Your PC already does half of an air purifier's job: fans pull air in, dust filters catch some of it, and it blows the air back out. So why not go all the way?

I searched before posting. There seem to have been a few similar attempts, but I couldn't find anything like this that you can actually buy today.

The idea: a PC case built around a real air purifier.

- Intake goes through a HEPA + carbon filter first

- CPU, GPU and PSU only breathe filtered air, so the inside stays dust-free

- The exhaust leaves your room cleaner, not dustier

- One box instead of two devices taking up floor space and making noise

The honest problem: HEPA filters are very restrictive. Pushing enough air through them needs high-static-pressure fans, and those are loud, the opposite of what a quiet PC wants. A realistic version might keep two separate airflow paths in one case (one for cleaning, one for cooling).

I don't have the skills to build this, so I'm leaving it here. Would you buy one? What am I missing?

(Images are AI-generated concept renders.)

Would you buy modular glasses (sunglasses or prescription glasses)? You could swap the arms between different pairs and put the parts together like LEGO. All components would be fully compatible across pairs, so you could mix and match them to customize your glasses and create different looks.

I’m looking for a free, open-source Records Management System (RMS) for police, safety officers, and security guards.
I can’t find any open-source options that actually work, and commercial RMS platforms are VERY expensive.

After discussing a public notebook idea, someone pointed out that existing meeting minutes could provide the starting material.

I’d like a small tool that helps someone follow one issue—say, a promised sidewalk repair—across several meetings.

You would select relevant passages from the minutes, keep their dates and source references, and arrange them under that issue. Later updates could show a revised deadline, evidence of completion, or something still awaiting confirmation. Corrections would stay visible alongside the original entry.

The result should be readable on screen and printable for a library or community binder. Readers should be able to trace each entry back to its source.

A first version could use manually selected passages. If an existing tool already handles this simply, I’d welcome its name. Otherwise, feel free to borrow or improve the idea.

Ive seen solar blinds with small solar panels to open and close them. I wondered if there was a way to have larger panels that generate electricity for use in a household generally not just to open the blinds. They could be solid blinds or i wondered if theres a way to have solar on roller blinds aswell? The electricity could be stored in cells or power electric heating. The cost could be recouped with lowering energy bills.

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm a student developer working on a side project, and I’d love your honest thoughts on an app idea I'm building called Trofex.

The idea is simple: Remember when video games gave you awesome titles or badges for completing hard achievements? I wanted to bring that exact feeling to a social app.

Instead of buying a checkmark for $8 a month, you earn titles by actually using the app and being active:

• Early Supporter: You were one of the first 100 followers of a creator before they blew up ("Day-One Follower" badge).
• Consistency: You kept up a daily streak or participated in a community event.
• Community Top Fan: You're one of the most helpful people in a group or niche feed.

Whatever title you earn, you can wear it right next to your username on your posts, comments, and profile so everyone can see it.

Think of it like a mix of Instagram/Reels and Discord, but with a fun game-style achievement system where status can't be bought with money.

I'd love to know:

1. Is "earning rare titles to flex on your profile" something you'd find fun, or do you not care about badges?
2. What’s one title/badge you’d love to earn on a social app?
3. What would make you instantly delete an app like this?

Be as brutally honest as you want! Thanks a ton for reading. 🙌

I work at a small day-care center for elderly people in Japan. Our supplies (paper towels, gloves, food, etc.) are kept upstairs, and most staff don't go up to check before someone does the shopping. So after every shopping trip we find out something is missing, and someone has to go out again.

What I wish existed: when you take the last few of something, you tap one button on your phone, and it goes on the shopper's list. No sign-up for staff, just scan a QR code once.

Does something like this already exist? I'd also like to hear from you:

1. Does this happen at your workplace (or at home)?
2. How do you handle it now? (whiteboard, group chat, an app, nothing?)
3. If you tried something that didn't work, why did it fail?

Thanks for reading. English is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes.

I saw the Muse launch and immediately had dreams of something that could just automatically organize the app tiles on my phone screens, with some basic instructions.

I'm tickled that even the in-house stuff from Google, which I would fully expect can do this, seems unable to do this.

I want to put an idea out into the universe for someone else to build—or for a public entity to operate.

The Problem Story

In a town I know well, there is an iconic, condemned historical building that was one of the very first structures built in the area. Originally a grand hotel, it has sat completely vacant and rotting for nearly four decades. It is a massive public hazard, and pieces occasionally fall off onto the street. Because it is a designated historic site, the city refuses to let anyone just tear it down.

Every few years, a new private buyer comes along, gets a permit, and tries to fix it up. Inevitably, a worker gets injured because the structure is so dangerously unstable, the developer throws their hands up at the financial/legal liability, and they abandon the project. It sits for a few more years, decays further, and the cycle repeats.

Private developers cannot handle this. We need a specialized model to break the gridlock.

The Solution: A Historical Reconstruction Agency

I propose the creation of a specialized Historical Preservation Demolition & Construction model. Ideally, this would be a government-operated public works agency (or a heavily backed public-private partnership) to easily bypass private property gridlock, shield workers with state-level hazard protocols, and resolve local historical board zoning wars.

The framework operates in 4 distinct phases:

• Phase 1: Historical Forensics & Era Discovery

Before touching a brick, engineers pull the town's original municipal blueprints alongside all recorded modifications. A team enters the building with an era-specific historian to map undocumented, "under the table" alterations (e.g., hidden speakeasies or wine cellars from the Prohibition era). They generate an exact "as-built" map.

• Phase 2: Precision Architectural Salvage

A team goes in to harvest structural components that can be saved or refurbished. They manually extract original old-growth wood door jams, iron railings, front desks, and vintage tables.

• Phase 3: Safe Demolition & Material Branding

The structural shell is safely brought down by demolition experts. During cleanup, original bricks and timber are collected. To prove authenticity, these materials are stamped or engraved with a custom logo and the original construction year of the building, creating highly valuable heritage assets.

• Phase 4: Up-to-Code Reconstruction

Using the forensic blueprint data, engineers draft brand-new plans that feature modern seismically reinforced foundations, ADA accessibility, and updated fire/utility systems, while perfectly mimicking the historic aesthetic. The building is completely rebuilt from the ground up, seamlessly integrating the stamped bricks, refurbished desks, and original railings back into the design.

Why Government-Operated?

If run as a public works program, the agency could hire a localized workforce at every disaster site it visits, training local carpenters, historians, and laborers in precision deconstruction trades. Any salvaged material not used in the final rebuild could be kept in a municipal yard, allowing local residents to buy pieces of their town's history for their own home restorations.

It preserves the history, eliminates a multi-decade death trap, creates local jobs, and guarantees the project actually crosses the finish line safely.

Quick thing before the idea: I used an AI (Claude) to help me with this. It helped me look up what happened to the sites that already tried something like it, and it wrote the text in this shape while I kept pushing it around until it said what I meant. The idea itself is mine. I've had the basic version of it in my head for years, and I'm happy to put it online for everyone. It belongs to whoever wants to take it: build it, change it, keep the good parts, throw away the rest.

The short version

It's a website for ideas and projects, but nothing gets sold whole. Everything is cut into pieces and you buy only the pieces you want. Every piece has a free preview and a paid part, and every piece has its own rights: exclusive or not, for how long, for which country, who gets what share. Companies can post what they need, so it's not just people throwing ideas into the void. And anyone can offer their own version of a piece that already exists.

Yes, it's an idea for a site for ideas. I know.

An example with a drink

Say somebody has a project for a low-sugar sparkling drink made with fermented tea and citrus. On most sites that's one thing: you buy it or you don't. Here it's a pile of pieces that sit inside each other, like sets in math class. The whole project contains a few groups (product, brand, market, legal), and some pieces belong to two groups at once. The packaging is both product and brand. The cost model is both product and market. And some pieces need others first: you can't price anything without the recipe.

Something like this (all made up):

• the recipe (needs nothing)
• the production process, from a lab to 1,000 liters (needs the recipe)
• shelf life and stability tests (needs both)
• the packaging, specs plus design (needs the recipe; it's product and brand)
• the name, plus a check that nobody owns it already
• the visual identity (needs the name)
• who buys it, where, at what price
• the cost and pricing model (needs recipe, process and packaging; it's product and market)
• the launch plan, the label compliance, the license contract, etc.

Now three buyers. Someone with a bar buys just the recipe, non-exclusive, for like 30 euros, and nobody stops anyone else from buying it too. A small startup that already sells drinks buys the whole product pack (recipe, process, tests, packaging) with exclusivity in Europe for three years, for a few thousand. A big company posts a request ("we want a low-sugar drink with Italian ingredients, worldwide exclusive") and buys everything, plus a few hours of calls with the people who made it. Same project, three different purchases.

The same thing with a video game

A 2D puzzle-platformer where you melt and cool glass to change the world. Call it Vetro. The pieces: the core mechanic (the melting and cooling rules), a plan for 30 levels (needs the mechanic), difficulty tables, art direction, a piece about how the art makes the glass states readable (design and art at once), a playable prototype, playtest data from 20 people (tech and market at once), market notes, etc.

An indie developer buys the mechanic and the levels for 40 euros and does the art herself. A publisher posts "2D puzzle, 6-8 hours, small budget, cozy audience" and buys the lot.

Games show something the site would have to be honest about: rules and mechanics usually aren't protected by copyright, only the code, the art and the text are. So the mechanic alone is worth very little. What you'd really be selling is the package, the prototype, the test data and the time you save the buyer.

The free part and the paid part

Every piece has a public preview, and whoever made it decides how much goes in. It could be a title and one line of result ("stable for 9 months at 20 degrees"), or half the explanation. The rest sits behind a door. To open it you register and accept written terms ("if you use this, you pay according to the license"), your copy is marked as yours, and every access is logged. Every upload also gets a timestamp.

This is the old problem: to decide if you want to buy an idea you have to know it, and once you know it you don't need to buy it. A preview that says what a piece does without saying how is the best compromise I could think of.

The legal side, as far as I understood it (I'm not a lawyer, and neither is the AI): an idea by itself isn't property. But in Italy and the EU, information that's secret, valuable because it's secret, and protected by reasonable measures can count as a trade secret. The paid part could be that. The public preview can't, obviously, since anyone can read it. And nothing stops two people from having the same idea on their own. So the site shouldn't tell anyone "your idea is protected". It should say: your package is covered by contract and trade secret rules while it's behind the door, and you can prove when you made it.

Rights per piece

Each piece says what you can do with it. Non-exclusive: cheap, many people can buy it. Exclusive: one buyer, for a country and a period, much more expensive. If somebody already bought it non-exclusive, the exclusive price gets recalculated. When a piece has more than one author, the split is written down before it goes on sale (60/40, whatever), so nobody argues afterwards. Quirky had "influence points" that the company itself decided, and that's the kind of thing I'd want to avoid.

Companies ask too

Companies can post requests: we need this, this budget, exclusive or not. The part I can't skip is how the free-floating ideas meet the requests. I think it takes an algorithm inside the site, not a chatbot, something like what TikTok does: a new piece gets shown first to a small group of companies whose requests look close to it, and if they open it, save it or write, it goes to more. It works both ways. The company sees the pieces that fit its request, and the creator gets a message like "there's an open request your project covers at 80%". The same system would see the gaps (requests nobody answers, pieces nobody asks for), and that's information somebody would pay for.

But TikTok learns from billions of taps and this site would have a handful of purchases. At the start a person has to match things by hand, and the algorithm only starts learning after hundreds of deals. Also, which pieces a company looks at tells you its strategy, so creators would only see anonymous numbers ("three beverage companies opened your preview").

Anyone can answer with a piece

This is the part I like most, and the newest. Anyone registered can answer a project or a request with a piece of their own. "I'll do this piece, but you can do it too, let's see who does it better and cheaper."

I think it's a good idea with one change: it shouldn't be a race to the bottom on price. Design contest sites have a bad reputation because only the winner gets paid, and critics say that most entrants put in little effort since they probably won't win. Here the losers wouldn't be unpaid by default, because versions are sold as listings (several can sell) and not as a tournament with one prize. Quality first (reviews, scores), price second, with a price range per piece.

There's real data on this. A study of 9,661 software contests found that more competitors means less effort from each one, but also a higher chance that somebody comes up with something exceptional. The first effect wins for predictable problems (a cost model, label compliance) and the second wins for uncertain, creative ones (a name, a visual identity, a game mechanic, a story). So contests for the creative pieces, a fixed price or a bounty for the routine ones.

A few rules I'd add. The project owner chooses if the project is open to anyone or invite-only, and other people's pieces enter the official project only if the owner accepts them, otherwise they stay as alternative versions (like pull requests). If you start from somebody else's public preview you say so, and a fixed share goes to the original author; independent versions don't owe anything. New accounts have a limit on how many pieces they can submit, maybe a small deposit, etc. I also think this could spread through invitations, because a piece often needs two skills (a technician and a designer) so you invite somebody. That one is a guess.

Why I think the old ones died

Here's what I found about the ones that tried something close, with the AI doing most of the digging.

Quirky (2009 to 2015). People sent in product ideas, the community voted and helped, and Quirky built and sold the products itself, giving the community a cut. It raised about 185 million dollars, got over a million members and over a hundred products, and went bankrupt in 2015. From what I could find, the problem wasn't the idea part, it was the factory part: physical products are expensive and risky, it launched too many and didn't improve the ones that worked, and people clicking like on an invention isn't the same as paying for it. Some people who analyzed it say it should have stayed an ideas platform with no manufacturing, which is what this would be. I don't know if that part alone could have paid for itself.

yet2 (1999 to 2018). An online marketplace for technology licenses between big companies. They closed the marketplace around the end of 2018, and wrote that in 20 years they never saw a purely online IP marketplace stay profitable. What worked for them was starting from what companies need and pulling solutions in, with human service on top.

InnoCentive (2001, sold to Wazoku in 2020). The opposite direction: the company posts a problem and a prize, anyone answers, the company picks the winner and the rights pass by contract. It works because the buyer defines the need, the price is known up front and the rights are settled in advance. It's also a small outfit.

The Black List. A site for screenplays. Writers pay to host a script and get it rated by paid readers, a closed community of industry people can read it, writers keep all their rights and the site takes no cut (that was the 2012 version, prices may be different now). It's the closest thing I found to "pay to be seen, get checked, keep your rights".

And the Hollywood story. In 1956 a man told his story to a director's secretary over the phone, she said they'd pay if they used it, and later a film came out that he said was his story. The California Supreme Court said an idea isn't property but you can be owed money through a contract implied by what people did. Studios built walls after that: they refuse to read anything unsolicited, they take scripts only through agents, they make you sign releases. This site would be a bit like the agent: you see nothing before accepting written terms, with logs and timestamps. The contract does the work here, more than the idea does.

What I'm afraid of

Things I know could kill it:

• People meet on the site and then take the deal to WhatsApp so nobody pays the fee. Possible answers: payment held until both sides are happy, contracts and rights records that only count if the deal stays on the site, reputation that lives only there, updates after buying.
• Fake companies that sign up just to read and copy. Verify companies, unlock more as the commitment grows, and give each buyer a slightly different copy so a leak can be traced.
• Payments, tax and identity. Moving money between third parties in the EU needs a licensed payment provider, and I have no idea about the tax part. The access logs are personal data too.
• Nobody buys. This is the one that matters. A small test would be one niche, a few dozen creators, three to five companies, matching by hand, a spreadsheet and payment links. If nobody pays even 30 euros for a piece, stop.

What I don't know

Whether companies would really pay for this. Whether people would spend time on a piece they might sell once. How much of the legal part would survive a real lawyer. The numbers and the examples above are made up. And I couldn't find any marketplace of this kind that stayed profitable on its own, so the base rate is bad and I know it.

What I'd like from you

I'm not going to start a company. If somebody wants to build even a tiny hand-made version, or a real one, go ahead, it's yours. If you've run a marketplace and you can tell me why this dies, that helps too. Wherever you found this, write to me there.

If you want to read the old stories

• Quirky (HBR): https://hbr.org/2016/12/a-case-study-of-crowdsourcing-gone-wrong
• yet2 on why online IP marketplaces fail: https://www.yet2.com/?p=7202
• InnoCentive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoCentive
• Desny v. Wilder (1956): https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/desny-v-wilder-26737
• The 9,661-contests study: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1322
• The Black List, 2012: https://johnaugust.com/?p=9713

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I'd like a motorized mount that turns an ordinary TV 90 degrees between landscape and portrait, so vertical short videos such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts can use the screen properly. The idea is to upgrade an existing TV, with versions for different supported TV sizes.

The main benefit is the video display area. On a 16:9 TV in landscape, an uncropped 9:16 video fitted to the screen uses only about 31.6% of the screen area, leaving large black bars on both sides. Rotate the same TV into portrait and that video can fill the screen: approximately 3.16 times the video display area, without cropping. That's an area comparison, not a claim about resolution. Playback or casting would also need to support portrait output.

Rotation would be motorized and controlled either through a phone app or a physical switch next to the TV. You could switch back to landscape for movies and other horizontal content. The illustration shows the 0-degree, 45-degree and 90-degree positions to explain the rotation.

The attached image is an AI-generated concept illustration, not a photograph of a working product. I'm sharing the idea to get feedback.

Would you actually use this to watch vertical short videos on your TV? What TV size would you want it for, and what price would feel reasonable for the mount alone?

Hey all! I had an idea back in February 2022 to create an app called Read to Me. I got bogged down in the copyright complications and never pursued it. I don't have the time or motivation to figure it out now, but I still think it's a cool idea that I would absolutely use if someone else built it!

I'm sharing the concept freely for anyone who wants to run with it. No credit, compensation, or involvement expected.

The original idea was to have people request existing books they wanted narrated. With the complications of obtaining audiobook rights from authors or publishers, though, it might be a better fit for indie authors who retain their audio rights. They could connect with aspiring narrators to produce affordable audiobooks, helping both budding narrators and authors build a following.

I also liked the possibility of multiple narrators recording the same book, allowing listeners to choose whose voice and narration style they preferred.

Anyway, here are my original brainstorming notes, mostly unedited. If you make something of it, please come back and share it here!

Read to Me app

• Request a book to be read to you

• Reader accepts the request

• Reader gets the book (owns it, buys it, or rents from the library)

• Reader records themselves reading the book and uploads (by chapter)

• Requester gets notified when chapters are available

• Requester listens to the book. Chapters are available for listening for 30 days after playing (pay to extend?)

• Requester rates the reader

• Reader gets paid

• Explicit content? Readers only have to accept book requests they're comfortable with/want to read

• Keep recordings for future purchases? Would probably break copyright

• Copyright issues? (would infringe on income for traditional audiobooks - will have to focus on the service, not the product)

• Great for books with audiobooks that are too expensive, have poor narration, or don't have audiobooks at all

• Great easy income for students or people with little skills or access to jobs

• "Read to me" already associated with kids books

• Readers can upload a sample of them reading to their profile

• Request a specific reader?

• Pay by the hour? By the book?

• What if readers don't finish the book? If the requesters pay by the chapter, what happens if they stop paying? Do they pay in advance for the whole book? Or maybe they pay by the chapter so they can choose to stop if they don't like the book

• Initial fee to cover readers getting the book

• Banned books list? Maybe too graphic/inappropriate for most readers

• Report/ban readers that record inappropriate things (how do we recoup payments to them?)

• Great for textbooks if they can be obtained by the readers

• Great for trying out books you're not sure you'll like

• Refer requesters to buy the audiobook if they liked it

• Rate books?

• Pair with Goodreads?

• Pair with Venmo?

• Request audiobook creation from publishers?

• Crowdfunding?

• What happens when a book has really long chapters? Really short chapters? Do the requesters choose the amount they're willing to pay for a chapter to be read?

• Tip the readers?

• Recommendations to readers on proper recording setups (no background noise, good mic, glass of water nearby, pause when needed, etc)

Survey

• Do you listen to audiobooks?
• Have you ever tried to find an audiobook, but it didn't exist?
• Have you ever been turned off from an audiobook because the narrator wasn't a good fit, but think you may have enjoyed the book otherwise?
• Have you ever avoided getting an audiobook because of the cost?
• Have you ever purchased an audiobook only to find out after a chapter or two that you didn't like it?
• Would you use a service that allows other people to read you a book of your choice?
• Would you consider reading books requested by other people for payment?

An idea for a knitting/crochet tool: open an existing PDF pattern, place a movable marker on the current instruction, and keep a row counter plus a repeat counter alongside it. Closing the app would save the page, marker position, and both counters together.

For example, if a pattern says to repeat rows 1-8 six times, the view could show both the current row and which repeat you're on. Notes would stay attached to that part of the pattern.

The aim would be to avoid switching between a PDF viewer, a separate counter, and notes. It wouldn't generate patterns or require uploading them to a public library.

Do existing tools already handle this well? If you knit or crochet from PDFs, would this solve a real annoyance, or are paper annotations and a physical counter easier? I'm sharing a concept for discussion, not a released app.

I am a new student teacher, learning to become an actual teacher. But I find it hard to keep track of when classes start and when classes end. Its a struggle not knowing how long a class is left because I dont know when to call clean up causing the students to stay behind and clean, or not clean at all and me having to do it. Also making them late to their next class.

So I am wondering if someone would be able to make an app. Where you can input the times of each period, start and finish, my school has 8 periods. while it having a live activity on an iphones lock screen. So you could quickly glance at your phone and physically see how much time you have left without having to struggle. I attached examples from the alarm app. The reason I dont like the alarm app because its a loud sound and it can be very distracting.

I feel like having an app like this could help so many teachers manage time better and be more efficient. I know there is other apps, but it just doesnt fit what im looking for.

Please let me know if you relate and think this would be a good app. Thank you!

Seriously I cannot fathom why there isn't something solidly reliable already available. Somebody make this, make it secure, and charge money for it. While I'm not an iPhone user myself I will send plenty of customers your way.

No paywall. No bots. No favoritism in preferences towards unreasonable expectations. Have the communications or matches based upon actual shared interests. Have proximity to you accounted for. Basically have matching and mutual interests and connection within circumstances or distance etc all factored into show people their best matches. Rather than who’s hot or not it’s based upon actual shared interests and feelings.