Idea: Produce Spotting

More of a fun silly app than anything that could be reasonably be constructed into a business..

I’m in the middle of making a pizza and need some rosemary. I know there is a lot around our neighborhood but I can never remember where. 

This app would let people record sources of wild, edible (not always?) plants and such. 

Not sure that many would be eager to have their secret blackberry spot picked out.. maybe give something to get something?

Idea: flavors.me but for bars and restaurants

Restaurants and bars have really shitty web sites by far most of the time. The Oatmeal does a much better job of pointing out what they do wrong.

What does a restauranteur want out of a site? 

  • Key information (location, hours) to people already committed to going
  • To be found and influence ‘where to go tonight?’ decisions
  • Taking reservations (maybe)
  • Engagement with their community (maybe)
  • .. in a manner that makes their customers feel good about the experience

What does a potential consumer want from a web site? The very same stuff!

Dozens of services have stepped into this space (Yelp, OpenTable, Urbanspoon, Chowhound, Foodspotting etc etc) and are first stops for would-be restaurant goers. Consumers do not suffer the inability to find out about restaurants. However, through their abdication of the space, restaurants have lost control of the message. Potential customers see generic profile pages with *cell phone pictures of menus*. 

Despite this, I still think there is value in a restaurant creating a reasonable web site. I’m sure tons of people search google for where to go to dinner, and as a consumer of nearly all of the above services I still find myself landing on these wretched restaurant pages frequently. 

With so many restaurants being so poorly served by their web presence, I believe there is a business there. 

What such a business might look like:

  • Easy domain sign-up / transfer
  • Great looking sites in seconds.. that actually work on mobile phones
  • Painless menu management
  • Upsell richer functionality like no-charge reservations, mailing lists, loyalty gifts, designable sites (ala Shopify), photography etc etc

Did I mention that in-restaurant software also sucks?

Idea: Rails gem for mobile views

When a request comes in from a mobile user agent it renders the view with a given convention eg. m_

Idea: Rdio remote control

After a recent hard drive failure I switched from iTunes to Rdio and I’ve really enjoyed the experience so far, and not just because I have friends that work there.

In addition to a few artists not on Rdio, I’m really missing the ability to control the music playing on my home stereo from my phone. Apple’s ‘Remote’ app worked brilliantly - I could pause the music as I’m leaving the house and skip bad tracks from the dinner table. As it stands, I have to pull out my laptop, share the screen of the mac mini playing the music and change it up there. #firstworldproblems  

Ideally such an app would allow me to:

  • discover devices nearby capable of being controlled
  • play / pause / skip
  • browse my collection and everything else available
  • add stuff to my queue

Unfortunately, without some help from the Rdio guys it’s not even really possible for someone else to build this - the mac client isn’t yet Applescript-able and there are god-knows how many other platforms Rdio runs on and few of of them have any programatic control.

Update: it looks like the Rdio app is now Applescript-scriptable

Much later update: the AirPlay makes this all but irrelevant for me.. but I’m a nerd and can set up the Mac Mini plugged into my stereo with AirServer. Sucks that I’m draining battery on the iPad, but being able to pass it around to people at the party and have them queue up songs is worth it. 

Idea: prediction market for startups

Everyone in the tech community has opinions about which of the current breed of startups will succeed and which are stupid ideas that will end in tears.

How about being able to place some bets?

Update: I’m working on it! It seemed too fun and too easy to pass up. Check progress at http://startupbookie.heroku.com

Idea: PayPal + Facebook mashup

PayPal is great - it’s the easiest way I know of to send money to someone. It could be a lot better though. Presently I have to:

  1. Ask the recipient if they have a PayPal account, and if so what email address to use
  2. Go to the site
  3. Go through the artificially prolonged login sequence (do people really believe it’s more secure or something??)
  4. Click through their advertisement
  5. Select ‘Send Money’
  6. Type in the recipient’s email address
  7. Select the right type of payment to avoid charges

This is silly. The mobile app isn’t much better either. 

Since pretty much everyone has a Facebook account, and pretty much everyone I want to send money to is my Facebook friend - someone should make this super easy. Something like:

  1. Unlock the app (4 digit pin? swipe a pattern?)
  2. Type the first three letters of someone’s name
  3. Type an amount
  4. Press send

Idea: screen writing software

Nearly everyone in the film / tv industry uses the same writing software - final draft. It’s standalone desktop software without any collaboration or sharing capabilities. Someone should do better.