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Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?
39 points by ryanwaggoner on April 7, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 189 comments
Ok, this may go nowhere, but I was inspired by this recent submission on what programming books HN wishes existed: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=551339

So in the same spirit, what product or service have you found yourself wishing existed? It could be an info product, tangible product, service, subscription, etc. It could be related to the web, programming, startups, or just life in general. The only rule should be that you would actually take out your credit card right now and pay for it if someone offered it.

Please don't upvote people's comments unless you would also pay for it.



Bachelor Chow (See: Futurama). It doesn't have to be particularly tasty, but a simple meal that has 1/3 of your daily nutrition (with 1/3 RDA of all your vitamins and minerals) would be great. Preferably without ridiculous quantities of preservatives and artificial flavours.


This is ideally a great product, if you can solve three practical problems.

1. Nutritional needs depend on age, time, body, activities, etc.

2. The desire for tasty food often greatly out-weights the desire for nutritional food.

3. Evolutionarily, we were designed to want more than what we need.


Well there are some solutions to those problems, #1 is simple, they do it with dog food. You just need a junior, adult, senior and light varieties (which may help in regards to #3 by being able to eat larger portion sizes if you're hungry).

#2 might be a little trickier, although if it's sold how it's shown in the show (literally as human dog food in giant bags) you could easily include a dozen flavor packets. If the food on its own was fairly flavorless, preferably with a meat-like quality to mix well with different flavor packs.

#3 is probably the trickiest. The solution is probably just like any food, moderation. However, when people receive adequate nutrition this behavior does tend to decrease, but evolution is a harsh mistress and like most animals we've evolved to build up fat reserves to try and survive.

Honestly #1 and #2 can easily be solved by standard market practices in both dog food and human pre-made meals. #3 is the stickler and aside from moderation I don't know what could help, except maybe a big sticker saying 'THREE MEALS IS ALL YOU NEED' might subconsciously stop a few of the gullible people who respond easily to suggestion (read: the people who keep telemarketers rich).


If I remember correctly the Dilberito was designed along those lines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilberito


I believe I only ever had one Dilberito when on a vacation to the US, now I'm living in Canada I might be able to help turn Scott Adams into a major food mogul.

Screw you 'Chef' Boyardee, hello Chef Catbert!


In the US at least one of the latest trends (advances?) are these microwavable single-serving bags of rice (and now pilaf, curry, etc).

A few companies make them, and they're a large enough for a small meal, and pretty good for being a 90sec meal. If they could add a bit more substance (and significant nutrition) and variety we might be able to call this one a win in the next few years =)


I would love to just drink my meals and be full.


Do you have a blender?


haha fair enough, let me rephrase.

"I would love to drink my meals, and still be a healthy human being."


I eat my morning cereal with Muscle Milk instead of milk. The stuff actually tastes good, unlike the ~10 other protein powders I've tried; and the nutritional information list looks like a multivitamin.


Pretty much daily now I drink a shake that contains 1 cup of dry oatmeal, some yogurt, a few cups of fruit, a banana and a tablespoon of peanut butter. Oh, and skim milk and occasionally some protein powder.

It's pretty good and it helps me keep my caloric intake at the right level.


you can do that. take whatever normal healthy food you were going to eat and put it in a blender with water or milk. then drink it.


You'd get sick of them right quick... the human digestive system craves variety too much for this to be viable.

In any case there are a lot of meal replacement bars out there already. To give you 1/3 of your requirements it has to be a huge bar...


What if Bachelor Chow varied in taste and consistency from can to can?


Imagine a Clif bar the size of your fist. Even if you vary the taste from bar to bar (I'm not sure how you'd vary the consistency meaningfully), wouldn't you get sick of eating such large globs of undifferentiated foodstuff?


There's Clif bars. You can't live off of those full time, though.

Colcannon? If this is made with turnips, kale, and lots of buttermilk, then it covers a lot of macronutrients. Then take a multivitamin.


Speaking of which, I was really getting into those Clif Mojo bars at one point, then we got a box of Nature Valley fruit and nut bars at Costco, so I forgot about them for a few weeks.

When we ran out of the box, I went back for my Clif Mojos and found out they were recalled in the peanut salmonella thing. It looks like I missed eating potentially contaminated food by a few days.

  </adventures in eating>


I was eating two Clif bars a day until I discovered that they caused gas. If I discovered a Clif-like bar that didn't, I'd pick the habit up again.


The healthier TV dinners come pretty close. Vitamin fortified cereal in the morning, tv dinners for lunch and dinner, and vegetables for snacks.


A dead simple, cheap 8.5x11 e-ink device with no wifi or touchscreen or anything like that. Just the ability to page through my already owned pdfs. Some of them are scanned images, not text so no text conversion. Even if the only way to get the docs on it was via some kind of virtual printer driver I'd be happy. I'd basically like a way to read stuff on e-ink as if it had been printed.


Seconded. Just today I looked at ebook reader devices again because I really want one - but the prices are ridiculous.

$359 for a kindle? Come on, that buys me about 35 physical books - close to 2 years of reading material. Give me the kindle and 20 books included, then we might be talking.


Some flexibility would be nice here. I'm sure there'd be a few books I'd like to read in the future, so maybe 10 books with the reader and 10 free ones I can choose later would be nice.

Still, the XKCD on the Kindle made me really want to try one, if only because of sentimental reasons.


In fact, since the kindle is a closed platform, feel free to lock me into amazon until I have bought enough books to pay it off. I would immediately order a kindle for $0 that forces me to buy the first 100 books at amazon (as long as the pdf function is not crippled). $100 / 50 and other combinations would also work.

I do consider myself an early adopter. But the current asking price is too steep.


Agreed ... Foxit's e-book reader "appears as though" it's getting a little closer. For me it's not about page size but price. It seems like there'd be a market for a "light on features" ebook reader for those of us who don't care about whispernet, touch screens or wifi.

Though I don't know that I would be willing to skimp on everything (like a reader with just forward and backward buttons). When I read PDF files on my screen, I regularly use the search features to zero in on things.

Your statement of "as if it had been printed" is intriguing. So the device would have to have something that you can at least plug a page number into (kinda like thumbing to somewhere that you think might be the location you're looking for). At the right price, I'd give up search if it had this as a minimum.


The reason I say "as if it had been printed" is because converting things to "kindle format" sucks and tends to not work correctly unless it is just plain text. My printer never has this problem. Also it seems like this would reduce the complexity of the device and with that hopefully the price. Furthermore, searching will only work if you have only text which is one of the problems... You're definitely right about needing page numbers though.


A computer display with at least 200DPI, and about 19...21 inches diagonal. I'd consider only 1:1 and 4:3 sized ones.

Honestly, several times I've been searching for high resolution displays, and aside of old, expensive and slow T221 (or crazy-expensive medical and flight control ones), there are none.

Why such DPI? For starters, it makes anti-aliasing (think, `blurry' fonts, jagged or blurred widgets and 3D objects and so on) irrelevant. Also, with the current 85...100 DPI screens, I still see individual pixels, and that's quite disturbing to me.


Stare at the sun for a couple of hours; that might help with the whole "seeing pixels" issue.


Sorry.


I want a desktop computer with a docked netbook. The files, programs, and program configuration on the netbook should auto-sinc with the desktop. Large files should be easy to stream from the desktop to the netbook. The netbook needs to have an embedded, fast cell network data connection.

I might be able to build this myself with a MacPro, a router, a COTS netbook, hackintosh, dropbox, etc.

I'd probably have at least 2 30 inch displays for the desktop, making the total cost in parts ~$8K. Companies would be wise to pay $10K for this kind of setup.


I've thought about the same thing myself. (I'll make do with the 24 inch monitors, though. :) I'm surprised the Mac Pro doesn't have a way to dock the air yet, though.

There are a lot of usability pieces to think about. Do you really want program configuration to sync? I use programs differently on laptops and desktops.


I use a laptop for my "desktop", so I don't see the problem. I run firefox, terminal, textmate, tweetdeck, and iWork. No configuration changes needed. Maybe for VM software - which I just wouldn't run on a netbook.


I use different font sizes for my work on larger screens, for one example.


That's interesting. I routinely switch from a 17 inch laptop screen and a 30 inch monitor screen, and don't change the font.


The MobileMe preferences sync is close and seems to be more elegant to me.


Ah yes, takes me back to my days with a Mac Duo.

We didn't have any decent syncing software hopes then.

I'll second your motion.


- A laptop battery that lasted for as long as I can stay awake (say, 24 hours).

- A cellphone that people could call anywhere in the world without paying for an international call, and that allowed me to call anyone or use my data plan at the same price regardless of where I'm located. International roaming charges are so absurdly high that they force me to have different sim cards and an unlocked phone (extremely inconvenient).

- A nonstop flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina (EZE) to a major city in California (SFO, LAX, SAN). I do this several times a year and the layover/recheck luggage after customs is a killer.


I assume the big problem with having two SIM cards would be having two different numbers and missing tons of calls. Wouldn't it help to have two different phones so that you wouldn't miss calls?


Decent Mexican food in Europe:-) (BTW, "if it were available")

Edit: if I ever 'made it big', and decided to stay in Italy, I'd invest a portion of my money in a good Mexican restaurant here. It would probably lose money, but what the hell.


And New Zealand too.. there are zero quality Mexican restaurants there.

Its not Mexican, but the best Peruvian food I've had outside of Lima is in Amsterdam http://www.casaperu.nl/html/casaperu.html can't recommend it enough!

(My wife was born in Lima and we eat alot of Peruvian food)


And New Zealand too.. there are zero quality Mexican restaurants there.

The Mexican food I had in Australia was a "shocker."


There's a couple of lovely Mexican ladies who have a small restaurant in Wellington (Viva Mexico) that is absolutely fantastic! Otherwise, yes, NZ Mexican is rather abysmal.

(I often think that good Mexican would be an awesome business opportunity here...)


The sad part is there isn't decent Mexican food in Mexico. I've tried in 6 different cities there, it's not at all like what we eat. Might be that the quality of the ingredients is just vastly inferior.

The only place I found so far with decent Mexican food in Mexico is owned by Sammy Hagar.


For that you have to come to our apartment in Berlin for our startup dinners. We've done about 5 of them (one being a Berlin news.yc meetup) and they all feature enchiladas or fajitas.

Sure, Berlin's a bit out of the way from Italy, but some things in life simply take priority.


Europe consists of more than one country you know :-) Please don't judge other countries in Europe based on your experience.


No kidding, Spain has great Mexican food. England the best Curry ;-)


i've lived in two countries, actually, and visited many others. Madrid was the only place where i managed to find decent mexican food.


I had decent Mexican food in London. It wasn't spectacular, but I remember enjoying it.


London is one of those sorts of places where you could probably find anything, but it's an outlier.


I'd add, a halfway decent pizza in Havana.

When Cuba opens up, the first decent pizza place to go down there is going to make a killing!

Seriously, there the pizza is terrible, doesn't matter if you are in Havana, Santiago, or Gerona.


> Seriously, there the pizza is terrible, doesn't matter if you are in Havana, Santiago, or Gerona.

But do the Cubans know that?


Unless you like ham and cheese pizza, then it's paradise.


Oh my god, hear hear.

Went to a "Mexican" place in Vienna (I'm an American expat) a few months back and it was horrible, terrible, frightening.

Somebody ordered the spare ribs (!) and they crackled as you pulled them apart.


I'm pretty sure ribs aren't Mexican though


I think that's what the ! is for. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that gets passed off as Mexican food in Europe.


What, people in Mexico don't eat the ribs on pigs? Perhaps they take the shoulder to make carnitas and leave the rest of the carcass to rot under the hot, Mexican sun?


Something like a Netflix for books and articles. I'd pay just to rent textbooks for general education classes. It would need to have a gigantic library though, big enough to guarantee that I would be able to find any book through there if it wasn't in a library.

PDF versions of the books would be nice to, so I could access the book anywhere immediately.

And it would need a good selection of scientific books. I have a scientific couple books that I want to read, but haven't because they aren't in any local library systems and used copies are going for over $40 on amazon.


It's called Bookswim, available at http://www.bookswim.com/ , and I have no idea whether it's good, because I cannot conceive of using them over the library.


Ask your local library system about interlibrary loan. You may have trouble with books released in the last 6 months (it's peak borrowing time, libraries like to hold them for their local patrons), but otherwise you can get basically everything.


I'd like to be notified when authors have new book coming out. You get this from some publishers, but what if the author jumps to another publisher?


Add in graphic novels and I'm in. It would have to emphasize breadth and new releases to make it clearly superior to the local library.


Yeah libraries are awesome. I grew up going to the library. That does mean that I am used to not spending money on books. I usually only buy a book if it is going to be read more than once and I know will find it useful. So I really want full access to the book before I decide to spend money on it.


This is an interesting thought. Does anything already exist as a service for college students to rent textbooks?


While access to textbooks would be nice, it wouldn't need to be a major selling point. If the book is for a class in my major, I want to own a copy so I can use it as a reference after the class is over. And used textbooks can be had for a decent price. I just paid $40 including expediated shipping for a circuits book. The book is in great condition, and I am happy with my purchase.

And renting textbooks is pretty expensive, especially for older books. I bought a different used textbook for around $15. The book is in great condition, and renting it would have cost $40.


It would be hard to maintain, since a lot of textbooks change version number relatively frequently.


Yes, there are quite a few, actually. But they usually don't give you significant advantages over the old buy new/sell used model.


Apartment with a pool in Tampere, Finland. Also I would be more likely to rent a place using a site that actually allowed me to search for apartments from a map.

Instant helpful per-minute advice from MySQL/Linux/etc. gurus 24/7 when I need it. Similarly graphic design where I could in a few moments get sketches of things and commission them to be turned into finished works. I don't enjoy hunting for talent on forums/elance and having to wait days for responses when I need something done now while I am still in the zone to work on that particular project.

Frappuccino in Finland, although I hope nobody actually does that as it would make me poor.

A mouse that makes no clicking sound. It seems to exist: http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/14/thanko-silent-mouse-kills... I'll buy one when I go to Japan next time.


I am now suddenly aware that I can hear every mouse click within a 5 cubicle radius, and I can't ignore it anymore =(


People often laugh at me when I tell them this, but "Awful Mart" on the Awful Forums is a GREAT place to get good graphic design quickly. Lot of REALLY talented people visit the awful forums. http://forums.somethingawful.com

edit: Just noticed you said you hate searching through forums. SA is rather large and if you have the patience for a usual 1-2 day turn around its worth it.


What I mean is being able to buy some credits, then going into a realtime environment where I can type "Paul graham eating a tuna sandwich", and after 15 minutes seeing several rough sketches. Then I choose the one I like and get a finished version in less than 24h.


A device that could accurately measure caffeine intake, levels present in the body, and the strength of your bodies resistance. I know if I have another cup of coffee at 4PM, the quality of my code will be much better. What I never know is if it will wear off in time for me to get a normal nights sleep. :)


A cheap and noninvasive device that can monitor and record a bunch of metrics would be great!

I would love to be able to graph my cholesterol, BP, heart rate, etc. over time. It is a shame i can monitor my car more easily than I can my body.


Yeah, data on this stuff is great. The treadmills at our gym actually have a USB port that you can use to export your average pace and heart rate over a run. That's the closest I've been able to come.


I don't use narcotics, but if there were a 100% safe drug out there (not addictive and/or dangerous) I would pay for it.


Pot comes very close, particularly if you make brownies rather than smoking it.


A proven cure for tinnitus. I'd clean out my bank account and cash in all my 401Ks, if need be, to pay for the treatment. For those who don't know what tinnitus is, just imagine having a high-pitched ringing sound in your head that never, ever, ever stops. Ever.


Definitely. My mother suffers from this and I can't even imagine what it must really be like. A solution would be absolutely wonderful.


I'd certainly pay for an iTuneslike service for impulse buying old magazines in a digital format. I love magazines but they're rarely justifiably keepable as they accumulate and create a terrible clutter. Unfortunately for the majority of us that throw out magazines after a short time, eventually old magazines become incredibly interesting. If I come across ancient Wired, Next Generation or Nintendo Power magazines at a flea market for example, I almost always buy them, not really to keep, as I usually donate them after reading, but just to really page through and revel in the nostalgia.

I'd love to be able to go on the web and instantly download some obscure issue of the magazines I liked when I was a teenager, or looking back farther, old ancient National Geographics or Esquires or Playboys or whatever. There are rare magazines as well, such as the Beastie Boys' self published Grand Royal, that only had a handful of issues.


Single serving cat food tins. i.e. Half the size of regular tins.

You might think I'm joking, but I'm not - I looked for this earlier today online.

Cheers


Get two cats.


That's a hack


There's already 3 Oz. cans and vacuum packs. Or do you really want 1.5 Oz?


I use 3oz cans, feed my cat 1/2 can at a time, and still have quite a bit left over.


I want 1.5 Oz


I had the same issue with my cats but they sell lids that seal the can well enough for a day or so of storage. Just put it in the fridge and you're good.


I have tried the lids. My cat is so fussy that it just will not eat it once it has been in the fridge.

I'm very serious about the 1.5 Oz cans - I'd be a customer immediately.


A robotic pleasure unit like in the movie BladeRunner...


I wonder if there are nerd-oriented escort services?


would you settle for a real doll rental service?


Ugh, who'd want to be #2?


It's different from being #2 with a real girl how?

Viscerally I agree with you, but I can't rationally understand why.


For starters, the human epidermis turns over with a period on the order of 45 days.


Its like a real girl who doesn't take hygiene all that seriously...


Boiling water + disinfectant beats a shower or any other non-lethal cleaning method. The doll should be more hygienic than any human could possibly be.


The problem is trust. People won't know for sure that's what they are getting. It's a similar problem with online fresh grocery shopping.

I have a few friends in robotics who periodically pitch this idea around.


that plus a few disposable parts and you're in business. It might take some time to convince the health dept, though.


A fuel efficient car / minivan with room for a family of 6 to take a road trip. There are no hybrid minivans :(


The current hybrid technology produces the most fuel-efficiency gains in stop and start driving. In other words, it works much better for taxi fleets than for family road trips.


Well, most of our driving is stop and go, in-town driving. However, it doesn't make much sense to buy a family car if it doesn't work for road trips as well. Especially since it is cost prohibitive to fly for a family of 6 when we can drive for 8-12 hours for a fraction of the cost.


Actually, it can make sense to buy a family car that doesn't work for road trips. Save money (fuel + price) by buying a smaller car, and rent a van for the few times a year that you need it.


I have not found that to be true for us (again, a family of 6).

Renting a van will cost $500-$1000 for a week. If you do that 3-4 times a year then you are talking about approx $200/mo in monthly payments that you would have to save.


I'll settle for an inexpensive minivan that I can buy new. Seems like it's a dying breed but when you have kids it's a necessity.


A combination proxy/script/something that'd pop up an interstitial task tracker/to-do list overview when I go to any of a list of "time-sink" sites. I can click "snooze" and go to the time sink, with the task tracker popping back up after 5,10,30 minutes, turn it off for a day or two, or click through to the detail/edit view for any task and get to work.


Leechblock + NowDoThis is my solution to this. I don't actually use NowDoThis, but it's default is to have it's own name in big letters, which is enough to remind me to stop slacking.


I know of those, but I'm absent-minded enough that I often forget there's many better things I could be doing. Seeing my long-range goals and my short-range deadlines in an easy-to-grok format has done wonders for me in the past; I just need a systematic way of delivering that when it's needed. Ideally, the software solution could also pop up when I start viewing a comic book archive, watching a video file, or preparing a snack just because I can't think of anything more pressing to do.


More Firefly


Second that. So many crappy serials get renewed, why in the hell this got canceled?


And I was thinking you meant http://is.gd/rtF6

:D


I'm waiting for some rich geek to produce it themselves.


0) Stylish sunglasses that act like the spexware in Bruce Sterling's stories, or like the smart glasses in Charlie Stross's _Accelerando_. I'd love heads up displays showing me peoples' names, maps, appointments, and all the stuff for which I currently rely on my phone.

The hardware is there if you're willing to pay. I recently learned about research in this direction aimed at helping patients with Alzheimer's (they also use audio prompts, as well). I don't know of anyone who has packaged up everything and written software to make this seamless, easy, and fun.

1) A battery for my phone that "never" ran out.


Teleportation device. Sign me up today!


An intelligent agent that would hunt up best comment threads from lots of news aggregator and other discussion sites.


http://www.backtype.com perhaps?


I desperately wish i could find top level tropical and non-tropical fruit of many varieties here in Houston. I love fresh fruit but mangos from Mexico are not that great and the lack of variety gets old.


I'd say. I miss the rainbow hued cornucopia of Indian mango markets. Yes, even blue mangoes.


A device that sits on your car dash and takes high-def pictures of the road ahead (infrared for night-time), then runs some image matching software that will fire off warnings if deer or other objects are in your path, or are moving towards your path. An early-warning HUD, to prevent deer strikes.


"The only rule should be that you would actually take out your credit card right now and pay for it if someone offered it."

ok here goes,

1. New replicas of old computers like the ZX Spectrum, Comodore 64, Amiga, the lisp machine, the Newton

2. The above, but in a handheld form factor

3. A kindle that reads programming books perfectly, has no drm and can handle pdf without conversion.

4. A website that would pay me for learning (hey we are just thinking creatively! A man can hope!). SO say if I finish all the non research problems of each chapter of Concrete Mathematics, I'd get 20 $)


I would pay for a good enough telepresence application for keeping in touch with my family and friends (they're in the UK, I'm in San Francisco).

Skype is better than nothing, but still not good enough.


Yeah, that's tough. It's even worse when you have a small baby and the grandparents are far away:-/

Here's an idea for someone: Virtual Grandpa - some sort of telepresence thing that's been made a bit robust so that a kid can drag it around and drop it without problems. Maybe like a robust cell phone with a decent size screen and camera? I actually wouldn't mind working on that too, but feel free to run with it. The big problem is probably finding hardware that will work: cheap, robust, and more or less customizable so that the parents can fiddle with it to 'tune in', and then lock it to some degree.


Great idea. A Chumby with a built-in video camera + gtalk/video support might fit the bill.


Chatterous.com

Rather than rehash why I would.. I explained it not long back here: http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2009/03/dont-ignore-the-donator...

How much? At the moment Chatterous is probably worth... $50 a month to me - and probably more to the company I work at.

EDIT: I realise that verges on linkspam but otherwise I would end up writing an essay on why chatterous should offer "pay for" - and I already did that :P


Yeah, I use this every single day for different circles of work, hobby, friends. I felt it very succinctly when Gtalk went haywire the other day and Chatterous was broken.


The ability to start up an Extra-Large EC2 instance running OSX and connect to it using NoMachine.

Combine it with a simple client that runs locally and rsyncs pictures/music/etc from a local HD with an EBS mounted to the EC2 instance.

(I want a MacPro so I can do photo processing and programming in the evenings, but I don't want to spend $3.5k for a machine that will sit idle 20hrs/day.)

(For this to be workable I'd also need a fiber connection - but I'd pay for that too, if it was available.)


To generalize, a service that SVN's powerful computers for a hourly fee, targetting general public on netbooks for video editing, graphic processing, gaming.


A service that matches you up with intellectual AND decent looking folks.


Actually I would settle for a site that matches you up with intellectual folks...


HN suffices to provide online conversation with intellectual folks, but I suppose that you and the person to whom you replied have a more specific meaning of "match up" in mind. The difficulty of face-meeting people for intellectual conversation is indeed what keeps a lot of online discussion groups going.


I actually mean for DATING. lol


OKCupid has done reasonably well for me--just spend enough time answering questions to get a good level of math & science stuff, and rate those as very important or mandatory. The Harvard math majors who run the site don't know how to classify looks into "Me likey" or "me meh-y" yet; but they do have the personality profile done pretty well, in my experience.


A small business server appliance for non-IT based small businesses. I'm thinking: Network attached storage with a built in Samba NT compatible domain controller/windows file/print sharing capabilities. RAID-1 plus an automated backup mechanism ... maybe, attach an external USB drive and it automatically does Sunday fulls and daily differentials keeping as many as it can store. Bonus points if it can take extra SATA hard drives / external drives for expansion without adding a huge cost.

Why I'd buy it? My dad's company is running a (very nice in its day) server on Windows NT with "redundant everything" that is starting to fail something fierce. It's 13 years old but it meets the needs of him and his ten employees and at the time there wasn't much of a better choice. Since they don't do anything locally but file/print sharing it seems like such a waste to have a power hungry box with a monitor on it for such a simple set of requirements. Also, if something like this were available, I'd replace my existing home-brew NAS ... based on openSuSE with it in a second if it'd lower my electricity bill.


I think Buffalo produced something like this called the "yellow box" or something.

It is getting easier and easier for a low-capital business to produce something like this. If you are interested in looking at this commercially send me an email at rgristroph@gmail.com, I have been researching various low power linux computers and etc.


I think this was called Cobalt but Sun killed it.


Early users, build something where a person can come to your site, pay $1,000 and get 1,000 active users to stimulate the site activity.


Couldn't you use Amazon's mechanical turk?


You can use AdWords for that.


Has anyone used AdWords like this, and how did it work out?


The key is to spend all the ad money in a small period during the day, say 1hr. It is better to have a lot of people on your site 1hr a day then 1 person on your site all day, that is if you site relies on users to interact.


Not for people to use a completely blank site


Something that allows me to search across all my old browser history (Content of the pages not the titles). So I can find all those blog posts and articles I forgot to bookmark for later reading at the time. (I guess I could start using stumbleupon or something but I want to be able to search in those pages as well.)


Opera has that. Once you have visited a page, you can use the address bar to search through the cache. It will not only search titles but also the content of the pages


Oh cool thanks for the heads up, I just installed 9.6 and it's right there in the "What's new in 9.6" copy.

"Quick Find

Have you ever forgotten the page where you found that great article or that perfect gift? When using Opera, the browser remembers not only the titles and addresses, but also the actual content of the Web pages you visit."

No need to pay for it either!


Would be cool for the browser to recognize that a certain tab has been open for hours or even days. For me, the tabs that are open for a long, long time (and aren't a web app) are usually articles I intend to read.


I'd pay $10 a month for a service that finds podcasts and videos about specific subjects.

I don't have the time to scour TV listings or subscribe to busy podcasts/RSS feeds in the hope of finding something to listen to at work/when I'm out and about. What I'm doing now is going to the BBC iPlayer website every week, putting in my keywords and hoping something comes up.

I'd pay a monthly subscription to a reliable service that could bring me high quality content from universities, YouTube Edu, Authors@Google, iTunes store, the BBC iPlayer, NPR, PBS, Fora.tv, etc. about the subjects/keywords I enter. What I don't want is homemade slideshows from YouTube or micro-segments of news. I shouldn't have to sit in Google's search box and now be able to drill down to find this interesting stuff.


I will pay for someone to market my skills on commission.


"18. The WebOS. It probably won't be a literal translation of a client OS shifted to servers. But as applications migrate to servers, it seems possible there will be something that plays a central role like an OS does."

http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

I'll know it when I see it, and when I see it, I'll happily pay for it.

It has something to do with CMS + federated, micro social networks. One should be able to easily migrate + back up one's "OS" to another provider, or even run the OS in parallel between two providers.

I know this is vague, but I feel the absence of something like it.


A hoverboard as seen on Back to the Future.


I used to desperately want a hoverboard. Then, sometime in late middle school or early high school, when I was getting into physics, I realized that a hoverboard would have no way of stopping or turning. I was quite depressed.


Very durable writable DVDs that could keep the data even after multiple scratches, the passage of decades...etc


This is motivated by the fact that I'm in Australia and our broadband sucks.

Netflix send a whole heap of DVDs through the mail, so they're trust you not to rip them and distribute copies. If there was a massive content distribution network with kiosks in shopping centres where I could put in a DVD-RW or usb storage device (or pay for a blank DVD) and pay for the latest movies and TV shows I'd make a good amount of use of it.

It's mostly about saving bandwidth, but also trying to provide an extremely fast and convinient alternative to piracy. If that existed, I'd probably use it. I already buy TV shows on DVD if someone I trust recommends them highly enough - a much better experience for me than watching them on TV, no adds, pause, rewind, etc...

We get some shows quite a bit later here, and a few of the good shows only come to pay tv. So the timing would be the key. As soon as the TV show is aired anywhere - bam - available from the kiosk. The premium for being ad free and not getting it on the studios timeline might more or less balance out with the savings in packaging and distribution.

Same with movies. Theaters wouldn't be happy, but we're rapidly approaching the days when people will go to the movies for the theater experience and otherwise just get hold of it online (one way or another).

As a bonus idea, if the kiosks kept records of what you'd bought then buying a whole series through the kiosk gets you a big discount on the DVDs if you want the physical media since you've already paid for the IP at the point.


http://www.cineflashplayer.com/

Click on the products part to see that they sell through kiosks.


I want cable TV service and this is how I want it:

- A la carte pricing: $1 per channel per month (I'd go $1.50 for HD channels and more for premium channels of course)

- I want an IP-based/wifi-enabled DVR that records shows in a non-proprietary video format. I can browse the files from any computer in my home or configure my router so I can access them from work. If it can browse web videos ala boxee, great. I don't care about it skipping commercial–heck, I don't even care if it appends pre-roll/ticker ads to the files.


A computer I could hang on the wall in the bathroom or kitchen that just displays tasks/reminders for the day.

You know, a simple dashboard to start the day.


I'm not sure how far digital picture frames are advancing, but you could probably get a wi-fi one, and display an image from a remote server (your desktop), where you generate an image from text on the fly.


Regenerative disc therapy for my lower back injury.


A secure, online back-up solution for all my computers that is dead-simple to use on all OSes.

And I mean dead-simple as in install a client that by default intelligently finds the stuff that I might want to back-up (iTunes library, folders with lots of pictures, My Documents, /etc & /home directories, etc.), with the ability to specify certain folders/directories as well. Or since we're dreaming, why not the whole computer? And of course it always runs in the background, never consumes 100% of my CPU or bandwidth when I'm using the computer, is always up to date, and pretty much never bothers me once I've set it up.

I don't want to think about back-ups. I don't want my family to have to think about back-ups. My dad is interested in getting an iPod and will definitely purchase songs on iTunes. I want a dead simple setup for him to keep those backed up.


A pan-European plan for the iPhone so that I could actually use the phone while travelling.


Luck.


Teleportation --will pay double for the service.


you know all those random pixels you get in a fax or even a scan? Yeah. Do that to your brain. Or, more particularly, the wall of a high pressure artery, in your brain.


Excuse me while I put my sci-fi hat on...

I think teleportation will have to be an analog technology instead of a digital one.

By analog I mean manipulation of space/time fabric that you actually step through, as opposed to being scanned and reconstructed on the other side.


I'd buy a CDMA iPhone. Forget ATT's slow and spotty GSM 3G. Bring on CDMA RevA.


Totally, its unacceptable that there are so many 3G dead spots in San Francisco of all places!


Ghost in the Shell Section 9-spec full robot body. Medical immortality. Nanotechnological bone strengthening, brain-damping mesh, damage repair, bloodstream oxygen cache system. Brain augmentation. Cancer-free cigarettes. Perfect, invisible contraception and STD prevention. Cyborg love doll, again see GitS. I could go on all day!

Maybe a little outside the implied timeframe of potential availability, but that's what I really want, not some minor upgrade of 2009 tech! : )


A REAL sequel to Star Control 2 (a.k.a. Ur-Quan Masters)


Business: - a way way better analytics system that integrates with our own logs and sql calls - a better referral system for hiring, contacts, etc.

Personally: - a system to clean up my contacts and make sure that all my living address books (linkedin facebook) work out. - a front end for mechanical turk, so that I know I'm getting Turk rates without doing the outsourced assistant


the pre-1992 version of usenet


Voted up, because I am actually planning to pay for a giganews feed, now that Time Warner killed there usenet servers.


Missing the point, dude. Its not about what you have access to group-wise, but rather what's posted on the groups. In this case, he's asking for intelligent discussion instead of warez.


I would pay for good access with long article expire times, to only to comp.* and sci.* and the other useful text-only groups. I have never downloaded any binary file from a newsgroup, and I have been using them since about 1994.


A battery so good that I don't have to worry about battery life again.


A decent computing environment.

(Technically available now: http://www.lispmachine.net/symbolics.txt but I would like one that meets modern specs.)


A silent XBMC box in a small form factor.

Think "Apple TV", but without having to worry about hacks, and with built in keyboard/mouse support.


I would have told you an iPhone that is on a good network, has a keyboard, and doesn't suck to actually use as a phone, but it sounds like Palm is going to come through on that one for me.

So instead I'll go with a tech-focused social news site where I don't have to hear 3 times a day how everyone not in the tech industry is stupid and doesn't get it, and is, by trying to make a profit and protect valid IP, tilting at windmills.


streaming NFL games.


streaming NHL games for me but same concept :).

I feel bad for all the brits at my work that are probably dying to see good soccer on the TV and can't find any. They'd probably love a streaming sports site as well.


Streaming formula 1 races.


justin.tv!


FreeBSD AMI's


Camtasia Studio for Linux.


A proper webbased project management tool.


a way to record streaming audio on a mac and auto splitting with auto tagging. Would pay up to $100


A bluetooth track-wheel mouse.


starcraft 2. I hope its not ridiculously expensive when it comes out(im sort of used to not paying for stuff).


An online memorial for a dead relative.


check out http://mem.com. They made something for a friend's relative recently (unfortunately) and it looked quite nice.


I don't mean to be rude, but how is a service like this actually used? I mean, in your experience, what's different about it versus, say, a blog, or even a simple cms like jottit?


Here's how it was done: http://jeffreyfalstrom.com/

When someone close to you passes away, you are distraught and have a lot of things to take care of. Maybe you don't want to register a domain and do design and stuff (most people aren't designers afterall). So they set you up with a nice memorial and take care of the details in a tasteful way. Think of it as a specialized CMS.


Check the last bunch of techcrunch 50s. I think there was something along these lines, but I can't remember what it was called.


A quick google search turns up a glut of these services...are you looking for something different?


The available ones are pretty horrible.




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