Coming into NYU I felt that there was a lack of community at the university. People from different disciplines weren't able to meet each other and share their ideas. Because NYU didn't have a campus people that studied Art weren't really meeting the people who were studying Business.
There's an untapped potential at NYU. Talking to different people around the university there is an incredible amount of ideas. Art students have amazing ideas about collaborating artistic tools with technology, but they don't have a Computer Science friend to discuss them about. So we created BridgeMe.
BridgeMe is a tool that will allow individuals to collaborate and "Discover" individuals who share the same interests as they do. Suppose you're interested in Music, Photography, Drama but are studying Mathematics. The algorithm will match you up with an individual who has similar interests as you do but won't necessarily have to be studying the same subject. This will allow people who have different ideas and thought patterns to communicate, meet and interact with each other.
It's called interest dating. Essentially the same type of idea as a dating site, but you date each other because you're interested in the same things rather than interested in the same sexuality, qualities etc.
We're still in the process of re-building the site - we completed our prototype in PHP, MYSQL as a way to test our idea and to show the community what we are offering. We got a positive response from different student groups we visited (The Digital Arts Club, Tech@NYU). We're going to rebuild the project in Rails, and our primary feature would have to be a way for individuals to setup events or ways to hold gatherings.
Above & below are screenshots of our prototype, which was built in PHP and designed very quickly. We're going to re-design the website and re-create the features. We also implemented an IDEA feature which would allow individuals to share and comment on ideas that other people have. The first screenshot is the homepage, and the second screenshot is a user profile.
The code is online here.