IDEA #58 - Politics: Who Should You Vote For?

May 10, 2007 | 3 Comments

This idea comes from Josh Manuel of StateOfBrain.com (website that allows you to submit links and apply an emotion to it — rather than just giving a thumbs up/down) (btw, it’s for sale at web2.0forsale.com — although I can’t imagine he’s serious about that selling price).

Here’s Josh’s idea:

Develop a website where a user enters in where they stand on a large list of issues. Once done filling out how they feel, the website compares that list against all the candidates in the running.

The site gives you a list of who to vote for based on the issues you agree the most with and why you should not vote for certain other candidates… Hopefully throwing the stupid ‘I am voting straight Republican or straight Democratic tickets’ often seen at elections, out the window.

Monetize it with contextual ads as well as giving candidates a way to spend all their campaign contributions at a place on the net where you have a large audience of people who will be voting. It would be very targeted traffic for the presidential candidates who have 20+ million dollars. I think you could run some costly banners if you built up a nice amount of traffic and contacted their campaign managers.

My comments:

I like this idea — and it could apply to all sorts of political elections (mayor, etc). I’m not very political, so it’d be great if there was a site where I could answer a list of questions about where I stand on the issue (and also a link to more info on the issue, in case I’m not familiar with it), then see what candidate I align with the best — and where the candidates stand on those issues (where we agree/disagree). Maybe I could then specify which issues I feel very strongly about, which would show me a different candidate that I’m better aligned with (maybe not on all the issues, but on the ones I feel strongest about).

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized

IDEA #57A - Social Networking via your RSS subscriptions

May 9, 2007 | 4 Comments

This post below is guest written by Michael Wales. It kind of extends off my last idea post — RSS Reader Influenced by your Peers. He talks about basically a service where you could upload your OPML file (what RSS feeds you subscribe to), then it would compare that against the pool of other users and show you people that read similar stuff — and you could then become their “friend” and/or see what else they read that likely would interest you.

As Chris Keller notes in my last post, Google Reader is so close to these abilities — however, they aren’t there — so there might be a possibility to launch something in this space that to Google Reader would merely be a feature, but you could likely turn this feature into a website.

Everyone uses different RSS readers — and exporting their latest OPML file is a manual process. If someone created something that could automatically export OPML files on behalf of the users (for the major RSS readers — Google Reader, Newsgator, Netvibes, Pageflakes, etc) — then this really could be a cool website. It could then notify users when someone has added a new feed that may be of interest to them.

I’m always open to guest posts — so if you feel you have something relevant to my readers (web-based startup ideas; radical concepts, etc), send it my way.

Michael’s post:

Much like in the days before the .com bubble, the target audience for many
of today’s applications is the early adopter crowd. Within this crowd
there is one technology used by all: RSS.

From bloggers to VCs, most everyone “in the know” has Read more

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized

IDEA #57 - RSS Reader Influenced By Your Peers

May 3, 2007 | 12 Comments

I thought I had written this one out, but I can’t seem to find it in my archives. The problem: There are so many RSS feeds I’m subscribed to — I’ve been using Netvibes, but it’s just no longer feasible for me; I miss tons of stuff everyday (and I know I do). I’m moving over to Google Reader — and have already been using it for about 6 months, but had done a mass import of an OPML file that had a lot of junk websites that I actually don’t care about, and haven’t removed them.

Anyhow — still, I have 100’s of RSS feeds. I’d like to see the posts that are most relevant to me — likely based on what my friends/family or those I admire, are reading. Kind of a Techmeme, but based on my network — not the world.

To make this happen, there has to be the network of friends and people you admire. Some options: Twitter, MyBlogLog, … and maybe LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, etc? Although I think you’d create your own. Then maybe a browser plugin (like the del.icio.us one) that allows people to give a post a thumbs up or thumbs down (a la Leaptag?) — and I’d also make this a Wordpress/blog plugin, so that at the end of every blog post, the reader could easily give thumbs up/down.

Then all the thumbs up/down data is aggregated for each person’s network, and a Techmeme is shown. You could also visit your friend’s profile page and visit their Techmeme page (based on their network). There’d also be the ability to specifically tag/earmark posts for specific people.

You could also have each user publish their OPML file and generate a Techmeme based on that for each user — that’s automated (?), and which can be viewed by anyone … and/or there could be a RSS reader page (much like Google’s Reader) that you [or anyone] could view. (And of course it’d keep track of what you read/view, and mark them as ‘read’ — and likely show if you gave a thumbs up or down). Sort of also becomes a social bookmarking service — and yes, it turns out we do need another one of those
For fun: Idea for the name of this business, something that ends with ‘rss’… example: ‘Radarss’.

I know someone working on something that does some of what I’m talking about, but not exactly — he’s solving another problem (kinda overlaps with what I’m talking about, but has nothing to do with RSS), and doesn’t do any of the Techmeme stuff I’ve mentioned.

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized

IDEA #56 - Web Hosting Company using Amazon S3

May 2, 2007 | 8 Comments

I wonder if anyone has built a web hosting business off Amazon’s S3 storage/bandwidth services ($0.15/gig storage; $0.20/gig transfer).

GoDaddy is minimum $3.99/month for 5GB storage and 250GB transfer — which would equate to $50.75 at Amazon S3. But how many people use that much space or transfer? Typically sites use less than 500mb of storage and 5GB transfer (or less).

Thus, a 1GB storage and 5GB transfer plan would be $1.15/mo. You could even create a service where the person pays $5 setup fee (to you), which then runs some automated process you created to make all the technical stuff work — allow them to upload files via FTP, or a java applet via their web browser. Ease of nameserver (maybe you tell them where they have to point it to). Then have them auto-signup for Amazon S3, to pay them directly for whatever storage/transfer they do.

You could possibly have a plan that is $1/month (or $0.99, no gimmicks!). Although Google’s Blogger is free to setup a blog, Piczo allows you to create basically your own free website — basically like MySpace, except you can create lots of webpages. So maybe there’s no need for some cheapo web hosting company.

Be careful of customer support — that’s where the pain is; if people are having any web hosting problems, they’ll call you, whether or not it’s your problem. PHPWebhosting has always been good and cheap - $10/month, I don’t really think there’s any restrictions.

I wouldn’t go into this business, but hey, it’s an idea

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized

Stats - I love snooping around

May 1, 2007 | 4 Comments

If someone has their web statistics information not password-protected, then I like to look
But I wish there was a service out there (if you know of one, let me know) where I could input a URL and it would automatically test every possible URL that could possibly show their stats program. It would look at what kind of server the website is running on (MS IIS, Linux/Apache) — and based on that, look at a list of stat programs for those, look at the standard ‘out of the box’ install directories/URLs, and test them.

For example, Webalizer is a typical stats program on Linux boxes — and the standard URL is ‘domainname.com/webstat/’. Thus, here are some random sites I found (by doing a Google search for ‘/webstat/’): ..., ..., and ....

What are the standard directories (software stat packages) for Windows boxes? Other LAMP stat packages default directories? Or, does anyone know of a website that does what I’m asking? If not, anyone going to build one?

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized