What is this? It’s a place for me to write down ideas for products/ or identified problems, without concern for how developed the ideas/solutions are. There is no particular order to this list, I’m sure there’re lots of typos, and you’ll likely find at least one thing on here that won’t make any sense to you.
Personalized speech-to-text
Speech to text software exists, but I’ve never had to calibrate one to my own voice when using it. I think that calibration would help quite a bit. The main drawback to this is that the transcription algorithm would potentially need a lot of personalized calibration recordings in order to learn enough to calibrate.
Bias Bounty
Many software companies offer “bug bounties”, monetary rewards for software and/or cybersecurity professionals who are able to identify exploits/bugs in that company’s programs. Use of machine learning is on the rise in software applications. A large problem when building machine learning software is dealing with and mitigating bias in the training data. Software companies should enlist the help of professionals outside of their organization to help identify exploits, biases, and other types of weaknesses in the performance of their machine learning algorithms.
Trivia Knight
I love trivia nights, but it’s never easy to figure out when or where they are. Online lists are often out of date, and venue websites themselves often do not have these event details listed. Trivia Knight would be a directory of trivia nights in your city, with details about when/where they are, and user reported details pertaining to difficulty/rules/question themes.
Halp!
Connect students who need help with a certain class with older students who have already taken that class, or with classmates who better understand the material.
Card Game
Everyone has plot-modifier/word cards, and they start 1 do card and 1 don’t card. A random plot card is played, which starts off a story. Each player, starting with the player who relates closest to the original plot, must add to that story, using one of their plot-modifier/word cards. They can expand the story in any way they want, as long as it does not stray from the ideas/concepts present in the plot-modifier card, and/or must relate closely to the word. When a do card has been achieved, the player gets to draw a new one. The game ends when a player has managed to complete 3 do cards, but be careful, because maintaining a don’t card is worth 2 points
A printer that is easy to use/debug/repair
What a revolutionary idea! I just think of how many printers I’ve been through in my life, and how a good portion of them are probably sitting in a landfill somewhere.
How to go grocery shopping
Some people think they know what they need before they go into a grocery store, and then they forget everything and second guess themselves. The rest don’t even plan in the first place.
Pickup baseball scheduler
Requires more planning than a pickup basketball game the player and equipment requirements.
Pinball machine encyclopedia/rulesets
There are great resources to learn more about pinball machines, Pinside.com, for example, but there’s no quick way to get the run-down on the rules and play tips for a specific pinball machine you might find “in the wild”. I’m imagining a website/app that has some quick pointers for each pinball machine that can make playing it for the first (or n-th) time a lot more fun.
Modular pinball kit
I’m a pinball nerd. I’d love to have a machine of my own, but they are incredibly bulky, expensive, and (depending on the model) difficult to maintain. I’ve seen a small handful of talented makers build their own pinball machines over the years, and I’m sure there’s a step up from 100% diy that might look like a diy build kit. It would be smaller than a full machine, but large enough that the playfield could still be quite intricate and can handle a standard sized pinball.
Itemized purchase tracking
There exists no shortage of apps that can track your expenses and help you budget, but they are limited to knowing what businesses you bought from, not what you purchased. It would prove useful to see an itemized purchase history on my credit-card/bank statement. You’d have the ability to go back and see how your restaurant ordering habits have changed over time, what you’ve bought everyone for christmas over the past 10 years, and exactly how many Trader Joe’s pork dumplings you’ve eaten in your lifetime.
Git Style Recipe Sharing
Recipes are all over the internet, but figuring out what to cook and how ‘best’ to cook it remains a complicated process. Recipes are fragmented amongst various aggregators (and formats) and there are a million ways and one to cook the same thing. How does the average person get what they’d like without dealing with this research process?I’m imaging a single place a person could go to search for recipes. Every recipe has the same layout, and there are no redirects to other websites in order to view the actual recipe. To deal with the duplication problem, recipe developers can create ‘takes’ on existing recipes, similar to how a repo is ‘forked’ on Github. Readers can add tips/results from their experiences with that recipe, and content-creators/bloggers can link out to their own websites where they may have posted their original recipes, have written more, or have their own take on an existing recipe. Because users are building relationships between similar recipes, there’s an opportunity to refine a recommendation algorithm to a user’s very specific mood and palette, depending on what kind of X (chicken wings, fish, etc) they are in the mood for.
Weather App for Travel
You input a basic itinerary of where you’ll be, and the app will show a weather report as sipmple as if it were a single location.
Shareable scheduling tool for interviewees
Often times when interviewing for a job, a recruiter will send a link to a scheduling tool for a candidate to book a time that the interviewer is available. Candidates should have the same convenience, especially if they are in multiple interview processes. Send a potential employer a link to book an interview slot on your calendar.