[franze]

just a wild, very wild and untested, idea. a mini-niche "mechanical turk" iphone(andorid) app.

i.e.: if your wife is called "gloria" the app is called "Ask Gloria"

  * user types in an question/request.
  * gloria (the real gloria) response.

the app is free(? or 0.99) with a 1 question package.

an additional question pack (of 5 questions) costs 10(?)$

the selling point is that not an anonymous person or siri-AI answers your stuff, but a real human being. the app can be pitched to techblogs and other stuff as an (funny and "slow life") alternative to siri & co.

it's the smallest niche i can think of. just a wild idea, would love if you give it a try and report back to HN.

[joncooper]

There were at least two versions of this: Chacha and KGB. The former I used extensively - you'd just send a text to CHACHA with a question and a real person would answer it for you. Some of the responses I got were quite amusing :)

[freshfey]

How about the niche "ask a mom"? This way new moms or parents in general can ask her about tips (i.e. Tips for traveling with a baby?). If it sticks, she can grow the network of possible moms to ask (which would "require" some kind of blog about parenthood etc).

[domainkiller]

It's what ChaCha was supposed to be, I guess they still are.

[franze]

with Chacha you ask "a person" (maybe, if the question wasn't asked before), with Ask Gloria you ask Gloria. but yeah, the product has similarities, but the marketing and selling point would be different.

[fffggg]

It's a really cool idea. I would worry about it interrupting normal life. If Gloria has limited availability (on lunch, sleeping, at a movie or otherwise living life) then the app is significantly less useful.

[Schwolop]

Use twilio to cache the calls. Charge for urgency of response.

[jarin]

This is a pretty cool idea, but it could easily go out of control if even one news outlet picks the story up. I'd raise the price by a lot (like $9.99 a question), in order to keep volume reasonable.

[franze]

pot. solution: pinboard inspired pricing - the more questions are in the queue (or the more question packages sold), the higher the - in app purchase - price.

[renownedmedia]

Would anyone actually pay $10 a question?

[jarin]

People will pay for anything :)

[Mz]

Yes, but how do you get them to do that?

(Serious question. Not kidding.)

[vegas]

Have you tried asking yet?

[Mz]

Yes. But apparently extremely badly...or something.

[anthonys]

Vodafone in Australia (not sure about everywhere else) once had a similar service which they pitched as being able to find the answer to anything. I only used it once or twice, often while trying to prove something in a bar.

Pretty handy service however I think you'd want to be able to call in your question as there might be a bit of forwards and backs in trying to work out exactly what you're trying to get the answer to.

[justincormack]

There were quite a few of these globally, but Google on mobile killed them I think.