Moving Time

I have moved to http://www.brianliu.net/blog/ - hopefully see you there!

Web 2.0 Idea: Personal Twitter Statistics

The initial Twitter demographic consisted of pr representatives and social media evangelists. Though they have thousands of followed/followers, the true audience is unknown. Similar to targeted web site statistics which allow for more accurate analysis of audience demographic and the degree of success of transfer of information, a service for Twitter (in-house or third-party) is needed. There will be a growing audience since there has been an increase of companies using the service.

Market: Business-related Twitterers

Expansion:
- SEO Optimization
- Service to Increase Exposure

Cell Phone Idea: Speech Controlled Device

A cell phone is limited by both size and cost largely by its display. With the increase in popularity of culturally-acceptable Bluetooth headsets, cell phones sans displays can be manufactured cheaper, more efficient, and more convenient. The solution is to use text-to-speech for input and speech-to-text for output. For areas where it may not be appropriate for speaking, there are headsets which read vibrations in vocal chords.

Market: Low-Tier, Global Cell Phone Market

Expansion:
- Output to portable projectors
- Integration with other modular products (i.e. module for phone, module for display - cheaper to upgrade)

Web 2.0 Idea: Free, Open-Source University

Problem

With the average college tuition rising to $30,367 in the US, many people simply cannot afford college. Not only does this burden the federal financial aid programs, but it also prevents eligible students from receiving a quality of education which meets their potential.

Furthermore, Obama has set economic policy as a priority before overhauling education reform. With unemployment at 7.2% and underemployed workers at 13.5%, the lack of expendable income restricts the possibility of further eduction.

Details

We plan on aggregating online, open-source courses by the top universities into a curriculum that produces a highly-qualified workforce. Not only will there be no cost to the student, but students will benefit from working on real-world problems.

With a full course, grade, and performance system available online, students will be able to access all available content and the system will be available to schools who provide course content (such a system, on average, costs $275,000 annually). Instead of resumes, all students' work will be available for employers to review, while we will also provide tools and an extendable API to quickly evaluate a student's performance.

Along with video lectures, written assignments, and interactive labs, we also ask students to work on real-world problems presented by companies. Students will interact with companies to evaluate issues and provide solutions, while companies benefit from the design, completed work, and a basis for evaluated work performance.

Social Value

It is an established fact that education and socioeconomic state is closely linked. We plan on benefiting students who cannot afford or cannot access education, both domestically and worldwide. Furthermore, we plan on trying to provide jobs to students who have completed the curriculum.

Market Research

Course video lectures and course documents are available for some basic courses by universities such as MIT's Open Courseware Consortium and Stanford's Engineering Everywhere and are aggregated by Academic Earth. There is a proposed university, University of the People, who targets third-world countries. We differ by combining a solution for students, companies, and universities and also focus on certification and performance, whereas the University of People focuses on mass education.

Business Model

Monetization is through two parties: Companies and Universities. We plan on integrating an innovative hiring system with the school CMS to provide jobs for students upon completion. Companies will pay a small fee for each hire, as typical with hiring bounties; however, the largest source of income will be real-world problems. Similar to the research/grant system, companies will pay the university to solve particular problems, and students gain crucial job experience. Though the course CMS is completely free to Universities who provide content, we will allow other universities to use the system for a small, annual fee in comparison to commercial alternatives.

Since it is also a non-profit, we also plan on applying for government grants and offering the ability to donate.

The largest fee will be to develop a content management system which will provide video lectures, written assignments, interactive labs, professor instruction, performance reviews, and hiring. We may be able to modify existing an open-source CMS or find a company donor which will provide a commercial CMS.

Web 2.0 Service: Application Database

Description: Since there are countless online applications launched each day (Museum of Modern Betas), a community-ranked database of free, online Web 2.0 applications based on function.would be extremely useful. The homepage would list the most commonly used functions (Word Processing, Search, etc) with the top 5 apps listed. The algorithm would need to take in account the duration since the application was posted, software updates, and filter out all the fanboy hate.

Monetization could through ads, referrer signup links for the applications, and a business-focused application database. This idea would be extremely easy to implement (a week or two), and have little upkeep cost.

Market: The entire internet

Expansion:
- Partner with online services (also for monetization)
- License out service for Web 2.0 bloggers and tech sites
- Create social network around services
- Create fanboy tags and badges for embedding

Web 2.0 Idea: Comments Blog / Post Aggregator

Description: While there are a few services focusing on comments, none of the services feature customized comments blogs. To give an all-encompassing view of a certain persona, the original post would be included in addition to the commenter's response. Aggregated over large blog platforms, it could provide an interesting service for existing communities. Not only would it automatically generate personal "sub-blogs," but it would also provide selected blog posts from a particular viewpoint. Monetization would be traditional ads and the original posters would get a percentage of the ad profits.

From a platform view, this could be a centralized, platform which has consensual deals with major blogging platforms (blogger, wordpress, livejournal) or it could be an additional feature provided by a major blogging platform.

Market: Existing blogging communities, microblogging communities

Expansion: Aggregated, personalized blogs and public feeds

Web 2.0 Service: Anti-Social Networks

As I mentioned in the post earlier, there has been a counter movement to the globalization of personal information. While blogs, MySpaces, and Facebook profiles have had the tell-all to the world, it is most natural to have a feeling of being too exposed. While work-related hirings/firings may be dependent on online information and privacy concerns/stalkers may come into play, it may not be the only reason. Global networks come with a host of problems - they remove a notion of individuality since so many others are similar, it displaces real relationships with fake superficial notions, create a niche culture of its own, and ultimately becomes a popularity contest. So how about "anti-social networks"? Retaining useful information for the sake of keeping constantly updated contact information, socialize with known outside sources, it may be a good idea to keep this private.

A personal private network, complete with all the bells and whistles of modern social networks, may be the next step in networking. With less contacts but with more time invested, it may open up different applications and increased relationship building. More contact may be encouraged through common causes, viewpoints, and even common friendships/enemies. Social games could be played online as a way to enhance relationships rather than replacing relationships. Closer relationships may also lead to increased amount of contact information, which could be utilized in multiple forms of contact - a "contact stream" of text messages, video conferencing, webcams, phone calls, voice messages, and instant messaging could be hosted on the server, accessible at any point from virtually any device. New friends may be introduced by others from a multi-way conversation or a co-op social game. Automatic privacy controls could be implemented as a multi-tiered system of increasing personal information. It may also be great if this would eventually be implemented physically with Microsoft's Surface to be used at bars or even a personalized number to give out instead of a phone number.

Feel free to add/comment.