

Show HN - Rich name popularity analysis via HTML5 - corresation
http://names.yafla.com/

======
crazygringo
Help me, I can't figure out for the life of me what this is.

It suggests to put in "Rob" as a name. I do, I hit "explore", and it says
"Alaska 0" and the map is completely white. I try hitting the down button and
the map is still white. I try dragging the slider, and everything's still
white, except occasionally some state turns a very light gray. (Chrome on
OSX.)

I try putting in multiple names, but it still seems to show only the first one
in the map?

This needs some instructions/explanations. And from the HN title, I thought
this was going to be something about names most associated with rich people...

~~~
haversine
While I agree that some better hinting is necessary, there is an About link at
the top and it's not that hard to get some details about this project through
it.

It's pretty intuitive except when you type a name that is very unpopular as a
registered first name with social security (which is where the data comes from
according to the blog posts behind the About link)

I thought the same thing about "rich people" \- I guess he meant rich as in
"rich dataset"

~~~
crazygringo
Turns out, if your browser isn't wide enough, the About link inexplicably
disappears. (1152px is not wide enough, so I never saw it)

But even the About link, once visible, just links to they guy's blog of most
recent posts. There is no direct "about" on that page.

------
nullsoldier
I feel like this could have been a lot better. It appears laggy displaying the
time line. Why does this operate in small increments rather than be analogous?
You can easily interpolate the colors between the previous tick data point and
the next tick data point. It would appear so much better if you did. On top of
that, it was incredibly unintuitive.

I had no idea what the buttons in the bottom left meant. Why is does the
"play" button use a fast forward icon? Why doesn't it turn into a stop or
pause icon when it's playing? When I first opened it, there's no indication of
why I had to select a gender before I could even type a name. Displaying the
input field (it doesn't look truly because it matches the color theme) and the
gender button doesn't inform the user what to do at all.

Overall, it's pretty neat but it's a pretty good example of something that
looks pretty but is the opposite of usable.

~~~
na85
Sadly that's the trend of late. I unsubscribed from /r/dataisbeautiful for
this very reason: tired of seeing pretty-looking but functionally-useless data
visualizations.

~~~
corresation
Is this really "functionally useless"?

I actually find this sidetrack a bit strange as I spent close to no time on
making it look pretty (because I'm generally very poor at doing that), instead
focusing on allowing for an enormous amount of data analysis in a minimal
interface. I understand some interface elements are unintuitive to some, but
that's the nature of sole-developer work where we become myopic about the
obviousness of things (e.g. I chose where things went and how they worked, so
naturally it must seem completely obvious to me, even if it actually isn't).

On the flip side though, and this is just general commentary about how we
analyze works, people who have difficulties assume that _their_ experience is
universal by the exact same myopia.

------
lost-theory
The rise of the -dens:

[http://names.yafla.com/#n=Aiden,Jaden,Braden,Jayden,Kayden&s...](http://names.yafla.com/#n=Aiden,Jaden,Braden,Jayden,Kayden&s=mt)

------
ynniv
The dragging mechanism is irritating. Sometimes the drag sticks, sometimes it
refuses to start, often it selects the whole page. At least allowing a direct
click would provide a workaround. (Chromium community build 30.0.1599.101, Mac
10.8.5)

------
hardwaresofton
Great app! I liked it once I got to use/understand it, but I definitely want
to make some suggestions:

I would suggest that you look into using joyride/introjs to give a user an
idea of how to use the app, and what it is...

I eventually figured out what it was and how to use it, and by that time I
thought it was pretty cool (I like how the sparkline is on the left hand side)
-- but it took far too long to find out what it was/how to use it...

------
pawn
Fun stuff. My mom said she chose my name (Joshua) largely because she didn't
know of anyone else with the same name, yet the year I was born just happened
to be the height of its popularity. I thought it was kind of odd that 10% of
my graduating high school class had the same name (seriously!)

------
dysoco
I never knew "Dylan" (my name) didn't exist until the 80s or so (Apparently).
Why is this? Was the name popular because of Bob Dylan?

p.s: Oh I see, apparently it's a Welsh name (should've known, Dylan Thomas...)
I'm too tired to think.

------
eksith
Nice project! I'm quite shocked how linear the decrease of "Frank" is
[http://names.yafla.com/#n=Frank&s=mt](http://names.yafla.com/#n=Frank&s=mt)

------
iamben
Really interesting, and nicely put together, thanks!

Not being an American and to satisfy my idle curiousity - anyone have any idea
why Benjamin jumps in popularity about 71-77?!

~~~
dangrossman
Perhaps because it was the name of a child on the popular TV show "The
Waltons" from 1971-1981?

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hotpockets
How come some very popular recent female names like hannah (~8th most popular)
and isabella (~4th most popular) don't hardly show up?

~~~
robmcm
Not sure if this is a trick questions, as you used a double negative. If that
was intentional then yes they do show up.

If it was unintentional then perhaps you have male selected, or haven't
scrolled the side panel down. Hannah peaks in 2000.

~~~
hotpockets
Just a technically inaccurate colloquialism. And yes I missed the sex
selector, even though I had explicitly looked for it. Don't know how I missed
it.

~~~
robmcm
No bother, I didn't not miss the slider on the left either. (am I doing it
right?)

------
corresation
I don't expect this to do terribly well, but as a side project that I spent a
few nights on I'd love to know that it provided a little of bit of curiosity
quenching joy for someone. This project was built using the rudiments of HTML5
with SVG, and an architecture purpose built for a very high level of caching
(both on the client, and on the proxy that sits in front a the Go instance
hosting the SS database dump). The end result is extremely high performance
and, I think, eminently usable.

~~~
haversine
I like this a lot. My wife and I have been having fun coming up with names for
the past 15 minutes.

It does need a bit of polishing but not to the degree some commenters here are
suggesting. You have an explanation linked through "About" to a blog post.
Some of that detail should probably be on the graph, e.g., explaining what
clicking on the legend does.

Nice work!

------
elwell
[http://names.yafla.com/#n=Kanye&s=mt](http://names.yafla.com/#n=Kanye&s=mt)

------
ganessh
It would have been great if you have integrated "arrows keys" to navigate
across the years.

------
robmcm
Is it Rich as in wealthy people with that name or rich as in the quality and
depth of it's content?

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actionscripted
As a Michigander, I love this thing.

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corresation
Based upon the excellent comments to this, I made some usability enhancements
--

-a tip telling you to select a gender

-the year will automatically start in a "play" mode (autoprogressing), starting at the first year with non-0 data. This should help those cases where people pull up results and think it is malfunctioning or otherwise not working because of a clear map.

-The autoprogress is clearly indicated by the color of the associated button.

Thank you all.

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dinkumthinkum
OK, looks great, what is it?

