Request for ideas: simple, useful web app

ruby-talk
1

I'm working on a much broader set of IOWA documentation, and core to this is
an approach of building, by the end, some sort of useful web application.

I'm making myself a list of ideas, and am hopeful that the varied minds on
this list might have a few good ones.

The vague criteria are:

1) Can't be too complex as I have to walk a person through building the
whole thing.
2) Should interact with a db of some sort.
3) Would be great if one could do file uploads in it somewhere.
4) If it could do some sort of on-the-fly SVG or image generation or
something like that, I could leverage that.

Other than that, I'm wide open. Whatever it is, I'd like it to be something
that is at least moderately useful in a practical sense, and not just an
academic curiosity.

Ideas, anyone?

Thanks,

Kirk Haines

2

Kirk Haines ha scritto:

The vague criteria are:

1) Can't be too complex as I have to walk a person through building the whole thing.

I guess this kills the idea of petstore :slight_smile:

2) Should interact with a db of some sort.
3) Would be great if one could do file uploads in it somewhere.
4) If it could do some sort of on-the-fly SVG or image generation or something like that, I could leverage that.

I think a small forum/bulletin board would be cool.
You can add arbitrary complexity to it, ba basically there is little
db usage, the ability to upload stuff and maybe you can generate images
on the fly in the authentication phase (a simple captcha).

Another nifty thing could be something that writes network traffic graphs or something like that, but not so good on the db usage part.

3

hmmm... this may be 'too complex', simplify as needed.

business card generator

company
  id, login, pass, company_name, address1, address2, phone, fax,
email, contact, etc.

logo_text (creates image, stores it in 'logos' below)
  id, company_id, name, text, font_id, color_id, size, bold?, italic?
     -- could lose this and just use a form that fills in logos table.

logos (allows file uploads, or creates from text)
  id, company_id, name, filename, create_date, last_update_date

cards (final results stored here)
  id, company_id, name, logo_id, template_id

lookup lists used during card creation:
  card_fonts
    id, name, font

  card_font_colors
    id, name, color

  card_templates
     id, name, sample_image_path

···

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 01:09:13 +0900, Kirk Haines <khaines@enigo.com> wrote:

The vague criteria are:

1) Can't be too complex as I have to walk a person through building the
whole thing.
2) Should interact with a db of some sort.
3) Would be great if one could do file uploads in it somewhere.
4) If it could do some sort of on-the-fly SVG or image generation or
something like that, I could leverage that.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

4

Kirk Haines wrote:

I'm working on a much broader set of IOWA documentation, and core to this is an approach of building, by the end, some sort of useful web application.

I'm making myself a list of ideas, and am hopeful that the varied minds on this list might have a few good ones.

The vague criteria are:

1) Can't be too complex as I have to walk a person through building the whole thing.
2) Should interact with a db of some sort.
3) Would be great if one could do file uploads in it somewhere.
4) If it could do some sort of on-the-fly SVG or image generation or something like that, I could leverage that.

Other than that, I'm wide open. Whatever it is, I'd like it to be something that is at least moderately useful in a practical sense, and not just an academic curiosity.

Ideas, anyone?

Thanks,

Kirk Haines

How about a music review site? A user can view existing reviews or add their own to the database. A review can consist of text inputted into a form and pictures (of the band or whatever) that are either uploaded or linked to. You could generate "band shirts" from a picture of a blank shirt and a user uploaded graphic.

-Matthew Margolis

5

"Kirk Haines" <khaines@enigo.com> writes:

I'm working on a much broader set of IOWA documentation, and core to this is
an approach of building, by the end, some sort of useful web application.

I'm making myself a list of ideas, and am hopeful that the varied minds on
this list might have a few good ones.

The vague criteria are:

1) Can't be too complex as I have to walk a person through building the
whole thing.
2) Should interact with a db of some sort.
3) Would be great if one could do file uploads in it somewhere.
4) If it could do some sort of on-the-fly SVG or image generation or
something like that, I could leverage that.

Other than that, I'm wide open. Whatever it is, I'd like it to be something
that is at least moderately useful in a practical sense, and not just an
academic curiosity.

Ideas, anyone?

Something like a scheduler? It's not that complex, entries could be
stored in a database, and it could generate a pretty picture for
printing. I'm sure you could wedge in file uploads somewhere.

6

online bookmark manager.

-a

···

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Kirk Haines wrote:

I'm working on a much broader set of IOWA documentation, and core to this is
an approach of building, by the end, some sort of useful web application.

I'm making myself a list of ideas, and am hopeful that the varied minds on
this list might have a few good ones.

The vague criteria are:

1) Can't be too complex as I have to walk a person through building the
whole thing.
2) Should interact with a db of some sort.
3) Would be great if one could do file uploads in it somewhere.
4) If it could do some sort of on-the-fly SVG or image generation or
something like that, I could leverage that.

Other than that, I'm wide open. Whatever it is, I'd like it to be something
that is at least moderately useful in a practical sense, and not just an
academic curiosity.

Ideas, anyone?

--

EMAIL :: Ara [dot] T [dot] Howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
PHONE :: 303.497.6469
A flower falls, even though we love it;
and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. --Dogen

===============================================================================

7

Quoting Kirk Haines <khaines@enigo.com>:

Ideas, anyone?

Build Dave's Pragmatic Jukebox. I always wondered what kind of
interface that thing had anyways :slight_smile:

~ Patrick

8

How about a combined Blog/Wiki?

:wink:

···

"Kirk Haines" <khaines@enigo.com> wrote:

Other than that, I'm wide open. Whatever it is, I'd like it to be
something that is at least moderately useful in a practical sense, and
not just an academic curiosity.

--
-mark. (probertm @ acm dot org)

9

Kirk Haines ha scritto:

oh, great idea:
bug tracking system.
The image part comes from an engine that draws diagrams representing the codebase with big red explosions whre it does not work :))

10

A simple web app that I'd like to create for myself is a "web
scrapbook". Instead of (literally) cutting and pasting articles from
newspapers into a dead-tree scrapbook, you fling URLs at this app and
it slurps the content and style and makes it easily retrievable later.
(I gather that applying saved CSS to saved HTML wouldn't be trivial.)

There's all sorts of stuff you could add to it (e.g. file uploads, SVG
generation, ... :slight_smile: but the bare basics of it will be enough for me to
implement if you don't.

Cheers,
Gavin

···

On Wednesday, September 8, 2004, 2:09:13 AM, Kirk wrote:

I'm working on a much broader set of IOWA documentation, and core to this is
an approach of building, by the end, some sort of useful web application.

I'm making myself a list of ideas, and am hopeful that the varied minds on
this list might have a few good ones.

11

gabriele renzi wrote:

Another nifty thing could be something that writes network traffic
graphs or something like that, but not so good on the db usage part.

How about something that watched logs for various attacks (e.g. worms,
port-scanning, etc.) and showed over-time graphs.

    * It involves graphics
    * A database could be used to store historical data and
      attack signatures
    * It could be very simple at first, and easily expanded;
      Initially, it might only recognize attempts to read .htaccess,
      for example. More signatures (patterns, where to look for
      them, and what they mean) could be added later.
    * It could be quite useful

-- MarkusQ

12

A web interface to an audio tool is really only useful when running
locally; plus, IIRC, there's already a Borges-based MP3 player
interface written in Ruby.

I think the business card tool sounds pretty good -- allow a user to
edit their contact info, upload a small graphic as a logo, select one
of a few pre-designed templates, and then generate the card as SVG or
PDF.

···

--
Lennon
rcoder.net

13

*nod nod*

Gavin

···

On Wednesday, September 8, 2004, 3:35:10 AM, Ara wrote:

Ideas, anyone?

online bookmark manager.

14

There is software that has been seriously developed called MRTG for that. Its not hard to set up at all. And its very good :wink: --David Ross

Another nifty thing could be something that writes network traffic
graphs or something like that, but not so good on the db usage part.

How about something that watched logs for various attacks (e.g. worms,
port-scanning, etc.) and showed over-time graphs.

* It involves graphics
* A database could be used to store historical data and
attack signatures
* It could be very simple at first, and easily expanded;
Initially, it might only recognize attempts to read .htaccess,
for example. More signatures (patterns, where to look for
them, and what they mean) could be added later.
* It could be quite useful

-- MarkusQ

···

Markus <markus@reality.com> wrote:gabriele renzi wrote:

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