@popoCrunchbase for techies to specify city/state/country they from, and school, and employer(s). Thus the way ‘WeAreNYTech‘ is, but for all cities. Crunchbase isn’t complete. It also lacks those fields like school and employer. I want to connect with other Purdue grads in the tech/startup world. Or those people from Buffalo, NY that maybe don’t live here anymore.
There’s LinkedIn, but man I hate that site. I don’t use it.
This is simply an idea of doing a daily podcast where an app or website is discussed for 45-60 minutes with some other experts in the field… VCs, UX guys, etc. The rights, the wrongs.
Have you ever worked somewhere that some employees are sitting around, surfing the web, and not being productive? They obviously have too much time on their hands and likely should be fired if they suck, because they are likely bringing the entire organization down on productivity (“if she isn’t working and doesn’t care, why do i? she doesn’t get punished for it”).
Anyhow, what about possibly outsourcing some spare time that your employees have. This could also help if the company is in need of revenue. If a programmer could work 10 hours per week for another company that wasn’t a competitor, that could help pay their salary.
This is a simple idea really, although probably could use its’ own website to help facilitate/coordinate. What about using Kickstarter (which is a website for crowd-funding ideas) and utilize it for neighborhood initiatives, such as painting a house, fixing someone’s roof, etc. Essentially helping thy neighbor.
This could simply be that one person leads the way for getting someone’s house painted that can’t afford it. Maybe $500 is needed for the paint and supplies, and 10 people are needed. I believe people locally would contribute financially if they couldn’t be there in real life to help.
Think of it as a crowd-sourced (and on a smaller-scale) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, for communities.
I believe these types of activities simply benefit everyone — you feel great about helping someone, you meet others helping, the recipient feels grateful with their new/refreshed *insert whatever here, such as Home*.
And/or mowing lawns, snowplowing driveways.
My belief is that there’s a lot of elderly and single Mothers out there that could use some help, as I’m sure many other people.
I find it amazing that most of us don’t know our neighbors.
This was written specific to City of Buffalo, NY, but really this should be built for any city. Here’s my idea, it’s yours, please go execute and build it!
We need a mobile parking app that allows you to see if you can park in that spot, or on that side of the street, and also when you can’t park there — also the app will show you were parking tickets get most often reported (via our app; and maybe there is open city data with that info too!).
Here’s how it works: $0.99 app (or other biz model). Shows the map, shows a number on each street in a circle — click on that and it gives info on reported tickets on that street. You can also see the rules for the street, either side — maybe each side of street is in red or green, to show if you can park there right now; also you click on the side of street to get full rules of the street. You could also have it set an alarm for you at 8am or something as a reminder to ‘move your car’. The reported tickets on the street will say ‘5 tickets reported on this street in last 30 days’ ’12 in last 90 days’.
The other part of the app is to be a good samaritan and notify someone that their car ‘is on wrong side of street’, ‘needs to be moved’, … a drop-down of options, no freeform text. You input the car’s license plate #. If the license plate is a registered user of our app, they receive a text saying, “Heads up from a good samaritan: your car is parked illegally”. We only send one text every hour (using twilio) — thus if multiple users identify the illegally parked car, only one text is sent. The end-user can then ‘thank’ the users that alerted him/her. Could be anonymous, or you could share your info. I think anonymous is the way to go though.
Also, if you get a ticket, you report that into the system. Good for the people to know, so that we can see if something fishy is going on with the parking police — maybe the signs are faded, or confusing, and hence why so many tickets are occurring each day.
The parking police can’t mess with this idea! Power to the people!
Thoughts?
This is my buddy Aaron’s idea originally (@lloydxmas). I’m sharing because he and I would like someone to create this. I spent a bit of time exploring this idea. You’ll see my mockups below. The gist of the idea is that people currently have no way of tracking our life’s win/lose percentage in games. I wish I had a history/record of all the Monopoly games I’ve played with friends over my life.
Imagine if before you start any game (kan jam, Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, Sorry, etc), that you initiate that game via an app. You specify who you’re playing with/against. Then you could share that to twitter/facebook, telling the world that a battle has begun in Monopoly. During the gameplay, you and your opponents/teammates can take photos, write comments… basically keep a record of all the action from the game. When the game concludes, you specify if you won or lost. Also, once you start a game with these players, the app will show you your win/lose percentage with your teammates, versus these opponents, and overall. You could even specify where you are playing [via foursquare].
I think this would make a neat app. Below are my mockups, as well as all of my notes. I have not built this app. I hope someone will build it. If you think this is neat, or have comments, add comments to the bottom of this post. And please, someone, create this app! I called it ‘Broughten’, which was a word used in the film ‘Bring it!’. I thought it was witty and sarcastic. Most of my friends disagreed with the name, to be honest. This entire post is all yours, please do something with it. This could be a good StartupWeekend project for someone 🙂
Win lose percentage — original idea
Posted by Steve Poland
Posted by Steve Poland
This is a list of domains I’m selling. Most of these I am seeking 4+ figures. Feel free to make me an offer, my email is at the bottom of this page.
ODesk is a huge marketplace of developers, designers and other contractors globally. When you hire someone on there, they have software that screencaptures the contractor’s screen while they work. So if you’re paying $20/hour, you see that hour of the programmer actually working and not dilly dallying.
It’s not perfect by any means, the programmer might have a second screen open where they dilly dally, but if you actually watched, you could likely see if/when the programmer isn’t clicking keys [although maybe they are reading a reference book on a scripting language].
Does something like this exist outside of ODesk for contractors? Paying someone $50/hour vs another $100/hour really doesn’t matter, if the first guy does it in 2 hours and the second guy did it in an hour. Finding a reliable programmer that meets deadlines and writes great code, is what matters.
When you are testing out a new programmer or designer or whatever contractor, that initial dating phase is up-in-the-air, unless the contractor comes referred to you by someone you trust, then you trust your instincts.
But I think clients would prefer to have a screencast system. And contractors would say that’s an invasion of privacy, but if someone is paying you and hourly rate, then it’s not. If someone is paying on a project basis (fixed fee), then no screencast is needed obviously.
The other day I met with a buddy that runs a photobooth rental company. After the meeting, I sent some introduction emails to him and others I know that he should know. It got me thinking, helping others is great — it’s human for us to want to help others. I know we have Twitter and Facebook, but what about another social network of needs? OK, Jig is doing that. But what about a focus on how can friends help you and how can you help friends?
I imagine a feed view similar to Twitter. Simple premise is “What are you working on?”, but maybe that’s not it. You could “retweet” things your friends say, want, or need. Contacts, ideas, cheaper vendors and options, jobs, restaurant suggestions, tips, etc.
Ways to comment on them, thank, introduce people (Hashable?), etc.
I don’t use LinkedIn, so maybe something like this exists on there?
Has anyone seen anything like what I’m describing? Basically Twitter for work. Not Yammer (that is basically for within your own company).
Remember being younger and writing all over stuff? Benches in the locker room at school, walls in stalls, etc. “Dave loves Michelle 6/8/10”, and drawings of random things.
Remember the Million Dollar Homepage? A limited amount of space for sale at $1 per pixel, 1mm pixels.
Why isn’t there a big graffiti wall on the Internet. Simple tools of a paintbrush that can be fine size to thicker. Select color. You could draw anywhere on the “wall”. The wall starts small until it starts filling up. Then sections open up. Maybe when you get enough friends to draw, your drawing becomes permanent? Or maybe they all are permanent. Maybe you can have your own wall section that your friends add too, as they add then more wall opens up for their friends to contribute too.
UPDATE: google search for “infinite canvas”.