Free Ideas for businesses, social programs, nonprofits, 4HWW-style e-businesses, blogs, and other ideas that benefit people. Feel free to steal them – I would be much happier seeing them out in the world with legs than as text on this page!
A website that lets you aggregate text-msg notes to yourself and *tag them to organize them. Categorized notes are then viewable via web or smartphone app.
A site that sells full in-style outfits to men, in size.
Easy-to-use software that implements the Getting Things Done (GTD) framework — for beginners getting used to the system. A virtual coach for GTD, if you will.
An online SAT coaching program – it gives a diagnostic, then presents targeted lessons so you can learn the material, letting you learn at your own pace. Effectiveness outstrips bootcamps and classes because it is: 1) targeted to your level so time is not wasted; 2) moves in digestible chunks so learning is maximized; and 3) is always in-context so you are learning from your mistakes.
WouldYouUseThis.com – a crowdsourced idea generation site that lets users come in and rate what products or services they would use, which they wouldn’t, and how much they would pay. Can integrate/partner with Kickstarter to fund ideas. Similar to quirky.com, though would probably not develop products, just gather data.
A crowdsourced teacher worksheet and lesson plan site – the best LPs and activities float to the top, the worst get discarded. All free. Fixes the biggest problem with finding worksheets – quality is not assured, as you don’t know who’s making it. This assures quality.
FreeIdeas.org – a crowdsourced website where anyone can list business, nonprofit, NGO ideas or just straight-up problems that need to be solved, and users vote them up or down. This would provide an idea of the market for an idea, and would be super easy to judge need and viability of projects.
TeacherTube (needs a new name) – a social network or open forum where teachers can post videos of lessons, discuss what went wrong and right, and offer suggestions for resources, handling problematic students, and other best practices. Videos of master teachers could be posted and studied. I understand that this is being used on a smaller scale by many teacher ed programs to provide peer evaluations. And imagine being able to observe your own lesson!
TalkingPoints.org – first suggested by my friend Ted A. A website pooling the major talking points of the week with the concrete data for and against each point. Intended to help the public distinguish posturing from science, and motivated reasoning from lack of evidence.
Let me know if you have any you want to add!
– Frank
The Blog of Frank Kotsianas 