Website idea 17: A blog about near misses

It seems the FAIL Blog has become very popular. No wonder: it has an original idea and lots of entertaining content that appeal to many people. I wondered if I could come up with somewhat similar idea and the result was this: a blog about near misses with death or serious injury. This blog would be a about extraordinary lucky people who only narrowly avoided a disaster. It could contain videos, images and stories. For example these videos:

Near death by coke bottle
Luckiest guys in the world top 7
Compilation of near misses
Rally car gone wild
Juggernaut vs Police cruiser

And stories:

Man who survived 133 days in a small raft
Man who fell 4 kilometers without parachute and survived
Man who survived WTC collapse inside building
Man who saved himself by amputating his hand

You can easily find more content by searching with suitable keywords (especially on Youtube), by asking people on discussion boards, by user suggestions and by watching tv shows that feature amazing survival stories.

I tried to find such a blog in vain, so this seems to be niche without much competition. The name of a blog could be something like "Near Misses", "Flirting with Death", "Fooling Grim Reaper", "Cheating Death", "Lucky S.O.B of a Day" or something like that.

Website idea 16: Gaming site for disabled people

Games for disabled people: did you know there exists such a sub-genre of gaming? When you think of it, isn't it natural that people with visual or hearing impairment, people with motorical problems or people suffering from mild brain damage want to enjoy gaming too.More importantly, gaming can be used very efficiently in rehabilitation of such conditions. Here is one example. I could also link some scientific articles that came to the same conclusion, but as they are only in Finnish they wouldn't be very useful here.The problem is that games designed for this genre are very hard to find. I tried once but failed miserably. With a great effort I managed to found some games scattered around the Internet, but for what I have read there must be a plenty of more, but very poorly marketed. Maybe majority of them are even made as custom-made products that are used only by the organisation that ordered it (what a waste).

So why don't you make an improvement: a portal that lists, reviews and sells such games. There could also be a discussion forum and a news section. That kind of site, with millions of potential users worldwide, would help developers to come to the public with their creations and encourage others to make such games. The site, of course, should be as accessible as possible.In addition to "getting some karma" by helping others to enjoy their life you could cash for the time you have spent by charging a little for every commercial game that is listed to your site, or sold through it.

Website idea 15: Take advantage of women's obsession with shoes

Today I'm going to suggest building a site about women's shoes. I can already hear your mumbling: "this idea sounds stupid and is definetly not badass at all, in fact it is totally gay". That is what I also thought at first. But let me put it this way:

People often tend to make websites about things they are most interested but most website developers are a bit geekish males like me (I have wrote about this subject more comprehensively here). So, how many people are there that meet the both of the following requirements:

a) They have enough pragmatism and passion for technology to become succesful webmasters
b) They start to scream and jump for joy whenever they pass a cute shoe store window

I would estimate the number is about 100 people worldwide (of whom at least 20 are perverted males). Just kidding, of course the number is bigger and I also acknowledge there are very good female web developers who simultaneously adore shoes. But still, I dare to claim that people who meet both of the requirements are scarce and the result is insufficient amount of shoe sites. And that gives you an opportunity to make a lot of money. Maybe it won't be so fascinating to run such a site but at least you should earn something. And in case you are a woman, it is even better because you might be actually interested about the subject.

So the site could contain at list following features:

• On the frontpage pics and description of the most recent shoe arrivals and the best offers. Possibility to comment these stories.
• "The shoe of a week" box on a front page, featuring a paid review of a particular shoe and a link to the store that is selling it.
  
• List of all relevant shoe stores, with a description, website, contact details and opening and closing times. Possibly also a price of a standard shipment and map to the shop.
  
• Reasonable amount of ads.
• Possibly some articles on how to choose shoes, how to clean them etc.
  
• If the site becomes very popular you can also consider a discussion forum.
  

Many of these features could be take advantage of forms, so users and shop owners can submit data by themselves and you just need to accept or reject it.

If you are living in the relatively small country, or more accurately, relatively small "language area" such as Netherlands / Dutch your job will be easier. You can include all the Dutch shoe stores and shoe store chains to your site, both online and offline ones. But what if you are living in a huge country like USA? It would probably be too ambitious to try to include all US shoe stores to your sites, so it might be a good idea to concentrate on one state only, or maybe one big city like New York. Or include the entire country but narrow the focus - for example concentrate on specific kind of shoes only.

Technically speaking, the easiest solution to get the site running would probably be installing a Joomla or similar CMS and buying this kind of template.

Website idea 14: Easy animation application for Facebook

Imagine the world where Facebook users could easily create character animations and send them to other Facebook users. And with "easily" I mean "child-play easily".

To see my "blueprints" please enlarge the attached image. There you can see the easiest possible animation user interface I can imagine. Two stick figures accompanied with their names and a timeline with an ability to pick a command for a character. The commands could be such as "walk in", "jump", "dance", "attack" and "drink". There should definetly also be a "say" -command with an ability to write the line for a character.

I assume many of the videos would be parodies of bosses, politicians, friends, co-workers, movies or any funny accident that have happened to you and your friends.

I'm afraid not all people are creative enough to create funny and entertaining animations with such a crude application. But that's all right. It's enough if even one of the thousand can do it. The rest of the people will act as an audience and redistributors of animations.

If you don't want to develop this software for Facebook there's no reason why this couldn't work as an individual website, where creator of animator can send invitations to friends to come and see their animation. In fact, when I first time figured this idea out I thought the right platform for this would be mobile phones (I might write about it later). However, I believe this would suit best for Facebook and gain the biggest popularity there.

Has anyone ever even tried to create such a concept? The easiest possible animation tool for average Joe? At least I've never heard of such attempts. Therefore, if you think you and your pals can handle the programming and (simple) animation this project requires this could be your way to the stars.