I love Hacker News, who doesn't? There's a couple things I thought could come in handy.
- A way for me to see if my karma is improving today without having to go back to Hacker News and hit refresh constantly.
- I'd like notifications that there are new comments on stories that I've submitted.
A Google chrome extension seems like a good fit for something like this.
Right now this does just #1. If you are logged in to Hacker News and load this extension, it will poll Hacker News to get your karma. It will take a baseline of your current karma just once per day and show you the differential (if there is one) as a little "badge" on top of the "Y" icon in your browser extensions bar.
The comment Growl-like notifications.