Y Combinator - Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

Good resource for ideas. Personally I've tried some things that fall into the list but nothing has taken of yet. Some of them didn't make it beyond proof of concept.

The one I spent the most time on was a few years ago for airline flight searching. The main idea was to allow people to track the price of flights they were planning to take to help them pick the right time to buy. I think that falls in "20. Shopping guides". I spent a long time finding a flight search API that was available to a small timer like myself. I eventually came across the Kayak Search API that was perfect for my needs. I got as far as a working proof of concept when I saw this post. Although farecast is not quite what I had in mind that was quite a blow. The final nail in the coffin was when Kayak started showing flight price graphs. Now I see recently released yapta.com which is pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Maybe I should have kept going?

Still that experience made it easier for me to join the facebook app gold rush with another airline flight idea Fly to Friends & Places. It's still going with about 14,000 installs. Not bad but pretty small fry by facebook standards.


So... onto the next idea. Probably a good idea to try something non-flight related.

Seth Godin - How to get traffic for your blog.

Looks like a very useful list of tips here. Granted the main problem I have is lack of posts but maybe following these tips will help motivate me to resurrect this blog?

This is me trying #35. I also set myself a daily reminder to post.

Eddie Izzard Stripped - Fantastic!

Saaan Francisco, San Francisco. Saw Eddie Izzard's new live tour Stripped this weekend. It's fantastic! At least as good as mine and many people's favorite Dressed to Kill. I would say better but this is the first time I've seen him live. Live is always better. My wife was in pain from laughing so much. Can't wait for the DVD but it will be a couple of years before he records that. He needs to take the tour around the rest of the USA, the UK ("otherwise they'll kill me"), Australia, France and Russia.

Just like a lot of his comedy you get a history lesson along with it. This time covering the birth of the planet up to the present day. Highly recommended! Get some tickets if you can!

www.eddieizzard.com

UPDATE: California Home Owners Property Tax Exemption

So I checked on my parcel information at the county web site to see if my exemption had been applied since I didn't get any response in the mail. I could see that a $5600 exemption had been applied but my property value had been increased. So the net result is a higher taxable value than last year. I wasn't expecting that.

I contacted the county office and the very nice lady explained that under Prop 13 they are allowed to raise property values by 2% each year which explained my increase. I guess no one has really cared for a few years since the property values were going up way more than that. She also explained that I could request (by asking on the phone) Prop 8 which means they will do a market valuation of the property. Whichever is less (Prop 13 or Prop 8) value is what will be used. However I'm too late as this years roll is already closed. So I'm down for 2008 and I should find out July'ish next year. Here's hoping there is a plummet in market value when they do the valuation and a sharp rise afterwards.

Proposition 8 Decline in Value Reassessment Program

Original post California Home Owners Property Tax Exemption

Citizenrē REnU - Perfect home solar solution or perfect scam?

Everyone agrees solar is a good thing free electricity with no pollution. However of course the equipment is expensive (about $40,000 for a home) so even if the the tempting federal and state incentives half the cost of installation your still looking at 10 years to pay it off. Not many people can be sure they'll be in the same house for that long.

Citizenrē has a great solution with their REnU program. Instead of buying your own system Citizenrē will install one for a $500 deposit. Then you just buy the electricity the solar system generates, from Citizenrē, at the same rate you currently pay your electricity company. The rate you pay is fixed over your 1, 5 or 25 year contract. So that means in your first year you may not save anything but as the years go buy your rate stays the same as the electricity companies rate increases. Your saving is the difference between the two. Over that contract Citizenrē is responsible for all maintenance of the system. There is a lot more detail on their web site Citizenrē REnU.

However it is possible that all this is too good to be true. Jeff Wolfe certainly thinks so. I have to say that as soon as I see multi level marketing especially with large commissions I get worried. If people have to work that hard to sell something how good can it be?

I think procrastination is definitely an asset on this one. I'll be waiting to see how it pans out. I do hope it succeeds.

ConsumerSearch.com - My first stop for product research

If I'm going to buy something the first thing I do is go to ConsumerSearch.com They aggregate and analyze reviews for many different products and provide detailed write ups of their findings. They also weight reviews so for example Consumer Reports reviews are given more credibility than Epinions. So at the very least you can find links to all the review sites for a given product at best you just go ahead and buy one of their aggregated recommendations. It cuts out a lot of the analysis paralysis.

ConsumerSearch.com

ING Direct Electric Orange better than NetBank NetValue Checking

I used NetBank NetValue Checking as my primary checking account for over 5 years. I liked the fact it is free with easy online access and there is some interest. However there were a few things I did not like.

What I didn't like about NetBank Checking
Although I could link to other accounts and transfer money into the account I could not transfer it out. I guess they prefer money coming in to going out but that feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It was a number of years before NetBank managed to get it together to enable linking to PayPal. Finally I received SPAM email (cheap meds, penis enlargements, Viagra etc) from the email address I gave to them. This was a unique email address I setup specifically for NetBank and did not give out anywhere else. So I know the source of the leak and I was rather concerned about this problem. I hope no other information of me was leaked.

What I like about ING Direct Checking
ING Direct Electric Orange checking has everything I like about NetBank, it fixes what I didn't like and has some additional bonuses. I can transfer money out as well as into the account (instantly between ING accounts a few days to others). It was able to link to PayPal right away. I have never received SPAM email from the unique email account I setup for ING (I have had a savings account with them for longer than I had the NetBank account). As far as bonus features go the interest rate is high (currently 3.93%). Many other savings accounts don't even offer that.
Another bonus feature is that they belong to a free network of ATM's which happen to be 1 in 12 of all ATM's.

If you want $25 to get you started for singing up for an ING Checking or Savings account send me an email to ingreferral AT thislooksinteresting DOT com . I'll get $10 as well.