Idea #1

I've thought about this a few times over the last year and was certain someone would of done it by now.

I TRY to organise my money using Quicken (like MS Money) but I often forget to enter the details into the computer until the end of the month and have to try to remember what I spent the money on. I can never remember most of it, even though I try to keep every receipt I get (100s of them in a file). So started to think about how this could be solved. The main problem is having to be sat at my PC @ home to enter the details.

So started thinking about a phone application that would link in with Quicken or money and let you enter the details on your phone and view your accounts and sync up with the main program when you get home. There are similar application available for PDAs (Pocket Quicken & Pocket Money) but how many people have PDAs and how many have Mobile phones. This has problems as well as you would need a smartphone or similar most phones aren't. So maybe you could update via WAP.

This then led me to think about dropping Money & Quicken and hosting a web service that managed your money. Your accoounts could be stored on a central server then you could access them from any Computer anywhere in the world or connected device (phone/pda) and update/view them. You could use a client program if you wanted and sync with the hosted service.

The only downside to this is that many people would be worried about security and all your financial details being stored in one central place. But this isn't that much different to if you did all your banking with one bank. someone could hack into to it and access your money. Although they may not know what you actually spent your money on or what bills were coming up.

This wouldn't really bother me, benefits would outway the negatives. It would also be less prone to losing you data. It would be like any other online site, regularly backed up with plenty of redundancy in place. I have lost my Quicken data a couple of times over the last few years when I forgot to back it up after formatting my computer (I remeber now!!)

So basically the idea would be to have an online version of Microsoft Money or Quicken accessible from any web browser. The closest I have seen is Egg or Yahoo which allow you to view all your balances in one place but they don't let you do anything else.

I can think of plenty of other benefits but would be on all night describing them all.

If I wrote down and did a fraction of the ideas I come up with I would be a millionaire by now. Thought of a portable music player like the Ipod or MPman long before they appeared after 1st downloading a music file off the net many years ago. Most things do eventually get made, I've forgot most of them, part of the reason I setup a blog in the 1st place was to try and remember stuff.