I realize that my comment is about 1 year too late. But I found your blog today and just had to complement the great content here. Interestingly, I’ve been holed up for awhile, working on projects in the same realm as ideas #2, 4 – 9, and 11-12. (Yes, I should downsize.) Wondering how you’re coming along with these. I’ll check more recent posts for any updates. Best to you and thanks again.

The concept: (over 20 years of R&D at UC Irvine, and ten years of commercial experience, with now over one million users per year): build a “knowledge Structure” out of a math course (say, Algebra one in Texas) by connecting all of the concepts and skills in the course and its pre-requisites by logical precednce realtionships (Knowing concept A means you must have knowledge of concepts b,c,d, etc..) Ask the student (no multiple guessing!) to answer a question on concept A. If the student knows it, infer knowledge of others.

Then — DON”T teach people stuff they already know or are not yet ready to learn!

Then keep assessing to determine what they know.

Then — DON'T teach people things tyhey already know or are not ready to learn.

Then reassess. etc…

Repeat until student masters course, gives up, or runs out of time, whichever comes first.

This is destroying the traditional math education classroom in the U.S.

http://www.aleks.com

Check out “What is ALEKS” “Research Behind ALEKS and “The Assessment of Knowledge in Theory and Practice.

Prepare to be blown away!

Odds of meeting great people and getting great feedback? ~100%

Content is a tricky game. I'm biased towards emailed niche content.

They're always going to need a place to record their music (until they can afford their own private studio) but they won't always need a record label. I actually was thinking the other day about new ways to disrupt the mp3 industry, coincidentally.

Also, I have a biz question I'll email to you directly.

Thanks for checking out Ramamia. Let us know your thoughts. We thought about making that the url, but we're more focused on privacy. Easier to keep things private without the custom URLs.

Will check the video out soon.

Talk soon!

I just signed up for Ramamia. You know what would be cool? If my “family” page were Ramamia.com/mariva (or whatever my user name is).

Good luck with everything, and keep posting interesting ideas.

P.S. What do you think of this?
http://fora.tv/2009/08/05/Entrepreneurism_Begin…
(It's less than half an hour, but you may have to deal with freezing video, alas.)

Some are definitely harder than others. The textbook concept is probably the hardest to start going after at first. It's also a very long road, but if it's something you love, then there's nothing wrong with that.

We actually built #11 already as a side project: Ramamia.com. We had thought about making it for more than families, but we think having a focus on families is a much smarter idea (for right now at least). The post I'm putting up later will give you some insight into that thought process.

With regard to #11 (Twitter for Families), why stop at just families? It'd be great to have a private Twitter or Twitter-like service (maybe Dave Winer's http://rssCloud.org idea?) for any organization, either official or unofficial (study groups, companies, nonprofits, political activists, fellow travelers, and so on). It could be based on the Freemium revenue model. What do you think?

Erick

Recipe For Guacamole …

A lot of companies start out wanting to do one thing, but end up settling into something else, because that's what the economy demands and they were able to leverage their current product in a new market. Who would have ever thought Amazon, which started as a bookstore, would be a leader in cloud computing? That kind of adaptability is really attractive. You never start over, you just change directions.

Are you going to Refresh next week? We can connect there.

On (#2,#4,#9,#11)- I had thought it might make sense to combine a LOT of these together. They fall under a “do it yourself” type of consultancy. I wonder if you'd be biting off too much at first. Maybe you go after one or two markets at first. I feel politics and music would be a good start.

Category 2 (#3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #12) Ideas- The QVC 2.0 might happen, but the other ones are pretty low on the list.

#10 is nice in theory, but you'd hit a lot of unforseen road blocks. You could probably start with this concept, but evolve it out to something. Lot of people on hacker news thought dating auctions like they do for charity would be a good middle ground.

#1 is ridiculously fun along with having the most potential economically. Literally the sky is the limit, and even that's up for question. You would have to start in one city with the game (maybe even subsection). Miami is actually perfect for an ARG due to great all year round weather and just an interesting landscape. Would love to get more of your thoughts specifically on ARGs. We should connect more offline – j@jasonlbaptiste.com

As we said over lunch, the ARGs are insanely cool. It's also a big business and something truly unique/innovative. It's high up on the list. I would most definitely use it.

My only concern with #2 is whether it can scale. A lot of artists are broke and there's little money to be made there. You would have to work with middle level artists.

Check out Revision3.com. It's all about content and creating the “Revision 3 of Online Shopping” would make a whole lot of money. QVC.com is purely a shopping portal with no video attached to it. You could very well mix many aspects of 3,8, and 7 together. #7 is really vague and an area I don't want to attack, but hoped to inspire some people to start thinking about it. Someone desperately needs to go after it.

-jlb

Category 1: #2,#4,#9,#11 – You're the middleman between lo-tech individuals and the social web.

Musicians are good at music, but not at marketing and distribution on the web. They're getting screwed by record companies.

Textbook writers are good at writing books, bad at marketing and distributing books. So they're getting screwed by book publishers.

Politicians are good at… whatever the hell it is politicians do, but it's too hard to reach ever growing and ever apathetic voters. They're getting screwed by big money interests who pay for campaigns in exchange for favorable policies.

And families – they just heard the web was good for keeping in touch with family members, but the major social networks are too big and complicated.

In all of these examples, all you really need is a good knowledge of the social web. There's no reason the same agency couldn't do all of these things at once for clients (although the Ramamia case is certainly more many-to-many social networking than 1-many client work). You build a platform, framework, or list of services that satisfy all these different needs with the same set of tools and move from one client to the next, like a mix of advertising agency, publicist, agent, and salesperson. One day you're working to help push Kanye West's new CD, then next you're working with a professor launch an online textbook. Your business grows as you build a track record of successful client work. My vote is for all of the above at once.

Catgory 2: #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #12 – You're the middleman between lo-tech people and experts (in areas other than the social web).

A low-tech shopper is interested in buying a product, lured online by the promise of deals, but there's information overload, so he turns to a subject matter expert to just tell him what the best product would be for him (reminds me of Kallow.com).

A low-tech reader wants access to local news, lured by the promise of up-to-the-minute reporting and analysis (just like they get on national 24hr news), but local news sites suck. He turns to a local news expert (who does his own journalism or aggregates the good stuff into a higher quality experience).

A… anyone really.. hears the web has “applications” that can do amazing things for him, like manage his business contacts and finances, play radio, track his to-do list, etc. But doing a simple search leads to information overload, so he turns to an expert on web applications to give him the low-down on what would be the best fit for him.

Lo-tech people with stuff to sell (packrats with garage sales, small businesses, etc.) are lured to the web by the promise of higher prices and bidding wars for their products. But online sales/auction sites like eBay and Craigslist suck, so they turn to an expert in internet sales to help get rid of inventory in exchange for a cut or flat fee.

The wealthy with eccentric tastes know the web is full of eccentric stuff, but it's just too hard to find. So they turn to a subject matter expert on things they never even knew they wanted.

People are drawn to the web by promises of cheap tickets, cheap shopping, directions, or any of a number of other services, but they're too hard to find or use. So they turn to a subject matter expert on “getting things” (a concierge) to do all the work for them.

Along with the social web expertise, all of these ideas require knowledge of some specialized area. It's easier to play yourself off as a “social media expert” these days than a “local news expert” or “expensive eccentricities expert”, so you'll have a much harder time learning skills, establishing authority, or even attracting people with pre-established authority to work for you (why should they?). Experts are hard to find (otherwise other people would have found them already and wouldn't need you). It's also hard to find people with charisma (like GaryVee) to make your authoritative site interesting. And sometimes you need an army of experts: one for every category of product someone would be interested in buying or selling; or one for every type of local news (sports, politics, business). All of this stuff is just too hard and expensive. I don't recommend any of it. Avoid the many-people-to-many-experts business.

Instead, find a single expert and move him into category 1 above – make him a client, work for him (instead of the other way around) and market and distribute his expertise. If you build up enough experts on a particular topic, you can consolidate and take over some particular area. Until then, keep it simple.

#10 A good stunt for shock value, but no staying power. The 1st woman up there is going to get a ton of responses with a signal-to-noise ratio of almost zero and a lot of rudeness. Dating sites need a disruption, but this is not it. Maybe a good idea for dating auctions, like they do for charity.

#1 Love it. Start with a particular game, make it succesful, then build gaming campaigns for big advertisers. It's like a new and exciting type of service that your Category 1 company could provide. Build a game around places where people already are. Concentrate people, don't disperse them. Turn a normal space into a gaming space. Launch with a big, secret, Cloverfield-style campaign at some big tech conference. Get some people running around with their iPhones attracting attention (laser tag, or something noisy). Get feedback afterwards, evolve, repeat, then offer your services to commercial spaces to get people to spend more time and money somewhere; or to advertisers to get people to engage with a product more.

Our model-in-progress is a system extending more to intellectual property by talent, artists or experts, in entertainment and other fields, who have a mid-level to high level following. The main idea is for them to have more control over their IP and careers by building direct and lasting relationships with their audience in a lifelong ecosystem.

I learned about you from Brad Feld mentioning your blog and I'm glad to discover you and what you're up to. You're very tapped in to some big problems that startups can help to solve. It's inspiring.