I think there would be better ways to monetize than that. You could drive massive traffic here if it was collaborative instead of host and customer.

Straight up guys, this feels like the next great social network. Think technical chat roulette, but the people have stored their qualifications and interests so an algorithm can choose who to connect you to (assuming they are logged in to their office hours).

1 on 1 conversations or mentoring is the absolute best. Last year, I taught a guy a little bit of EE in exchange for him looking at the Java I was teaching myself and adding comments, but it was all on IRC. I have to admit, I really like the idea of doing this on Skype.

Does anyone else have major lightbulbs coming on at a really rapid clip because of this post?

I agree that Japan is ahead, but seriously, who gives a crap if every other person in Italy has two cell phone subscriptions? Thats retarded.

Startup.

There are a few EE's lurking around here, myself included. Can you elaborate on what you are trying to build?

My latest thought was to make a bluetooth transmitter which would help me locate my cat using my Android. :)

A few questions: Is this a hobby project or are you hoping to build and sell many units? If it's a hobby project, are you doing it primarily to learn about building hardware? Or do you want this information so much that you'd be willing to buy some product that would do it for you? (eg http://www.surprisinggift.com/GPS-Tracker-Locator-Portable-G...)

Can you constrain the problem? Can you assume the cat is inside your house and you want to know which room it's in? Or is this lowjack for lost pets that wander away from their homes?

Getting a fix on the pet's position is probably the most challenging part. Transmitting information from pet to the web is easier.

You may want to look at the snif tag as an example of pet activity monitoring. It is like fitbit for dogs (or cats). http://www.sniftag.com/

If you just have a proposal, I think it is going to be tough to attract the right talent. I am not necessarily a hacker (or maybe I am, who freaking knows), but I am taking that role on so I can make the first versions of my product. If I can show some traction, I know I won't be wasting anyone's time with my business. Furthermore, the first version doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be good enough to get by.

120 Hz is ambiguous. Are you referring to the display refresh speed? Was the discussion in the context of a specific physical display technology?

Excellent point. You could toss in assembly as yet another choice for the very highly constrained environment (very cheap microcontrollers, although many now have abstractions so you don't actually have to code in assembly directly, it is sometimes necessary).

Nice post. I think I would have a hard time pulling the trigger so quickly after meeting someone, but it sounds like serendipity.