4 Websites I wish someone would launch
OK, many of these are just enhancements to existing products, but some of the features are differentiated enough that they could stand alone. These may already exist, so please let me know if you aware of anything similar.
- Photo sharing site for groups. Every time I go on a trip with other people, we all take pictures with our own cameras. Invariably we never reconnect and get each others pictures. No photo sharing service serves the group well - sharing is an afterhought, and they make it impossible to download the pictures in bulk - mine or theirs. Oh, and I want the site to allow me to build a web-based photo album that they host on one of my subdomains (similar to how feedburner handles feeds).
- Movie Listing Maps Mashup: Where is Borat playing near me? If you don’t know the theaters well, the existing movie listing sites are close to useless. You need to look up the addresses of theaters, and then map each one. Forget about trying to browse and see what’s playing nearby. This site almost had it right, then they got shut down for illegally using the source data. Sumit and I looked into building this, and got as far as having a conversation with the providers of the listings data.
- Random Email Address Generator: I leave my email address at hundreds of sites. Many times I only need to use the email address once (mailinator.com is great for this), however I frequently find myself needing the email address more than once. I want a website and firefox plugin that creates a randomized email address for every site I visit. I would have full control over what happens with them - I could delete them, forward them or just expire them. I would know exactly where my spam was coming from and could kill it as needed. Rahul and I have had a few conversations about this idea and think there is potential.
- Intelligent Email Assistant: I get tons of very predictable email that can easily be aggregated and made more useful. I’ll use airline receipts as an example. These emails all come in very predictable formats from known sources. They can be easily parsed automatically and aggregated into a single flight calendar or even better, automatically added into my existing calendars. I’d then have 1 place to go to find all my flights. Same with purchase receipts. This could stand-alone or work directly with the random email generator.
Update 1: 12 Nov 07
Two of these sites have been launched:
- Photo sharing sites for groups. Sharpcast (My Review).
- Intelligent email agent (for travel). TripIt. You forward them your travel emails, and they parse and build a travel schedule . Brilliant idea, and I’m playing with the execution.
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you can use gmail and plus addressing to generate custom email addresses for an individual website. not all websites will accept plus addresses.
True, and I already do use plus addressing. But, it won’t protect you from spammers – it contains your full email address and is simple for a spammer to ‘clean’ and use unfettered.
[…] covered the launch of Sharpcast’s Photosharing platform. I listed this service as one of the 4 websites that I wish someone would launch in January. Sharpcast’s initital offering hits two huge pain […]