[Swizec]

> - Group purchasing for work - what if you wanted to break the cost of a Foosball table up over a group of people. It's cheap if you have enough people involved.

It's called an office manager. Combined with an expense account for the company.

> - App for finding which stores are open at 11pm (or on Sunday in places where most things are closed on Sunday)

It's called Foursquare. Bonus, it does this for a radius around your current location and when it doesn't have official data, it makes a guess based on check-in data.

> - Swarm - Reverse how people get taxis, register that you're looking for a taxi and expose to taxi drivers where all the people are

It's [probably] called the Uber/Lyft interface from the drivers' side.

> - Reverse registry - wedding registries are obnoxious...register your gift so that people don't buy the same thing.

Haven't reached the Omg Everyone Is Getting Married age, but I'm sure this also exists already.

[delinka]

>> - Group purchasing for work

> It's called an office manager.

No office manager I've ever had would purchase anything and then seek divided reimbursement from individuals in the office.

[bluehex]

If the purchase is for the workplace, even something recreational for the employees, the company should pay for it. There should be a fun-budget for such things. Group purchasing is still an interesting idea, I just don't think the example's a great one.

[cdcarter]

A lot of workplaces don't work like that! I know my small non-profit can't go buying appliances, but we recently went in as a team on a sodastream and it would have been great to have a system to track it more than someone putting the cash up front.

[ryan-c]

FYI, there are mod kits for sodastream machines to connect them to large CO2 tanks. I installed one on mine recently, love it so far.

[pjc50]

That may incur tax liabilities and in non-tiny workplaces purchasing anything is a huge hassle.

[eitally]

On the last one, I've never seen a formal registry (managed through a retail store) that didn't denote whether someone had already purchased an item.

[vertis]

Main part of the idea was not creating a huge wish list, but rather just the de-duplicating part of the wedding registry.

[cowpewter]

The de-duplication is very handy, but I think the main point of a wedding registry is so you know the thing you're gifting is something the couple will actually get use out of.

If you know the couple well enough to get a meaningful gift that is not on the registry, go for it, but I've been to plenty of weddings where I was not close enough to the couple to know their tastes/needs for something as personal as homegoods. No one wants to embark on their new life as a married couple with a bunch of stuff cluttering their house that they'll never use and just have to drop off at Goodwill (or worse, go through the hassle of returns - how many different stores would the gifts come from with no registry?), and no one wants to buy a present knowing that's what will most likely happen to it.