

Show HN: Spotsy – iPhone app to discover the world through Instagram - wlindner
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spotsy/id714622289?mt=8

======
grabeh
If I had an iPhone I'd take a gander.

I like [http://geophoto.grabeh.net/](http://geophoto.grabeh.net/) for looking
at photos around the world, but that may have something do with the fact I
built it.

~~~
wlindner
Cool! Does this use the Flickr API?

~~~
grabeh
Indeed it does - via Node.js - the code is here:
[https://github.com/grabbeh/geoflickr](https://github.com/grabbeh/geoflickr)

------
josephjrobison
In a way this is kind of a workaround to the original Color app idea right?
Not exactly the same, but color wanted you do be able to see photos of other
people around you that weren't your friends, kind of the same concept, which
is cool.

~~~
wlindner
Yeah, there are definitely similarities to what Color was trying to do.
Originally I made the app to only see photos close by, but realized most users
wanted to see other places.

It also uses Instagram photos so there's already a ton of useful content,
unlike Color's approach.

------
resu
I don't have an iphone and can't try the app.

Is it similar to [http://smwh.re](http://smwh.re) and
[http://www.travyde.com/explore](http://www.travyde.com/explore) ?

~~~
BenjaminN
Hey man, thanks for linking Somewhere. Funny how Travyde totally stole my
design! I'm glad their whole website is awful.

------
nanidin
I'll check this out - I had a similar idea last summer while attending large
festivals. That it would have been nice to see what people were posting on
instagram around me. I'll give this a try next time I'm in a populated area!

------
cdevroe
I've been looking for an application like this for a while now. I had toyed
with a few that simply didn't fit. Now I have an application that will help me
plan kayaking trips, vacations, events, etc. Great work!

~~~
wlindner
Wow, that is so awesome to hear! I hope you enjoy using the app.

------
lalos
A good lesson people can learn from your app is that you offer a good chunk of
functionality and what to expect before logging in and that motivates the end
user to login and keep on browsing. Awesome work!

~~~
wlindner
Yeah, that was an important feature for onboarding new users. I wish people
didn't have to log in, but Instagram (understandably) has API limits that
require logging in once you have a lot of activity.

------
bitsweet
Nice work.

I've always wondered why Instagram has made it so difficult to find photos by
location.

Update: why do you require my Instagram username/pwd when they support OAuth?
Not a fan

~~~
wlindner
RE not using OAuth: I did that because users had a lot of trouble using the
oauth login, so I basically just pass the users credentials to the oauth page.
If you prefer oauth just press "Forgot Password" in the login popup and press
the go back link, it will bring you to the standard Instagram login and will
work the same.

~~~
bitsweet
that worked. I'd probably feel comfortable if there was just a disclaimer that
said you don't store credentials on the login page. I'm probably too trusting
but I like it when product designers are thoughtful enough to explain what is
done with credentials/data.

------
sixQuarks
Not really useful when so many geolocated images are so random. I don't
necessarily want to see people's selfies or food pictures if I'm trying to see
pics from a certain location.

~~~
ahmadss
please do provide some feedback / insight on what you'd like to see. thanks!

~~~
sixQuarks
Well, if I'm just wanting to check out photos, I want to see actual photos of
the places. Not people taking selfies, close-up shots of food, or photos that
are not relevant.

The value of spotsy, however, is that you get to see which local spots have
the most instagram photos associated with it, which provides value in a
different sort of way.

I can see the usefulness of the app in that regard, but not as a photo
browsing app.

------
danso
Instagram's search-by-geo-coordinates endpoint is one feature that makes the
API so valuable and interesting...Other services have it, of course, but
Instagram's version has higher value because geolocation is turned on by
default...I read somewhere that maybe 2-5% of Tweets have geodata, whereas
Instagram content is at 30 to 50%.

The investigative newsroom ProPublica (disclosure: my former employer) had a
fun use-case, in which they knew of a lobbyist-politician ski resort retreat,
looked up the location of the resort, and then used Instagram's location/date
filters to see who was on the trip (at least one lobbyist posted a photo from
their own publicly identifiable account):
[http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/a-super-simple-tool-
to-...](http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/a-super-simple-tool-to-search-
instagram-by-time-and-location)

~~~
maxerickson
We need to develop a social norm that sharing something is not necessarily
permission to publicize it. There's lots of contexts where it is probably
fine, but I think there are also quite some contexts where it isn't so fine.

I'm not trying to get up on a high horse and preach, it's just kind of gross
to completely change the sort of attention that is being directed at something
that someone shared.

I know that some of the response to this will be to not post it publicly if
you don't want people to see it, but that's exactly the thought I want to push
back against, just because something is available at a public url doesn't mean
it is a cool thing to point reddit at it.

~~~
danso
I agree that social norms need to become better (i.e., people need to be
better and more decent), but you have to consider why publicizing this info
(not in this particular case, but for any given person and any given content)
is not considered illegal in the United States, currently: such a law would
almost certainly be used to squash freedom of expression.

This has been the case long before Instagram and the Internet becoming
mainstream, including the denial of requests for public government records and
the photography of police actions on the purported concern for privacy.

I know you're only talking about social norms...but such things influence and
are influenced by law and regulations...I'm just pointing out that it doesn't
exist in a vacuum.

~~~
maxerickson
Sure.

I suppose part of the problem is that we talk about privacy, when really it's
publicity that has changed. The situation where basically every individual can
create recordings and publish them to the entire world is actually somewhat
novel. We reach for analogies about privacy, but really we need to think about
what sort of rights people have to their own publicity.

~~~
greggman
What about the idea that maybe our ideas of privacy / publicity are shaped by
what we're used to rather than any universal laws. In other words, if we were
to grow up in a society that didn't experience much privacy maybe we'd just
accept it as the norm.

I'm not making a judgement which is better. The old way or some other way.
Only trying to point out the fact that we had more privacy in the past isn't
in and of itself better. It just is.

~~~
maxerickson
I only expressed it implicitly above, but I am making a judgement about what
is better. I would absolutely prefer it if people did not casually direct the
internet ray-beam at people that are not interested in its attention. At the
same time, I would like those other people to be able to use the internet
without paying intense attention to the consequences of each action they take.

If that makes me some sort of stodgy conservative that has been shaped by the
past, so be it.

------
michaelchum
Wow, this is nicely done, very neat. Great job!

Just out of curiosity, is this a native app? I really like the animations of
the modal windows, I wonder how you made them so awesome!

~~~
wlindner
Thanks a lot!

Yes, it is a native ios app. For animations I used
[https://github.com/zrxq/UIView-
EasingFunctions/](https://github.com/zrxq/UIView-EasingFunctions/)

For animations, it's very important to use the right easing function to make
it fit the feeling you want to evoke.

For instance, I used a keyframe animation for the login modal when you close
it to not log in. It evokes a feeling of disappointment because it awkwardly
swings down because you are not logging in :)

------
pixelcort
In Tokyo it's just pictures of food.

I wonder if there was a way to detect pictures of food automatically so it
could be filtered out.

~~~
wlindner
I know what you mean, it sounds like you want to search or explore by
categories. So, when you want to see landmarks, you only see those, but if you
wanted to see food, you could filter by that as well. Thanks for the feedback.

Also, these results will be different at different times of day.

~~~
spike021
Not sure exactly how your app works but maybe you can use the API to check for
tags on each photo you load. If any tag contains some word that would relate
to food, then just don't load/display it.

~~~
wlindner
I think it's more about finding out what type of location it is: restaurant,
bar, club, park, concert venue, whatever. Then filter by that. Rather than the
individual photos.

But I like the idea of a "no food pics" option :) Instagram is infamous for
stuff like that.

------
limsup
the flip book animation/interaction is top notch. good job!

~~~
wlindner
Thanks! My good friend @alexsailer did a killer job on designing the app and
interactions. I modified this example to create the effect:
[http://corgitoergosum.net/2013/03/16/from-js-to-
uicollection...](http://corgitoergosum.net/2013/03/16/from-js-to-
uicollectionview-building-a-custom-roulette-wheel-stack-control-in-ios/)

------
hnriot
this needs an image classifier, which is not so easy to build.

