Friend Notes

I'm working with my friend Eric Allen on a facebook application that let's people take notes about their friends, whatever kind of notes they want!

I think it's really cool because it lets you now build your own content about your friends. They present themselves, and you record and interpret it through your own lens. For now, all notes are confidential to the user, so the friends and others can't see them, but we're thinking about creating some sort of sharing or collaboration capability in the future... thoughts?

Here's a link!
http://apps.facebook.com/friend_notes/

Cloud Computing has been the Hot Stuff, but now what? Application Ideas? Post em!

Ok so some readers who have a lot better handle on this may find a mistake or two, but here is a basic description I wrote up for my father, who was asking about what it really was. He needs to know, he works in publishing. The question is, what are some great applications for the cloud that cannot be done with our normal infrastructure?

"Cloud Computing I understand it reasonably well. Remember that before computers became PCs on the desktop, they were mainframes? Then, every user had a terminal, but all the processing was done on a larger computer - the terminal was just the control station where you interacted with the mainframe. Cloud computing is very much going back in this direction. Instead of processing being done on your home computer or your smart phone or whatever, it is done by a larger "computer" somewhere else. The difference now is that this larger computer is not one mainframe, but a giant (and I mean giant) network of computers working together. This is the cloud. Together they have the power to process lots of requests. You can think of what Google does as cloud computing sort of since they have vast warehouses of servers stacked up, each of which is really a pretty humble machine, but working together they form a supercomputer, and with it, they give people access to services. Google docs is a very cloud computing type application, because they take what is normally a desktop application (word processing lets say) and make it into a network application - you just access the internet and use the program running in the cloud. This is why Microsoft is afraid of Google, because if Google does enough of this, the valuable windows operating system becomes obsolete. The crazy thing is that in cloud computing, your computer can become part of the cloud too though. Conceivably, the cloud could be the whole internet if everyone participated."

New facebook app

Make an app that lets you find very unconnected friends of friends.  I was in a friends facebook page when I clicked on a random one of their friends only to discover that I had another completely different friend who knew this same person.  Wild.  I want to do that more!!

Stock and Economy Ranking Website

Ok so this is simple, people visit this site (and of course there are some cool integrations with other websites, esp social network) and give a thumbs up or thumbs down to a stock. You only rate the stocks you know, and an aggregate opinion is drawn out of this. Whether you want to go with it or go against it, it's an interesting data set. Other analysis can be done and interesting conclusions drawn. You could also yes/no investment in nation's economies, anything really, but I think there would be most interest in things people invest in.

thanksforthefavor.com

A website where people can go to give nice things to people who did nice things for them. It is a gift shop, but its not for giving our gift baskets or bottles of wine or anything like that, it's for when people do nice things, you do nice things in return.

For example, someone helps you out because they are being nice, you can go to the website, type them a message, and a handwritten note will be sent to them from you.

If they do something really nice, there will be a wizard interface that will help select something that they really might want. For example, someone lets you use their parking space for a couple weeks because your car is having issues. You want to get this person something they will really like. The interface will ask: "what does this person like", with responses like their car (and they can select specific types), their home, their kids, various hobbies, movies and celebrities, etc. The site has an automatic link that allows the users to buy from established sites like Amazon.com, and gives additional personalization options. Since the person who lent their parking spot loves Porche cars, you get them a sweet picture book about Porche.

Name This

have I ever shared this website? I think it is very good... earlier this winter I made about a hundred bucks naming things, not much money for sure, but it was only a few hours of time, and lots and lots of fun!!

www.namethis.com

wiki idea

create a wiki dedicated to the cololaborative creation of self help materials. people can share their experiences and weigh in on how they achieved success or fought failure. probably based on a for-profit advertising model.

IP Rights Idea

Make a system for publishers etc to track royalty revenues for all IP over the vast number of possible permissions.

computer idea

disposable screen (or like a jump drive) that can be used to store/display digital documents. easily hand in or share these documents. Used like paper and can be shared around/disposed of.

Idea:

Start a blog with records of all the papers and work i have done for my MBA program