Website Idea's

Discuss the application of the Dharma to situations of social, political, environmental and economic suffering and injustice.
Jesse
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Website Idea's

Post by Jesse »

I have been thinking about creating a website for some time, for the purpose of helping people in some way or another, unfortunately I haven't had any great ideas.If anyone want's to offer me some ideas, that would be awesome.
The only thing I know I want to avoid is dealing with money in any way, because of the technical overhead and expense of dealing with that sort of thing. Otherwise Anything goes, Thanks in advance. :)

Also if anyone is interested in working on projects like this, that would be great too. Any sort of skill could be potentially helpful, graphics, writing, plain old wisdom etc. :)
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A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
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maybay
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by maybay »

Don't get distracted :smile:
People will know nothing and everything
Remember nothing and everything
Think nothing and everything
Do nothing and everything
- Machig Labdron
Jesse
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Jesse »

It's hard not to be distracted sometimes. :)

Coding for me is like painting, or calligraphy, or chanting. Helping people is just a great side effect.
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
Jesse
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Jesse »

Now I realize why they call it the thinker... :toilet:

This isn't fully fleshed out, but I am curious what people think of this idea, and excuse the mess as I sort of wrote it up in a hurry -- perhaps I should clean it up a bit but I feel lazy today. :)
--------------------------------------

Create a website dedicated to spreading meditation, mindfulness and methods for removing afflictive emotions and delusional states of mind in a nonsecular way as to benefit society at large.

I think for society to improve in any meaningful way, it's going to take a collective effort of removing afflictive emotions and delusional states of thinking at an individual level. Since eastern religions have already developed efficient methods for doing these things, I think it's one of the best ways to achieve this. Thinking about it more, I think it may be what the dalai lama has been doing by having western science study mediators and meditation in general, and also what thich nhat hanh has been doing by spreading mindfulness.

While it has spread quite well, the vast majority of people I know do not meditate, and I think it should be designed for people like this. People who have no interest in religion, spirituality, etc. I think if its presented in a scientific way, with well documented medical studies, people would be more willing to try it.

Perhaps present it as a community, where people can find support, sort of the way in which weight loss communities work and it could be almost social-networking based like facebook/myspace.

Ideas:
-Clearly establish and present what meditation and mindfulness can accomplish for people in their lives
-features for tracking meditation sessions, 'progress' and what-not.
-Introductory meditation video's done by well experienced meditators
-Video's of medical studies, etc.
-A very extensive documentation/help/support section, and also question-answer type features. Which could take the form of volunteers like Wikipedia. It would be difficult to find that many experienced meditators though.
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
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Qian Zheng Yi
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Qian Zheng Yi »

Your ideas are remakable and excellent!! :applause:
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Jesse
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Jesse »

Haha.. Thank you, but no not really.. :smile:

I've actually planned out the website and have been working on it, perhaps a bit too much for the past few weeks. It's coming along well though.

The address is: http://sit-with.me" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's a ruby on rails 3 project, being hosted on heroku. heroku uses git for version control / deployment, (if any developers are interested ) :P

I will eventually need lots of help with content, especially meditation articles/video's and related stuff, since my experience is pretty limited I really would rather not write them.

I hope to have the first version up within a month or so.. :smile:
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
Arnoud
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Arnoud »

I have an idea for you or David:

http://www.buddhistcalendar.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; or .com

IN it, one can find any schedule of any Buddhist teacher or center. One can also search based on area and time.

So, let's say I am going to Argentina next month, then I can find out what teacher or center is there and what I can attend if I wanted to attend. I know we have google but that is just so much to wade through at times. Or, I want to know the schedule of this or that Lama or Ajahn or Sayadaw, then I can find it there. In any and all languages. I know it isn´t as beneficial as your idea but I think it might work.
Also, one can add of course the different important Buddhist hol/i/y/days

Also, an app for businesscards. :smile: Although they might have that already.

I also have a great idea for a tv-show based on the Bardo. :smile: Let me know if you have connections.

Best of luck with your site though. I couldn't open it just now.
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kirtu
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by kirtu »

Clarence wrote: http://www.buddhistcalendar.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; or .com

IN it, one can find any schedule of any Buddhist teacher or center. One can also search based on area and time.
This is straightforward. We can have a demo up in no time.

Kirt
Kirt's Tibetan Translation Notes

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
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"Most all-knowing Mañjuśrī, ...
Please illuminate the radiant wisdom spirit
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Jesse
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Jesse »

Clarence wrote:I have an idea for you or David:

http://www.buddhistcalendar.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; or .com

IN it, one can find any schedule of any Buddhist teacher or center. One can also search based on area and time.
I would be willing to put some time in on it, just send me a pm.

I probably can't do much more than contribute, but definitely let me know. :smile:
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
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A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
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kirtu
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by kirtu »

They way to do the calendar would be to set up a web service as a common data repository that calendar apps on the web as well as smartphone and tablet platforms could pull from.

Kirt
Kirt's Tibetan Translation Notes

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche

"Most all-knowing Mañjuśrī, ...
Please illuminate the radiant wisdom spirit
Of my precious Buddha nature."
HH Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
Arnoud
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Arnoud »

I am glad you guys like my idea. How can we get it to work? I have no idea about coding or developing websites.
Jesse
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Jesse »

Having a service seems like a good idea.

Do the major calendar apps use some common interface for data retrieval? Json or xml, or something?

The actual website itself could be designed to work on all platforms, which isn't as convenient as your device pulling the data down to your local calendar app, but still handy.

The main concern I would have is who would add the events/dates to the calendar app? User accounts / crowd sourced, or an individual
I am glad you guys like my idea. How can we get it to work? I have no idea about coding or developing websites.
Well, someone would need to be willing to host and maintain the application, and domain first. Then the project would need to be planned and broken up into development stages. From there it's just actually building it.
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
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kirtu
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by kirtu »

ghost01 wrote:Having a service seems like a good idea.
I was going to throw a basic web service together this week that generates xml and json with data gleaned from known lama schedules and retreat schedules.
Do the major calendar apps use some common interface for data retrieval? Json or xml, or something?
I don't know but all calendar apps will inevitably move in that direction.
The main concern I would have is who would add the events/dates to the calendar app? User accounts / crowd sourced, or an individual
All of the above with precedence given to authoritative sources. The input to the service can come from multiple sites actually that just stream an rss feed to the service.
Well, someone would need to be willing to host and maintain the application, and domain first. Then the project would need to be planned and broken up into development stages. From there it's just actually building it.
That's what the various clouds are for nowadays. Amazon EC2 can be ultracheap (totally free below a certain data transmission limit).

Kirt
Kirt's Tibetan Translation Notes

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche

"Most all-knowing Mañjuśrī, ...
Please illuminate the radiant wisdom spirit
Of my precious Buddha nature."
HH Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
Arnoud
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Arnoud »

What would it cost to get it all working properly?
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kirtu
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by kirtu »

Nothing for a prototype and probably nothing for an initial working version. After people buy in to using it and lots of data gets sloshed around then some minimal cost. well under $100-$200/month. If this became wildly successful and all the 14 M or so Tibetan Buddhists used it every day and 1000 bytes of information is exchanged then it would cost just over $100/month on Amazon - just 1 k of data moving back and forth is more than quaint but structuring the data in a service could facilitate a low number of bytes actually being transferred - data transfer would need to be capped for rich media based on the total number of users - so 1M users could only exchange 33,333 bytes a day every day - large numbers of users with daily usage forces monetary support but this is a worst case and, outside of the Olympics, not real world scenario. Advertising (ugh!) might then become necessary as a means of support.

Start up costs are essentially free in the tech world (West + tech Asia) - Brazil, Argentina, Eastern Europe and tech Africa (SA [we do have users from there], Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and North Africa) I don't know. Time is the major constraint. After that then scaling can be a problem but that happens with large numbers of users. A site with only a few thousand users intermittently is inconsequential in terms of cost.

Kirt
Kirt's Tibetan Translation Notes

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche

"Most all-knowing Mañjuśrī, ...
Please illuminate the radiant wisdom spirit
Of my precious Buddha nature."
HH Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
Arnoud
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Arnoud »

kirtu wrote:
I was going to throw a basic web service together this week that generates xml and json with data gleaned from known lama schedules and retreat schedules.
Any updates on this? :-)
Punya
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Punya »

http://www.buddhistcalendar.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" or .com IN it, one can find any schedule of any Buddhist teacher or center. One can also search based on area and time. 
I was thinking along these lines recently when a family friend asked about available buddhist 'lectures'. There really is a need. Did you run into problems with the website idea Kirt?
We abide nowhere. We possess nothing.
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meepmeep
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by meepmeep »

Interesting. If you guys need some graphic design help, let me know. I could donate some time.
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kirtu
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by kirtu »

Punya wrote:
http://www.buddhistcalendar.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" or .com IN it, one can find any schedule of any Buddhist teacher or center. One can also search based on area and time. 
I was thinking along these lines recently when a family friend asked about available buddhist 'lectures'. There really is a need. Did you run into problems with the website idea Kirt?
No I forgot about it. Because I do have some demands on my time and an extreme lack of resources it'll take me a few weeks to get going. But the main thing is that I forgot. I'll get the initial steps done by Sunday.

Kirt
Kirt's Tibetan Translation Notes

"Even if you practice only for an hour a day with faith and inspiration, good qualities will steadily increase. Regular practice makes it easy to transform your mind. From seeing only relative truth, you will eventually reach a profound certainty in the meaning of absolute truth."
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

"Only you can make your mind beautiful."
HH Chetsang Rinpoche

"Most all-knowing Mañjuśrī, ...
Please illuminate the radiant wisdom spirit
Of my precious Buddha nature."
HH Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
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Dan74
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Re: Website Idea's

Post by Dan74 »

Common-sense wiki, where people can share everything from the shoelace fix for oil-leaks, century-old remedies for kids' colic, 5-minute meal ideas, great bedtime stories, etc. With criteria for backing it up either with scientific research, 'tried-and-true' - old folk remedy or some vids or illustrations for new inventions.

Down-to-earth Progressive Newspaper
- take progressive politics back from the elites and bring it back to the common man and woman.
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