ideas

For some time politics and the web have been quite good friends. But, the political web is somewhat unbound. Political bloggers are everywhere, espousing their opinions in their small piece of the web. This week’s quick idea brings them together. “Second Congress” (which would not fly as a name because it is derived from Second Life) would pull political bloggers / thinkers into a social network in which real debates take place, and the best thinkers shine.

Basics: Everyone gets a page / blog; you build a network of friends and supporters; compete for fake campaign currency and the best of the best are chosen to a simulated congress. Essentially simulate government, but let it be run by the unfunded, less-supporter-biased masses that spend their time online. And kick it all off with a big publicity stunt in which you actually fund the campaign of the highest rated user to run for office offline.

I would love to build this, but don’t have the time / resources (unless someone wants to help me make this a reality).

Quick Ideas is an ongoing series in which Josh Amer publishes one idea for a website or product each week.

Every week I receive an email from iTunes called “New Release Tuesday,” I’m sure many of you receive the same. I nearly never read it, but think it could be valuable with a little tweaking. I don’t read it because it is, for the most part, not relevant to me. The email includes listings of the most popular new releases for the week - the problem is, I don’t listen to most of the bands that make the email and I’ve gotten so used to it being irrelevant that I won’t open it even if it is relevant. So… tweak it. Make it more relevant, and deliver it to me in an RSS feed or any way I chose.

Here’s the idea: let me select a handful of bands, or look at my listening / purchasing history and do it for me, send this info to a database, when the selected bands - or related bands - release an album I receive a notification in my RSS reader or other medium of choice. Amazon does this with purchase history (in email), but I want it more customized and I want to be able to add things that I haven’t purchased. In fact, this would probably work better for a company like Pandora or Last.fm. Pandora could theoretically create a custom RSS feed for me that would notify me when bands I’ve liked - or that the service believes I would like - release new albums.

And it’s not just about new music - this type of system could be built around any type of product. The opportunity is there, it’s just a matter of time.

This one comes solely from the high quantity of searches that have been getting people to my site since Facebook Apps launched. The queries in question are things like: “facebook gmail” or “get gmail in Facebook” - as many of these as I see a day, I think it’s fairly clear that people would like to read their email through a Facebook app. I haven’t looked enough at the Facebook platform documentation to know if this is possible, but I can’t really think of why it wouldn’t be - other than it would appear to have a point to it, and I think it may be a requirement for Facebook Apps that they all remain useless.

Thoughts? Is anyone doing this?

I’m often surfing the web and wish that I could copy a handful of things, paste them somewhere, or type a quick note - without leaving the browser and without signing in to a service. I’m sure there are some places that this can be done, but I most frequently find myself using Gmail and sending myself emails. Even that’s too cumbersome some times - I want speed, and Gmail can be mighty slow some days. I want to arrive on a page and have it just be an open text area, I start typing and then if I chose, I can login to save what I typed or send it to someone. It’s an extremely simple idea which is why I think it must exist. A good to alternative to having this as a website would be a firefox extension. I created a rough build of this idea (in about seven seconds) but without any of the saving or emailing features: you can click to check it out if you like. It’s literally four textareas, that’s it. What could be easier?

It’s been a busy week, I know this probably isn’t the best in this series, but I wanted to keep up my promise of keeping it weekly. Let me know what you think, or if this exists and I’ll give credit where it’s due.

Oapmeal.org is a new project that I’m working on that will be a sort of launch pad to reading blogs. When I talk to people about blogs, one of the first questions is always, “what are some good blogs about X topic/field/industry, etc.?” The best I can usually do is point someone to tagged posts on Technorati, or one of the hundreds of blog directories. For people that I’ve worked with on blogging I create a topic focused OPML file for them, to give them the user experience of reading blogs on a specific subject. What’s an OPML file? It’s a file that contains a list of blogs that you can import to most rss readers, that automatically subscribes you to the listed blogs - more to it than that, but that’s the general idea for how I will be using it. So… Oapmeal will be a directory of OPML files that I will manage, with some community support, that people will be able to take and use to get started reading blogs on a particular topic. That’s a pretty simplified version, and I’ll have more details as more progress is made.

If the only person that ever uses it is me to tell people where to go to find blogs, that’s enough for me - not setting the bar too high on this one.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Chicago with “nothing” to do from 1-5; so I go with the T-Mobile day pass, pony up the $9.99 and suddenly I’m connected again. Yay productivity! But… I hate Starbucks, with a passion. The reason I ended up here is because I didn’t know where else to go and couldn’t really find a hot spot without… a hot spot. I could browse the web on my phone, but that’s sort of a pain… that’s right I don’t have an iPhone… or even a cool enough substitute. Checking my Gmail ad nauseum is about the only thing my web connection on my phone is good for (that and my Lopico mobile marks, of course). So here’s what I want: I want to send a text of my zip code to some web service that will come back with a listing of nearby spots with free wifi (doesn’t have to be exclusively free, but that’s what I’d prefer). Each spot on the list comes with a unique ID next to it in the list. I text the ID back to the service and it responds with contact info.

Biggest fall back of this idea: not everyone knows their zip code, especially travelers (like me today… though I think it’s 60604 or something close) who would benefit the most from the service.

Does it exist? Thoughts?

My problem with wikipedia is not that anyone can edit it, it’s that I don’t know who edited it (most of the time). My proposed solution - Accapedia. Same basic concept except: the editors are identified by more than an IP address, you must have a .edu email address or be invited to be a part of the site (invite is probably better), you have a profile that demonstrates why you are an authority in this area, and you include a reputation system. Sort of Wikipedia with a social aspect, and less anonymity.

Thoughts?

A while back, I mentioned a notebook I have where I write one new idea for a website (or improvement to a website) everyday (that’s the book on the left). I’ve sort of fallen off the everyday wagon, but still do a pretty good job.

I also talked about sharing some or all of them at some point and I think I’m ready to do that. There are a few I want to keep to myself, but I’m going to try to do at least one a week in a new series called: “Quick Ideas.” Since today is the first day I’m even going to throw in an extra idea (though the two ideas are related).

Making TinyURL Better
TinyURL, for those of you that don’t know, is an easy way to condense long URLs. Instead of a huge URL with a large number of variables, like an Amazon URL, you are given a very short (might even say tiny) URL (something like: http://tinyurl.com/3dwovf) that points to the long URL. The service has recently increased in popularity as Twitter implements it for messages that contain URLs. But, I have a problem with it: I want to know how many times people click on my TinyURLs, even if they go to a site that I’m not tracking. This would be a very easy implementation, and would give me a personal interest in TinyURL. By that I mean there would be a reason for me not to switch to a competitor like URLtea. If I have an account with TinyURL already and all of my tracking is in the TinyURL system, I’m less likely to leave for a competitor. Just a thought.

Bonus: EdURL
This is one I thought about a lot while I was writing my final paper in law school. Create a uniform system for citations of web documents based on a tinyurl style site. I used a lot of web resources for my final law paper, which meant a lot of space dedicate to URLs in my footnotes. Good for hitting your page requirement, bad for… everything else. This idea would be more about building a community and support for your standard… but it needs to be done.

Thoughts?