

Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting - BenSchaechter
http://gopollgo.com/do-you-prefer-starbucks-or-peets-coffee

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ecaroth
Small suggestion... you should make the vote option text a label. Very
annoying when you try and click it but realize you cannot, and are forced to
click the actual radio button.

~~~
BenSchaechter
Good suggestion. I'll add that in.

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alextp
Skipping questions shouldn't be that hard. I don't care for either Peet's or
Starbucks, nor do I care for Ke$ha or Kate Perry.

~~~
BenSchaechter
So right now there are 3 polls I think. And I have very odd polls that I've
made. So that is part of the problem. I hope to make something in the future
where you can follow topics and get emailed polls that interest you.

But I think you're right. Skipping should be easier. I'll try to figure out a
good solution for this.

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Wilduck
If you click vote without selecting any of the options, it looks like it's
processing your vote, but never does anything. There should probably be some
message telling you to choose something, rather than make you think that
there's something going on when you submit a blank vote.

Other than that, cool interface.

~~~
BenSchaechter
Ah, awesome. Nice find. I'll get this fixed. Thanks!

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vgurgov
Hey Ben, As i mentioned on FB - I like your design and implementation. One
thing that i noticed just now- when i click "vote", would be cool if "take
another poll" would appear somewher near so i dont have to move mouse along
whole screem. i believe its your major call to action once i voted, right?
small thing, but its quite annoying and slows my voting process which i
believe is quite fun by itself. good luck with this!

~~~
BenSchaechter
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to best solve this problem without
complicating the UI.

I've thought about making everything ajax so you can use your arrow keys to
navigate through polls much easier. The overhead for that would take some
time.

I believe we may launch publicly launch as is (after bugs are fixed), then go
from there. I'll keep you updated though.

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blakerc
Nice app. I like your implementation -- particularly how you encourage users
to make their own polls with the orange notification. I recently built a
surprisingly similar polling application. Check it out below:

Is Starbucks coffee better than Peet's coffee?

Yes: <http://grok.io/yuc> No: <http://grok.io/nuc>

~~~
mkjones
I think the "take another poll!" call to action is a good idea for keeping
people engaged, assuming there's content. Grok.io needs that - so far it's
more concentrated on answering a question accurately than surfacing more
questions for a user. The map is cool too - it'd be even neater if you
inferred location based on IP address.

(I've worked with Blake on grok.io a bit.) Shall we try:

Is grok.io's forecasting model going to be more successful's than
gopollgo.com's consensus model? Yes: <http://grok.io/yuS> No:
<http://grok.io/nuS>

~~~
BenSchaechter
Yup. Once we actually are public and people are making polls, I think "take
another poll!" will be very interesting.

We actually _do_ infer location based off of IP address and a few other
things.

Grok.io is cool. I like the look and feel of it.

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Dobbs
When I mouse over a state if it has votes then it stays black after mousing
over another state. If it doesn't have votes it returns to white.

Let me know if you need more details.

Safari 5.0.2 Mac OS X 10.6.5

Also when casting a vote I'd like it to tell me what city/state it recognized
me as. I'm from Provo but there where no votes there, so I'm assuming I'm the
one in Salt Lake.

~~~
BenSchaechter
Yes, this mouseover problem has been confusing me as of late. I'm using JQuery
+ Raphael to interact with the SVG map objects. I need to figure out this bug
(which I believe is something particular to Raphael) by diving into some docs
a bit more.

The geolocation is only as great as your ISP allows. I hope to allow people to
change their region if they're logged in. If anyone happens to know a good
geocoding service, please let me know.

I'll try to get something worked into the interface to show this.

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csouth
I'm guessing the map is for me to put in my location. If so, 2 things. 1 the
area I live in is labeled wrong (email me and I'll point you to it if you want
to fix it), also when I hit take another poll it takes me out to country
level, it should stay.

~~~
BenSchaechter
Actually, your location is determined automatically based off of your IP
address. The map displays the majority votes for their respective regions.

I'll email you about the misspelling, though. Thanks.

~~~
ecaroth
Ben, that interactive map that zooms in with all the counties in a state is
pretty friggin nifty. Did you make that from scratch with a n ip-to-location
data set, or use some kind of location API??

~~~
BenSchaechter
I built everything myself from scratch in regards to the maps. This includes
all vector paths (you wouldn't believe how much work this is), JQuery &
Raphael interaction. There is also some websockets goodness. 90% of everything
is handled in the background then pushed to browsers via websockets (for
browser which support them).

To get location I do a variety of things mostly based off of the IP address of
a user. However, I've built up a lot of meta data around locations which I may
release later on down the road. Happy to talk more if you want to email me.

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ses
Looks nice, although I'm not in the states...

~~~
BenSchaechter
We're adding support for other countries currently. I believe Germany and
France are in there right now...but that is something that is definitely on
the list.

The maps are made with SVG and I make them on my own so they suck up a good
amount of time.

edit:typo.

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kevinburke
Hi, I just voted and your site has been "Processing my vote...." for the last
minute or so. The map is blank.

~~~
BenSchaechter
I believe I just fixed this. Sorry about that. But just to be sure, which
browser are you using?

~~~
kevinburke
It was chrome 9.0.something

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Groxx
Starbucks edit(+"coffee") isn't coffee.

~~~
drewse
"Do you prefer Starbucks or Peet's Coffee?" implies the following: "Do you
prefer Starbucks' [coffee] or Peet's Coffee?" From what I've learned, this
title is grammatically correct.

Here is an explanation:
<http://www.kerryr.net/webwriting/gpwu_punctuation.htm#q5>

~~~
Groxx
Hah xD Didn't realize it could be interpreted that way.

Correction: Starbucks "coffee" isn't coffee.

~~~
drewse
My bad, didn't realize you were joking =]

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Groxx
One should not joke about serious matters such as coffee. I meant what I said.
Starbucks makes black, coffee-smelling crud and _really_ tasty caffeinated-
crud-added super-sugary high-fat drinks.

:)

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drewse
It looks like it's a good idea and the website has a nice design, although
I've never understood how online surveys can be unbiased considering the fact
that the population of voters is definitely biased. Do you have any plans for
making the data more reliable that you're using with the site (e.g. asking
users for how they found the site)?

~~~
BenSchaechter
We track where users voting come from so you can segment by particular
referrers. For example, you could segment votes by Facebook users or Twitter
users.

Mostly, we aim to work with larger websites/companies with large amounts of
website visitors, Twitter followers or Facebook fans to easily aggregate what
their users think.

I'm not positive we'll be able to eliminate bias though. Its on the to-do list
=)

