HarvardIdeas

Your idea here...
The Harvard Athletics site could use a redesign, including better organization and layout of content.
I'd like to see a really simple computer program that displays a calendar - no events, no holidays, just days of the week and dates. Dashboard widgets on a Mac are way too slow, and every time I want to see a calendar I have to google one. I wish I could just have them open in a window (maybe as a desktop background, as long as it changed every month).
An iphone/Android app with headlines from The Crimson. A variation on this idea could be an app designed for alumni/parents, which would compile headlines from The Crimson as well as other university publications like the Harvard Gazette.
Why not to track city buses the same way Harvard shuttles are tracked?
publicize the cs50 pages - i didn't even know about them until tonight
location app - Blackberry has an app where people can find out where their friends are and join them - make one for Harvard
Enhance school spirit - make my.harvard more centralized and accessible, make it a page where people automatically look to find events and news - change the graphics to make people excited
The Harvard library system has the worst website in the world! It makes no sense. Fix it!
We need a Senior Sale website to log items across houses because everything is sold on house email lists, which is stupid because it's only pooling 1/13 of the people to try to move things out. Basically you just need an item listing/photo website (kind of like the now-defunct Hmarket or whatever it was called), that anyone can post to with prices, bargaining, and maybe bids?
Have the course selection too at my.harvard.edu export to google calendar and other services
I <3 Harvard they way it is.
A better events calendar for Harvard.
Someone could design a better online interface to record running and walking distances than those currently available. You could type in the starting point street address on a Google Map, and then draw the route traveled on the map. It would allow you to double, triple, etc., the route, if traveling on the same path. It would tell you the distance traveled. You could input your time, and it could tell you your speed and calculate calories expended. And it could be an iPhone app.
An application to download all Facebook photos tagged of me.
A website that tells you which computers have certain programs downloaded on it, like solid works :)
A new slideshow tool. The ones most teachers use now are slow and do not work well in Firefox.
I'm from Brazil .Help for translations becuse i don't comprend. Sou Brazileiro e gostaria que voces coloca-se uma legenda em toda as aulas do youtube,pois alguns videos tem closed caption e outros n�o tem por favor agilizem para que o resto do mundo possa acompanhar esse fant�stico curso.
Ada Lovelace day to celebrate women in programming
Someone should tap into the list of people swiped into the dining hall at a given time so that people can check on their iPhones which dining halls are least crowded.
Someone should create a website that tracks which laundry machines are open, and allows people to reserve a specific machine via credit card for fifteen minutes so that no one takes the machine before you reach the laundry room.
What we really need is a community room reservation system (I'm thinking one for undergraduates, but it could be applied to other purposes). There are a lot of houses with rooms available for student group use without any real clear way as to go about officially reserving them, and there are conflicts between student groups which could be easily resolved with an online reservation tool. You just need a list of all the "rentable" rooms in the houses and a calendared reservation system wherein student groups can log in and place reservations rather than running to the paper lists on the doors, or finding out that another group actually was using that Common Room at X o'clock. This would be most excellent, and, I think, not too hard to implement.
Navigation map on Smartphones via using GPS... Typing in a building on campus, the program should find your location and draw your best route in means of walking or going by car. Ömer KAYA
Make a Adobe Air application for viewing the lecture,making quick notes,reading scribes from TFs and ssh in one window
A file-sharing network like Shakespeer. Pretty much every other college has one
create a program that allows people to write feedback about the room they lived in. This could be useful when it comes to lottery time, but also for house upkeep (though NOT to replace work request forms). It should have ratings on various factors, but also allow space for the little things you only notice when living there: noise pollution from X; the bathroom is laid out; dark; light comes in at such and such a time, etc.
Create a lecture video system that allows slides from the professors powerpoint to be shown side-by-side with the lecture video. Bonus points if you can time the slide transitions to the lecture. If you want to get really aggressive with timing, look at how OneNote (in office, available free through the MSDN student alliance) deals with timing of notes vs. audio recording.
Create a better way for courses to post files -- in big classes downloads become interminably slow.
Redesign the course shopping tool so you can search by q score, and so it doesnt crash when my harvard does.
Ok so lots of people order stuff from the grill and then don't pick it up. This amounts to alot of waste. The same happens with bag lunches but now HUDS charges those who don't pick up their orders. Since it started, unclaimed bag lunches have dropped from 10 to 1. CS50 needs to institute something similar for the grill. I'm thinking computerize the ordering system? Instead of the current paper and pencil setup, maybe people could punch in their orders into a laptop and then it would be immediately transfered to the kitchen. The catch is that to be able to place an order, you must enter your ID number, this way those who renege on their orders can be charged accordingly. About a month ago there were over 90 unclaimed orders one week. The number fluctuates but it is still very high.
The problem with blocking groups is that people rarely establish social circles of exactly 8 people; half the group can be complete strangers to the other half. I can envision a Facebook app that finds groups of eight freshmen who are all mutual friends, thereby automating the awkward process of establishing blocking groups.
I'd love for someone to develop a front end to the e-journal access system for the library -- currently you have to go through an absurd number of clicks and windows to retrieve a PDF of an article, and in principle one should only have to fill in fields for the name, volume, issue, and starting page of the journal.
Add an option on harvard college facebook to allow us to search by room #
When you have your courses selected for the semester there could be a tool that would automatically compile the dates of lecture topics and assignments from across the different syllabi and put them on a google calendar or on a spreadsheet or something.
If you want to sign up for a machine at Hemminway, you have to go in person to sign your name. I would love someone to create a website where you can reserve a machine online so you dont have to go there just to sign up for later.
Harvard Chat Roulette... see chatroulette.....the idea would be to have this at harvard
To reserve a practice room, Freshmen still have to go to FDO and register on a sheet of paper. Save some trees and some time- website!
How about a party tracker with some form of GPS built in? Something that lets Harvard kids walking around on a weekend know where the nearest party is and its capacity so that once a party's full people don't waste their time getting there.
stop door dropping or poster flyering somehow.
a harvard site to help seniors find other harvard-associated roommates once we hit the "real world"; a not as sketchy version of craigslist, but with potential roommate making suggestions like the freshmen rooming application
There are always hordes of people walking around on Friday and Saturday nights looking for a party... texting their friends to find a party... and asking anyone who will listen if they know where the party's at?! A website where you could list parties you hear about (that are open to everyone) would be wonderful!
We should have the ability to request left-handed desks in rooms. The desks that come with house or dorm rooms have the leg opening on the left side and the drawers on the right, thereby leaving most of the working space on the right side of the desk top. This is probably inconvenient for left-handed people and a desk where the design is reversed may make working on the desks easier for them.
As a photo editor at the Crimson newspaper, it pains me how much paper we waste in printing for the student body and larger Harvard community when more and more people are turning to our website for their school news. Could we have some sort of online tool where people could say whether or not they will actually read a print copy so we could set the press more effectively in the future?
a harvard site for snowboarders: updates on conditions and also message board to get groups together.
Online summer experience funding application process instead of waiting in line in the basement of CGIS south and filing through sheets of papers.
Sectioning for classes: If you were to revise the sectioning tool to include the calendar application from my.harvard, students would be able to track their preferences and times that they could be potentially sectioned in order to avoid being doubled up. For example, if Johnny was trying to section for History 1 and English 2, and they both had 10 possible section times, the tool would allow them to place "ghost" sections on their calendars to see where their preferences had been stated. That way, they could avoid clustering up a number of their top choices, reducing the likelihood of being placed into conflicting sections.
Tell me when the laundry machines are available so I don't have to drag my hamper down 4 flights of stairs and be greeted by a bunch of full machines!
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See a problem or inefficiency or need on campus that a program or website could solve?