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.

REMINDER: Feel free to republish these articles on your site

If you want to republish these ideas on your site or blog feel free to do so. You can use the articles as they are now or refer to my ideas with your own words.

There are only two limitations:

1) Always provide a backlink and a clear indication you took the text from here.

2) Do not copy more than four of my articles to your site. If you want to use more email me and we'll talk about it.

Website idea 13: Build a discussion board about eco-cars

The era of traditionally powered cars are soon inevitably over, as amount of crude oil decreases and amount of pollution increases. One doesn't need a crystal ball to foretell it won't take too many years before majority of new cars are so called eco-cars - hybrid, electric, natural gas, alcohol-powered, you name it . Web developers are already reacting to this new situation - but there is still enough time for you to take advantage of it.

My advice is: set up a discussion board for eco-cars while the competition is still relatively low. You just need to carefully decide the scope of your board. Is it about all the cars that are using some alternative power source? Or only hybrids? Or cars that simply have an electric motor? Or maybe still even more specific topic, like battery technology and mainteinance? You also have to consider whether you make your board in English or some other language. Remember that even thought more rare languages are not spoken by very many people, the amount of a competition is also lower.

The incomes naturally comes from the ads on your site. I assume car-related keywords are relatively valuable.

In the beginning don't make too many different discussion categories, otherwise the few initial users will be scattered around and can't communicate with each other. There are plenty of good forums softwares to choose from, such as Invision Board, vBulletin and phpBB, all easy to use and PHP / MySQL -compatible. You won't probably need dedicated hosting at least initially as most of the traffic are just plain HTML pages that doesn't rob so much bandwidth.

It might be good idea to add also a news section where you collect a hottest news concerning this topic. And also a link section where you can collect the sites of car dealers, repair shops, information sites, news sources and part suppliers.

Website idea 12: Hitler video meme site

If you are a regular Youtube user you have hardly missed the recent "Hitler video remix" meme. It all got started when someone took Hitler's worst rage burst scene from the movie "der Untergang - the Downfall". They then added the new English subtitles for the German dialogue , suggesting that instead of Hitler realising the war is lost, his outburst was because his Xbox Live account was shut down because of cheating. The clip was hilarious and has already resulted hundreds (?) of similar clips, the reason for an outburst ranging from unwanted Superbowl results to Hitler realising Santa Claus does not exist.

Strike while the iron is hot. Start a site dedicated to these videos. The site should meet at least following requirements:

• Ability to rate videos so when can separate masterworks from crappy videos (which, unfortunately, most of these are). There is a popularity listing on Youtube too but it doesn't work too well, as it lists also old propaganda movies etc. Also the ability for visitors to comment videos .
• Editor's pick section, where you can present new promising videos and old classics.
• Top ten list on the main page.
  
• Ability to easily add new subtitles. I'm sure there are thousands of great ideas for new subtitles but not enough knowledge or time to put them to practice. The easiest way would be adding a sufficient number of text input boxes, accompanied by the original line (and tone of it). You could then make Youtube videos of the best of them.
  
• History of the meme (for journalists and bloggers to read and link).
  

How to get visitors to your site? One good way to get started is a product a number of your own videos. Just remember to provide each video with a text "VISIT WWW.RAGINGHITLER.COM FOR MORE VIDEOS". If you can't figure out good ideas by yourself, ask your friends and on Internet forums, or use the imagination of visitors of your site as mentioned above. I have also some suggestions:

• Hitler is made redundant because of worsening economical situation
• Hitler became the latest victim of the Nigerian email scams
  
• The staff of the bunker found Hitler's secret Toblerone chocolate bar cache and consumed it all
• Stalin rejected Hitler's friend request on Facebook
  
• Hard drive of Hitler's laptop broke up and no one never took a back-up
• The generals took a joyride with Hitler's Mercedes without permission and crashed it
  
• Hitler gets a parking ticket
• Hitler wished for a new iPod for a Christmas present but got a pink Creative Zen instead
  
• Hitler tries in vain to establish WLAN network between his desktop PC, Xbox 360, DSL modem and Eva's MacBook
• Mussolini keeps sending irritating application requests to Hitler on Facebook