There are two aspects to this problem: (i) the garage is both doctor and pharmacist - there is an incentive to take advantage of my lack of knowledge and propose unnecessary work; and (ii) I don't know whether, for the services and goods proposed as necessary (including labour), the price is fair.

I know this is stuff that I should probably know, but I feel like there is an opportunity for this all to be made better.

Techcrunch about them: http://techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/repairpal-its-like-google-h...

Initially "incentivize" people to submit year/make/model, then repair/parts/labor and build up a database of prices (later users would do the same thing with estimates).

I believe labor rates are the same across repairs so you could split that out as the dealer's standard rate. Add service reviews, etc.

Just last week the garage that took my car misdiagnosed the problem and charged me much more than necessary.

Usually I try to get a grasp of what the problem could be and try to fix it myself if I can. This time I was under pressure to get it fixed quickly so I directly brought it to the garage. Had I tried to identify the problem (which I did later on with a lot of web browsing), I would have fixed the problem under 72h and $20 vs one and a half week, a lot of hassle and $150 at the garage.

I wish there could be a robust platform to help you identify a problem. The forums are often full of people that really don't know what they are talking about but they still come and confuse you.

I'm thinking about a website where you could identify you car's problem with community approved answers (based on their own experience or solid references from the repair manual).

I can envision something that works more like a dating site solving these problems. Both parties put in descriptions of themselves and criteria for what they're looking for in a potential employer/landlord or employee/tenant. Then the site matches people based on these criteria and sends both parties a list of good potential matches. Et voila -- a much smaller, more relevant set of data for both parties.

I know there are sites that already do something like this in one domain or the other, but I haven't seen any that really do a good job. I also think there's huge potential for putting the two problems together, since people are often looking for both a new job and a new apartment at once, and they use similar criteria (e.g., location, proximity to XYZ, seeking someone who has or wants XYZ...) that are currently difficult to search by.

Edit: I see that "dating site" and "Craigslist competitor" are both on the original ideas.html. I see my idea as an instance of these.

There is so much overlap because the apartment finders (working on commission) are all posting the same listings they grab off the MLS. This seems ripe for innovation as the redundancy and non-existent barriers of entry make for a very ineffective system.

If anyone wants to take a crack at it, here what I would advise you build: A simple app that asks you your very very basic info (name, picture, age, location, add 20 word description of yourself). Then simply, simply, simply show me pictures of women. If I like a girl I click "like". If the girls Likes me as well, then we can email each other. I dont need to email her through on your app. You can use the craigslist email style.

That's it. Nothing else. No video chat, IM, levels of communication etc... I don't know about girls, but most guys will only talk to women they are attracted to, no personality match can do the trick if I do not like what I see.

I think the basic problem with a site that operates like you suggest is that attractive women tend to not need dating sites. The same is true, probably to a lesser extent, of attractive men.

2) I personally admire email campaign sites like campaignmonitor.com and mailchimp.com. They have created great businesses centered around a very simple product. It also has a wide enough audience and viral loop.

1) I think I'd love a much better way of finding homes/real-estate which can derive synergy from 3rd-party apps like Google Maps as well as bring about some kind of social features more in the line of commenting we see on HN.

2) Mentioned earlier.

3) I think one can see huge opportunities in B2B niches. There seems to be a great unfilled opportunity in bringing together the businesses. The thing is that most of these businesses don't understand anything about web or Google Adwords which they might use to better market their products. The idea is to make it extremely simple for them to find other businesses which might be willing to buy the products and services.

I ended up getting my real estate license about a year ago just to not have to deal with agents (I have flipped a few houses). They were so inefficient it literally was painful.

I imagine a search service that tells you things "4 times a week, you check in at restaurants with 1 mile of this apartment" or "Buying this house will shave 8 miles off your commute."

Elaborating:

A small popup can appear upon selecting someone's HN username on a thread to then show their profile information. Selection would involve holding the left mouse button down on the user name for more than 1.5 seconds, and then the popup would appear with bio, member since, and karma. When the mouse button is released, the popup disappears.

The profile page may need to be parsed to extract information before displaying. It could also be cached client side with HTML5.

As an extra nuance, if the mouse is moved away from the username, the left button can be released but the popup remains activated and a little 'close' is inserted (and the submission and comment links appear). This allows the user to click on any links in the popup, as well as the submission and comment links.

In effect, the popup operates much like on Twitter when the mouse is moved over a username in the timeline, but in a more controlled fashion where it doesn't appear automatically upon mouseover.

When I look around my area I see lots of money being spent in a variety of areas that have not been innovated online at all.

1) Landscaper architects/garnders/etc. - Still a very old way of doing things. This easily could be brought online

2) People love their dogs and as a result, dog walkers, groomers, etc. have very thriving businesses

3) Coffee/morning commute - Some sort of app that ties both of these together. A great offline component.

4) Coupons - Groupon has proven that people want deals and that if you're able to remove the stigma around it, they'll buy it with tenacity. This could definitely be expanded upon.

Offline catalogues have/are being duplicated again and again online yet the Internet is capable of so much more than paper.