A Startup A Day

Disclaimer – I fully realize how completely idiotic this idea is.  But I really, really, really hate doing laundry.

Today’s idea is a clothing rental service that delivers clean, “like-new” clothes right to your door.  Users could sign up for the service, browse through a large selection of clothing online, and add clothes to their queue.  The clothes would be delivered within a few days, and when you are done wearing them, you would return it via a pre-paid envelope.  Once the company receives the clothes, they would ship out the next clothes in your queue.

Why is this cool? 

#1 – You would never have to do laundry again.  Seriously…I freakin’ hate laundry.  OK, you might have to do a little (underwear rental probably isn’t going to fly), but still, it would be much easier. 

#2 – Clothes are a big investment, and after a few months they go out of style, they get worn out, you outgrow them, etc…  Why spend all that money on something that you probably won’t be able to use (or don’t want to use) in such a short period of time?

#3 – It would be great for travelers or situations where you temporarily need a whole new wardrobe in a short period of time.  This would be ideal for someone who just changed jobs, or for someone who travels for work (they could have their “rental” clothes shipped to their hotel, so they wouldn’t have to pack and carry a big suitcase).

#4 – OK, it’s not that cool – but come on, coming up with a viable startup idea each day is actually kind of hard, so you gotta cut me a little slack from time to time. 

About a week ago I started seeing abnormally high hits (Z-list, anyone?) to this blog for people searching for Chuck Barris.  Any guess as to who or what Chuck Barris is?

Turns out, Chuck Barris was the host of The Gong Show (and according to Wikipedia, is actually a pretty interesting guy).  And I happened to use his picture as sort of an inside joke for one of my all-time favorite ideas “Going Going Gong“.  Which, sadly enough, has started contributing more traffic to my site than all of the other search terms combined.

And seriously – paper coozies?  I don’t even think that’s a real thing.

Any bloggers out there with crazy search term stories?  Post ‘em in the comments below!

I just realized that two of my blogroll links are outdated and need to be replaced – anyone got any good suggestions?  My preference is for fellow Z-list bloggers, somewhere between one and fifty daily views is just about right.  Shoot me a mail or post a link the comments below.

OK, I usually don’t talk about work stuff here, but I was in a meeting with someone from the Windows Server team the other day who showed us a great video they made to promote the new Windows Server 2008.  I personally think it’s hilarious – I’ll let you be the judge. 

Aight, on to the good stuff.  Today’s idea is a Facebook application (shocker!) that scans your profile and creates affiliate links to any books, movies, or music that you mention on your profile.  Of course, every time one of your friends buys an item featured on your profile, you would get a percentage of the sale.  And that’s pretty much it.

I’m fairly certain this violates at least 2 of Facebook’s developer terms of service.  But it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

Yep, it’s official.  Worst startup name ever.  On the plus side, at least www.cellphonecamerareceiptstoragethingy.com isn’t taken.  Or is it?

Today’s idea is based on a positively-reviewed little start-up called qipit.  They have some neat technology that basically cleans up cell phone camera pics of whiteboards and converts the image to a very readable .pdf format.  My idea is along the same lines, but focused instead on the cleanup, storage, and organization of receipts. 

Think about it.  How archaic is it to have to save hundreds of little scraps of paper throughout the year, and when tax season rolls around, you have to spend hours digging through the piles of paper to calculate your tax write-offs?  Or for every business traveler in the world to have to shove little scraps of paper into their wallets or purses to submit for expense reports?  With this system, you could simply snap a quick photo of the receipt, text it to a short code along with a category (“tax dinner”,”business taxi”), and the service would clean up the receipts and store them up in the inter-clouds.

There are two keys to this idea.  One, it may be a bit too early to implement this idea based on the average quality of cell phone cameras – but give it another 12 months and I’ll bet this might actually be feasible.  And two…I forget what the second point is…but did any of you guys catch the Season 7 premiere of American Idol?  Whoo boy, now that’s what I call entertainment.  Except for the part where the judges laughed at the guy who sang “Old Man River”, that was kinda sad.  Hilarious – but kinda sad.

I gotta say, I really like this one.   

Today’s idea is a site featuring a daily posting of “Dummies”-style instructional articles focused on a variety of miscellaneous topics.  The articles would be short (less than 5 minutes to read each article) and would be written to be both informational and fun.  The site would include irreverent topics such as “Monet vs. Manet”, “How To Avoid Making 6 Common Grammatical Errors”, “The 15 Countries That Make Up The Former USSR”, etc..  Users could subscribe to a feed of the stories or request to get the day’s articles sent via a daily (or weekly) Email. 

In addition to just reading articles, the site could have a bit of a “pub quiz” competitive element to it.  After reading each article, users could take a short, timed quiz on the material to earn points.  As users earn more points, they eventually make their way to higher levels – eventually earning the coveted title of “Most Smartest”. 

Users could also write their own articles and submit them to the site.  Editors would review the articles and the top ones could be published on the live site.  And of course, there could be a corresponding Facebook app that would display a user’s level and the articles they have read recently.  In addition, the site could create podcasts of the articles that users could subscribe to via iTunes, Zune, etc.. 

Of course one of the big stories of the year is going to be the presidential elections.  Obama, Clinton, Huckabee, Paul – it seems like every minute there is a new piece of gossip, a new revelation, an underdog becoming a front runner and a new poll that won’t even be close to predicting the true outcome. 

That’s the premise behind today’s idea – a browser plug-in that displays up-to-the-minute information around the latest election news.  The format could be in the form of a CNN-style running ticker across the top of your browser.  News items could be color-coded (blue for democratic, red for republican) and formatted to easily separate the huge stories from the minor ones (big bold font to indicate the big bold stories).  Of course, if you find the constantly-running ticker to be extremely annoying, users would have the option to change to a more static visual style (for example, five key stories that update every 15 minutes, or a minimalistic version where a little clickable icon appears only when a major news story hits).

This year’s Christmas haul was epic.  I got both Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3, and I am loving it.  And I have to say, if anyone ever needed proof that I was uncool, here it is: my instrument of choice in Rock Band is the bass.  Yeah, even in rock fantasy land I still choose to be the skinny kid in the back of the band. 

Anywho, today’s idea is PC-based Guitar Hero clone where users can create Guitar Hero tracks for songs in their own music library.  Here’s how it would work.  First, the game would search your PC for all available music tracks.  Then, the game would scan an online database to see which songs have GH-style tracks created and download the matching tabs.  Finally, users could plug their GH-compatible guitars into the USB port in the PC and start rocking out. 

The fun part of this idea is that If there was a specific song in your library that you wanted to play with GH that didn’t have any tabs, the system would allow you to create your own tracks using a simple WYSIWYG editor.  Once you’ve created a track, you could upload the GH file to a centralized database and share with any other users.  Of course, users only download the tabs (not the actual music files) which would get around any pesky DMCA issues.

Question of the day:  If your house was on fire and you could choose to save only one thing, would it be Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band?

The tubes of the Internets are clogged with every get rich quick scheme in the book.  So why not drop one more into the plumbing?  Although today’s idea is a little bit different.  Instead of a get rich quick scheme, I’m proposing a get rich slow scheme.

My idea is a site geared towards providing options for users that have some time on their hands that are looking to earn a little extra spending money.  You can think of it as the online equivalent of a neighborhood lawn-mowing gig (sans grass-stained shoes).  Users would jump on the site and have the opportunity to fill out simple marketing surveys, complete Mechanical Turk tasks, etc..  The site owner would start by providing some basic money making opportunities, and eventually users would be able to post their own simple get rich slow ideas. 

There are a few keys to making this idea fly.  First, it needs to be ridiculously legitimate, no flashing banners, no shady ‘too-good-to-be-true’ schemes, nothing like that.  Second, the tighter you can integrate, the better.  Best case scenario, the user could sign up once through the Ten Bucks A Day site, fill out surveys or watch ads, and get paid directly through the TBAD site.  

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.  What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Think about how many times in your life that you’ve had that conversation, either with a companion or the friendly little voice inside your head.  You could pull some creepy old board game out of the attic and run the risk of rhinos destroying your house.  Or, better yet, you could take advantage of today’s startup idea.

My idea is a site that gives you a personalized list of things to do, such as recommended movies, books, games, activities, etc..  Here’s how it would work.  First, users would be presented with a wizard-like interface that would display four movies, books, or games.  Users would click on whichever of the four choices they like the best.  After making 10-15 choices, the system should have enough info to run a Netflix/Amazon style of recommendation query to get a list of “If you liked X, you’ll probably like Y” types of additional entertainment choices.

Once the system had a list of entertainment options, the user would be presented a list of “27 movies you must see before you outgrow the humor”, “12 books you need to read before they make it to Oprah’s book club”, “15 places that the girl of your dreams might be hanging out right now”, etc, etc..  Alongside each item on each list would be a quick “Loved It/Hated It” type of rating system to provide more feedback on movies that you’ve already seen or books that you’ve already read.  Of course you could share your lists with your friends, do simple comparisons around ‘You Like X% of the Same Movies as Your Friend Sally”, and display your lists on the social network of your choosing.  One last feature – let’s say you’re at the video store and don’t know what to rent, you could send a quickly text “movie” to the “What To Do” short code and receive a text message containing several of the top rentals from your movie list. 

Editor’s Note:  Today I happened to check out the new offering from Comcast called FanCast.com.  Believe it or not, it does 90% of what I outlined above!  Go sign up and see how it works – pretty crazy stuff…