IDEA #81 - iPhone Photo Plus [iPhone SDK application]
March 13, 2008 | 1 Comment
The iPhone’s camera is pretty “blah”. I’d love to see an app on the iPhone that allows me to do a bit of a “zoom” [even if it is fake and just manipulating what I see], simple “cropping” (using the touch screen to zoom) in the photo gallery (because I may want to send an image direct from my phone w/o going to edit it on my computer), and simple ability to send a photo to my Flickr or Facebook accounts — as well as be posted/shared via Twitter. And ability to send/share via text (MMS) or email, to my friends.
Also, why can’t my iPhone’s camera record video? Seems like it could record video — and stream it live like Qik.
Couldn’t it also connect to my Flickr or Facebook photo accounts, so I could browse mini thumbnails and then click on one to view the full size photo — and possibly send that to a friend direct from my iPhone?
Twitter Syntax for Twitter Bots
March 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
Fred Wilson just featured a twitter bot for stock quotes. I was also just chatting with Andrew Parker (Fred’s associate) at USV about Twitter syntax. I think we came up with a pretty good idea for it — although needs to be panned out likely. I’ve mentioned my thoughts on this topic in July 2007 as well.
I still hate the direct messaging syntax (i.e. “d mytrade AAPL GOOG AMZN”). I wish it’d be like “@mytrade AAPL GOOG AMZN” — and allow the twitter username account holder (i.e. “mytrade” in this case) to specify if their account is a ‘bot’, then that syntax would be a direct message (”command”) to that bot. If the user screws up and does like “@mytrade1 AAPL GOOG AMZN” which isn’t designated as a bot, then it gives an error to the user and doesn’t post to their twitter account.
“Techmeme” Monthly Printed Magazine [opportunity]
January 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Allen Stern asks if people would pay $1 per month for full RSS feeds with no ads. He poses this question to spur some conversation on how as a professional blogger he could be making some more money. While it seems like people would be inclined to pay $1 for some reading material, I don’t see it happening with RSS feeds anytime soon. People are happy with their RSS readers, and the ads at the bottom aren’t intrusive.
But I’ve got another idea that might work — basically repackaging the writings from his blog (and other blogs that participate) into a hard copy magazine form. People still like hard copies of things– magazines, books, etc — good material for the bathroom, airplane, waiting room, etc.
What I’d really like to see is a weekly (or monthly) magazine that is selective in the writings that it publishes (the best blog posts and tech news of the week/month) and also selectively publishes some comments from the post (and/or comments from other blog posts related to that post).
This would give people a hard copy, but also would ensure they didn’t miss something for the week/month.
If you were selling these monthly for $5/mo, I bet you could sell 10k/month. At even a 40% margin, that’s $20k/mo profit. Allen, start the coalition of bloggers that will give you republish print rights, and hop to it! 
You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours [opportunity]
January 30, 2008 | 7 Comments
You may already be familiar with Jim Kukral’s Scratchback service. It’s a widget you place on your blog that lets people give you a monetary “tip” and then their text/link appears in the widget to everyone for a period of time (as designated by you, such as a week or a month). You specify how many links are available and how much they are — so you could have 5 links that are $25 each, and the donor’s link would then appear for 1-week.
I think there’s another interesting opportunity here — either as another function of this widget, or for someone else to create their own similar service. I’d like to see a “roll” of contributor links that are basically auctioned off to the top bidders. For example, I’d be able to specify that 5 spots exist and the price starts at $0.01. Someone bids $0.01 with their text/link and it appears in the top slot. Someone else bids $1.00 and their text/link appears in the top slot, while the prior link drops a spot. Someone else bids $2.50 and their text/link appears in the top slot, while the prior link drops a spot. And so on…
You’ll have to work out all the details, but I think you could receive a full PayPal payment of whatever the user bids, but only require them to bid a dollar (or $5, etc) above the virtual high bid. Thus in the example above, the top spot would really be $2.00 [if you have to bid $1 more than the prior bid], but since the other person bid $2.50, that person would remain in the top spot if this user bid $2.00 [and the $1.00 bid would drop a notch].
You could have it reset at the beginning of the month if you wanted. Also, the benefit to the early bidders is that they could potentially stay up in your linkboard for a lower cost than those after them.
Thus it creates a bit of competition and the market (your readers/advertisers) will determine the true value of those link spots on your Site.
Sidenote: BTW Jim, where’s the affiliate program for your service? 
iTunes Search Engine [opportunity]
January 28, 2008 | 3 Comments
Fred Wilson twittered that he was looking for these “I’m Free” remixes by The Rolling Stones. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of the Stones, but the remixes are by some hot artists — Postal Service, Hot Chip, Fat Boy Slim, and Moby.
I did some research and found out they were released exclusively on iTunes. I happen to not have iTunes installed at this time, so I did a search to try and find an iTunes song search engine. No luck — I couldn’t find one.
So here’s an idea for the taking — create an iTunes search engine. Sign up as an affiliate of Apple through LinkShare. Then I think to get access to Apple’s 6.5mm song data feed (download data feed spec doc), you have to pay $250 to LinkShare (which gives you access to product feeds from many of their merchants). You’ll then earn 5% of any sales that result from your iTunes search engine.
Note: Don’t use ‘itunes’ in the domain you choose for this (you could use something more generic related to mp3’s or music — because then you could work to get a data feed from Amazon.com’s MP3 library, eMusic, and others like IMEEM, these new ad-supported free download sites, and in the near future we’re going to see other big players opening up DRM-free MP3s for sale — like Yahoo!).
Further Note: 5% of a $0.99 track is only $0.05. You’d have to sell a lot of songs to make any real money from Apple’s affiliate program — however, you could complement your Site with display ads (much like Last.fm and Hype Machine do), as well as sponsored search results (from Google, or Validclick, or Searchfeed, etc).
Good luck!
IDEA #27 - Lunch/Dinner/Bar Specials - Updated Daily
February 24, 2007 | 5 Comments
A new site launched called Snag Lunch — quite honestly, I think it’ll be short-lived. This isn’t really done well/automated — but I think the idea has potential.
If I were launching something similar, I’d start with a database of restaurants — get them all listed in the site. I’d then setup a VXML app that can auto-dial those restaurants — telling them about the service, that it’s free to use/signup and allows them to communicate daily specials to their customers (and prospective new customers!). Additionally, let them do an audio-message of their specials.
And then I’d launch another website to do the same thing for bars / happy hours / drink specials; dinner / restaurant specials.
Monetization: Eventually you start doing advertising [of beer or beverage or food companies; since everyone visiting your website is interested in consuming food or beverages] — and allow for restaurants to Read more
