For the past few months I’ve been sitting on some ideas (for Web applications) that I’ve scribbled here & there. I’m working on a few (not listed here) in my spare time, but realistically I won’t be able to work on all of them. So I thought it will be better to just publicly share some of the ideas for others interested in driving them.
1. Car Pooling – Sometime back I took a taxi cab to work. I got talking to the driver, a friendly guy with crude English. He mentioned something so simple that it made me think on several interrelated issues (environmental, social, economical) for days. “Only one person in each vehicle. That’s what’s wrong with this f**king world.”, he said. As I looked around in the sluggish traffic, I could really see only one person in each vehicle, for miles. It made me jot down a note to think about promoting car pooling and maybe improve the experience somehow. Eventually, a bit of brain-storming brought a question – what’s a good model for online coordination of car pooling, so that more and more people can easily get on-board and the mechanism is effective?
2. Comments Aggregation – Most of the decent user-generated content is built around niche online communities, where users often post some great comments on various topics. Most of these comments (however small or big) go unnoticed and get buried over time. If these comments were available for reading on a wider platform (a dedicated website) to a larger audience, then it can add more value. Each deserving comment becomes an independent post/article, linked back to the original post/article. The app can simply be a bookmarklet to clip thoughtful well-deserving comments and a website to aggregate the clipped comments with a clean uncluttered reader-friendly UI to go with it.
3. Social Goals – An application (probably a Facebook app) where anyone can set one or more goals (e.g. lose x amount weight in y days) for themselves or their friends. The user (person who has to achieve the goal) can then post regular updates on their progress. Their network of friends rank their effort on each update posted. Their network of friends can also send them a gift (virtual or real) at each milestone or when the goal is accomplished. The idea is loosely based on Game theory, as it aims to promote action and behaviour change through group motivation.
4. Feedback for Startups – Startups need early feedback as part of customer development. The idea is to create a website for startups to put-up a survey (small or big) and a special offer (e.g. discounts, coupons, gifts, gift certificate, books etc.) to go with it as an incentive to complete the survey. The longer the survey, the bigger the offer to the user. Users (who meet a set criteria) can then choose to participate in a survey and receive the special offer. Startups on the other hand can get the relevant feedback.
5. Food Photos – More and more people are sharing photos of their food. And there’s something about looking at other peoples (real) food. It’s somehow aesthetically pleasing to the eye. New York Times wrote about the phenomenon – People Who Photograph Food and Display the Pictures Online. The idea is to create a website and curate/aggregate food pictures in real-time from various photo sharing sites and social networks (Twitpic, TweetPhoto, Flickr, Posterous, Blogs). Add a bit of social voting and make it elegant for ‘food porn‘.
6. Integrated Blogging Environment (IBE) – Blogging is more common than ever before. From a bloggers perspective, I find that it still lacks a simple integrated tool to write rich articles quickly. Here’s my wish-list for a blogging tool: Web-based, simple WYSIWYG text editor, inbuilt support for dictionary & spelling suggestions, quicker reference to Wikipedia, inbuilt support for search and embedding of images (Creative Commons licensed) from Google Images and Flickr, auto-post to multiple blogs, auto-post to Twitter & Facebook. How about it?
Most of these abstract ideas have emerged from my own needs and observations. These ideas are open for anyone to use, so feel free to go for it. Drop me a message if you make any progress. Good luck.
The other day I was browsing through the list of world’s most popular goals on 43 Things, when I came across something one might call a “true lie”.
Apparently, 25271 people want to “Fall in love” and on average it takes them 9 years to complete this goal. Not too far down the list, 19421 people want to “get married” and on average it takes them 8 years to complete this goal. And there is the fundamental flaw with the typical perception of statistical averaging.
The dictionary defines an average as:
central tendency around the middle of a scale of evaluation.
Averaging has long been an important methodological “assumption” in data-driven understanding. A lot of analysis and decision-making around the world is based on taking the averages of various quantitative measurements. But, is it really a reliable way of result representation?
An average is a single value that is meant to typify a list of values. This can be misleading if misused. I think the problem with averaging is largely related to transparent distribution. For example, on average every person has one testicle and one breast. Misleading, but true. Without valid segmentation, an average doesn’t accurately classify the data set and the inference becomes biased.
In most cases, an average ends up sounding like a generalized fact, mainly to justify a marketing strategy. If a company promotes a product by stating that its been proven to be effective for “75% of people on average”, it leaves a lot unsaid. What age groups, gender, income levels etc. were these people segmented in while deriving an average? The chances of this product being effective, and the chances of anyone buying the product, should marginally diminish with an increasing lack of segmentation made available. However, marketeers know well that it’s this very lack of segmentation that impairs the judgement of people. We buy what others buy, as Game theory comes into action.
On the other side, many market researchers overuse averaging and reach invalid conclusions. Organizations misapply these conclusions, all to their own demise. Most organizations produce stuff that may never be widely adopted, but since their market research was based on generic averaging to start with, they think otherwise.
Averaging of data without clear information around the segmentation of that data is a vague and pointless exercise, which can have grave consequences through cognitive bias. Unfortunately, it’s also the most popular way of drawing abstract conclusions.
I’ve been relaxing and trying to make the most of my holidays for the past few days. It’s amazing how much you can get done when in the right frame of mind.
While doing some coding in my spare time lately, I’ve had a strong craving for listening to some new music. So, I took some time out to basically mix and record my own tracks, mainly electronic rock stuff composed using digital synthesizer software.
I’m sharing a few tracks below. All mp3′s are downloadable under the Creative Commons license. Some are also featured at Opsound:
Duct tape programmers are pragmatic. Zawinski popularized Richard Gabriel’s precept of Worse is Better. A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.
Joel’s views triggered a series of rants and responses on the pros and cons of the “release early, release often” pattern and the “analysis paralysis” anti-pattern, a phrase that describes exceedingly long timeframe to solution delivery. While I personally prefer the “quick ship” approach, I do utilize the benefits of iterating analysis. Maybe it makes me a diplomatic drone, but I care more about an uncomplicated outcome.
The debacle around the “duct tape” approach to programming led me to a different question. What if the duct tape is red, or more precisely, how does patent-driven red-tapism affect software and technology development? Essentially, why do some programmers patent their work?
Kas Thomas described the concept of a role-based favicon, and why Novell patented it:
I was granted a patent (U.S. Patent No. 7,594,193, “Visual indication of user role in an address bar”) on something that I whimsically call the rolicon.
Okay, but why do this patent? The answer is simpler than you think (and will brand me as a whore in some people’s eyes). I did it for the money. Novell has a liberal bonus program for employees who contribute patent ideas. We’re not talking a few hundreds bucks. We’re talking contribute ten patents, put a child through one year of college.
I have two kids, by the way. One is in college, using my patent bonuses to buy pepperoni pizzas as we speak.
It was a bit unsettling for me, because Novell has been continually contributing to open source projects, and most marginally good programmers I know don’t believe in patents.
Undoubtedly, Michael Jackson was a great performer. He had actually invented and patented the shoe design used as part of his famous Moonwalk.
It makes him a “hacker“, but his “method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion” could have had wider benefits if he would have not patented the design so that other innovators could make the most of it. I can already think how this could have improved the condition of people with arthritis for example.
An anticipated social benefit of patent law is that it creates an incentive to innovate. Ironically, the patent law severely restricts innovation and healthy competition. Patents stimulate monopolies, like Microsoft and many other self-indulgent technology companies. We need to acknowledge that patents should not be a marketing strategy, but unfortunately they are so in consumerism.
Some may suggest that we should abolish the patent system altogether, but I don’t think the big fishes would ever let that happen; otherwise they’ll lose competitive advantage in a lot of lucrative areas. But what if patents were self-expiring? A patent would auto-expire if isn’t used within a certain timeframe less than the default 20 year term of the patent. This should hopefully satisfy the corporate schemers, and all programmers regardless of the colour of their duct tape.
Earlier this year I worked on an experimental sci-fi short film, “Memoirs of a Spore” (Chapter I, The Rains).
Plot Summary: Once in a long past future, a cyborg ponders their rehabilitation in a metabolic society ravaged by the war, continuous rains, and other artifacts.
For the past few months I’ve been sitting on some ideas (for Web applications) that I’ve scribbled here & there. I’m working on a few (not listed here) in my spare time, but realistically I won’t be able to work on all of them. So I thought it will be better to just publicly share some of the ideas for others interested in driving them.
