The Internet Wishlist

February 25, 2011 8:59 AM

The Internet Wishlist. Amrit Richmond has launched The Internet Wishlist, a collection of ideas for apps and websites people are wishing for, that she calls “a suggestion box for the future of technology”. To share your idea, just post on Twitter about an app or website that you would like to see built and include #theiwl in your tweet. Via: Laughing Squid.
posted by nickyskye (31 comments total)

Just give away my million billion dollar idea? What are you, nuts?!
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:00 AM on February 25, 2011

My great-great grandmother suggested the design of the pour spout to the Morton Salt company, and she never got so much as a "thank you" in return. From this, I took that you should always patent your ideas, if nothing else to get the credit and praise you deserve (/semi-hamburger).

And a number of these suggestions should be sent to software companies, because they're not for The Internet, but programs. But I guess they might trickle back to the companies, or people who could write add-ons.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:13 AM on February 25, 2011

Interesting. Just the other day, I came up with a great idea for an awesome new internet thing. But I wouldn't just give it up for free into the ether. I'll probably never build it myself anyway, but still. It's the principle of the thing.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:17 AM on February 25, 2011

The Winsome Parker Lewis: Interesting. Just the other day, I came up with a great idea for an awesome new internet thing. But I wouldn't just give it up for free into the ether. I'll probably never build it myself anyway, but still. It's the principle of the thing.

The principle being that it is better to avoid advancing the progress of humanity if one cannot profit from it somehow?
posted by Mitrovarr at 9:21 AM on February 25, 2011 [8 favorites]

Yes, exactly that.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:23 AM on February 25, 2011 [3 favorites]

"The principle being that it is better to avoid advancing the progress of humanity if one cannot profit from it somehow?"
posted by Mitrovarr

which is similar to M$, Sony (suing developers and hackers etc), and so on
posted by marienbad at 9:24 AM on February 25, 2011

I on the other hand, will happily give up any chance at remuneration if it increases the wide adoption of the app that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.
posted by happyroach at 9:29 AM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

I've got my own private Internet where all those things exist already.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:33 AM on February 25, 2011

happyroach, I already thought of that. It's cost me a fortune in monitors and laptop display panels, but I'm happy to say it makes me feel better. It's only money, right?!
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 9:37 AM on February 25, 2011

It's not only a place where you can give ideas but receive ideas too.
posted by nickyskye at 9:38 AM on February 25, 2011

"The principle being that it is better to avoid advancing the progress of humanity if one cannot profit from it somehow?"
posted by Mitrovarr

thatsthejoke.jpg
posted by LogicalDash at 9:57 AM on February 25, 2011

Ideas are the easy bit.

I used to feel slighted when I would encounter something and think "hey, I thought of that". But when you find some of your ideas have not only been done by someone else, but by someone else before you were born, you realize that maybe those ideas you've been holding on to are not as valuable as you thought.

The hard work (and sometimes money) is turning those ideas into reality.

Usually when someone comes up with a truly good or valuable idea, they have to fight to get it adopted, because a truly revolutionary, visionary, and unique idea is not obvious at first. If it were obvious, someone else would have thought of it already. Or even if it is obviously a good idea, maybe it cuts into someone else's bottom line.
posted by fings at 9:58 AM on February 25, 2011 [4 favorites]

LogicalDash: thatsthejoke.jpg

In my defense, reality has been indistinguishable from parody for a while now.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:07 AM on February 25, 2011 [4 favorites]

"Dear Internet: feed mayonnaise to the tuna and WHAMMO! instant tuna salad! No need to pay me for this, I do it to advance the progress of humanity. You're welcome"
posted by briank at 10:07 AM on February 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

To share your idea, just post on Twitter about an app or website that you would like to see built and include #theiwl in your tweet.

My idea: Some other way of submitting data to websites that doesn't involve setting up a Twitter account. But, *sigh*, that's probably a pipe dream for how else can websites receive data? Some kind....text box? It would never work.
posted by DU at 10:09 AM on February 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

hmmm...seems mostly to be a bunch of twittertwats whining for more features. might i suggest some sort of twitter suppository? or medical funding to help find a cure?
posted by sexyrobot at 10:09 AM on February 25, 2011

I used to feel slighted when I would encounter something and think "hey, I thought of that". But when you find some of your ideas have not only been done by someone else, but by someone else before you were born, you realize that maybe those ideas you've been holding on to are not as valuable as you thought.

If you'd like to take it in a more optimistic way, you can think of it as validation for that particular idea that someone thought of it independently, or that you thought of it without having the background in the field to know that it already exists.

also,

"I wish there was an app that projected your imagination out into the open."

It's called Photoshop, Paint, Premier, Notepad, and so on and so forth.
posted by codacorolla at 10:10 AM on February 25, 2011

Also,

"I wish there was an app that helped you find parking in the city."

One million times this. I was thinking about the logistics of this the other day, as I vainly circled Mount Vernon in Baltimore trying to find a motherfucking spot where I wouldn't get towed.

What's required?

For one thing you need to build on the Google maps API, as that doesn't recognize sides of the street, which is vital for parking, since some streets have different rules for either side.

You also need to consider the level of detail that would be provided by the application. Does it say "there might be parking here" or "there definitely is a spot here, at this GPS location."

You need to start with a strong corpus of data about what sort of spots are available where. Probably best to begin with a comprehensive map of a single neighborhood, then a few neighborhoods, then a city, then multiple cities. The hardest part would be the leg work, as I'm not sure that cities make the different types of spots available at different locations publicly available. If you can make a database of streets, with the parking rules for each one, and provide this as a smart phone application (without even saying if these spots are available) that's already a hundred-thousand-dollar idea.

If the user can put in to a form, "I'm in [CANTON] and I need to park from [2:00 PM] to [10:00 PM] on [MONDAY] the [21ST]" and have a list returned of free spots, pay spots, garages, etc... that would be an awesome thing to have.

If you can take it one step further, and have the user rate the streets that they're given as "available" or "full" you could feed this back in to the database, and have the database also return spots that are likely to be open. If you get enough people to use the reporting feature then you can return even more accurate information. If you also include the ability to tag, or to comment on different spots, then you can increase the utility of the program greatly. Maybe you could provide incentives by way of partnering with certain garages to raffle free parking passes with each contribution giving you another chance to win.

If you charged 5 dollars for the app, and also collected advertising revenue from local businesses (geotagged to where the user is accessing from, so if you're looking for parking near Lou's Cafe then you get an advertisement for it) I think you could make a LOT of money while still providing a useful public service. If people abuse the service, or spam comments to try to game the raffle system then you can ban their device from using it.

I'm all psyched about this idea, but the idea is the easy part. Implementation is something else entirely.
posted by codacorolla at 10:23 AM on February 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

My wife, the love of my life, suggested a site where you could upload a video, and then insert flatulence noises into the audio track, either randomly or by edit. It would be called YouToot.
posted by newdaddy at 10:26 AM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

(i would totally watch YouToot)
posted by sexyrobot at 10:31 AM on February 25, 2011

My wife, the love of my life, suggested a site where you could upload a video, and then insert flatulence noises into the audio track, either randomly or by edit. It would be called YouToot.

I can see a whole range of these.

YouFlute = Random James Galway samples inserted.
YouCoot = Random Walter Brennan samples.
DasToot = Random flatulence noises on board WWII German submarines.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:45 AM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

There's a place for Internet Pony Requests? Awesome.
posted by empatterson at 10:55 AM on February 25, 2011

I totally thought up this internet wishlist thing months ago. I just didn't get around to creating it.
posted by Brodiggitty at 11:11 AM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Parking app: Primospot. Yes, the Internet has already thought of that.
posted by monospace at 11:18 AM on February 25, 2011

I too would watch YouToot. Most likely far too often.
posted by haqspan at 11:59 AM on February 25, 2011

Alright, alright, here's a serious one. What I want is a service that takes an input stream of text, or better yet my utterances, and filters them in such a way that what comes back is the closest approximation of my meaning, realized solely as a series of Talking Heads lyrics. For an app that did that, a 'Headifier', I'd pay cash money.
posted by newdaddy at 12:17 PM on February 25, 2011

Internet wishing for more internet wishes: yea or nay?
posted by katillathehun at 12:27 PM on February 25, 2011

My wife, the love of my life, suggested a site where you could upload a video, and then insert flatulence noises into the audio track, either randomly or by edit. It would be called YouToot.

There's already fart-sounds.net. Open your video editing program (iMovie or Windows [Live] Movie Maker). Open the video file then import the fart sounds. Bam, YouToot.
posted by nickyskye at 12:37 PM on February 25, 2011

On a whim I asked the Internets for video of air bassoon, and yes, they had done that. I was satisfied.
posted by stonepharisee at 12:48 PM on February 25, 2011

I like this idea - although I always wonder where the apparatus to match the people with the need with the people with the desire to build the app is. codacorolla has an excellent synposis upthread of what a parking app creation would look like and how difficult it would be - but maybe there are folks who've hacked at the Google Maps API... and other people who've done a nice UI for it. Heck, there may even be people in local governments who would help with this type of thing (see the whole Gov. 2.0 movement). To me, the key issue is how to get collaborative knowledge and resource sharing to get these separate people and resources together - kind of a matchmaking service for app creation and citizen activism. That's not a killer app, but boy, it would surely help with giving people what they need past the 'I have an idea' section, and surely would help some great ideas actually get built.

Something happened in the match making arena around the Crisis Commons initiatives - the idea of 'I have/I need' is a great metaphor for sharing resources. Also interesting to see stuff like the OpenIDEO crowdsharing initiative - more for the idea generation per se than the matchmaking. Again, my main concern is that ideas and the people who build on them are ships passing in the night. There are so many fantastic ideas out there, but until we facilitate better ways of matching those with the ideas with the people who can help build them, I fear we're not really making big enough strides in building good software, good products and good societies.
posted by rmm at 1:52 PM on February 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

See also: The Half Bakery.

The Halfbakery is a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression.

posted by zamboni at 4:52 PM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]