well I wouldnt say its impossible but the competition on this market is already quite high so you better have some more ideas.

just in case you didnt know the touchscreen poker table exists for quite a while and is working perfectly fine. Your "improvements" would just make it more complicated.

There is also a poker table that has RFID in all the chips / cards that makes 'televising' your own game super easy since the table can recognize hole cards / bet sizes / etc.

There's a YT vid of it out there somewhere of it in action.

It's weird.. have been reading 2p2 for a long time but never registered but now that I have my first 2 post have nothing to do with poker.

Anyway..

"Social Band"
A site that allows you to choose either drums, guitar, keyboard, bass, etc. After you pick it you can either choose live or software instrument.

Live: You have your instrument hooked up to your computer
Software: Electronically played (ex. drums would have 5 or 6 pads you could click or use your keyboard to play)

Say after you finish a 2-2:30 drum recording the site saves it and attaches your username to it. Now someone else logs on and chooses a different instrument and plays that instrument over your recording. They save, link their username to it, and it gets sent off again until all instruments have been recorded. Each user then gets a PM saying their song is complete which they can play. It would all be random.. so you would login and get a random song that has already been started by other people.

I really like the concept of it, but I dont know if the public is ready for that level of collaboration though. You have to think about how much work it would be to either buy some compatible piece of hardware that allows you to connect to your computer.

I think maybe to prototype it, you could use something that connects users of garageband or any other music making app that already exists.

I also dont like the random part of it. There would have to be a way to sort the tracks. Maybe some kind of voting system or based on the user's history or something.

Have you guys seen this business cherry.com? Basically you use your phone to GPS pinpoint your car and then you pay for a car washing service via the app. Their team comes out and washes your car on the spot.

I think there are a lot of problems there and would probably bet against this company succeeding, but I think the concept is kind of cool.

Are there other things that can be used in this way? Could you do the same with oil changes? It wouldnt be focused so much so on "leaving your car parked on the street and get an oil change" rather people could come to your car at your home, office, whatever and do it there. It is more about taking the hassle out of going to get your oil changed (driving there, waiting, maybe having a friend pick you up, etc) and less about having it done in crazy places.

Concept is definitely interesting, I agree that it's unlikely that company will succeed, but feels like something that may be good in a few years once the kinks have been worked out and people are more used to the idea and ready to sign up in droves.

That site is funny, doesn't even BEGIN to describe what areas they service, I'm just going to take a wild guess and say it's probably just in certain areas of San Francisco or wherever the company is located, so maybe NYC. And I know some people are happy to pay $29 for a car wash, but I think saying "Just $29" is a bit much in the site copy haha (please no replies talking about how much car washes cost in big cities or something, I am sure tons of ppl are happy to pay $29, just hinting that it's JUST $29 is funny to me).

It's funny, of all the car-related services I'd like this for, car wash is the last, it's so easy to just go to a gas station with an auto car wash and go through it. A few weeks ago I would have said this would be good for an oil change, but I went to Jiffy Lube for the first time since then, and it was insanely fast and convenient, I had no clue it would be like that.

Anyway this model is cool in theory, but really it's just "we come to your location and do a service" dressed up to look more revolutionary because it's wrapped around an iPhone app. Clearly, very few services have made a go of "we come to you", but if you cater to people in big cities with higher incomes and less free time, I can see this working with certain things, you just have to jack up the prices and keep a nice big margin.

BTW If I was that site, Cherry.com, first thing I would do would be to hire a good, sneaky social media agency to make a viral video where the guys show up to wash the car and then some crazy stuff happens around them, like a parade of people in weird outfits doing something unexpected ala ImprovAnywhere or something. Their target market seems like exactly the kind of people who are refreshing Laughing Squid all day looking for funny Star Wars videos or whatever, the right video would make people aware of their services pretty damn fast since it'd be an integral part of the video.

so not really a fleshed-out idea, but kind of

I'm amazed how relatively "unintelligent" word processing software has remained over the years

I dream of a program that has some serious (and feasible) tools and features that would actually be useful to a professional writer

examples:

1) a clean, collapsible space accessible below any given sentence for working on sentence variants, which can be sketched here using spoiler tags:

[Candidate final sentence] "{subject} {verb} {adjective} {object}"



2) a robust 'semantic field' exploration tool: you click on a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb, and a menu / box pops up that lets you efficiently search for synonyms, related terms, definitions, antonyms, etc.

3) some kind of sentence diagramming functionality if you want to really map out how your prose is flowing and what patterns are there

4) just a more flexible and simpler way of grabbing and moving words, phrases, and sentences into different places, with the rest of the text expanding and contracting around these adjustments

5) advanced word searching and reports: are we overusing a particular verb or noun or whatever? can we get a look at frequency and patterns of typical sentence lengths in our text? what about the same for word types (syllable count, vocabulary level, Latinate-versus-Germanic)?

6) inclusion of style guidelines (like the CMS) for questions regarding punctuation use, quotations, parentheses, dashes, citations, dialogue formatting, and so on

7) advanced grammatical assistance: show me all the possible modifier slots in a given sentence; highlight all the verbs in this passage so I can focus on them; same for adverbs and adjectives; etc.

8) bonus magical fairytale wish: include a 'figurative language dreamatorium' module, where users enter a separate area with tools and resources and models and examples available to help them craft decent similes and metaphors and whatnot


okay, now make it happen, internet!

I see what your saying.. but that is why I would have the availability of software instruments.

examples:
If you pick drums then certain keys on the keyboard would represent each unit of the kit (e.g. F = bass drum, J = snare, I = hi-hat, etc.).

If you pick keys then then A-; would be the white keys and Q-P could be the black keys.

I am struggling to figure out how to do guitar and bass.

I agree with the randomness of it a voting system would work real well. User's could rate each other.

Word processing software idea is brilliant.

With the amount of blogging, twittering, etc., a web based program that carries out those tasks would be even better.

This link came up on HN today and I thought it was a great read. Its a post by Joel Spolsky on figuring out splitting equity in a startup.

http://answers.onstartups.com/questi...ly/23326#23326

I figured it'd be relevant to this thread

One of my ideas is to start a one-stop condo furnishing company for landlords. Many of the condos here are purchased by investors overseas and they simply have a local property management company take care of renting it.

The company would take care of scoping out the condo, sending a proposal with various options, delivery, and installation. Everything that the landlord can't take care of from overseas.

Fully furnished rentals generally go for $500 (1-br) to over $1,000/month (2br) premium over unfurnished rentals here. These are long-term rates (6-12 months), not for weekly or monthly rentals.

The property managers generally get 10% or one month's rent commission for an annual lease. If they can convince the owner to furnish the unit, that's an extra $500 or $1,000 profit for the agent.

I believe the premium would cover the price of furnishing in just a year (in most cases), so most landlords would see it as a sound investment.

At first, I'd try to make a deal with a local wholesale distributor, but if things worked out, I'd rent a warehouse and order furniture wholesale myself. I've purchased some furniture direct from the manufacturer before (through a friend's license) and the markup on furniture is quite absurd.

Things like linens, cookware, and basic electronics would be bought locally with a flat-rate shopping/delivery/installation fee on top.

Any advice/criticism is appreciated.

Do it then? Easy $200k profit a year? If it's fact, in one year from now you will be sitting on $200,000, minus $2,500 to produce them at quoted $5 each.

clocks in top of ski poles