delomos: Great! A have a few in order of interest:

Idea 1:
A good one will be to work (improve) on this site (Nairaland) -- there is little question that this app needs major work and of course give back to this community, even if it's just the software section alone --
So, what needs to be worked on (patches):
a. UI.
b. Tighter Notification system.
c. Social Media Integration (references, cross-post from FB,or Tw?).
d. Better interaction.

delomos: Well, and of course, all that depends on IF the proprietor of the site is willing to bend that way, most likely not but I can dream.


Idea 2:
A social knowledge(QA?) portal with an integrated code review environment (the second half is already solved via many APIs & Librarys, part A is where the challenge is).

delomos:
Idea 3:
An Afrocentric "Reddit or Digg".

Kobojunkie:
Let's please stay away from Nairaland. As developers, there is a vast world out there outside of Nairaland, that I don't see why we should even poke it with any stick we have got working with. If the owners of Nairaland want to change it, they will do it on their own.

Kobojunkie:
Please be less vague. Why would developers spend their time building such and what is there to gain please? Just curious.

Kobojunkie:

Why do we need an Afrocentric "Reddit or Digg". I ask again because I don't even know what Reddit or Digg really does or the value those services add to the lives of those who use 'em, so I am curious as to why I or anyone with spare time would want to invest that in rebuilding what already exists, only so he/she can claim it is more afrocentric.

Kobojunkie:
....We need great ideas, not your usual 'social networking and not much else' applications or the average computer project subject picked up by students down in nigeria

delomos:
you made valid points, and this reminds me of GitHub's (and many other service) models, see attached (At the footer of GitHub repo page).


NairaLand is a knowledge portal, it's model is a bit dated but classic, ppl come start a topic, other comment, etc
StackOverflow (and it's siblings) is a knowledge portal, in form of a Q/A with many other interesting subtleties.... : both are trying to solve the knowledge problem and harnessing the wisdom of the crowds.

In Nigeria, there is a huge knowledge gap, not because there aren't ppl with varying knowledge but because there isn't the avenue to tap that "wisdom of the crowd". So this portal (perhaps narrowed to folks with interest in development/software) will be an avenue where folks can collaboratively solve problems, track progress of problems you're contributing to, find mento[r/ee] you you can lead/follow -- two is certainly better than one, and more even better.

It's give folks who don't other have the avenue to insights that might other not have been possible.



Reddit/Digg helps sort relevant stories by people (which poses a serious chicken/egg problem). And the problem that solves is geting relevant news in the mass of news floating around and of course, people create their stories around them. I guess you can see how an Afro-centric one might be different, especially considering the intellectual challenge of coming up with a passable design and sweet algorithms -- it's one of those you solve cause it's interesting.

Apart from the condescending ton of "...down in Nigerian," great ideas are a myth, there is no such thing as a great idea, just an FYI.

Kobojunkie: ^^ huh?

Kobojunkie: Please provide better description of each idea you present.

kodewrita: Casting my bread upon the waters:

What's more==> It has absolutely no commercial value whatsoever but is a labor of love if attempted.

A-ZeD:
A Budget Monitoring/Performance Application.

Monitor the budget of the both federal and state governments

kodewrita: @Kobojunkie As creator, you can add a poll and even edit the polls. Just add it and let people vote.

delomos:

Love this, it can also be extended to make people vote/discuss on issues (perhaps those on the houses) -- a sort of open-governance platform! Brilliant bro!

SimonAndal: This is my baby, so it's really, really hard letting it out on cyberspace: a 'protean' app, sort of. It basically is an app that reads any format. Eg. Open up the app, load what ever file you have: .jar, .sis, .bar, .apk, .mp4, .pdf, .jpeg, etc. whatever format.
How many billions of lines of code d'ya think that's gonna take?

A-ZeD:

The subsidy debacle/probe inspired the idea of a budget monotoring app. i started it as a side project but i stopped at the design stage cos other issues came up.

delomos:

I actually lunched a parallel campaign in the midst of the subsidy thingy itself -- www.occupy9ja.com & the counterpart twitter hash and names. The idea then was to use the power of social media to push some collective bargaining by the citizens. It turned out after the protest and all, there is more to fixing things than clever looking app/sites, not mention the "God-fathers."

A major huddle that will be crossed here is: can people put their head where their body is (and the obvious problem of is the government information of budget policies open)? Which is the challenge of the aforementioned.