Ask HN: Idea Sunday - <AUTHOR> I think we should resume this Idea Sunday threads. And this first edition of March, 2015.<p>A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on. <comment><USER2> We need to take a step back, and stop building all these silly websites and applications. Seriously, this madness must stop. The application paradigm simply cannot scale.

How many apps can you install? How many profiles can you maintain? How many inbox can you empty? How many activity feeds can you go through? How many shopping apps do you use until you buy that one thing? How many times have you seen the exact same article/story posted across your social networks? How many "share your startup ideas" communities does it take for humanity to find the meaning of life? After how long and how much are you going to realize that nobody will ever use your niche social network?

We need to look at the big picture. We need to rethink all of this. We're doing it wrong, and now is the time to fix it. Everything else is distraction.

<comment><USER3> What's the issue? People use these silly websites and applications, and they provide a service. Why do we need 100 different to-do list applications? Well, because everyone has unique needs. Some people want a simple list, some people want categories, some people want to organize it by priority levels, some people want it to look like a piece of virtual paper while others prefer a modern design, some want to self host it, and others want it stored in the cloud.

And what's wrong with niche social networks? You're on HN, this is a fairly niche place. Did you want it merged with Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, etc?

<comment><USER2> > What's the issue?

There are many things to consider.

1\. I don't believe in giving people what they ask for. People don't know what they want. If you give people what they need, they will eventually want it.

2\. It is not possible for software that's designed with a user in mind to cover the needs of everyone. Even with 1000 different to-do list applications, nobody will truly feel it's perfect for them. We need generic and dynamic software that can adapt to users needs and context.

Don't you think it's sad that we have to endure HN's horrible UI/UX to access its community and content? Shouldn't we be able to have this discussion through a client that's made for us and respect our individual needs?

The current paradigm is full of unecessary trade-offs. If we stopped assuming and accepting that every user interaction should be manually designed by some UI person, and embraced a framework that automates that process, we would be a lot more advanced as a society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like Gravatar but for everything, not just avatars. Gravatar is a service, where you save your avatar. Websites such as StackOverflow can connect to Gravatar and retrieve your avatar from there. So when you decide to change your avatar, you do it in one place.

On a more abstract level, the problem here is that people and organizations often create some data and basically Ctrl+C Ctrl+V it to different services. Couple of examples:

\- RSS subscriptions. If I want to try a new reader, I have to export subscriptions from my current reader and import it to the new one.

\- Calendar events. Same problem. Yes, some services can sync with each other but it's a messy situation. Calendar apps must separately implement sync with several calendar services.

\- Whenever I want to buy something from a new eshop, I need to enter my email and address.

\- Restaurants publish their location, opening hours or photos on Yelp, Google Maps and others. When opening hours change, they need to separately update every service.

\- Public transport operators send their timetables to Google and other services.

The solution I suggest is to store this data at the source. People and organizations would have something that's sort of similar to Dropbox, let's call it databox. You have a databox url, such as databox.org/1\. Your avatar is available at databox.org/1/avatar. Your RSS subscriptions are at databox.org/1/rss/subscriptions. Opening hours of some company are inside a JSON that's on databox.org/2/restaurants.

The databox URL also serves as a login. So the workflow when trying a new RSS reader is like this. 1) You click on "register". 2) Enter your databox URL. 3) The reader requests a read and write permission to your RSS data. 4) You allow it and the reader fetches your subscriptions.

There are some standardized "subdirectories" (e.g. /rss, /calendar, /tasks) but anyone can create a new standard. For example, a bunch of Linux distributions can decide they will save desktop background and other desktop settings to /linux-desktop.

<comment><USER5> The W3C sort of had a solution with the semantic web, too bad nobody cared about the semantic web.

<comment><USER6> I personally think the semantic web was a solution in search of a problem. People weren't concerned about ontology and mappings. They were concerned with making the web more approachable. I think, therefore, money was invested into Mobile Apps / JS frameworks instead of tools for semantic web.

<comment><USER5> I think it grew out of very much the same idealism that still drives Ted Nelson to this date. I guess to unify all of human knowledge to reach a higher form of understanding just isn't on most people's mind. Not even those whose day job it is to do just that, as is my experience from dabbling in academic publishing.

This reminds me of an old blog post, Charles' Rules of Argument [1]:

"5. DO NOT argue with Lisp programmers, believers in the Semantic Web, or furries"

1\. [http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/03/21/charles_rules_of_arg...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/03/21/charles_rules_of_argument/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Idea: a personal blood testing device for use at home (to test for many parameters including vitamin levels).

It would be beneficial to be able to test at least monthly in order to avoid risks associated with various deficiencies, to detect possible diseases early, to monitor relevant parameters while on a diet or exercising etc.. Also, we'd like to keep our results confidential to avoid trouble with insurances and other interested parties.

Labs have large, expensive devices tuned for throughput (e.g. [http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia-...](http://www.healthcare.siemens.com/immunoassay/systems/advia- centaur-cp-immunoassay-sys/features-benefits)). They can probably be reduced in size and cost to something comparable with a laser printer. Newer testing methods would work with single drops of blood (e.g. Theranos) so no special skills would be required.

(personal motivation: discovered an extreme Vitamin D3 deficiency, supplements seem to have a dramatic effect)

<comment><USER8> What exactly is the advantage of a home device over Theranos, which has a Vitamin D3 test ([https://www.theranos.com/test- menu/test/82306](https://www.theranos.com/test-menu/test/82306))? Data privacy?

<comment><USER7> Privacy, no need to mail tests around and wait for days, test price not dictated by 1 entity.

<comment><USER9> See my reply elsewhere: sell a lab-kit, customers send them in, anonymously if they want, get results by writing the code from the kit into a website.

This is kind-of-anonymous (won't help if the feds are after you)

<comment><USER7> Indeed, this already exists. It's like sending a 3D model to a 3D printing shop and getting a (pricey) result, instead of having a 3D printer at home. Different uses, appeal to different people. For example, an athlete interested in monitoring his body closely while exercising will prefer getting results within a few hours rather than days and the cost per test might be very relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An Uber-like app where people pay for their rides with banked miles earned by giving others rides. This would serve a large market of people that a) travel alot and can give rides in their home city (free rides when they travel) and b) people that only have part-time access to a car but may need rides when they don't have it. It may also be legal in areas where Uber can't legally operate because they charge money for rides. If it got big enough, Uber would probably buy it.

<comment><USER11> we have that already, the layer is called "money" you can give people rides and be compensated in the "money points (usually US dollar). Later you can use this points to recieve rides yourself by others. great thing is that you can use those points for many goods and services and not only for rides.

<comment><USER10> After the 20% they pay to Uber, and income taxes on the money earned from Uber, they would wind up with half of the miles they had earned through this "money" layer. With this, they get full value for each mile. Additionally, Uber is restricted from entering into many markets (example: their failed entry into Nevada, where one of the largest tourist markets on earth is located). With free - as in no money changing hands - rides, presumably the app would be allowed everywhere.

<comment><USER12> You don't need money to change hands for a transaction to be taxable. The sort of barter-based system you describe would also (in theory) be taxed. The only difference is that tax _enforcement_ would be much more difficult under your system.

That would work well for a while, but if your service got really big, and became a target for enforcement, you (or your users) might have serious tax problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about someone besides Apple makes trackpads for laptops which are actually usable?

<comment><USER14> If Apple already makes great trackpads for laptops, why not just use their hardware?

<comment><USER13> Maybe I want to use a GPU with a couple of cores? Or even play a proper computer game...

<comment><USER14> You play "proper computer games" with the trackpad? Suit yourself: [https://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/](https://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> FDAPI: Food Delivery API. Grubhub is winning the food delivery battle because the industry is so fragmented. Have a simple, central API for restaurants to export and store in the cloud their menus, hours, availability, percent they are willing to give to affiliates (if any) etc. Any app can tie into the system and submit orders in exchange for affiliate revenue. Restaurants can receive orders, with order info, payment info for the customer, etc. Delivery specialists can tie into the system and receive payment for delivery in the case of restaurants that don't already offer delivery. The system could handle all affiliate and delivery driver coordination and payments without restaurants having to worry about it. They just get more orders.

<comment><USER15> I like this idea. You could even auto-generate branded mobile/web ordering apps just for those restaurants as a way for them to uniquely market themselves, and could be used as a revenue stream besides the exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This type of thread should be monthly, not weekly.

You might want to set up an account just for posting these threads. That helps avoids a bunch of different people starting the threads as Sunday rolls around to their timezone.

<comment><USER17> The OP is not affiliated with Hacker News/YC.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand your point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> MVP as a service, where you pay a fixed amount each month to get a fixed number of developer hours.

EDIT: To expand on this a bit: True lean development, every month focused on delivering a working product. Initially using third party applications like Firebase and Parse, gradually increasing features, but the product must launch by the end of the first month.

<comment><USER19> I've got a team that can do this. In fact, I've already started meeting startup people who are interested.

The team is able to make websites, iOS/Android apps (that talk to the sites), pretty much anything that you'd want an MVP to do. We know how AWS works (can make things scale ready), and how the app launch/approval process works. We can integrate all manner of components, including push messaging, databases, pictures, social media integration, etc.

The core team are two HFT developers who've moved into the web space over the years, and a number of associates who can do things like design work.

I've also got a member who has 15 years online marketing experience, if that's considered part of MVP.

<comment><USER18> @lordnacho could you send me an email about your team: email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There needs to be an easy method for consumers to pay the record labels for the rights to use signed-artist music in amateur videos. That way I have the rights to upload my GoPro snowboarding videos that will have Content ID matches on Facebook, YouTube, etc. because of the music. I realize there's plenty of ways around Content ID matching and even more Creative Commons music, but that's not the point.

<comment><USER21> Ohh, someone, please figure this one out!

My understanding though, is that it's not hard, just expensive. Therefore, everyone just end up using illegal content. There should be an easy way way to track views and pay per 1K/M, etc. Or better, pay with revenue share of commercials alongside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tutorials that actually validate whether they currently work.

One use case would be tutorials on deploying to IAAS/PAAS providers. Deploying always seems to be the hard part after I build something; I don't like using the same language and IAAS/PAAS twice for learning purposes. It's complicated even more so as many tutorials don't reference when they were written or which code versions they used. The site would require this information, and then use it to periodically attempt to deploy that sample to AWS/Digital Ocean/etc (whichever the tutorial is covering), and prominently display whether the tutorial currently works.

<comment><USER23> I thought about this after scrolling past a couple of times - and I think this is a good idea.

I'm thinking like a CI for tutorials. For example, I create an account on Tutorial CI (or whatever), give it the environment of the tutorial's code. It spits out a badge that I can put on my tutorial that says whether the build is passing or not. Pretty much exactly like the Travis badges you see on Github. That way, someone can verify before they even start reading that the tutorial is valid.

I actually like this idea a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since no one linked it, here's the reason Idea Sunday was killed in the first place: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640)

<comment><USER24> I kinda liked the idea (yes, I see the irony of this in this particular thread :)) about having these post not being liked to the karma of a user.

Then again, perhaps the best thing about hackernews is the simplicity of the system without having these complex scenarios tied to posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Most of these ideas will be an echo chamber for the niche needs of this niche crowd.

HN itself identifies towards the tech-centric crowd, so most of these ideas are already focused around some market + tech (or just tech for some marginal utility).

Granted, some of these ideas sound cool. But why so? It's because of the echo- chamber in that "we" all find them cool on some level, and thus they become niche ideas in fragmented markets with demanding users and no possible financial gain.

This is probably why it was stopped in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER26> some place where entrepreneurs can put real ideas they're working on, and anyone can vote on them. If you're an investor and love an idea, you can pay for an intro to the team. (names and details are otherwise hidden.)

any such money is shared with the founders who posted the idea (30% site, 70% them) and they can use it to help roll out their MVP.

<comment><USER27> How does this idea differ from Kickstarter? Or those other websites that you get your ideas funded on.

<comment><USER26> Kickstarter is a donation platform and, more recently, a de facto pre-order platform. It has nothing to do with investment. (in the literal sense, like what investors do.)

I would argue it is also not a platform for ideas (i.e. in the way that this thread _is_ , though few people have incentive to post their genuine ideas here.) For example, computer renderings are prohibited on KS - only working products may be shown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Ask HN: Idea Sunday/{{Idea}}" : "Show HN:/{{Idea}}" mapper.

</comment><comment><USER29> A TV-show backing system, after the fact.

Many shows are not available in countries where they are as a result, vastly downloaded. Sometimes they're available 6 months later. Sometimes you need bundles with various companies in order to get the shows you like. Sometimes, they're only available with so much advertisement that you lose the plot, while the same ad has been served 3 times in 40 minutes. These shows are GOOD. They deserve people's money, other than being split by an equal length of advertising to content ratio.

If a website had most TV show cast / writers represented, with a trusted authority overseeing, and an anonymous donate buttons; I can think of many shows to which people would donate their monthly entertainment-budget to.

TV is greater than ever. Writers are brilliant. Casts are amazing. But the whole system is rigged and barely functional. I realize the system cannot be flipped suddenly, but an initiative such as this one could drive to fundamental changes in modern TV production.

</comment><comment><USER30> Idea Validator:

Type in the long-tail search phrases and it goes off and does as much market research automatically for you as possible, and comes back with a yes/no on whether you should bother pursuing it. Perhaps including a list of statistics like: how much it would cost to get into that market, how many competitors there appear to be, etc. etc.

<comment><USER31> I'm currently working at a startup that actually does something like this. You're probably never going to get a yes/no answer though because most large competitors will have multiple unrelated lines of business, and it's usually not possible to get data beyond the organization level. (Sometimes though the larger organization is a holding company that has different subsidiaries for related lines of business.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Problem: lots of early stage biotech/medtech ventures have a hard time raising funding, for a variety of structural reasons ([http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today- re...](http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-reflections- on-exits-funding-and-startup-formation/)), despite having already made initial progress using non-dilutive government funding (NIH grants, SBIR, STTR, etc.).

Solution: an equity crowdfunding site for early stage biotech/medtech ventures focused on gaining backing from doctors and other knowledgeable medical professionals. Those same life sciences entrepreneurs who are having a hard time raising $5-10M in VC funding are often in a hospital environment, surrounded by doctors who both deeply understand the problems they're trying to solve and whose pooled capital could easily add up to $5-10M.

Not only would this counteract scams in this industry made possible by information asymmetry ([http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug- hearing-a...](http://pando.com/2015/03/05/backers-claim-nanoplug-hearing- aids-293k-indiegogo-campaign-was-a-scam/)), many medical professionals already meet the (pre-JOBS Act) income or wealth requirements to be an accredited investor.

One major concern with this idea is whether the VCs who weren't willing to invest in a series A-stage life sciences ventures would be willing to come in at a later stage. They typically prefer tranched investments ([http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections- on-...](http://lifescivc.com/2013/02/lessons-learned-reflections-on-early- stage-biotech-venture-investing/)) and don't necessarily see later stage ventures as less risky ([http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late- stage-vs-ea...](http://lifescivc.com/2011/11/risky-business-late-stage-vs- early-stage-biotech/)). If that turns out to be a problem, another scalable source of follow-on investment will have to be tapped in order to prevent a "series B crunch" for these non-traditionally funded biotech/medtech ventures.

</comment><comment><USER32> App of Thrones: second screen app for Game of Thrones that I can glance at to see character names and bios while watching the show. Crowd-sourced content, audio synced so it's smart about pausing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Idea: A TENS Machine you can control with your phone

[http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous- ele...](http://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-electrical- nerve-stimulation-device-in-a-weekend/)

TENS are currently kind of expensive and hard to use. People typically only use them when prescribed by a doctor and the devices are actually quite useful.

Many people get pain somehow or could use some sort of recreational relaxation, and a intuitive TENS machine for a smart phone could have a good market.

</comment><comment><USER30> Easy Expenses:

There are lots of expenses saas apps out there, but the pain with expenses is scanning in all the receipts. I should be able to do this by just taking a picture of the receipt at the time I get it. Perhaps include some computer vision stuff to pick the numbers off the receipt and let me choose which one was cost (incl./excl. VAT). Include other fields for project, time, date, reason, etc.

Then when I'm finished I click a button and it emails the expenses so I can forward it onto my accounts department.

<comment><USER34> Check out Abacus (recent YC company): [https://www.abacus.com/](https://www.abacus.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> StartupMentions.io

We recently wanted to create a page to list all mentions of our product. So, we duct taped a JotForm form with the JotForm api and created one. But if there was a service that created and maintained the list and let you manually edit the list, I am sure many startups would pay $20/month for it. [http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/](http://www.jotform.com/inthenews/)

</comment><comment><USER36> A CMS designed specifically for the solo contractor making a typical brochure- type website for a mom-and-pop organization or company. Every website is a fork of the main repo, so devs have full control and version upgrades are just git merges. Runs on SQLite and comes with in-page editing controls a la Medium. Basically Wordpress for the 21st century, but designed for devs rather than users.

<comment><USER23> I've thought about this too - what language would you think would be the most universal for devs? I think Wordpress pretty much covers this, though I do think there is room for another competitor.

<comment><USER36> There's definitely room for competition. Most recently we've got Wix and Squarespace, but again they target the end user rather than developers. I think most people are willing to shell out a bit more for a local developer rather than an impersonal SaaS site.

At the moment I'm working on a prototype using Python and Flask, which seems like Django without all the cruft. Pretty much the only other options would be Ruby, Go, and Javascript. But I really like Python. :)

<comment><USER37> +1 for using a language with a good security track record.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Idea: A startup which holds your data, it then provides it as a service to other websites giving them it only as they need it.

This will provide a single place where you data exists and other companies will only be able to use it as need be. Security would become a big problem however... But it could get around a lot of privacy concerns at the moment.

<comment><USER39> Its name is [http://openpds.media.mit.edu](http://openpds.media.mit.edu), developed at MIT.

OpenPDS is a service acting as a middle datastore, between the user (who can even host the service themselves), and the data consumers. The key issue here is to guarantee privacy, by responding with 'SafeAnswers' to the queries of external services. It's a WIP, but free and open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm interested in building a 3D mobile game that allows you to build your own life through scanning items around you through your camera and then representing them by making them interactable inside your phone. You'll have quests and stuff..

Can this idea be a worth giving a go at it?

</comment><comment><USER41> They don't fit in an HN comment but I recently dumped a couple of ideas on my blog: [http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup- ideas-2015...](http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup- ideas-2015-edition/)

<comment><USER23> Your cold calling as a service caught my attention. It's an interesting idea, but I feel the pitfall would be that random callers may not know or be as passionate about my product as an employee or myself. I could see a sale easily being lost because of an unexpected question.

<comment><USER41> Yes, that's definitely a big risk to take especially if your target market is relatively small and you don't want to burn bridges.

One solution could be to have different types of callers (similar to freelance marketplaces) to chose from. You could pick a less experienced/expensive caller for stuff that isn't really important and pick a more qualified/expensive caller for stuff that really matters. Callers could even specialise in certain industries.

Another solution could be to let users listen in on calls and provide live feedback to the caller but then most people would just opt to do the calls by themselves. Personally, I might still use such a service simply because I hate talking on the phone and am not good at sales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Idea: Companies setup a basic poll asking people to pick their favorite of 2-5 options. Customers pay $1 (or a little more) to vote.

Companies can use it to understand their actual customers better, people who are actually willing to pay. I was thinking it would be used to prioritized features but it could be used just to raise money. Customers would get a voice with the company, and would not get drowned out by potential customers who are not commited enough to pay a small amount.

I thought of this from the companies perspective so I'm having trouble thinking about it from the customers point of view. Would there be enough incentive for customers to pay?

<comment><USER43> _Would there be enough incentive for customers to pay?_

In a word, no. Companies will often pay a lot to survey their customers. Getting the customers to pay to be surveyed sounds like a very tall request. And any incentive of value the company could add would run counter to the value proposition you've outlined for the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've created a subreddit for regular idea validation: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ideavalidation](https://www.reddit.com/r/ideavalidation) because we have ideas more than once a month.

</comment><comment><USER45> NLP as a service. It's a growing field yet setting up training models and all of that for a wide variety of NLP related services is pretty hard still. Things like sentiment analysis, Named Entity Recognition, etc.

<comment><USER46> I don't have any experience on NLP, but are any of these suitable for you?

[http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language- processi...](http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-25-natural-language-processing- apis/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> the day of the one page resume serving any purpose are over. If companies look at your resume at all, they are looking for information in raw data form: what projects you've worked on/completed, where you've worked, skills, etc. Otherwise they don't even bother. You might be asked to bring in a one page resume to a job interview but it's rarely used for anything but reference/quick glances.

The Idea: Gravatar but for resumes. Raw data that you fill out online and can be updated as you work on projects. Companies (or you) can pull this data into usable formats or to fill out online forms.

Additionally it'd be cool if it had a "condensed" option that either you fill out with terse explanation for each project, or it ignores the descriptions of projects entirely and just shows the project name,date,and role. This would give interviewers something to glance down at for reference, but would save the functionality of the resume as a complete document of experiences.

Idk the idea that only our most recent projects (that can still fit on one sheet of paper) is the only relevant info is absurd to me; there is a lot to be learned from seeing the growth of a person over time.

To me the resume fails on every goal that it SHOULD accomplish except for maybe your ability to choose your best work, which i can see as important but there could even be a feature where you select the three works you are most proud of or something.

</comment><comment><USER48> Problem: the torrent network is not so good for hosting rare files, because often people download rare files, use it once or twice and delete them or place them in another library not accessible to the torrent.

So there are file hosting sites for that matter, but they're far from ideal - because they are centralized with all the problems that come with that.

That creates a lack of accessibility to rare files.

Not sure what would be the best solution that won't hurt the bittorent network(by splitting it), and that will have a reasonable monetization source.

</comment><comment><USER49> An app, possibly desktop one, which gets two music fragments and tries to figure out the stack of effects that were applied to one of them.

Context: I realised recently that a lot of film/series music is processed, compared to the album version. Specifically, I noticed blues tracks on Suits sound so much deeper than their album versions. I'd like to know how was that result achieved and how to make a chosen track sound as if it was processed for that series.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've had this idea several years ago, and it now exists in a few cities around the world. Feel free to start one in your city, and add it to the wiki: [http://www.ideasmeetings.org](http://www.ideasmeetings.org)

It's simply a monthly meetup for idea sharing, validation, and collaboration. Helping each other make our ideas happen, be it an art project, community project, business, or social enterprise.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> some old threads - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910)

<comment><USER50> You linked to the first editions, but the interest decreased a lot in the following threads. Latest I can find:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648149) (4 points, 105 days ago, 1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614657) (18 points, 111 days ago, 12 comments)

<comment><USER51> Maybe it should be monthly instead of weekly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I have obvious bias as a member of the Assembly team, but I think it would be a perfect place to build lots of these ideas collaboratively – and I'd love to help facilitate/participate.

Here's where to start: [https://assembly.com/start](https://assembly.com/start)

And if you mention @awwstn anywhere on Assembly I'm more than happy to help out.

</comment><comment><USER53> Meta: As the last time this was done have showed, every Sunday is probably not sustainable, which lead to progressively worse thread every week.

That said, iirc it have been a year since the last popular "Idea Sunday" was on (I started working on a project from that thread!), it seems like a good idea to do it a week or two ... unless someone decide to kill it off early again.

On topic: I think there might be a need for Website-for-SaaS-as-a-service. What I meant is that whenever a developer decide to start a SaaS, you have to have a website for that service (that has info, landing page, billing, account management etc.). Of course, if the website itself is the service, then you have to develop it, but alot of SaaS is more of the backend stuffs, which the website is merely a presence for sign up and customer support. I think it's just a natural progression from Landing-page-as-a-service and Document-as-a- service (that we already had). The value you providing would be the design of the site, A/B for conversion testing etc.

Another idea: "What could go wrong when I do X?". You see, in modern time, it seems like every thing can cause cancer, every other tools you have in your household is out to get you. And people tend to be in one of the two camp: "whatever, you can't avoid everything" or just being freak out by any, and everything (those that use gluten free vegan organic computer mouse, for example). I believe neither of those behavior is optimal, but unless you're an expert in the field, you really can't tell whether a risk is real or not. It would be nice to have a place where you can come and look for common scenario and see if anything is worth being concerned about (I see black mold, is that a drop everything and move out, or contact the landlord and wait? My roommate is sanding his old car paint in the garage and we have kid around the house, isn't it bad because of ... lead or something? How bad it is if I lick a bar of metal lead? Which kind of cleaning supplies is absolutely dangerous, and which is just essentially ethanol?). A lot of those might sounds like just "common sense" to you, but when I first move (from South East Asia) to the US, I had none of that "common sense" , and it was a nuisance trying to be careful. It's also noticeable when you're living with people that have a different idea of what constitutes "toxic" than you -- and then realize that you're actually not sure if you're overreacting or the other party being a big fat idiot. Google is not suffice, as even though you might find a few articles with advice, "being careful" doesn't help with a risk assessment. The info will have to be qualified quantitatively, or at the very least, very specific.

Also, for any of you go (the board game) player out there, we need a new tsumego solver!

<comment><USER54> > I think there might be a need for Website-for-SaaS-as-a-service. What I > meant is that whenever a developer decide to start a SaaS, you have to have > a website for that service (that has info, landing page, billing, account > management etc.).

Yeah I like this idea. You can get so far with Bower, before you inevitably start spending so much time working on "product boilerplate". I remember being dismayed by this when I wanted to launch my invoice management app, I thought I was at "the last 90%" and I was -- of my product implementation. But then came the billing integration, legally required unsubscribe stuff, privacy policy, t&c's, blah blah blah.

<comment><USER55> Sorry for being a bit spammy, but if you want to team up (just some sparring would be awesome), this SaaS-in-a-box sideproject im working on might be something you'd check out.

[https://github.com/AndersSchmidtHansen/LaravelSidequest](https://github.com/AndersSchmidtHansen/LaravelSidequest) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> #Hardware: what about a solution for 'endless-3d-printing' ? new mopboards will be welcome for our next 'spring-renovation' ...or maybe some fineart picture frames :)

edited: mopboards (?!) in german called "Fussleisten"

</comment><comment><USER57> We solved the problem of curating content to share in your newsletter for engaging your audience/leads through email: [http://mailcaddy.co/beta](http://mailcaddy.co/beta).

Let me know your thoughts!

</comment><comment><USER58> Quora for just India, with answers from experts instead of kids fresh out of college

</comment><comment> rafael-rinaldi Fake it till you make it. Trust your guts and never stop learning and trying.

</comment><comment><USER59> A Firefox (or Chrome) plugin to collapse comments on HN.

<comment><USER60> [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr- news/mnlaodle...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr- news/mnlaodleonmmfkdhfofamacceeikgecp?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info- dialog)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Our IRC bot/logger, BotBot.me - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone! BotBot.me is a side project we've been working on for the last few months. BotBot is an IRC bot and logger with a pretty web interface. To be honest, we're not quite sure what direction to take with the project at the moment and would to hear your feedback.
Since we use it internally, our roadmap includes sending SMS/email messages to offline users, providing a "what I missed" view and some 3rd party integrations.
You can read a little more about the project and the tech at http://lincolnloop.com/blog/2012/dec/5/introducing-botbot/ and the site lives at https://botbot.me. <comment><USER2> For clickers: <https://botbot.me>

</comment><comment><USER3> You seem to have missed the all-important download link.</comment>


How my very first iPhone app (version 1.0.0) got featured in the App Store - <AUTHOR>

We submitted our very first iPhone app (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/localuncle/id473554413?mt=8) about 3 weeks ago to the App Store and about 2 days ago we were featured in the App Store. It's called "LocalUncle" and it gives you the ability to know what's happening anywhere in the world by sending questions to people who are checked-in on Foursqure. Think Quora meets Foursquare meets Magic.
Here's the proof: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=197084127038309&set=a.131140903632632.33967.124227507657305&type=1&theater
Or just go to the App Store to the "Featured" and "New" section and you'll find us.
How did we do that? Well, we just built a great app! Literally the only thing we did was build an app, submit it and we got featured! We haven't had ANY press whatsoever cause we wanted to softlaunch our app and prevent a #faillaunch like color.com. Little did we know that version 1.0.0 of our app would already be featured on the App Store!
We're seeing an amazing amount of downloads and couldn't be happier.
So our advice is: Focus on building a truly useful and nice-looking service. The rest will take care of itself! Good products always surface to the top and rise above the crowd.
If you have any further question, shoot me an email to email@example.com. <comment><USER2> Great idea! Do you need the app to answer questions, or are they sent via Foursquare's messaging system?

<comment><AUTHOR> You do need the app. Do you think it would be possible to build it via 4sq messaging system? We were looking into different options, but came to the conclusion that this was the only way to build it.

<comment><USER2> I thought it was possible, but just saw they don't allow comments on strangers' check-ins. Could use people's twitter/facebook profiles, get sign- ups as a bonus :)

<comment><AUTHOR> true!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats, how many downloads are you doing daily?

<comment><USER4> I'd like to know this too. If you guys don't mind sharing of course. Also would you consider doing a report of your progress after the first month?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Well, we've only been featured for about 72h now. We're seeing that download rates are doubling daily. And on the first day we got over 1k downloads. You can do the math. People I talked to say that we can expect anywhere from 50k-100k downloads. Let's hope for the best!

I'll definitely put up something on our blog blog.localuncle.com. Just follow us on twitter @localuncle to stay in the loop. Exciting times coming up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate to nitpick, but this should be labeled as a Show HN instead of a 'how we did it' type of post.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I guess that our excitement took over and I kinda forgot the HN etiquette for a moment.

<comment><USER5> It's cool, I remember chatting with you during Startup Weekend on Justin.tv (I think). Good product - congrats on the success!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats! Can you make it available on the UK store please? I hate the app store for this - half the apps I see are only in the US store.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on it. Main reason to launch US only was not to pull off a color.com type of #faillaunch. But expect LocalUncle to be available worldwide sooner than you think! Follow us at @localuncle on T to stay in the loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats. Cool to read!

Could you explain the difference between this and LocalMind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. \- We give you the ability to ask about areas. LocalMind doesn't \- We route your questions with some heavy tech in the background to the most adequate users on the system, in real-time. LocalMind doesn't have this intelligence in the background which means that at the end of the day, the experience on our system is way more relevant and simply better than on LocalMind.

Here's more info on what we do exactly [http://blog.localuncle.com/2011/11/04/know-the-world-in- real...](http://blog.localuncle.com/2011/11/04/know-the-world-in-real-time/)</comment></comment>


Can you give a review on my code? Mainly JS and little bit CSS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Nikamura/YoutubeToSpotify-JavaScript

<comment><USER2> Have you considered using [http://codereview.stackexchange.com](http://codereview.stackexchange.com)?</comment>


Google mulling carrier rev share to popularize Google Wallet - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/#!/gadgets/news/2012/03/google-mulling-carrier-rev-share-to-popularize-google-wallet.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand this is a challenging area for Google, but establishing deeper ties with the carriers, and strengthening consumer dependence in them makes me sad.</comment>


A news extension which actually works. Read top news in browser new tab - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/newsprompt-breaking-news/gcajgpbafhkbkdpbaaipjoiajnangjhp <comment><USER2> Exactly what I was looking for. News from all sources. Love the interface

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks...do let us know if you want any features. We are continuously improving it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Loved it

</comment><comment><USER4> Great news extension.</comment>


Show HN: Turn an email to a web page - <AUTHOR> http://mailp.in/c8cN1BEb <comment> mike-cardwell So I tested this with [https://emailprivacytester.com/](https://emailprivacytester.com/). I didn't get an automated response with a link. However, I noticed that somebody had viewed the email using an iPhone. So I scanned my logs to grab the referer from the callbacks and it was:

[http://mailp.in/dashboard/reply/*ID*](http://mailp.in/dashboard/reply/*ID*)

Where I replaced the actual id with " _ID_ ". So I copied the ID from that referrer and visited:

[http://mailp.in/*ID*](http://mailp.in/*ID*)

It seems you don't strip out quite a lot of stuff, including script tags and meta refresh tags.

If you want to contact me about any of this, my details are at [https://grepular.com/#contact](https://grepular.com/#contact) (I am the author of [https://emailprivacytester.com/](https://emailprivacytester.com/) if you hadn't guessed)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your testing! We have fixed the script / meta tag strip problem. We keep improving our code base, making sure emails are rendered correctly on web pages. We won't use user data for anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Nicely done. Feedback:

\- Where's your privacy policy detailed? With the nature of the service (gathering email addresses etc) you could head-off lots of questions with that.

\- A default serif font drags anything down. For me personally I'd prefer another font.

\- You sensibly replace emails, but other links like 'unsubscribe' remain intact, which could be problematic (don't worry, you'll still get your costco emails although it can sometimes lead to real emails/names).

\- I guess grouping and parsing is the next step, i.e. process them and provide features around them a la tripit. Is that the direction you might take it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

"Where's your privacy policy detailed? With the nature of the service (gathering email addresses etc) you could head-off lots of questions with that."

We haven't worked out a formal privacy policy ... but of course, user privacy is our top priority! We won't use user emails for anything else. In fact, from the post page, you can't find your email address.

"A default serif font drags anything down. For me personally I'd prefer another font."

We are still improving on the UI ... We would appreciate if you tell us your preferred font :)

"You sensibly replace emails, but other links like 'unsubscribe' remain intact, which could be problematic (don't worry, you'll still get your costco emails although it can sometimes lead to real emails/names)"

We also take care of unsubscribe part if the unsubscribe url contains your email address.

"I guess grouping and parsing is the next step, i.e. process them and provide features around them a la tripit. Is that the direction you might take it?"

Definitely there are many possibilities to explore from what we have right now. We'd like to hear users comments / critiques / suggestions first.

<comment><USER2> Just to clarify what I meant by the 'unsubscribe' part, many newsletters (like your Costco example from the OP) contain an unsubscribe link without an email but with a unique id in the href. When clicking this you often get to a page that then lets you unsubscribe and sometimes also see who the address was subscribed too, which defeats the purpose. I'm not sure what would be the ideal solution, but you could hit it with a hammer and remove all hrefs from the content in the email DOM, or perhaps parse explicitly for unsubscribe links (harder, as they vary, a bit of NLP etc). Alternatively, just consider the page as 'not for hostiles', in that the user should only share with people who wouldn't hunt for mischief in the first place.

For next steps and parsing, it really depends on if you want to store a user graph your end, i.e. do you want to also initiate the 'share' and know who is looking at the link? If you do then the features go in one direction (collaboration, conversations, actionable stuff) but if you don't want that then it's sort of a different animal (formatting, i.e. galleries, content suggestions and the like).

For a font, Helvetica Neue or anything in that family is all the rage ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank for your insightful feedback! It's really really helpful! We'll think through it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good! I created a similar thing last year when Posterous died; it sill exists and although it never got any traction I still use it for my blog; it's called urgeous.com and has an API that lets users use it as a service (posts can be displayed from your own domain while being hosted by Urgeous).

Your positionning is certainly superior though, because 'mail2web' is simpler and more fun than 'yet another blogging platform that uses email'...

I never got around to turning attachments on because I was afraid of the hosting costs; how do you plan on dealing with those?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your support!

"I never got around to turning attachments on because I was afraid of the hosting costs; how do you plan on dealing with those?"

As long as users don't delete their posts, we keep them (including attachments) there. If we are running out of storage space, we can add more machines :)

<comment><USER4> Are you guarding against malicious users who send automated emails containing large attachments?

<comment><USER5> … like sharing the latest block busters …

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be curious what your approach is to handling porn submissions, be they legal or not? (i.e. I don't see anything about reporting illegal images, like most gallery-hosting sites have.)

Also how will you handle spam? Just post it regardless unless or until volume becomes excessive?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is great. One use case: my grandma who struggled to learn how to use email can now make websites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Our goal is to keep it simple. It's just like many things in life, it's always harder to decide what not to do than deciding what to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very good idea, I'll use it. just a heads up though.

Abusers will abuse, and it seems that you are only going to consider restrictions and security overall after it happens.

Set some alerts so you at least get a warning before the server goes down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" This picture shows how we created this page:"_

(Checks picture...)

Picture contains:

 _" This picture shows how we created this page:"_

Picture of picture contains...

...there it breaks. But you were on to something recursive for a while.

<comment><USER10> haha, interesting..., chicken and egg problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice! We've been working on a similar project [http://jokund.com](http://jokund.com) You just send an email and any Cc'ed people is subscribed to your blog. Would love some feedback. By the way, we also open sourced an npm module to handle inbound emails and post them to a webhook of your choice [https://github.com/Flolagale/mailin](https://github.com/Flolagale/mailin)

<comment><USER12> Looks really good, very nice design.

<comment><USER11> Thanks! Feel free to use it and share any other comments or remarks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome! I blogged about people sending emails with content that didn't have an associated URL recently (and how that pained my heart): [http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1441](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1441)

And mailp.in solves that issue perfectly. If someone sends you an email that is chock full of content that should be shared, just mailpin it.

One question: how long are the URL and the content preserved?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

"One question: how long are the URL and the content preserved?"

You decide. If you don't delete it yourself, it'll be there forever. And it's private. You decide who to share with. You decide whether to keep it or not.

We will commit to improving mailpin, making it a robust and useful service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know not logging in is the basic premise of your website, but I'd also like to be able to read more than just the one post I found written by that author. Rather than search his tweets, and facebook posts, and any emails he's ever sent me for a mailp.in link.

Is there a way you can have sub-domains such as [username].mailp.in/[post address]

Perhaps the username is a hash of the email address to keep the privacy of the user. Not a deal-breaker but it'd be nice.

</comment><comment><USER15> One request: PLEASE don't use highlighting-pops-up-text add-ins. They immediately get blocked on my end and are an annoying user experience.

<comment><USER16> This is a HUGE pet-peeve of mine because I have a habit of selecting text while I'm reading. And I'm definitely not alone. I don't understand why sites continue to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your voice is heard. We've removed the highlighting plugin. Sorry for your inconvenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thread.is tried to do this a couple years ago. Gone now. Not sure there's a good use case for it.

Archive: [http://web.archive.org/web/20121118205935/https://beta.threa...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121118205935/https://beta.thread.is/)

Twitter: [https://twitter.com/threadhq](https://twitter.com/threadhq)

<comment><USER18> I used Posterous a fair bit to do blogging by email when abroad. Attach photos from my phone and it auto-created a gallery. Saved a lot of time.

<comment><USER19> Ditto. The best part was that offline "just worked": I could compose the post in GMail and it would send once I had a signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cool stuff! :-)

Feedback:

"The created web page is private to you."

If I understand the system correctly, isn't that misleading? Once you share the link with someone, they could share it with the whole world. I.e. you share full control with every person you share the link with. Kinda like the privacy you get with email (no more) so maybe @mailpin could correct the description to reflect that.

<comment><USER21> Imgur says exactly the same - your Images are private and its up to you if share them. I cannot imagine situation where someone shares a link and expect the content to be private any more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It must be so fun to look at the breakdown of the company or university email addresses that you are getting emails from

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be handy if you could attach a js or css file to the email which would be used in the published page.

<comment><USER24> This is an excellent idea—I've received many requests from people who want to be able to use the BeeLine Reader browser plugins to read their email. This would accomplish that goal. Even without a JS/CSS helper, this is still really awesome because people can use this tool in combination with our browser plugins. Please contact me (email@example.com) if you end up allowing JS/CSS helpers so that we can work with you to make ours compatible. Thanks again for this awesome product!

<comment><USER25> I'm sorry, you have written a very similar message to the comments section of the given link. It smells spam.

<comment><USER26> What do you mean? Yes, he posted another message endorsing mailp.in in the comments and here he's reaching out for a collaboration. I don't see why it would be spam just because he's mentioning his product.

<comment><USER25> Seems like I am getting downvoted for some reason. Let me clarify a bit of things here. The product he is talking about is a browser plugin, which is something that claims that speeds up reading by coloring the sentences.

This has no relation whatsoever with the OP's product. It is saying, "Hey great stuff! Check out my unrelated product in the link, maybe we can collaborate."

I doesn't smell spam; it is spam.

<comment><USER26> I don't agree. He purposed how they could collaborate. Bee Line Reader is a great tool which a lot of people on HN use and not something random. I definitely see how it could be used with mailp.in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone know which library this uses to convert mails to HTML?

I'm wondering because I need something for a devops project that can show spam inline in a webpage. Obviously this is dangerous because it could spread malware so what could mailp.in be using to avoid spreading malware like this?

</comment><comment><USER28> Sweet! Thank you. I just used your service apply for PIEPDX Startup Incubator just a few seconds ago. I needed a quick way to create an online photo gallery and just emailed the pics to email@example.com. Private by default, no account needed, and easier than min.us

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a neat idea. It would be cool to somehow allow you to add a list of recipients that should receive the link once it's pinned, but I guess that takes away from the simplicity of it.

<comment><USER5> like if you receive a mail that was not only to email@example.com, you could send the generated link to those people in CC.

I'm not sure what to use this for though. Who would look at the website when it just contains what was in the mail a minute ago anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can you add so that people can append their emails / attachments to the existing page? Even SMS messages? You can add twitter message to it latter on...

</comment><comment><USER31> This is bad [https://www.google.co.in/search?q=site%3Amailp.in](https://www.google.co.in/search?q=site%3Amailp.in)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out. All these google indexes are gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I like the idea. I can't think of a specific use-case for me yet, but email integrated apps are often pretty cool and make for easier adoption.

<comment><AUTHOR> We (as developers of mailpin) use the services ourselves:

1\. Ad hoc image album. Put a bunch of images as attachments in an email and send to firstname.lastname@example.com to create a simple page.

2\. Forward company receipts to firstname.lastname@example.com and create a page, and share the link in coworkers ... (this sounds weird ... but it works well for us ...)

3\. Forward marketing spams to create page, and publicly share such pages to denounce those spammers :)

4\. Forward paper acceptance latters or other letters to create pages, and share them to show off -- vanity!

5\. Ad hoc blogging ... Don't want to have an account, don't want people to follow me. But occasionally, we still want to say something and share to Friends that we really trust.

6\. Create a playlist of youtube videos. Put a bunch of youtube links and send to email@example.com. A page with embedded videos will be created. We don't have youtube accounts ... sorry ... but still want to share a bunch of videos with friends ...

7\. Tweet more than 140 characters. Create a page with short url, and tweet!

There would be more use cases. The point is, we want something dead simple. No registration, no app (well, email client is still needed ...), and private.

<comment><USER32> Thanks for the update of what went through your minds. Keep track of how customers use it. You will likely be surprised by what actually is done with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great Idea. Can you add a time limit functions on the generated webpage? The generated webpage will be deleted after x number of days.

</comment><comment><USER34> Do you know if google index your pages ? and how it can find all the pages or links ?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you put your link to public places like hacker news, then google will find it.

If you simply create a post page and keep it to yourself or share in a closed social network (e.g., IM, facebook private group ...) that cannot be indexed by google, then you are good.

That said, you decide to what degree you want to share your page.

<comment><USER35> This is not correct. With Google now having Chrome and other tools, there are many ways for Google to find out a URL exists.

You may want to send a follow up email with a quick link for the user to add a noindex meta tag to the page, or even password protect it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

We just did a release to address this problem. Now, <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> is added for each single page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Email is for me a convenient way to pass data. And client are more easy to manage or interact with emails.

And one of the best is that you can keep your data with emails an decentralised it.

Very nice works, the idea is pleasant i'am thinking on a private open source network. Would you mind if i use your idea ?

<comment><USER34> I am thinking that it could be a way to make a extended kind of mailing list.

A maling list where you can publish things more easily ....

<comment><USER34> And again what please me is tahat oy decentralised the things why not make comment for a post with emails too ?

Did you read this ? [http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/papers/mrprivacy.pdf](http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/papers/mrprivacy.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just a heads up, you left the unsubscribe active in the sample Costo email.

<comment><USER37> And the email address to which Costco sent the email is also visible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Cool hidden feature: it obfuscates any email address mentioned in the post.

<comment><USER5> slippery slope. if it obfuscates this, it implies it is meant for certain types of sharing that would also other things to get obfuscated.

<comment><USER39> I'm not clear what you mean, could you explain?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "You email client is your editor"

Should be "Your email client...."?

</comment><comment><USER34> Do you plan to implement tweeter card format for the post ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I want to see the mailp.inception on the image attached!

</comment><comment><USER42> What are the restrictions on attachment sizes?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, we really don't have any restriction on attachment size. We accpect whatever you are allowed to send for your email account.

But definitely we have alerts and closely monitor to prevent something bad happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This passed the instapaper test, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER44> This is really cool!</comment>


The Death of the Web Page - Single Page Apps & APIs will change the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.3scale.net/2012/12/the-death-of-the-web-page/

<comment><USER2> Interesting read, somewhat worrying though -- hopefully along appification we will also see (open) "API-ification" that will help preventing fragmentation/compartmentalization of the web. We were fighting silos (in the corporate setting) in the past and would be unfortunate to see this coming to the web too.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use micropayments if done right? - <AUTHOR>

We're at the "customer validation" stage of our first startup attempt :) , so I wanted to ask you:
If someone implemented an easy way for users to pay for content or services (or in-game items), without requiring a credit card, would you consider it?
What must such a service have or offer in order for you to consider using it?
How do you believe it should work?
Would you accept a large % in fees in exchange for ease of use and removing the credit card barrier?
Our proposal is shockingly similar to BuySimple (and we arrived independently), though we have 700k less in funding :) <comment><USER2> _> If someone ... would you consider it?_

Sure, but you'd have to convince me that it wouldn't turn away users who haven't heard of the service. Also, you'd have to show some people that they'll make more money than an ad-supported model.

Example: I'm working on some tutorials on integrating Rails apps with iOS apps. I'm deciding between selling an eBook + code versus just blogging it. If such a service allowed me to sell access at $3 per chapter/turoial, I'd consider it.

All in all, you might take this angle and focus on a specific type of content in order to get traction. Maybe coding/tech tutorials would be a good place to start.

 _> What must such a service have or offer in order for you to consider using it? _

Users + growth

 _> How do you believe it should work?_

That's your problem. Make it easy and people will use it. Show publishers that they'll make more money and they'll get on board.

 _> Would you accept a large % in fees in exchange for ease of use and removing the credit card barrier?_

Definitely not more than Apple's app store (30%). But something below that would be nice, say 20-25%.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. We have a tough road ahead indeed :)

It's encouraging that you would consider a 25% margin - we're finding this the toughest point to tackle, right now we're looking at costs of about 50%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of money in micropayments and there are loads of problems with existing solutions from the perspective of virtually everyone involved. The compromise solution tends to be purchasing service-restricted credits in larger increments.

It's a great problem to solve, but people have been trying to make incremental improvements here for ages. What makes you different than all of them?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're currently testing several hypothesis and assumptions:

1) People want to pay for online content or services that deliver value for them

(League of Legends creator said: "if it delivers a tremendous value to them that's highly replayable, people will spend money")

2) There's a large segment of people that don't have international credit card or paypal, yet are online and want to pay (or people that don't want to use a credit card online), and have a cell phone.

3) Webmasters and game developers are willing to accept a large percentage cut in exchange for much better conversion rates.

4) The service has to be as simple as possible (and I think BuySimple is doing things right in that regard) and dead easy to try (we'd thought of the "free sample" thing as well)

The hypothesized target segments are: \- online games with in-game stores \- virtual communities that want to donate or help \- small independant websites with small products (example: arts and crafts sites with small projects)

Think very small payments (5 cents of a dollar)

League of Legends interview:

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28313/Interview_League_Of...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28313/Interview_League_Of_Legends_Merrill_On_Succeeding_With_FreeToPlay_Core_Games.php)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the competition, BuySimple:

<https://www.buysimple.com/>

We're looking at the same implementation (a "Pay" button, Facebook Connect or OpenId, and we even thought of free credit the first time around! Though our backend money collection is probably very different and might be our difference-maker).

I'm really excited to be part of a startup at last :) and I hope you guys can help validate our idea (or make us pivot :) )

</comment><comment><USER4> The solution is cryptocurrencies, imho. Everything else is a nasty workaround.</comment>


Startup interview audio podcasts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.airingpods.com/audio-podcasts-on-entrepreneur-interviews/

<comment><AUTHOR> A curated list of only 5 audio podcasts, which is only into interviews on entrepreneurship.</comment>


StopNGoGrid - <AUTHOR> http://shawnonthe.net/2009/04/22/stopngogrid/

<comment><USER2> A dude I work with has nothing but praise for GoGrid - he told me setting up a machine behind the balancer is super simple... I'll see if I can convince him to share his experience.

<comment><USER3> Setting up a server behind a load balancer is super simple. The only issue I have with GoGrid is when you have to setup a few machines with complex configurations or change the setup behind a load balancer. GoGrid has followed up with me though as you can see in the comments and advised that most all of my concerns will be dealt with in the next update. So I'll probably after update my opinion significantly after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do you need servers on the West Coast?

Ray

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm Shawn. It was to keep latency low for clients of ours on the west coast. We have to complete every request within 350ms including network time and when we were serving west coast clients from the east coast we were unable to do this due to network latency.</comment></comment>


MacBook Pro? No - <AUTHOR> http://shahidkamal.com/macbook-pro-no/ <comment><USER2> I absolutely agree with the touch bar, I think it's more like just a gimmick feature and don't have any real function. In addition, sometimes I accidentally mute my computer thanks to the Touch Bar button on the right side.

I also heard about the keyboard problems, but so far I didn't experience any, it works well, but yeah, the feeling is different and you can dislike it.

<comment><USER3> I have a touch bar. I find it kind of neat and occasionally useful but I would not pay extra for it.

The keyboard is fine. I don't have a strong preference for it vs. the older Mac keyboard or vice versa.

My speculation is that the touch bar is a toe in the water of software defined keyboard interfaces. In the future they could make the entire bottom panel of the Mac a haptic software defined interface. The touch bar API and chip/platform would be the basis for that.

On the rest of the machine I agree that "thin and light" has become a cargo cult at Apple. I'd like more battery, more RAM, and a faster process more than thinner and lighter. But the machine works for me and it's still overall better than most alternatives.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't give up the thin and light build, but I travel a lot with it, even in the office :)</comment></comment></comment>


A one question survey on the nature of consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QzdRUI2xCZtNech1krDmOsusODfaF9sGA1PSFOVZf7Q/viewform?usp=send_form

<comment><AUTHOR> I will post the results once I get no more submissions.</comment>


Personal Management System - <AUTHOR> http://220.127.116.11:8000/ <comment><USER2> This should be the link you point to: [https://github.com/Volmarg/personal- management-system](https://github.com/Volmarg/personal-management-system)</comment>


Ask HN: Please review ESMZone.com beta - <AUTHOR>

We just released a refresh of our beta and need feedback.
ESMZone is a community game where student athletes are rewarded for mentoring their peers, rating each other, and developing leadership skills.
We have a lot more to do, but getting feedback from a wide variety of people is invaluable. I appreciate any ideas, thoughts, opinions and your time.
What's good?  What's confusing? What would you add?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Not enough answers on the homepage or questions i care about to entice me to register to see more. i am not a student. i feel uneasy when all the information is behind locked doors and will not bother if i think the reward will not be worth the effort. your community is appears small. maybe hide the standings listings till theres more users. just my 2 cents, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for taking the time.</comment></comment>


Eloquent JavaScript on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/marijnh/Eloquent-JavaScript

<comment><USER2> FWIW, a booksprint ([http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.reps.general/browse_t...](http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.reps.general/browse_thread/thread/c7a0f6290a067dc1)) has been organized several weeks ago by people from Framalang (<http://www.framalang.org/>) and Frenchmozilla (<http://frenchmozilla.fr/>) to translate this book to french. The result can be consulted here : <http://books.lifeleaks.com/eloquentjavascript/>.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haskell to build a site for a javascript book? I would have expected some client side mvc or maybe node etc.

<comment><USER4> Sarcasm? Not every JavaScript developper wants to use JavaScript for everything.

<comment><USER3> sure. but web seems like an appropriate use for javascript.

<comment><USER5> Which is why there's also a ton of client-side JS being used on <http://eloquentjavascript.net> . The Haskell program just converts the book from text to HTML.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coders at Work on finding and preventing bugs - <AUTHOR> http://scraps.benkuhn.net/2015/08/08/caw-errors.html <comment><USER2> Anybody have a debugging workaround for Haskell? Dropping print statements is doable, but not very nice looking.

<comment><USER3> Debug.Trace -> [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-220.127.116.11/docs/Debug-T...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-184.108.40.206/docs/Debug- Trace.html)

Whenever you want to see the value of x, replace it with traceShow x x</comment></comment>


Show HN: PodCastle - Reddit for podcasts - <AUTHOR> http://podcastle.us

<comment><USER2> For the first instant I saw the page, I thought it was one of those spammy, ad-filled domain placeholder pages. It's because the design is similar - boxy, list of links, no images. I'm not sure if that first impression will actually drive people away, but you think it might, you should change the design a little to distinguish your site from those placeholder sites. Perhaps adding a podcast-related image or a large logo to the main page would work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried to submit this excellent podcast: [http://castroller.com/podcasts/BigIdeas/2085839-Craig%20Kapl...](http://castroller.com/podcasts/BigIdeas/2085839-Craig%20Kaplan%20on%20Mathematical%20Art%20and%20Artistic%20Mathematicians)

And it failed. What exactly do I need to submit?

<comment><USER4> Note, I'm the developer of CastRoller.

I was able to submit that episode by getting the RSS feed from the podcast's main page (<http://castroller.com/Podcasts/BigIdeas>) and submitting that directly.

I don't know if PodCastle is able to pick up the MP3 on the CastRoller episode page.

The episode is on PodCastle here: <http://podcastle.us/e/CMB5V>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Might be worth noting that there's already a podcast called Podcastle, so that might present some naming issues - I was confused for the first few seconds.

Also, seconding what roryokane said, your design does not look good. It's bland, it's boring, and it looks a bit spammy.

</comment><comment><USER6> _/me adds an episode of PodCastle(.org) to PodCastle(.us)_ <http://podcastle.us/e/kbQub>

Namespace collision proved non-fatal, but still a bit confusing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really loving some of the things happening in the "podcast" space lately (check <http://said.fm/> for another approach). Does make me wonder why it's taken so long for these types of services to come to market though, I've been after decent way to discover interesting content outside of iTunes for years.

But was obviously not motivated enough to do anything about it myself :/

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool idea. Can you optimize the front page? Scrolling lags a lot on my Droid incredible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working on ways around this. Reason for lag right now is that iPhone requires that play events come from a UI event rather than any arbitrary javascript function call. To get one-click play on the homepage, you have to load all 40 players on page load. The alternative is 2-click play. 1 click to load player, 1 click to play. Opted for 1-click and laggy over 2 click and snappy.

<comment><USER8> Ah, I see. I didn't even notice you could click once to play (the play icon should have been obvious to me). Honestly, I would always click through to the description anyway to see what's up, unless it was a podcast that I regularly listen to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe Related: Over the last few months, I've really come to like most of the 5by5.tv podcasts. Two picks:

\- the dev show, good combination

\- on the internet, entertaining

</comment><comment><USER10> Horrible name! There is a fantasy fiction podcast called PodCastle (<http://podcastle.org>). Seems like a conflict there.

</comment><comment><USER11> I listen to podcasts 2 hours a day on my drive to/from work. Looking forward to you expanding on the site, keyword searches, tags, descriptions would be nice

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't reddit primarily about the comments/community? I don't see a way of logging in/creating a throwaway account or commenting on the particular podcasts?

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for building this, I've been having trouble finding good podcasts lately and this is just what I need.

It keeps crashing my tabs in Chrome OS X

</comment><comment><USER14> yooo nice</comment>


Concrete Problems in AI Safety - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/11/29/concrete-problems-in-ai-safety/ <comment><USER2> It is really neat that some people are doing experimental work in an area which attracts so much uninformed speculation.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best strategy to work on a HW consumer electronics idea? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea of a consumer electronics item that I like and am thinking about the best way to approach it. I am in the process of prototyping it. I know exactly what the end result should look like. But I have not done any thing related to hw outside of prototyping. So thinking long term and aspects of taking it to actually make a finished product, I would like to get some feedback on how to approach it. I am not looking at this to sink money into it right away, but to get an idea on what to expect and how to go about it, primarily to estimate costs involved and time it might take. Specifically -
- How to find companies that will assemble the electronic components for me.
- How to find companies that make the external casing for the product.
- How to go about finding out what it might cost and how much time it would take.
Honestly, prototyping is fun and all but if the longer term aspect of this does not pan out (fall with in my limitations) I am better of spending my time on other ideas I have.
Thanks for any feedback. <comment><USER2> This seems like a good place to start:

[http://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-build-a-hardware- startup](http://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-build-a-hardware-startup)

I don't know if you want to do a startup, but there is good information in the guide.

Here are some other blog links that might be good starting points for further reading:

[http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/10/electronic- compone...](http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/10/electronic-component- purchasing-for-manufacturing)

[http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/11/what-every- hardwar...](http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/11/what-every-hardware- startup-should-know-about-the-electronic-component-landscape)

[http://pinocc.io/blog/open-source-hardware- business/testing-...](http://pinocc.io/blog/open-source-hardware- business/testing-before-shipping/)

By the way, Octopart and Adafruit are really great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for those links! I will go through them carefully. Doing a startup is what I want to do but before any of that I want to do the due diligence part first and learn things.

<comment><USER2> You should probably start with the Adafruit guide, it's a good survey and starting point. It doesn't delve deeply into actual prototyping, but it covers the 'due diligence' aspect.

The first half is run of the mill startupy stuff, but the second half has a lot of useful information to consider.

I'm not sure how helpful the blog links will be at this point.

Re: External Casing- If you have access to a 3D printer, I highly recommend trying out a few iterations of the casing yourself before you try to outsource.

Once you have everything working, you can find companies that do limited runs of PCB and casing.</comment></comment></comment>