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[Competition] What's the big idea?
If you have a great idea for a web app, here's your chance. Submit your vision with some market research and a "shopping list" to me by email by Friday 8pm London time and I will try to make what I think is the best one happen. I will work on the "fine print" with the winner but if it takes off, you can be sure you'll be suitably compensated and if it doesn't, you don't lose anything.
What I am offering:
- Up to ~100 hours of development time to build an initial prototype
- Costs including domain, design work & other minor expenses covered
- Hosting on Softlayer's network (bare metal, virtual, PaaS, CDN etc.)
I will pick and announce a winner here, on Saturday. I am looking for an idea that will be both enjoyable and profitable both both of us.
Submissions by e-mail to james[at]loadingdeck.com by Friday 8pm London time.
Comments
I'll do some research tomorrow. Nice offer.
PHP based website monitoring script that works as master with option to add slaves to test from other servers, with option to choose how many must view it as down before reporting via email, text, and/or push notification. Report sends screenshot of a live browser (phantomjs?) displaying the result, regardless of the error, so that the user has a screenshot to deliver to their host along with multiple reports of the outage.
Potential customer response to this offering should only be huge.
No market research, no shopping list, no credit wanted, not e-mail worthy. I just want this script
pingdom + phantomjs?
I think @Jar proposes something self-hosted.
@Jar https://github.com/uakfdotb/pybearmon does a decent subset of what you're saying, except push notification and screenshot; screenshot shouldn't be hard to work in
Edit: https://github.com/uakfdotb/bearmon is the original in PHP but it doesn't support threads
@jhadley
Interesting proposition
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@Jar, @jhadley: TFTFY
@jhadley
Will the code be shared with the winner once its completed? Can the project be open sourced or only closed source? Can a language be specified?
I will discuss all this with the winner - ideally the winner will work with us to market the software. It can be open or closed source. It will almost certainly be written in PHP.
I'm pretty confused by this. So someone comes up with an idea, if you think it's a good idea, you both create it then pay the person off who came up with the idea and then run their service?
I'd be up for something like this if I knew what would happen once it's made, or if the project got open sourced, but you haven't said too much to do with what will happen.
@iKeyZ It depends on the project. If it's an open source project - just something you want to see made - then there won't be any financial gain. If it's an idea for a closed source project then we will need to evaluate how your involvement will work, and this will vary from idea to idea and from person to person.
If you want to see something made, by all means submit it as an open source idea, we'll make it and credit the idea to you.
I think I'll pass..
Just passing by - a control panel that let's you control, monitor all your VMs/VPSs from different hosts from one page (only the majority as SolusVM, Feathur). (It's on my to-do list because I keep forgetting which VM/VPS is from which host...)
FYI
Wait a few months, we will open source the CP at cloud.net, you can then be able to fork it and add support to bring additional providers (different platforms, etc) in yourself to manage those resources.
@NullMind
What language will it be written in?
It is RoR, you can see it at https://jager.cloud.net
I see. You can always profit financially from open source, primarily from services. Was hoping it would be written in something like NodeJS or Go. But, PHP could work
I do not want to start a war. I'm a coder. I like php, ruby, nodejs...
But for some projects php or ruby on rails fits better than nodejs.
You simply do not need to go with the Hype.
NodeJS + MongoDB + redis = KILLER App combo. Right... right... please do a CRM in nodejs and mongoDB and load it with 10m+ records... then have fun with the relational queries
I did go with the hype too, but it is not going to happen again.
Not a nodejs fan, but the fault is not in the nodejs side: you pick the wrong NoSQL data storage to represent the ER. nodejs + pgsql/mysql should suffice a CRM app.
Looks like you guys are using a bootstrap + angularjs approach for the panel, nice job. Really want to checkout the source code.
Spot differentials in the crypto currency exchanges and between currencies, complete transactions taking advantage of them. Set up servers closer to the exchanges much like what is done with FOREX. Not quite a web app though...
Does the transaction fee will kill all the profit?
I've no idea, it's just a thought. I'd imagine in some cases it does, some cases it doesn't.
I just mentioned the current hype: That everything should be nodejs + mongodb.
I know that there is a mysql adapter for Node.js
No worries. I wasn't advocating hype. Since you brought up points, I may as well clarify. Node.js and Go are my interests, so its easier if the project was in one of those languages. PHP isn't my favorite, just a personal preference.
As far as the DB combinations, it really depends on what your data looks like and your CAP needs. A lot of the NoSQL, e.g. MongoDB and Redis, are good for non-relational data. So yeah, a CRM with large number of records would not benefit much from a Node.js and MongoDB deployment for its primary DB since its relational data. HA MySQL would be a better choice. However, you could use something like Redis in conjunction with the RDBMS for the lookup/read-only tables to speed things up.
I'm curious as to what your credentials are, what web apps have you successfully developed from start to finish and what is your design background (quite a different field from coding)?
Also, you seem to be only offering to make a prototype (~100 hours, which doesn't seem like much), which is not something that I think would be "ready for public consumption."
Just a couple of things that should be expanded upon, if you want to avoid ...
Thanks for the interest, discussion and submissions. So far there is one clear winner (subject to a few questions) but please keep the submissions coming.
To answer the above question about my credentials, I need to make it clear that I'm not a business incubator but the owner of a small development company. I'm running this competition for enjoyment, interest in new opportunities and to help train new staff. My company does well and produces successful software regularly. However, most of the software is produced for clients and they market it. I've worked with a number of the service providers here on LET, and elsewhere for systems, consultancy and development work. Finally, I am not a designer but work closely with a designer and an HTML coder.
I think this competition is a great way for to find future clients. Its a nice goodwill gesture and marketing
Here's the Saturday update I mentioned, though it's not what I thought I'd be writing:
There was one clear winner with a fairly well thought out idea and some good research. I contacted him last night to confirm. I received a reply this morning stating that he didn't want to pursue this, mainly because he felt 100 hours was not enough to get to where he wanted it to be.
With this in mind, I need some time to think about a suitable way forward as there was a clear divide between this submission and the others. I may re-run the competition at some point in the future.
I've asked the winner to post here to confirm his decision.
This is certainly a good way to get great ideas from others for your next projects