Startup Idea #54: Small idea-Platform for creating TwitterBots

Well, twitter as a group communication tool. About time.

Somebody should build a simple interface for non-technical users to easily set up their TwitterBots applications.

I would build more intelligence for this system so that it can add relevant information to the 140 words. For example, if the TwitterBot is about food reviews, the system will generate a dashboard type of page where there will be addresses of the restaurants, reviews from other services such as Yelp.com.Users can then have more information on these dashboards, beyond the 140 words.

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Startup Idea #53: Lower premium for healthcare insurance through a network of medical tourism hubs

Continuing from these series of posts about improving healthcare (see this post for articles, see this post of a possible idea for a new healthcare startup), another idea is to provide cheaper insurance for companies to provide their employees.

Rising insurance cost for healthcare is a growing issue and this has forced companies to provide inadequate coverage for their employees. Our model is to create a network between medical tourism hubs such as Singapore, Thailand et al and provide insurance coverage that requires the patients to travel to these cheaper places for their healthcare needs. As the costs of these hubs are significantly lower than developed countries such as the US, the insurance premium needed will be much, much lower. Companies can then take advantage of the lower insurance premium to provide better coverage.

In the 2.0 spirit, all these transactions can then coordinate via the web, similar to what Weatherbill has done for weather insurance. Through this site, companies can purchase, compare, transacted on their insurance needs. Individuals of course can also purchase personal healthcare insurance through this site.

Comments anyone?

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Startup idea #52: Comparison service for medical tourism

After reading a few good articles on current state of healthcare (see post here), and reading this story from Fast Company, it suddenly all made sense and I can see what a startup with little resources can do to create value for the healthcare sector.

The main issue threading across these articles is that healthcare is not going to the people who need it due to the games that insurance companies play. One solution, as pointed out by the Fast Company story is to seek cheaper treatment in other countries. I think there lies the opportunity for a startup to contribute to the solution for healthcare problem.

One idea is to be the Jellyfish.com + Tripadvisor.com for the medical tourists. The site will allow comparisons of different factors such as price, service quality, airfare costs et al for different types of medical services. It should also allow users to review recreational activities that can be enjoyed by the patients after their operations. The quality of information about the different medical services and the ease of the interface will be key success factors.

I will leave you with this paragraph from the Fast Company story that spells out the opportunity:

Medical tourism hubs will become different stops on the same assembly line: Brazil and South Africa for plastic surgery; Mexico and Hungary for dentistry; Costa Rica for a little of both; and Southeast Asia for the bodywork of heart surgery, organ transplants, and orthopedics.

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Idea generation #23: Product conversations: new form of social mediation

Found this link through rebang (one of my favorite bloggers btw). The idea here is simple but powerful: what if physical products can relay simple messages? Such conversation starter cannot be overlooked. Many a times, conversations lead to replies, actions, recall et al. The implications are huge!

For example, in the blog post alone, this was mentioned:

A group that represents the elderly in Australia is looking at some technology that can send a message from a kettle.

The thought being that every time the elderly person makes a cup of tea a message is sent to their children, letting them know that they are OK.

This simple message can trigger the children to send messages to their elders, let them know how frequently their parents are drinking tea and whether they are running out et al.

I think lots more value can be created from this.

Updated: 26th April 2008
Terrific example of how a product Twitters.

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Idea generation #22: Solving food shortage issues

Issues waiting to be solved:

Economist Article
NYTimes Article

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Startup Idea #51: Last.fm for job training

We can leverage on coordination economics and arbitrage the inefficiencies of the HR training manager. The idea here is to develop an application where it can record and 'learn' a user's daily work routines, and use that implicit knowledge to select online learning courses. These learning courses, must of course be microchunked, so allow for personalised training sessions.

To take this idea one step further, let's imagine the data can be shared across users. A user, who aspires to be in a certain position, can use the data of another user who is already in that position. The application can then automatically selects and tailors the learning courses for the user such that the skill he learnt will be relevant for the position he aspires to be.

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Idea generation #21 (Part II): Social funding through new exchanges

This is a really wonderful blog. Gives me great ideas on how to use 2.0 to solve real world problems. See, for example, this post on how twitter is used as fund raising mechanisms. Wouldn't it great to combine this with an open marketplace model, where companies can select and sponsor individual twitter users who is willing to join the 'follow and donate' idea?

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Idea generation #21: Social funding through new exchanges

One of the most innovative things I read this week. The author did not state so explicitly but implicit in her post is the idea of a new form of exchange, an idea that was prevalent during the dotcom days. Her suggestion of converting cash from auctions into donations is similar to what was posted here last week. The powerful thing here is that I am beginning to see how new models, in the form of markets, networks and communities (see bubblegeneration) can help to solve some of the real economic issues we are facing such as global hunger.

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Idea generation #20: Solving healthcare issues

2 great articles (Article1, Article2 , courtesy of Marekh) illustrating why is health care broken. Massive information asymmetries in health insurance that is begging for alternative business models. This is a good starting point to brainstorm on what can be done, to respond to what Bubblegeneration has been saying.

See also my initial idea in this area.

Updated: 21 April 2008
More articles on other problems in healthcare, this time personal healthcare information (Article 1 , Article 2)

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Idea generation #19: Application Ideas for Broadcast APIs

Great advice for broadcasters.

Why doesn’t Tivo offer a set of data API’s that web developers could use to create television widgets and mashups in exchange for promoting Tivo subscriptions?

I should seriously talk to MediaCorp (Singapore's national broadcaster) about this. Maybe should even build something for them. Where is my phone book...

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Startup Idea #50: Micro payment for music

AVC articulated this idea very convincingly. There is no easy way now to pay the artist directly for streaming their music. The proposal that is subsequently highlighted is very necessary:

What's needed is a comprehensive web service that I can pull the music I
want to stream from, play it in their player (like the tumblr player or the
yahoo player or the delicious player), have it record the number of plays
for me, and then send me a bill.

What would be even better is if I could direct a portion of my adsense or FM
ad revenue to go directly to the streaming music bill

What is interesting is the last portion where bloggers can channel their ad revenue to paying the music artists. This not only makes it less 'painful' for people to pay, but also solve the issue of payment system.

Would love to build such a widget based system...

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Idea generation #18: Live search

Another great idea by Buzzmachine on live search. It is a difficult and yet interesting problem to think about. Something that the page rank algorithm cannot solve easily. One possible way, as suggested by Buzzmachine, is to use Twitter. Possible...

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Startup idea #44 (Part II)

Part one of the idea is here

As ad serving technology becomes more open (see post1, post 2 by BuzzMachine), it is now possible for anyone to easily pull together a network of blogs and create their own ad network. In order words, anyone can be a Federated Media.

What is needed to get us from now to there is have an open source platform (like PeopleAggregator but for ad network, rather than social network), where anyone can take the source code, modify them, and even run if off their own servers. Such a platform will need to incorporate the open ad calls of either Google or OpenX, create open standard metrics as well as the bidding infrastructure and make all these into a user-friendly interface. The end result will be a platform where anyone just curate the network of blogs, select this open source platform on top of the blog network, and viola, their very own federated media.

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