Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is one of the use-cases lots of people've thought up for location services + AR, over the last decade-plus.
It has the following problems:
1) A bad chicken/egg critical-mass problem for adoption. (Apple, Google, and maybe Facebook are best positioned to overcome this, if they built the feature in to their OS or apps)
2) Content moderation.
3) Even if you treat it as a friends-and-family thing rather than a more broadly social experience (which solves #1 and #2 fairly well) AR on a screened device is approximately 1,000x worse to use than on the hypothetical non-dorky and practically-useful-battery-life AR glasses that every major tech company seems to expect in our nearish future (judging by their continued emphasis on AR, despite its being kind-of a shit and gimmicky interface outside some niche uses on current hardware)
I suspect 2 and 3 are why FB, Google, or Apple haven't taken on the challenge in 1, yet. I expect they will if/when 3 gets solved, and this kind of real-world commenting/tagging thing will be widespread in a hurry.
This has literally been done tens of not hundreds of times. It’s probably one of the go-tos for students in any kind of art/hci class. I did it myself back in 2007 as a student with a partnership with Telefonica and the Catalan government in Spain!
every "hackathon" I went to for years had some try a variation of this. and "bill-splitting" apps. but... wtf - you're an adult who can afford an apple smart phone. how many times are you "splitting a bill" and having to settle up with people such that this is such a burden that you'll want to use an app for that? that one truly flummoxed me, but every hackathon event (pre-covid) I went to had people talking about this sort of problem.
>Clipboards are perishable, can be lost, tampered with, etc.
They sure are easy to set up and use though.
>Don't know what you mean by Siemens, Microsoft & PTC
I mean the corporations that already sell software licenses to factories have AR offerings that integrate with their systems.
Convincing smaller shops to convert from a clipboard mounted to the machine to an app is probably more realistic than a start-up getting conquest sales from these companies.
Had a similar idea years ago, but thought more of a gps-located twitter. A tweets sticks to a location an can be private or public. People who use the app may have access to special deals. Monetizing in the sense of coupons. The app would incentivize people to explore and find gps-tweets.
It's not a bad idea, but the landing page needs more clear non-video illustrations of exactly what the experience looks like. The videos are somewhat helpful but they are so jumpy with lots of quick cuts that it's hard to get a good look.
Have you considered linking this to Notion / Roam Research API etc?
Higher level concept than standalone 'sticky note' is worth exploring. Lots of indigenous cultures were/are based on memory techniques based on tying specific pieces of knowledge to exact locations: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29759605-the-memory-code
This is awesome, I would love to see this as a feature in some documentation tools. It should not be the only way to consume it, but being able to put notes on a physical device could be awesome in some industrial applications.
Neat idea, it just needs to be less centralized. A lot more people (myself included) would be interested if this was a federated protocol or API, and not limited just to iPhones. The real limiting factor here is going to be how well you can get other devices to work with it and developing the extensibility.
Not a bad suggestion but I would suggest that OP focuses on the main features rather than something like this. Otherwise you'll have a handful of very happy HN'ers while missing out on 95% of the market that doesn't care about a federated protocol.
Interesting concept! Personally, I'm not seeing much in terms of a practical application here but possibly a recreational one? I'm imagining a game of clue where you follow the notes to some sort of geocache location.
Oh, I see, sorry. I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that you wouldn't disappear if the wall was painted over, but that you would want it to disappear.
I’ll add one more comment as a person who once worked on something similar to this. It looks like lots of people were working on “location based tweeting” around 10 years ago.
It makes sense as around that time Twitter was growing fast and location based services like Foursquare and Gowalla were popular. As well as Google/Niantic Ingress.
Our iteration was based on the concept of “shouts” that had a location and a visibility radius. Reshouts would increase the radius further.
Twitter lets you search for tweets near any location. It's not an exact location because nobody really wants strangers on the internet to know their exact location.
A decade ago, there was a similar product called "Sekai Camera" [1]. In Japan it was heavily hyped and then spectacularly failed. Maybe it was too early. Maybe the implementation was bad. Or the idea isn't as great as it appears. We'll see.
I started a company that did something very similar. Flook.it - We had grand ideas of locating all of the worlds geo data into what we called a location browser. We were one of the first apps on the iPhone. Still think it has legs...
I'd like to use this around my house. We are renting it to some friends this summer, and it would be great to stick notes around each room, explaining various quirks and where things are. But it's a bit weird to "publish" the notes and have my house show up on a map. Is there a way to "not publish" my notes publicly, but perhaps be able to share them selectively via e.g. a URL or an invite in the app?
For static notes paper and pencil is the simplest and best technology. Smartphone app might come into picture if you want the notes to be dynamic or have personalized content.
"DON'T TOUCH THIS HANDLE - IT LEAKS!" -- it's sort of hard to explain exactly what handle I'm talking about in a bedside note, but trivial with virtual (or real) sticky notes.
There is potentially a lot of information I want to share, and it would be weird to have dozens of notes all over the house. Plus it would be fairly natural for the renters to read them and then immediately remove them, and then, weeks later, forget what they said; "Wait, what's the trick to getting the bath temperature right? Wish I hadn't removed that sticky note!"
Also, I can spend the next week+ building up the "library" of notes as I go through the house, vs. having to do it as a "last chore" before we leave the house, putting sticky notes all over the darn place and trying to prevent my 3 and 5 year old children from grabbing them.
And we could re-use the virtual notes with zero effort the next time we rent the house.
I'd say the same the same thing that stops (most of people) from writing shitty things on the walls (most of ppl don't feel the urge to) + usual moderation/flagging.
Cool to see this space get some more activity. Wasn't this the general idea of Color Labs [1] way back like 10 years ago? It was a neat social experiment that suffered from over-hype and geographical limitations of networking effects.
57 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadIt has the following problems:
1) A bad chicken/egg critical-mass problem for adoption. (Apple, Google, and maybe Facebook are best positioned to overcome this, if they built the feature in to their OS or apps)
2) Content moderation.
3) Even if you treat it as a friends-and-family thing rather than a more broadly social experience (which solves #1 and #2 fairly well) AR on a screened device is approximately 1,000x worse to use than on the hypothetical non-dorky and practically-useful-battery-life AR glasses that every major tech company seems to expect in our nearish future (judging by their continued emphasis on AR, despite its being kind-of a shit and gimmicky interface outside some niche uses on current hardware)
I suspect 2 and 3 are why FB, Google, or Apple haven't taken on the challenge in 1, yet. I expect they will if/when 3 gets solved, and this kind of real-world commenting/tagging thing will be widespread in a hurry.
There used to be an app that allowed to tag and write things on wall. It's of course only visible when you are on the spo.
I am huge believer in the coming of time and location restricted layering of data/art/app.
Imagine having to tap into the work history of a machine and add latest repair works and notes for others.
Don't know what you mean by Siemens, Microsoft & PTC.
One alternative is to have QR codes that point to a dataset in a database.
They sure are easy to set up and use though.
>Don't know what you mean by Siemens, Microsoft & PTC
I mean the corporations that already sell software licenses to factories have AR offerings that integrate with their systems.
Convincing smaller shops to convert from a clipboard mounted to the machine to an app is probably more realistic than a start-up getting conquest sales from these companies.
Higher level concept than standalone 'sticky note' is worth exploring. Lots of indigenous cultures were/are based on memory techniques based on tying specific pieces of knowledge to exact locations: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29759605-the-memory-code
[0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
A sticky note placed on a wall with something written on it should disappear if it's painted over. How do you handle that?
What about indoors where gps may not work?
Why?
It makes sense as around that time Twitter was growing fast and location based services like Foursquare and Gowalla were popular. As well as Google/Niantic Ingress.
Our iteration was based on the concept of “shouts” that had a location and a visibility radius. Reshouts would increase the radius further.
https://findery.com/
Technology doesn't have to be the answer for everything.
There is potentially a lot of information I want to share, and it would be weird to have dozens of notes all over the house. Plus it would be fairly natural for the renters to read them and then immediately remove them, and then, weeks later, forget what they said; "Wait, what's the trick to getting the bath temperature right? Wish I hadn't removed that sticky note!"
Also, I can spend the next week+ building up the "library" of notes as I go through the house, vs. having to do it as a "last chore" before we leave the house, putting sticky notes all over the darn place and trying to prevent my 3 and 5 year old children from grabbing them.
And we could re-use the virtual notes with zero effort the next time we rent the house.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs