Pitch 2 Programmers - 11/19/2019

RE: Ideas for Computer Science senior projects (to collaborate with Brian Schwartz brian@selfpublish.org on)

TEL: 805-225-1251 (office)
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PS: You are all invited to The Function tonight - 6-8pm - We have a speaker from PyData discussing economics and machine learning.

Problems Worth Solving

I am a 10+ year entrepreneur and Cal Poly Grad (IT '94). I'm still working with a graduate from a former P2P session, so I value the opportunity to share my ideas with the brightest and the best that Cal Poly has to offer. One thing I've gained clarity on over the years is that it's easy to burn time and money building cool things. Yes, experimenting is super valuable, but the real fuel (passion) comes from finding a problem worth solving. The problem justifies the means to every action, and when you work toward something bigger than yourself (the problem to solve), people will support you in ways you'd never imagine.

~ Brian Schwartz

Dear Students,

I have about several ideas below you can browse through if you're interested, but the one project I want to pitch first is the one that could have the biggest impact is a submission/voting web app for CSC senior projects.

Problem: CSC students possess killer skills to build pretty much anything they want. But it's not until they solve a real-world problem that their skills get rewarded.

There is a huge community of full & part-time entrepreneurs who have already identified problems that need be solved. The first problem to solve however is how to get their ideas in front of you! Most can't attend an in-person P2P session, but there's a good chance some of their ideas will light one of you up.

Solution: Build a submission engine that also includes a ranking/voting system

Examples/Possible Frameworks: Hackernews, Reddit, Threadbase, Discourse, there's reddit clones on Github (of course), etc..

However, this will ideally grow beyond Cal Poly, and allow other schools to see the ideas pitched at Cal Poly will open the door to other developers wanting to partner with more business people. But once an ideas is 'claimed' it should be moved into a different directory. But just because an idea was passed up this year doesn't mean it won't be relevant next year.

I know there is a lot of attention on the CIE hatchery and getting companies into the Poly sponsored incubator. This engine could give idea starters a forum where CSC students could view potential projects.

Wouldn't the best gap year be spent going through the trials & tribulations of a startup than traveling Europe or getting an advanced degree?

Almost 25,000 wannabe startups jumped into Y-Combinator's Startup School this year (2019). I attended most of the calls and the common thread I saw was that most of founders had other full-time jobs and their startup was their 'side gig.' As such, they had a great idea, but not enough time to implementation it.

With this project (code name 'Problems worth Solving'), what we implement are the ideas themselves. Essentially, we are building an idea engine for CSC students.

The first project below is the one that most closely resembles what I saw working back in 2010.

If this doesn't light you up, maybe a few of the ones below will. If they do, I'd like to hear from you!

Thanks,
Brian

(PS: If you're interested in learning more about how my life went in entirely new direction and ultimately got us back here, I can share the story of how 50 Interviews happened through a similar 'senior project' for another 'institution' I attended)

Problems Worth Solving

CSC Senior Project Idea Vetting / Voting system

There was a nice vetting system used by Ignite Fort Collins where after a speaking topic was submitted, others users could vote on it. I believe it was tied to a users IP Address, giving each user 5 votes to spread among all the topics. The topics where ranked by the highest number of votes.

A page like this could be used for future P2P events so all students could see the most popular ideas and choose the ones that have the higher likelihood have making an impact.

Here's the page from 2010 - It was an early iteration of UserVoice.com which has since become very pricy ($500/mo. and up). There are some alternatives out there and of course a few clones on Github.

There is also a super simple version of the 'voting system' in place at https://peterattiamd.com/ask-me-anything/:

Similar & Notable Live Examples (get inspired!)

Product Hunt Makers Community - 25,000+ members!
Indie Hackers - Which was built & sold to Stripe for an undisclosed sum. The tech used to build it.
Uphunt
SnowCrash on Github

Amazon Polly Page Reader

Problem: Authors are too lazy to reread their own work, but if their work was read to them, they would hear the atrocities in their writing!

Solution: Provide a 'Read To Me' button on their pubwriter page using the Amazon Polly API

See:

https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/polly/home?region=us-west-2 https://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/getting-started.html

Sample implementation: https://youtu.be/5HYR0_FXSYc

https://github.com/ranman/twitch-polly-chrome-extension

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/Polly.html

More Help: https://github.com/ejbeaty/ChattyKathy

Yet more resources to check out...

https://ttstool.com/

Current Solutions:

https://www.sitespeaker.com/ ($25/mo and up)

QR Code Generator (JS) Auto Generator for Webpages

Take the webpage and automatically generate a QR code for it, and display it on that page. Then, whenever you are presenting, attendees can get to the page without writing down a long URL (which slows everybody down when you have to recite it).

QR Code API: http://goqr.me/api/

Example

https://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr-code/?size=150x150&data=https://read.pubwriter.com/p2p.md

Time is Money

Objective:

Create a timer that calculates $ earned based on an hourly rate:

The user should be able to enter their hourly rate and use the timer for logging work preformed on a specific task.

Get inspired by:

Task Timer - I like the idea of setting up something similar where the freelancer could enter a list of tasks with a budget for the completion of each.
Read this on how to convert minutes to pay.

Mail 2 Webpage

Objective: Turn Gmail into a web publishing tool.

Save to .md for Gmail.

I currently use the Markdown Here plugin for Chrome. It lets you write a gmail in Markdown and render it to beautiful HTML before sending. What's missing is a save to .md button. Fork off the project already in github? If the user upgrades to PubWriter, then they could have the additional 'Send & Publish' button.

I have already developed the web publishing tool (PubWriter) that converts .md to .html, and this could integrate with it.

Rule of 150 (email filter from a contact group in gmail)

The idea is to create a way to flag emails based on contact list of 150. This is a means to prioritize our list of VIPs. Reference Dunbar's Number (150) we reflects the maximum number of people we can maintain active social relationships with.

Scheduling Web App

Create your own schedule & personalized lesson plans

Show me your calendar, and I'll be able to tell what's important to you.

Similar to how MindBody provides a screen to signup and book times (and add then add it to a users google calendar). This is to create a daily agenda based on a personalized list of 'classes' which reflect the main objectives a person has defined are important in their life.

The opportunity is to work a coach in any area of your life you want to improve by giving that coach visibility into your schedule (the coach builds the 'classes' that you signup for each day).

Ideally, giving the user options to add the calendar to a variety of calendars:

The idea of filling your jar with the big rocks (your priorities) first is the key concept behind this idea. With this tool, you can build your own schedule with the 'big rocks' that matter most.

Update for 2019 - look at integrating Timeular. There's an API for it.

Right Click to Publish

For Mac & PC users - the ability to right click and move a file to a specific directory (dropbox folder).

Option: 'Share' extension on mac:

more info

Google Structured Data Builder

The best search results stem from proper google structured data, for example, how to add a Google Event.

There currently isn't a solution (I've found) that allows the average user to create 'html cards' that provides Google with the content of their website in a structure to improve search results.

Learn more here.

Snapchat Pages

Create a page that disappears after a predetermined number of views or expiration time.

Perfect for limited time offers, one time offers, think Groupon / Dealsaver.

Possible route:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-digitalocean-spaces

I have more potential projects to expand the functionality of the PubWriter, a Dropbox based publishing platform (Dropbox has over 500 million users).

I am on a mission to make desktop publishing and web publishing seamless! PubWriter is the first 'Click-to-Publish' web publisher I know of. Click save and it's Published. Phase 1 is complete. Phase 2 is to combine deskop & web publishing into one seamless

Including:

RSS Feed into HTML page (the solutions I've found are buggy).
Build an html index page based on a directory of .md files.
RSS to Twitter Feed.
Build an RSS feed from a list of files.
Podcast Recording/Hosting

Please contact me if you want to explore any of these further.

Completed or in Process Projects

11/19 Update - Devon Martin (CSC Grad 2018) stepped up to take this project on, even though it was not his senior project. You can find it on GitHub.As a result, I hired him to help me with other projects and to date he's earned over $1,000.

Reading Time Calculator

Live at: http://pubwriter.net/readingTime.md

A php script that provides a visitor the choice of autoscrolling the page based on the number of words they read per second: