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Ask HN: Review my weekend project - MobilePly

27 points by Jordanian ↗ HN
http://mobileply.com

Mobileply is remote GPS that runs on most GPS enabled phones with a browser (Android, iPhone, some BBs). The app starts tracking you and gives you an id to share with friends, they can enter the id and see where you are on a map, it's as simple as that.

My roommate and I had this idea when we both moved to a new city for new jobs. We never knew where we were or where other people were, and simply saying what intersection or roads we/they were on was far too annoying and time consuming to deal with.

Over the year we've found many useful applications for this, but we're trying to figure out what to do next. So I'm asking the HN community for some feedback and advice. What should we do with our weekend project?

Does anyone else find it useful? Any suggestions for possible uses?

21 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 16.4 ms ] thread
hcarmichel
I just tried this on my nexus one and it works pretty well. Surprised at how accurate the GPS is. The mobile version is very nice too. I like how it is just a map with controls overlayed, very clean. I think this could be very useful for meeting up with friends. Eliminates the "where are you" conversation. I am going to try this out with a friend later when I am actually moving.
djb_hackernews
Not to be a total downer but you have a lot of competition in this space. If you plan on building this out so it is widely adoptable you'll need to differentiate yourselves.
Jordanian
Thanks for the feedback!

We've seen a few competitors out there that are really big. Glympse (http://glympse.com/) I think is the biggest one and we tested out their app and weren't impressed with their mobile to mobile experience. If one person is on a computer the other on their phone their app is amazing but if you don't have flash all they do is show a picture of a blurry map to show the other person's location.

Do you know of other competitors out there?

corin_
"Ready to start sharing your where? Get Glympse" made me vomit too much to read on any further.
djb_hackernews
google latitude, foursquare, brightkite, pretty much any geolocation based social network.
jordanmessina
Looking at this and these competitors there's a few things I like a lot more with this app:

Google Lat - Disgusting barrier to entry, 99% of my friends don't know what it is yet they HAVE to be a friend of mine on the service to see where I am.

Foursquare,Gowalla,Brightkite - Not Realtime tracking, I'm not going to 'check in' every 10 seconds to achieve the same effect. Also these are much more 'stalkerish' while this app is pretty anonymous.

This seems like the opposite of a social network and more of just a utility.

mrduncan
Please don't use sequential IDs for this.

I went to the "Track Me" link and got a tracking id of 54. I was then able to look through plenty of other peoples locations for IDs less than 54. I'd suggest switching to something that's much harder to guess.

With that harshness out of the way (sorry :)), it does seem like a pretty cool little app. I could see myself using it for a long road-trip or something so that others could track my progress.

Jordanian
Good point, we'll switch this soon. The current code base is more for proof of concept purposes. We were also concerned with having easy ids to send others. We'll get on this!
mrduncan
I'd suggest something like the way that http://bit.ly handles their urls. Auto-generate a short string or let users (maybe after a registration or something) enter their own.

It'd be nice to be able to say "Keep track of my progress at http://mobileply.com/matt or something similar. Heck, I could see myself even paying a couple bucks for a nice url like that.

brosephius
just a small side note, doesn't work for me if I put www. in the address
Jordanian
Looking into this! I can't believe the little things you miss when you're just trying to get something out early for people to see :)
corin_
Tried it on my BB Bold 9700, asked permission to get my location (and I gave it), then just stuck on "Map Loading..."

Should it work for this handset? (UK, in case that matters)

hcarmichel
I tried using on my work BB and it wouldn't load the map. Than I remembered that google maps won't work at all in the BB browser. When I try to go to maps.google.com it tells me to download the google maps app for BB.
[dead] bhellman1
Sounds interesting. Can you answer the following for me? With mobileply I can now do X which previously replaces Y and is so much better because???
bravo_sierra
Definitely useful. Love the simplicity of it. Foursquare and Gowalla have too much going on, and it's weird to pull out your Spot at a restaurant.

One enhancement might be to use the location of your friend to get directions to each other.

Charging for something like mobileply.com/matt sounds like a good idea too.

My other thought comes from how Spot does it - they use passwords to make sure you can't get in just by knowing the URL. You could even mix that up so the password you give your mum only lets her know you're in Chicago, while someone else can see you're on 42nd & Grand. Maybe that's too much though.

The simplicity of it is the best part - keep it up.

mattfrench
pretty cool application. Working on a startup that uses location as well, it is nice to see the simplicity being applied to something like this. It has potential, keep up the good work
samratjp
Well, this is kind of insulting to YC and it's longest running posterchild, Loopt - http://www.loopt.com/

Can't believe no one here mentioned it.

kliebles
I think what sets this apart from sites like Loopt, Gowalla and Foursquare is that those sites are oriented towards the social networking aspect of geolocation. Those sites are community based where as this seems more like a nice little utility app for giving someone directions. The real time tracking and simplicity is what makes this unique I think. Not sure where these guys are going to take this but I would urge them to not turn it into a another geo-community to find new "friends" and "places".
samratjp
That just tells me that you've missed my point about missing Loopt's early days on the list. If you've been an active member of the HN community (judging by how long you've been on HN - probably a throwaway account for downvoting?) or know about Loopt's early days, they did exactly what this app is trying to solve, which was to solve the problem of "Where you at?".

Yes, I agree Loopt and the sort are more social/community oriented these days. But, back in the day before Foursquare, Gowalla and even the iPhone (and Android) were alive, Loopt did this first and did it rather gosh darn well.

That aside, the app is pretty neat. It'd be nice to have an embeddable version in the future so let's say you arrive at a restaurant or whatever, and your location could be broadcasted or narrowcasted to the rest of the group. I could see this working with maybe a facebook group or whatever.

ebun
Others have already mentioned competition but now you have a bigger player, Facebook, on the playing field.

FB has tried to make their application as simple as possible and my understanding (I'm not in the US so I can't use it) is that it basically uses your GPS to tell you the location you're in (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). This sounds like a big part of your app.

How will you respond/differentiate yourself as a response?