Startup Idea
Peer-to-Peer Online Jukebox with Songs from each User
Today we have Pandora, Spotify, GrooveShark, and a dozen other sites to listen to music online. Each has its own caveats, does not really let you hear the music you want, has ADs or a subscription model, …
I often wonder why nobody created an online peer-to-peer Jukebox where each user contributes with some songs. The songs will be played/streamed directly from the each other’s computers, so if only one user has a particular song, who wants to listen to it will have to wait its turn in a queue.
Assuming that all the songs in the system are regularly purchased, the software/system could be designed in such a way that the songs are directly played from the owner’s computer to the speaker of the listener. In this way, there would be no copyright infringement.
Song recommendations, suggestions, and personalized stations will be easy to implement on top of this, as well as creating hardware radios which directly play music from the service. The system could even connect to the various cloud storage system (e.g., iMusic, Amazon, …) and pick up your songs from there so you don’t need your machine on all the time.
Car-Sharing Done Right
I often dream about creating a system that allows real car sharing. There will be a set of similar cars shared among all the users, and each will pay a quote of the global expenses every month. Nobody will own a car but will be allowed to (respectfully) use one from the pool.
When you need a car, you will just pull out your phone and say where you need to go. The system will indicate the closest car that you can take. You go there, the car will unlock, turn on, and you’ll be ready to go. At destination, you will turn off the car, get out, and it will be locked automatically ready for somebody else to pick it up.
You will be able to book cars in advance, of course. The system will automatically account for the fact that trips to the grocery store need a ride back, while trips to the airport may not, but users will be able to book slots of times in advance, or include return trips.
This will also help people to car-pool to work. There may not be a car available for you to take, but there may be a user close by that goes to the same place where you go. When cars will drive by itself it will be even better, they will all act as small buses which stop on demand.
The system will compute statistics on the times and locations in which cars are needed the most and facilitate to moves accordingly. Since it will know the destination of everybody, it can do a great deal of planning and optimization. In the end the number of cars in the system will not be minimal, but it will be way smaller than the number of cars that circulate today and stay idle for 95% of the time.
Since the majority of cars will be mostly used for small trips, electric cars will be able to thrive in the system. Charging station will be positioned in strategical points, starting from the most covered areas, and electric cars introduced there and used strategically until all of them can be substituted.
When cars will drive itself there will be no need for driving licenses. Kids will be able to get rides by their-selves as well (only in authorized places and not farther than a certain distance from their home) and parents will get an alert. A few mini-buses will also be in the system for trips which require just a bit more of space.
This system may also create jobs for people which will be tasked with check on the cars, perform maintenance, gas them up, move and clean them.
I really hope this is the future, and that we will get there pretty soon. There are too many cars around, too few parking spots, too many reckless drivers and too many accidents. And the Earth will thank us as well.
Photos in the Cloud: Geolocation, Auto-Tagging and Virtual Albums
Yesterday I was thinking to my next photocamera. I want it small but with some buttons (no clumsy touchscreen), capable of taking pictures at night, waterproof, with integrated GPS, and capable of backing up the pictures automatically when I get home. Unfortunately, I do not think that it exists yet.
Then I started thinking about how I would like the computer to help me organize my photo collection. It would be cool if tags were automatically added to the pictures, for example:
- using the GPS location it could add tags like “Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Pisa“, and maybe also things like “beach” or “hill” perhaps also using the camera settings
- using the timestamp it could add “Summer, August, 11th, 2011, evening“
- using face recognition it could add “people, kids, crowd” or “head shot“, the distance of those faces (e.g., “closeup”, “far”, etc) and perhaps the names of the people in the pictures
Once the pictures are mostly tagged and automatically uploaded online, it would be great if I could create virtual albums through searches on the tags. Right now, all the online photo services that I know obligate you to upload one copy of the picture for each album. That’s insane! I just want to type a few keywords, give a name to the album, and share it with my friends, not upload the same pictures a dozen times.
For example, if decide to create an album to show my family my great summer in Europe I could just search for “summer 2011 Europe” and it will bring up all these pictures. I can “hide” the pictures I don’t like, add a name to the album and email the link. Done. If I want to create a romantic time-line of all the beach shots with my girlfriend I could just search for our names and the keyword “beach”, sort them by timestamp, and publish the link. Done. And if I need an head shot for my new online profile, I can just search for my name and “head shot”, create an album, and ask my friends to vote on the best picture for me. Done.
How long will it take before all this happens?
