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.
They do and it's very helpful, however, since they are technically "savings" accounts and CapitalOne 360 (like all banks) makes more money the longer we keep our cash in one place, they limit the number of transactions out of any of those accounts to 6 per month.
For that and other reasons, I think the proposed system is worth exploring.
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!
A lot. My parents and I recently bought my 93 yo Grandfather an iPad, and even though he's smart and has owned a desktop mac for 15 years he still struggles with things like email and photos on the iPad. Senior-oriented features/ui, and maybe family remote control help, would be neat. It's also possible that 93 is just too old for some people to learn new technology.
Tangentially relevant: watching a nontechnical senior citizen use an app I worked on was a humbling experience. Things that seemed obvious to me were disorienting and discouraging, even after patient explanation that could never be offered in production.
The problem is that to simplify an interface further after a certain point, you need to remove features. But the features you remove will be inessential to some people but absolutely essential to others. Even if you've reduced your target market to "the elderly who want to use email to send and receive pictures", you've still got a huge pile of features that you'll never reduce far enough to make it simple for everyone.
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.
Considering myself a minimalist I have tried to do this on a much smaller scale: for myself.
I ran into a big problem: how do I label/organize this mess of both physical/digital memories? What are your thoughts on that specific part of the problem? How would you solve it? More importantly, how would you automate it?
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.
AirBnB existed before AirBnB as well. People just called it Homeaway or VRBO. AirBnB did a few key things much better. I think there's the same opportunity in self-storage (although not sure what makes this model finally take off).
I've also had the idea of an AirBnB for 'toys' (i.e. sports equipment, motorcycles, bikes, instruments, etc).
There is already RelayRides for cars, and qraft is probably the closest existing site to my idea, but I think it could be executed much better than qraft.
Looks to me like an idea very easy to put in practise :
- Buy some recent high-res data, maybe from DMCII (http://catalogue.dmcii.com/). You can get relatively recent (month old) data for very cheap. Only issue is to find high-res enough data.
- Link the image to a gg map / OSM equivalent for geocoding
- Create mechanical turk or taskrabbit to search for pools / houses without pools
Do that for one neighborhood and see if you can make a sell.
No automation needed, or at least no complex CV involved.
In Arizona you could also do something for solar panels. Solar panel companies are always trying to sell panels, but they can't tell you right away (a) what size/shape panels you can fit on your roof and (b) how much energy you're likely to generate, and what that's worth. I bet if they could give us that info (and it came from an impartial 3rd party like your startup) specifically customized for my house, they'd have a much better chance of selling me solar panels.
Google has started doing something like this[0]. They're basically taking advantage of the detailed satellite imagery they already have. You certainly don't have the same flexibility as you would with drones, but seems like decent quality and definitely helps with the scaling problem.
Good question. I notice missing shingles around my neighborhood all the time. Most homeowners seem pretty oblivious, not sure why. That's what gave me the idea.
True that more populated areas are imaged more frequently. I dont know the price for recent imagery, I know that mapbox has gone that road recently you should check how old their images are.
Otherwise I agree that drones can be very cost effective if you cannot make it work with satellites.
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).
The problem I have with this is that I end up using the gross take on projects to float my receivables. In theory your idea has merit, but in practice we all have cash flow challenges and the money I owe uncle sam can bridge those challenges for me.
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.
The restaurant chain Chili's does something close to this at least where I live. There's a wireless device at each table where you can order as soon as you sit down. You can pay your check also so there's no waiting for the waiter to bring a paper check and you never have to give up posession of your credit card.
They don't do while you wait ordering AFAIK. Well maybe they do if you "wait" in the bar!
I've always had a funny lower-tech idea along the same lines. It's an airplane themed restaurant where each table has one of the service buttons that airplanes have. When you want a server to come by, hit the button. It lights up at the table and at the server station.
The Yo! Sushi chain in the UK does this. When you press the button, something on your table lights up and a cute (usually)Japanese-ish soundbite rings around the restaurant.
Well, part of the thought was provide a no-internet-required embedded box, just wifi with no app to load, for the many restaurants that don't want to mess with more complexity.
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.
I too have used that, but it's clunky & unwieldy. Need something more senior-friendly, better ergonomics e.g. something that folds up into your car trunk like a stretcher for ambulances. Make it fashionable to bring your cart to store.
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.
In Europe (I think Amsterdam?), beer bottles are often sold in plastic cartons that are then refunded when returned and reused. Could be handled like that.
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.
I really like this idea, though I suspect it'd be let down by the ELIZA-like. I don't think even a cutting-edge AI would do a lot better than ELIZA did, and she really was limited.
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.
I was mostly thinking more in terms of getting people together in the "real world", rather than just an another online community for mountain biking, triathlon, etc.
Possibly a week-long summer camp, weekend hackathons/fitness outside major cities, weekly runs or bicycle rides.
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?
A system to retrofit an appliance into a smart home.
Example: My AC has its own remote. With my device I can record the wireless signals it outputs, similar to a garage opener in a car. Then with my mobile app I can create my own interface to power on/off, set temp, etc. I now use just my smart phone to turn on my AC. I press power on the custom UI I created in the app, it will send a packet to the hardware in my LAN, and that hardware sends the matching wireless signal to the AC.
Some things might still need physical fittings and cannot always be wireless devices such as power switches. New power splitters with this functionality would also be a good way to control appliances that just need to power on and off.
Popcorn Time for quality children's programming - Bill Nye, Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, Avatar. Shows that are entertaining AND educational, none of that advertising filled, sassy attitude, Disney Channel crap.
Sounds basically like TVO Kids which I used to watch many years ago when I got home from elementary school. Children's programming does seem to have changed significantly since then unfortunately.
You open an app. You're played three different pieces of music. You're asked which one you like best. The program branches and plays you three more pieces of music. Again they're different but from a more similar selection.
At each point you can highlight bits of music to go back to - to buy that music or to start the chain from that point.
One example would have this tightly connected to one particular publisher's catalogue.
It would eventually teach about music, giving comprehensive sleeve notes about the composer or the piece of music or the history or music theory or etc.
Something with the Oculus VR tech. I think there's massive, exciting options opening up with the Gear VR or similar, and anyone starting now will have a substantial first mover advantage.
I have two specific applications for VR: the metaverse, and really good porn. (These do not need to be combined though I suppose they could.)
I would argue that Second Life failed mostly due to execution issues. I'd love to see a virtual world where I can socialize, and where I can build cool spaces to hang out with my friends / hold meetings / work.
Phillip Rosedale, the guy behind Second Life, is working on a next-gen equivalent. Janus VR, meanwhile, is busy working at turning the Web into a metaverse, and getting some rave reviews.
WeWillWalkYou - An online platform for volunteering to walk, visit, cook for, seniors. Trade time with a stranger's loved ones in your town, for the same for your folks back home.
Underground garbage disposal. In Tel Aviv, the garbage gets picked up every day (hot climate), and because of traffic this is done early morning (4-5am).
The system will have dedicated "containers" on corners or squares where you drop your garbage and an underground network of carts delivers it to a central point where it can be picked up. Or even to the dump if possible.
This can be fully automated and I think will save a lot of money in manpower and gas (for driving the garbage trucks through the whole city).
Dawkins' book "the Blind Watchmaker" introduced "biomorphs". These are intended to show the power of repeated random change and selection. He uses a small computer program to draw six images composed of lines. The user selects one and the program redraws another six images, making small changes based on the image the user choses. This is repeated many times.
The new version is pretty similar except it uses Lego pieces instead of lines.
Since all the scandals about security, I came up with a different approach, instead to increase cryptography, just build kind of a reverse surveillance. A place like gravatar that informs you who is accessing to your profiles on your social media. The idea is very simple, you provide a jpg that can send back a message every time it's being rendered by a client. It can be that it requires a new image standard that allows to send some info to the main servers.
Start it in Colorado and Washington, of course. Go into any Weedbucks and the "O.G. Kush" (or any strain) is just as good (e.g. THC concentration constant) as at any other. Special sales on April 20th, and at 4:20pm everyday.
TextMe - Too much texting apps started popping around.
Cactus - Photo sharing app with option to put a title on it. Had this a while ago, then whisper and others showed up.
Escape the Monster - iOS kids game, some creature have to avoi d obstacles to escape the monster. Lack of time.
Invoicer - Mac app for making invoices. Lack of time.
Donster - Texting using only recorded sounds. Lack of time.
Reading through this I came up with one: Tinder for jobs. Employers can look through a small CV of candidates that they might like, while potential employees can do the same for workplaces. Matches lead to interviews.
I can't really see myself ever doing this though because you'd got a chicken and egg problem, plus it'd probably only ever be used by tech companies unless there was an easy to use API.
that doesn't solve the biggest problem I face when recruiting, which is highly specultive applications. Swipe right, swipe left is just a fancy ui for a simple folder system. When recruiting I want a folder system with more levels than just qualified(swipe right) and disqualified(swipe left).
I'm probably an edge case user but I don't save stuff to Pocket because I want summaries of stories. I save them because I want access to the actual content.
For example, I do save articles I can just read. For that, a summary service would be great BUT that is true with or without Pocket. On the flipside, if I saw stuff like a blog post on technical code someone wrote about for something, more than likely I want to save that reference for later (true for a huge chunk of stuff I save or the type of things I save).
That said, I came across several people who have either worked on summarizers or talked about it but nothing seemed to have ever took off on those. I can't speak for others but in general I prefer to read content for myself.
Hi, just a quick correction - the Berkeley RISC-V team are not one and the same with the lowRISC team. We collaborate with them, and we have Krste on our technical advisory board. We are of course also using Chisel though.
An insurance company who's policy covers anything you own against any kind of loss for any reason. House, car, boat, bike etc for flood, fire, theft etc. Basically, if you buy insurance you should simply be insured. Period. No fine print.
Yes, it would probably be more expensive than people's current policies.
What Dropbox did for storage, but for CPUs. The classic business example would be that you have to to process a large Excel doc and are willing to pay extra to speed it up. With fast internet connections and cheap online storage, it could be opened up to a growing number of tasks like video rendering.
Isn't what you're talking about really application-specific? You already have access to tons of CPUs with AWS.
The problem is that you need to reproduce the local Excel environment, or the local video rendering environment, in the cloud. That is either something you do on a per-vertical basis or perhaps with some very advanced system administration tricks.
Also, video is probably not a good candidate, because it's data heavy and relatively CPU light. The good candidates for cloud offloading are lots of computation on small data, which does not fit the class of things that most people do on their desktops these days.
There have been a couple attempts at this: and the general consensus is that the bandwidth issues tend to swamp the costs of what you'd pay to handle it internally.
I asked some commercial video friends about this once and they didn't seem too interested. Their company invested in a private network for their office and a lot of CPU muscle.
- a "Rap Genius" for crowd-translating doujin manga (kind of exists on danbooru but not quite)
- A collaborative gaming site for pen-and-paper RPG and boardgame players which would let you design and run your games as a virtual representation of the physical game (probably exists or else is a bad idea)
The RPG idea is, in fact, part of a very dense space. However, I think Tabletop Simulator[0] is an interesting approach that comes at the problem from a very different angle: just simulate a table with physics.
Adding the support systems around this type of table, like tracking stats for various RPGs, could be a way to dominate the market. Most of the other solutions focus on the stat-tracking externals, and only have a very simple table or rigid grid, not in keeping with how real games go.
[0] http://www.berserk-games.com/ts/ - this link shows board games but there's a user-created library of game pieces[1] and some built-in RPG figurines.
And also be able to implement the idea. Not that I'm saying that you couldn't. But in general, I think having a great idea is not really worth all that much on it's own.
It seems like you need a lot of money and experience to build a successful kickstarter?
What if there's a different service where a person can put up an idea with minimal cost and flare, and just raise enough funding to hire a video team, PR team, etc to then run a kickstarter campaign?
But then how will I get the idea? I think we need kickstarterkickstarterkickerstarter.com. It literally just sends someone to your house and kicks you until you have a good idea.
I am fed up with all those warranty cards I am getting with every equipment I buy like juicer,external HDD,etc. so thought what if I can make a smartphone app with open API which other manufacturers can use to link their warranty info.
Through the app, you can apply for warranty , see when it is expiring etc.
Those cards are more for the purpose of giving the company your contact info in case they need to notify you of a product recall. Still, the idea makes sense.
Another one is predicting price rises and optimal time to sell Magic the Gathering cards before rotation. Its like the stockmarket only unregulated Gambling. People, do invest in these cards and flip them. Not for the faint of heart but people love to buy into dreams...
My friend and I kinda do this. We started 8-10 years ago when we were in high school. We pooled ~10k together to buy legacy staples. Since then we've bought some cards, but very minimal compared to legacy cards.
We aim for the cards that will be useful post-rotation as many card sale sites do an okay job estimating release price. Also, we mostly played legacy.
Snapcaster for instance was ~$25-30 on release (although some places sold it for as low as 15). Then it was ~20-30 for a while until it saw a lot of legacy play and jumped up. It is currently 30-35. ROI probably similar to an index fund.
Tarmogoyf was probably our biggest 'buy' since our legacy staples. We didn't buy that many (5 play sets). And sold as soon as the price hit $100-120. This we risked due to rumors of 'modern'.
Force of Will, a legacy staple for a long time. 8 years ago we paid ~$10-15 per FoW. Now they're going for ~$90. The S&P is up ~70%, FoW is up ~566%. We bought 20 play sets (80 cards) for roughly $1000.
We're still holding many of our original collection. But, sold off enough to get our original $10k back. At this point the price keeps going up, many cards fall out of circulation (destroyed/lost/etc). The only "risk" is reprints.
One issue is unloading many cards. With stocks I can create a sell order and sell it for roughly asking price. Whether I'm selling $100 of shares or $100k of shares it will go through instantly. With magic it isn't hard to deal with ~500 cards or so. But, once you scale up it is a full time job. If we bought $10k worth of FoW vs $1k we'd have 800 FoW to try and sell at some point. This would take a long time.
You either pay SCG prices to get cards quick. Or you use ebay for a 10-20% discount. But, takes longer and no guaranteed sale.
As far as logistics we each put in roughly 5k and split the original buy cards evenly. Since then our collections have fluxed. He bought/sold a Black Lotus at one point, I never did. He bought individual power 9 cards and sold a 'power 9 set' (5-10% markup) a few times. I was more passive.
GPS powered fast food inhibitor. e.g. You get a text coupon for a salad at "insert healthy restaurant" whenever you pull into the parking lot of a Mcdonalds.
The idea is to catch people and entice them to eat differently right before they make the decision to eat fast food.
I've been thinking about something similar, an autoscaling job queue that could run off your own servers (via API) so you could decide the pricing/power you want.
... thought about building a mobile femtocell attached to a helium baloon, so if you find yourself (playing Ingress) in a dead spot, perhaps the femtocell in the baloon 10 to 30 meters above you could help out?
A paper version of a sat nav.
Essentially its a book with a picture of all the roads. A reader will be able to use it on the go to see where they are trying to get to.
the missing B in AirBnB.
I really wish I can finish the work on this idea someday. I have tech MVP but I dont know how to move forward. The idea :
Basically, people can charge for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner at their places. There are people who like to cook and people who dont. Why not let former earn money and later save money while eating healthy meals and meeting new people.
I have thought about this too, but in the country I'm currently living (France), it would be too much of a mess with the licence / legal side - if somebody gets really sick after a dinner, that could end bad.
That being said, it's a great idea and I would love to work on this one day.
Yes that is one of the big issue for sure. But it can be mitigated using reviews and past experiences. Other issues are similar to what AirBnB might have faced like security issues, etc.
Thanks ! Didn't know that one, but seems to be this.
Doesn't seem to really take off - 6000 users in France after 3 years of operations (data from a french article a year ago, not sure if reliable), and their FB page has last posts about a year ago too - I would say it's dead now.
shazam for face recognition? Sometime when you see a movie, you can't make out who stars in it. take a quick picture and shazam it away to get the actor / actress name!
Google play does this when watching certain movies and shows. Not sure if it's added manually or does intelligent recognition. However, it's certainly useful - so I could see generalizing that capability for other movies / plays??
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Granted, the movies and shows on Play have at least a context to do the pattern matching with - a cast list greatly reduces the possible matches.
Possibly better fit for TV. Although it's usually no problem, I can imagine that cinemas would get really anxious about people taking pictures of a moving they are watching
Secret exists to confess anonymously within your circle.
General social networks to connect to your connections (FB, LinkedIn, etc).
An insane list of failed startups that try to get strangers to connect but no one actively seeks meeting strangers for the sake of in general.
I am having a hard time seeing why I'd want to connect to anyone anonymously in my area that don't fall into the above categories but I'd love to hear why you think it makes sense
Unfortunately, at least for me, that isn't a selling feature. It's basically Secret (perhaps more social) without the personal friends angle and adding in location. Can't see a reason to use it.
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.