

Show HN: Mapsaurus, the visual map of the Android Store - c0da
http://mapsaurus.com/

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comatose_kid
Neat UI, like the animation.

The idea is well executed, very slick, but I'm not sure how this site would
help me discover fun new things as the friction is high (eg, have to remember
your site first) - I'd almost want some sort of slide-like toolbar that
scrolled apps with their descriptions at random at the bottom of my computer
screen (yeah, that's distracting, but if I were into trying lots of different
apps and had more time, that might be fine)

One more thing - you have the main headline "Discover great apps for your
Android Phone" and a little below in green you say "Also available on Android"
which seems unnecessary?

edit: I think my mistake might be that I was using it on my mac instead of
using it from an android device (which I don't have) - so that use case makes
more sense....

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c0da
Hey! Thanks for the input.

The subtitle "also available on Android" is a link to the Android Play Store
because we're both a website and a native Android app. I think the Android app
solves a bit of the problem with the friction; if a user has downloaded our
app, they can easily go back to it later without having to remember the name.

I really like the idea of a sliding random list of apps (perhaps trending
ones). The cool thing about our interface is that even if those random apps
aren't perfect for the user, they can still provide great starting points for
exploration.

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DeepDuh
I really like the idea and I hope you will release it for the iOS appstore as
well.

Just a small detail: While sharing it on facebook I noticed that the sharing
popup was cut off by the navigation frame and it was a bit hard to complete
the message.

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zanny
This <http://mapsaurus.com/static/javascript-warning.png> is amazing. Best
"please turn on JS" ever. Dinosaurs have a tendency to do that.

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VertiGuo
Hi! I'm another member of the Mapsaurus team. Alice
(<http://mapsaurus.com/about.html>) drew that up in the middle of a late night
coding session. We think Rex is pretty awesome too.

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ninetax
Wow, this is awesome! How long did this take? What do you use for the map UI?

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c0da
Thanks!

We built it in about 3 months.

We use SVG and d3.js for the web interface. In the Android app, we use native
Canvas (and share Javascript code with the website-- about half of our code is
shared between the Android app and website!)

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alexvay
Great stuff!

Your Android app says "Double _click_ an app to start." I think it would be
more fitting to read "Double tap" instead.

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Kiro
"We're sorry, but our website doesn't work on Android."

A bit funny considering it's for finding Android apps.

~~~
VertiGuo
Sorry, we're going to reword that message. The website itself doesn't work on
mobile browsers, but that's why we provide a link to our native app.

