
Show HN: IP Sidekick, geolocation API with additional metadata - hboon
https://ipsidekick.com
======
nkkollaw
Very cool.

I think 1 request per minute is way too low for any sort of usage, though.
That made me dismiss the project immediately, ex. I won't even try it because
I would never be able to use it in production anyway.

If I was you, I wouldn't offer a free tier at all if you can't handle a
standard load (30,000/day+), and just offer a 14-day trial.

I would base tiers on the number of requests with a minimum of 30,000/day, but
most importantly on the amount of data you receive: tier 1 only the country,
tier 2 GMT offset and everything else.

I don't think it's a product that needs support, it's easy and once I set it
up I'll never touch it again, so I would not pay premium for support.

Good luck, congrats on releasing!

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hboon
Good point. Thanks for the feedback.

------
hboon
One thing I want to do with IP Sidekick is to include additional information
about the location it resolves to. For now, the result includes the national
public holiday of the country it resolves to. This should work for the next
few hours of Aug 17:

    
    
      $ curl https://ipsidekick.com/5.189.201.130
      {
         "countryCode" : "ID",
         "country" : "Indonesia",
         "holiday" : "Independence Day",
         "timeZoneName" : "Asia/Jakarta",
         "ip" : "5.189.201.130",
         "gmtOffset" : "GMT+7:00"
      }
    

I'm planning to add more data types. Welcome any feedback.

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b44rd
Cool stuff. Adding lat/lng to the dataset as well would be nice as well.
Alternatively a lat/lng that can be associated to the country can be an idea.
For example by using something like [https://developers.google.com/public-
data/docs/canonical/cou...](https://developers.google.com/public-
data/docs/canonical/countries_csv)

~~~
hboon
Yes, I plan to include a lat/long somewhere down the road when I can get it to
be more accurate.

Slightly related, what can someone do with the lat/long in that data set?
(since there's only a canonical lat/long for each country)

~~~
b44rd
Great! Lat/lng would of course be best implemented if kind of accurate.
Ipinfo.io seems to do this quite well. I would happily use this to detect if
somebody tries to spoof the info provided from window.gelocation.get/watch,
whic is pretty sweet to utilize for anything that relates to maps. :)

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ffumarola
What is the advantage of this over something like MaxMind or NetAcuity?
Thanks!

~~~
hboon
There're 2 ways to access a geolocation service:

1) Secure your own database(s) and offer it as an internal library/API 2) Use
a hosted version.

IP Sidekick offers the latter option. The advantage over running your own
version is more predictable Opex, both money and effort — if operate your own,
you'd have to find source(s), make sure they are updated and make sure the
services remain up.

With IP Sidekick, you pay a certain amount monthly, and it's a relatively
simple API to use, so there's 0 maintenance and ongoing effort.

Another advantage is I'm supplementing additional data other than what other
geolocation services offer. eg. the results now include the public holiday for
that day in that country. Planning to add more.

