Tech Mashup Idea: Live Street View for Google Maps

Cell phone cameras are getting much more impressive.  I just saw an 8 megapixel HD camera on an Android  phone.  Neat.  Also about time.  Android also has lots of great apps too (I really need to dig into Java programming a bit more).  After all, it's free to develop apps (eclipse.org, android.com, etc.) for it.  A friend (@alanlupsha) and I were swapping app ideas when it finally hit me: live street view feeds.

Given that phones have:

• high quality cameras to capture photos and video
• the ability to record a lat/long position, and a bearing & angle (via compass app/tilt/acceleratometers)
• the ability to send data and communicate with other devices/computers

then this app can:

• automatically geotag photos with a lat/long, direction, and angle OR
  automatically geotag frames of a video with locations along a recorded along a path (also see RoboGEO software)
• upload geotagged media to a server when you return to your home wifi connection, or any other wifi hotspot (@alanlupsha)
• server geocodes the images (with minimal effort now) and updates an internet mapping application view that can be shared individually as a single view (see Google's Street View @ the 2010 Olympic ski runs)

App Idea: Facebook History

I've tried on a few different occasions to see how I have previously wasted my time in the past. I scroll to the bottom of my Facebook wall, click "Older Posts" and repeat. This happens up to a half dozen times before I loose interest (I've read studies that internet users' attention span is as short as seven seconds [I would have posted links, but I don't feel like reading these articles]). This technique usually yields no more than a day or two of my Facebook history. Who cares?

I'd like a more efficient way to (possibly) quantify and (more importantly [not importantly]) reflect on just how much of my youth I have wasted. Assume each wall post can equal 10-20 seconds, each posted picture/link amounts to a bit more time, etc. Also, it'll just serve as a simple tool to navigate through a given time frame to see what you/your friends were up to at least 100 years ago.

Website Ideas: FML-Style Web Sites

In the style of FML and TFLN, where users submit short, text based hilarity, I'd like to build three web sites.

One is dedicated solely to "That's what she said" opportunities from inappropriate situations. As much as I would like to shout it across a meeting with my division director, or at my roommate's mother when she walks into a giant bucket of hilarity, I'm often bound to a puritanically imposed sense of of tact.

The second is simply a compilation of quasi-believable erroneous facts. For instance, skin is actually an acronym for its composing elements: Sodium Potassium Iron & Nitrogen. The human body contains exactly 100 bones (101 if you count the skull). Fire ants prefer hickory BBQ sauce. Pi is exactly 3. That sort of thing. See Look Around You.

In an xkcd stylee of nerdiness, the last is a site dedicated to user-submitted equations, algorithms, functions, statistical inferences, etc. that model everyday occurrences or nuisances. For instance, Matt's First Law of Mexican Restaurants states that "The quality of cuisine at a Mexican restaurant is inversely proportional to the cleanliness of its bathrooms," or my postulation that "the likelihood of vegetarian options existing on a given menu decreases as the number of televisions at a restaurant increase." Yeah, statistics jokes are GOLD these days. Also, jokes involving computer programming/coding or diagrams (chemical, physical, electrical, etc.) are fair game. OpenWetWare has a cool santax for creating diagrams.

• Update: thisisindexed.com (thanks, DLC)
• Update: GraphJam (thanks, lolcat network)

I created new blog called Unnecessary Modeling. For now I'm using the graph builder at GraphJam for my templates, but they're not showing up as well as they could, so I might switch over to Google Docs soon.

These are not really that great but I would like to learn basic web based database management programming. I love LAMP!

Website Idea: Marriage pools

How many weddings have you been to that have ended in divorce? How many are probably on their way out? I haven't really been to many, but I'm looking at .500. Not a great statement for the high standards of the sanctity of the "eternal bond" is it?

Wouldn't it be nice to stop loosing money on showers, gifts, and weekends of preparation? I propose a website that will allow friends, family, and other random weirdos to throw down a few bucks and make a bet on how long a marriage will last. Conversely, one can wager that a marriage will last forever. HA! Seriously though, you can make money on others misery. God bless America.

It can work along the lines of general things like how long will it last to tie breaker to more of a point system, with topics like picking the reason of termination, who was at fault, etc. The more people who enter, the better the outcome will be, of course. Pools can be open or closed, which leads to the more public option: CELEBRITY WEDDINGS!

All information is confidential so the couple or other family members don't have to know which of their greedy friends and family are betting for or against them.

The closest thing I found on the web is weddingbetting.com which seems to be some sort of Hot or Not for weddings. Miss.

Open Source Art

I have an idea for a new web community that is a cross between a blog, imdb, wikipedia, and iTunes. I'll get right to explaining it. Users can:

• Post art of any medium: music, lyrics, poetry, video, stories, books, illustrations, graphic designs, paintings, technology-based art [web page layouts, ytmnd's, lolcats], you name it
  

• Attribute the entry with searchable metadata that describe and categorizethe work for others to use for enjoyment, inspiration, education, or reference

• Track the flow of ideas that go into the creation of any piece of work, thus providing further insight into the work itself - for instance a song can have its own blog entry and link to other music/poetry/blogs/outside news articles/facebook profiles/Google Maps/etc. that have contributed or inspired the work
  

• Serve as an open source community of ideas to distribute, inspire, teach, catalog, and ultimately promote the creation of more art - sort of an opportunity for new art mashups, or simply a resource to learn more about your favorite song, painting, book, or artist.

An example:

• A poet/lyricist can post her or his work for the community, with the option to include a background description, photos, etc.
  
• A jive band who may shred but cannot write decent lyrics to save their life may stumble upon this writer's work and use it as inspiration or take it en mass to complete their own work
• From this, any number of animators or film makers may want to create their version of a music video, or include the music in a film
• The band can find another artist to create album art or web design
  
• All portions can be cited by the contributing artist/tagged to be searchable/linked to other works that may have influenced/discussed by the original creator or the community
• The work can be downloaded for free/open contribution (a la Radiohead)/purchase by track/purchase by album
• The work can then be distributed easily via posting on other web sites, or compatibale iPod downloads, order prints, etc.
  

Although the open source aspect may seem to short change any single contributor (for instance of a web design or lyrics in this case), the contributor is given a citation and interested parties can easily contact the contributor or view other work.

Of course this can all be done already, but the niches are
A) the "open source" community of philanthropic artistic collaboration
1) entertainment value of learning/contributing background information about art
I) spam-free (I'm looking at you, myspace) and multi-format access to obtain music & art
N1) citation of ideas / implicit suggestion or promotion of other art

Update: (2/4/2010)
http://bandcamp.com - Great!