[jackowayed]

One idea I've had that I'll never get around to actually doing anything with is playing with Amazon's Spot Instances. I think that the cheap cloud computing they offer can open up some new possibilities and also just save people money.

I think the best idea that I've had come out of it is some kind of spot instance guide where someone could say "I need this job done by 10am Monday. It'll take ~5 hours on 10 large instances. Get it done for me as cheaply as possible while still having a 95% chance that it gets done in time." You would know enough about the patterns of spot instance pricing that you could instantly estimate the cost for them, and they could play around with the confidence that they want of it finishing as they see the price vs. chance that it doesn't get done trade-off.

Now, there are definitely some issues with that idea. It may be a terrible idea. But I think there are opportunities to build businesses like that that exploit the cheap computing that spot instances offer.