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Ask HN: If you would launch a website in 4 hours, what would it be?
29 points by withinthreshold on Feb 24, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 43 comments



Between ZenCoder and the encoding services that AWS released, someone needs to expose easy video encoding to non-developers. It's easy for us to wire up these services for our needs, but Joe Marketer can't.

Here's what he see when he searches: a large amount of spammy looking sites offering downloadable software of questionable origin (and ability). Five minute trial versions. The actual download page has twelve other download buttons for affiliate links and products. It's awful.

He just wants whatever-file-type he was given to work on iPhone/iPad for this upcoming ad campaign.

Bootstrap + filepicker.io + Zencoder + Stripe.


It isn't web-based but http://www.fuelcollective.com/permute is a nice tool.


People come to Zencoder wanting this, but it isn't really what we do. Not sure how big it is, but there is a market for this.


you could try Miro Video Converter


A blog where my 6 yr old daughter can review toys. She's been asking for this for a few weeks.


Have you thought about just using Wordpress? You can be the admin and then make a contributor account for your daughter to write random things but not have the power to publish them or change up any of the settings/design.


Or even blogspot / youtube?


I set my son up on http://www.jux.com. Nice and easy


I just launched one yesterday for a small business. I'll probably launch another today. If it takes you more than 4 hours to ship, you've probably made it too complicated and you'll never finish it.

I usually even go as far as setting up a website. Here's a coupon for a $0.99 domain name (http://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name-registration/PS-...), and here's some $1/month web hosting (http://www.lowendbox.com/).


Stupid Q: But are there any "gotchas" with a $.99 domain? Seems too good to be true.


Only two small issues I noticed were you can't change the whois data, and the 2nd year would cost $39. You can turn off autorenewal and transfer it in a year though.

I just tried it.. not too good to be true! They even give you complex DNS zones and setup was near instant.


I spend too much time procrastinating... so I'd like it if I could speed up my "stupid" time.

I'd build a site that has the design of pinterest/instagram or whatever the site is that has the multi-columns of different heights for individual cells.

And the content would simply be from various RSS feeds -- npr, cnn, fox news, times, huff po, etc. Ideally I'd bring it to a level similar to HN, Reddit and Digg with the only difference being the content isn't user generated and you can't "vote" on a story's popularity -- it's timely.

Add the necessary ajax elements so it "stacks" stories on the top of the scaffolds. I should be able to sit on that page and not do a thing and have fresh content load for me.

Then if there's any interest you could easily add more features.

I'd probably write it one day if I weren't so distracted by other things. Shouldn't take much longer than 4 hours to code.




A site where you could safely and anonymously 'expose' corrupt government offcials.


i made this www.complainsindia.com (not in 4 hours)


Interesting. How do you go about securing that people who file complaints are anonymous?


Did you mean complaints?


they are similar. http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010092205524...

And of course i had to compromise with the available domain.


No, they are not. "Complain" is a verb, whereas "complaint" is a noun. Nevertheless, good effort.


A website that provides RSS feeds for Twitter, since they are shutting off RSS next week.


If I only had 4 hours I would stand on the shoulders of some good APIs. Maybe make a gaming site with challenges - "guess the common theme"... pictures, video or something like that. Use search and embedding.


A mashup between a To-Do list and a bookmarking system.

This way, I could just fill links in, then when I got time, read the first one and unstack it instead of having 20+ tabs opened at the same time.


A site that sold t-shirts and the like which promoted the idea that disabled folks are sexy as hell.

Yes, I am serious. I would totally do that if I had any clue how to make it work.


What part of "making it work" are you unsure of?


The idea would actually fit well with several sites I already have. I cannot get traffic. I don't know how to "sell" anything. I have at times jotted down ideas for sayings but I tend to be too wordy. So I haven't figured out something short and snappy for a t-shirt, though I am disabled and I have a few ideas on how to frame that as sexy (men seem to think I am hot).


A bookmarking site that works with bookmark previews only. I haven't been able to find something similar to what I want but then again I haven't searched a lot.


It would be a simple plain white background with a button that says push. And a troll face would pop out all up in your screen.


A blog where people can contribute photos of their friends doing stupid things. Why? Because people love stupid stuff.


I did one a couple of months go. wishlistagram. took about 6 hours though.. from idea to prod..


A site to learn English pronunciation using the Google Chrome Speech and TTS API


The site i've been working on for 2 years... but it's not ready. :)


A hack with some API? Plus bootstrap to make things quicker


A serious competitor to Amazon


download my reference server from github, write a couple templates, publish


A site for launching a website in 4 hours. Meta.


what language you use to develop


a qr clock :)


I started to create one a while ago. But I found out that there was really no use for it. :D

http://x42.se/


What use did you think it would have when you started? o.O It is cool though.


Hey, thats pretty cool :D Well, atleast its buildable in 4hours, right? :)


That's a pretty awesome idea!





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