therefore all the commands have to be done manually and any computation is performed on a piece of paper and just put into the command line.
There could be no graphics at all. Just the roar of your enginges.
In the beginning the tasks are simple, but the more you play the more complicated the calculations become. It begins with simple arithmetics and trade. Later you need trigonometry to fire a "torpedo". It would be great if you could progress it even further, with advanced math and phisics, and also chemistry - you need to combine different substances in order to burn them as fuel or to produce oxygen to breathe or combine nitrogen and carbondiaxide in order to grow food in the farm.
It would be great if instead of taking tests the teacher would just say: "John, you are still on level 8, you should go to Alpha Centauri and fight with pirates. Play more!" - which would mean - learn to solve problems with two unknowns and calculate volume of spheres.
And imagine a multiplayer with students on the same level who have to make accurate calclulations fast because without it they would just float in the dark and cold outerspace.
I will never make it - I don't know math and programming that well - but I'd play the game!
A search platform that allows users to find stores that specialize in whatever it is they're looking for. For example, here in Austin we have a store that sells upholstery fabric, specifically, and another that sells just bookcases. I've also seen a disc golf store. If I were looking for any of the above, I wouldn't remember that those specialty stores existed and so would probably go to Michael's for fabric or Ikea for a bookcase or Dick's for a disc. If there were a way to show stores that could give me a better selection to suit my particular need/want, I'd much rather shop there. Maybe if I search "fabric" it would pull up a location-specific list of fabric stores further categorized?
[+] [-] nardi|11 years ago|reply
This would make "budgeting" very easy. Have a "food" account, an "entertainment" account, etc. Do weekly or monthly budgets by transferring money into your mini-accounts, and denying transactions for each account when it goes over budget. (Or let the transaction go through from a backup account, but notify you that you went over budget.)
Also, have an API that anyone can write apps for.
Of course, I'll never do this because starting a bank is really hard.
[+] [-] joshavant|11 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, I do much of what you describe and such a system is nearly my most valuable financial asset.
[+] [-] pan69|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mr_P|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tejasm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalore|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] himanshuy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshdance|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robford|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frequentflyeru|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nstill|11 years ago|reply
Although I guess you could do it on github if you had technically inclined people doing the traveling and wanting to post about it.
[+] [-] nirajd|11 years ago|reply
Http://hopon.com
[+] [-] jmc734|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkfrank|11 years ago|reply
- Tablets for seniors: when the elderly population sees an iPad ad, they're not captivated or entranced; they're intimidated and disappointed that they're left behind by technology. I envision the "jitterbug for tablets" -- built on Android with big, tactile buttons; a 'never get lost, take me home' feature; remotely controlled functionality (IE turn on/off apps); etc. They wouldn't use much bandwidth, so you could build 3G right into the device and charge a significant monthly premium -- after all, it's a dramatic quality-of-life improvement for someone sitting in a retirement home.
GE and a few other companies are doing similar projects, but no one is really executing all that well IMO. Problems: would be super hard to get off the ground / defend, and the market is becoming increasingly obsolete.
[+] [-] koopajah|11 years ago|reply
* based on IE7 so a lot of websites don't work/render properly. This does not seem important when the core of your users go on google/wikipedia and that's it. But my grandmother loves to order online but is limited to amazon because most of the other websites don't work properly. She would gladly pay more to be able to simplify most of the main websites UI for her and ease her order flow.
* Impossible to have more than one tab. This seems logical at first because it simplifies everything, but when she is ordering something as a gift and wants to look for an address she has to close the whole application and go in "notebook" and start over again. Same with the idea of having multiple tabs in IE.
* Email services really limited. Their idea is to avoid spam you have to whitelist every email address. But this is not negotiable, so when you order for the first time online you can't use your system's email because you'll never get the "confirm your email address". Or you use a gmail account for this which immediately make things too complicated for her.
* Most of the other features (games especially) are really limited/dumb such as having to recognize a banana. Creating games for her is something I'm planning to do but with the old browser inside the machine it makes things harder.
* Pictures management! We all send pictures to her by email but she can't organize them at all. I've been thinking of a UI for this but when I draw it/explain it I immediately see she would be completely lost. She needs a simple UI on top of explorer of something that would do "delete, crop, move, rename, add comments". And on top of that the main feature she needs is "print it for me and mail it to me". Websites already exist for this feature but she would have to understand how to upload photos and then use them which is clearly impossible.
* Keyboard! Another big issue for her is being able to raise her arms high enough for a long period of time to type an email on the screen with the tactile keyboard. At the same time, the keyboard delivered with the computer is not in alphabetical order. I've been trying to teach her but it takes her a long time to write so she mostly gives up and limit herself to a few words!
Hope this helps!
[+] [-] omarforgotpwd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mileszim|11 years ago|reply
Some awesome friends of mine at Chapman University have been building exactly that: a tablet for seniors.
[+] [-] booruguru|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmpc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smeyer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkstar999|11 years ago|reply
Percona has a remote DBA service that gives us 24/7 access to a team of proficient DBAs for a fraction of the cost of hiring one.
I'd like to see the same product for cloud sysadmins.
[+] [-] evv|11 years ago|reply
I have boxes and boxes of tapes, disks, notebooks, books, and photos. All of which I'd prefer to have digital. Other physical things could be digitized with video, photographs, and scans. I would take them to my street corner and a driver would pick them up and deliver them to a digitizer. They could show up in the cloud a week later, or be delivered back to me in a hard drive.
Once the digital copies are received, the customer can request to have the goods responsibly disposed of. The service could also cover long term storage for customers who want the originals to remain intact. Possessions can be returned to the owner within a day or two's notice.
A service like this would allow people to minimize their physical existence while preserving the memories associated with physical possessions.
[+] [-] conductr|11 years ago|reply
There is actually a huge potential to improve the worker side of the current status quo. Right now, these guys have a ton of idle time[4] and there is a pricing opportunity[5]. There's a lot of other opportunities in this, I've been mulling it over for the past few years, I can build it just don't want to market/grow it[6]
[0] for projects that I don't necessarily need a contractor for [1] or, work that a regular contractor doesn't do, like; my lawn guy doesn't clean gutters, my housekeeper doesn't clean windows [2] taking them home is worse - they're probably dirty & sweaty and I don't that in my car [3] can't have high expectations, these are generalists don't expect them to do high quality tile or carpentry [4] they sit in front of hardware stores for hours just waiting, some days they have no work, there is never a guarantee of work [5] they would take less money for guaranteed work, they could build a reputation and charge more for work, they could have their own transportation; saving the buyer the hassle of playing taxi service (often the buyer is a contractor, not a lone home owner like me) [6] if you do, let's talk
[+] [-] vishalzone2002|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonbischke|11 years ago|reply
Still seems like a massive opportunity. $24 billion market in the US. Inconvenient locations (for many people). People have (collectively) a massive amount of under-utilized space. Not without its challenges but neither was AirBnB when it started.
[+] [-] mrfusion|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juanplusjuan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digikata|11 years ago|reply
This lets the restaurant increase their profits by serving more parties through their tables at peak times - maybe 10-15 min per table that uses the order system.
Some variant of this might also work for busy bars too.
[+] [-] bobosha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaredsohn|11 years ago|reply
It doesn't let you check out from within the cart itself (is that really necessary? If that is what you need, why not just create an app like the Apple Store has?), but it does let you use the same cart both in and outside the store. I bought mine since it makes it a lot easier to walk my groceries home.
[+] [-] networkjester|11 years ago|reply
Was thinking more along the lines of direct to fridge and freezer options. Ideally with cooling or refrigeration properties so cold food can stay cool on the ride home, and the whole thing can pop into the fridge.
[+] [-] krapp|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vishalzone2002|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bogrollben|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|11 years ago|reply
An "eliza bot" like service that doles out Freudian dream analysis when you tell it about your dreams. Maybe even combine a logging service so you can log your dreams (ala the way some people keep dream journals).
I really have few ideas for monetizing the thing, I mostly just think it would be fun to do. But possibly you could do some cool targeted advertising based on the "discussions" you have with the dream-analysis-bot.
[+] [-] rb2e|11 years ago|reply
The neiches are small. One for example is model engineering and related subjects. Books with plans, drawings etc. Construction methods.
[+] [-] mileszim|11 years ago|reply
Then you simply specify: "I want to make dinner, what can I cook?" The app links you to the recipe and any videos for making that recipe right to your device.
[+] [-] ddw|11 years ago|reply
Maybe a smart refrigerator will figure it out some day or Amazon with their automated service/scanner combo. It certainly could prevent food waste.
[+] [-] prawn|11 years ago|reply
I have a loyalty card for my supermarket so they'd know almost everything I buy. If they made that data available to their users, this space might be more accessible.
[+] [-] bendmorris|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmior|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jefflinwood|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattdanger|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orky56|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dropit_sphere|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkuykendall-com|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fidotron|11 years ago|reply
Instead of just makers saying what they can do it would be based more on what people say they want, and attach a value to say they'd pay a certain amount for it. You could also declare that given x, y and z you could do a, b or c and thus giant chains could be resolved.
All a bit GOSPLAN like though.
I've also considered Tinder crossed with auctions: bid according to how hot you think they are, with highest bids getting to meet (and pay!)
[+] [-] dorfuss|11 years ago|reply
In CeeBot you learn programming concepts and whole languages by writing instructions for virtual robots. You can see how they move around and perform different tasks. (Actually Mehran Sahami from Stanford teaches the programming methodology course with a little virtual robot named Karel with exactly the same principle).
The player in my game would be a spacecraft captain. But unlike in other games, where you just press a button and the vessel goes to any direction, this ship had been hit by a meteoroid and its main computer is broken. Therefore all the commands have to be done manually and any computation is performed on a piece of paper and just put into the command line.
There could be no graphics at all. Just the roar of your enginges.
In the beginning the tasks are simple, but the more you play the more complicated the calculations become. It begins with simple arithmetics and trade. Later you need trigonometry to fire a "torpedo". It would be great if you could progress it even further, with advanced math and phisics, and also chemistry - you need to combine different substances in order to burn them as fuel or to produce oxygen to breathe or combine nitrogen and carbondiaxide in order to grow food in the farm.
It would be great if instead of taking tests the teacher would just say: "John, you are still on level 8, you should go to Alpha Centauri and fight with pirates. Play more!" - which would mean - learn to solve problems with two unknowns and calculate volume of spheres.
And imagine a multiplayer with students on the same level who have to make accurate calclulations fast because without it they would just float in the dark and cold outerspace.
I will never make it - I don't know math and programming that well - but I'd play the game!
[+] [-] whentheship|11 years ago|reply