https://austinhenley.com/blog/takemyappideas.html

Austin Z. Henley

I work on dev tools.

austinhenley@microsoft.com
@austinzhenley
github/AZHenley
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Take my app ideas

4/19/2022

[eureka]

I spend a lot of time daydreaming about what I'll build next. But for
99% of the ideas, I never do anything with them.

And why do we all tend to be so secretive with our ideas? If I were
to build any of my app ideas, then I would have to beg you just to
try it out.

At some point I get exhausted carrying around an idea that I really
like but don't seem to be making progress on. For example, my CAREER
Award idea and Yesterdoc. Those posts got a lot of praise too.

I'd rather give my ideas away than let them go to waste. Who knows if
they are even good? The hard part is the execution anyway.

So here you go, a few app ideas randomly taken from my list of 80+
ideas for you to take and do as you please. It would be cool if you
let me know if you build any of them so I can try it out!

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1. Create an auto-updating website from a Google Doc or Sheet. I
share a lot of documents in the cloud, but sharing them feels heavy.
The person I share them to might get nagged to open an account
(looking at you Dropbox) and viewing on mobile always looks terrible
or requires downloading an app. It would be cool to take the URL and
plug it into a service that creates a hosted webpage based on the
document's content with a minimalist style. Then whenever I edit the
document, the website automatically updates.

2. Author and share short-form solo audio podcasts. I really enjoy
Twitter and I really enjoy podcasts, but why isn't there something in
between? I'd pay to subscribe to hear my favorite creative/tech
people just spout random thoughts throughout the day which can be
packaged up periodically as a traditional podcast.

3. URL clipboard tracker. I lose links a lot. It isn't surprising
since I'm sending and receiving them across a dozen different
communication applications. A great solution would monitor my
clipboard for URLs and log them. I described this idea in my post,
"This project will only take 2 hours".

4. REDACTED. Removed, sorry.

5. Journal/todo app that asks me what I'll do and what I did. I've
emulated having a todo app that every morning/night asks me: "what
will you do?" and I can fill in a handful of items. But it also shows
me the items from the last time and asks "did you do them?", giving
me the option to check them off, throw them out, or move them to the
next day.

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What idea have you been holding on to for too long? Maybe just give
it away.

More ideas to come.