* Ultra-portable Linux computer. This is interesting in both building the HW, and figuring out the SW stack. To get most out of the device some custom(ized) SW is probably needed. Main inspiration: 200LX
* New kind of word processor. Squarely aimed for writing essays and other relatively straight-forward articles. Attempt to take semantically correct HTML to the extreme.
* Tag based file system/management. Ultimately this is something that should be integrated fairly deeply to the OS, so probably the most difficult of these projects. Basically make the filesystem more like document database.
* Something that merges the greatness of Excel and IPython. Not sure if this is really achievable, but it is something I'd love to explore.
* Object shell. I think the basic idea of PowerShell (ie piping objects) is very cool. But the syntax did not impress me, and Windows console window is not a nice editing environment. The output wouldn't need to necessarily be pure plain text, instead you could have at least some simple tables etc.
* Discussion platform. This is bit nebulous in my head, but something that would merge best bits of Wave, G+, Reddit, XMPP, and blogging maybe. This is one area where innovations certainly are possible, especially ones that do not have a walled garden in the center.
* Better XMPP-IRC gateway. Kinda precursor/first-step for the previous, something that would allow progressive transition from IRC to XMPP. Main inspiration: Isode/M-Link/FMUC.
* MP-TCP based VPN gateway+client. This is pretty self-explanatory; most services (afaik) do not support MP-TCP, but for end-user it would be massively beneficial. But luckily most of those benefits can be gotten by using MP-TCP (or something similar) to make a VPN, over which regular TCP connections are made.
Many of these ideas might work quite nicely together to make even greater whole.
Like your idea about combining excel and Ipython a lot. So many people start with excel because it makes it easy to enter data and put up a couple plots, but by the time you want to do something more serious, you have multiple worksheets and cross references everywhere that are difficult to replicate into MATLAB or Ipython or a similar environment. Definitely see a market for that.
* Ultra-portable Linux computer. This is interesting in both building the HW, and figuring out the SW stack. To get most out of the device some custom(ized) SW is probably needed. Main inspiration: 200LX
* New kind of word processor. Squarely aimed for writing essays and other relatively straight-forward articles. Attempt to take semantically correct HTML to the extreme.
* Tag based file system/management. Ultimately this is something that should be integrated fairly deeply to the OS, so probably the most difficult of these projects. Basically make the filesystem more like document database.
* Something that merges the greatness of Excel and IPython. Not sure if this is really achievable, but it is something I'd love to explore.
* Object shell. I think the basic idea of PowerShell (ie piping objects) is very cool. But the syntax did not impress me, and Windows console window is not a nice editing environment. The output wouldn't need to necessarily be pure plain text, instead you could have at least some simple tables etc.
* Discussion platform. This is bit nebulous in my head, but something that would merge best bits of Wave, G+, Reddit, XMPP, and blogging maybe. This is one area where innovations certainly are possible, especially ones that do not have a walled garden in the center.
* Better XMPP-IRC gateway. Kinda precursor/first-step for the previous, something that would allow progressive transition from IRC to XMPP. Main inspiration: Isode/M-Link/FMUC.
* MP-TCP based VPN gateway+client. This is pretty self-explanatory; most services (afaik) do not support MP-TCP, but for end-user it would be massively beneficial. But luckily most of those benefits can be gotten by using MP-TCP (or something similar) to make a VPN, over which regular TCP connections are made.
Many of these ideas might work quite nicely together to make even greater whole.