
Ripple – Chat with people nearby - jamztang
http://ripplechat.io
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runn1ng
If I want to chat with people nearby, I would go up, come to them and start
chatting with them. In person.

...just kidding, I am an asocial person, I don't speak with other people.

~~~
digitalengineer
Exept with us or course. So I take it you'd be someone willing to try the AI
as shown in the 'Her' movie?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4)

~~~
zanny
As long as I don't have active reinforcement to remind me you aren't just
randomly generated text by a machine somewhere, I'm good.

Which also means I'd prefer my creepy stalker AI to speak in a monotone
machine voice. More relatable that way.

~~~
digitalengineer
...Hello Dave. What are you doing here Dave?"... (Hal)

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otoburb
I thought they were related to Ripple Labs
([https://ripple.com/](https://ripple.com/)) and the Ripple cryptocurrency due
to the recent Bitcoin and cryptocurrency craze; however it seems they are
unrelated and just happened to hit upon the same name for their chat app.

~~~
jamztang
Right there's nothing to do with Ripple Labs, we named it through a hackathon
before we found it out.

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underwater
"Meet like-minded people". Where like-minded means "uses the same OS as me".

Sorry, couldn't resist. Congratulations on shipping. It looks like a great
utility.

~~~
jamztang
Yes we hope it can be really useful, maybe for conferences and events, never
know. We'll see how it goes :)

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est
WeChat (by Tencent) has similar feature, but you must first add people to
friend list then chat.

However this raise an interesting topic:

How to securely verify that a device is indeed nearby and not spoofing it?

You can spoof your GPS coordinates easily on Android at least.

~~~
joe_the_user
Why would that be a problem?

Your location should not be an identifying value but more or less a topic.

Being able to set your parameters to some location somewhere and chat with
"random people" there seems like a feature, not a bug.

~~~
est
> Why would that be a problem?

Hmm, the same reason you wanna keep your conversations private?

I can think of few cases, like if you want to giving nearby people coupons, I
mean really nearby, not random guy on the other side of the planet trying to
re-sell your coupons.

How to use a non-hackish, non-intrusive way to make content exclusive to local
users?

Providing an ad-hoc wifi is not the solution because people may need public
Internet activities and a device can connect only to one access point at a
time.

~~~
nl
The edge cases just aren't worth doing any extra work for.

~~~
est
All innovations come from edge cases. Cheers :)

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lelf
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642100)

~~~
OafTobark
I remember seeing this when it was announced but didn't bother using it
because I was too lazy to sign up an account. I like that this one doesn't
require an account to engage allowing me to try before I sign up

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TeeWEE
I thought about this idea myself. But then I noticed there were tons of good
apps doing exactly this. This stopped me from implementing it, because i would
not be "first app in the market", because I woudnt have the unfair advantage
of being first.

(yobong, palringo, whoshere)

~~~
easy_rider
Yes this. Actually the first time I came across a (variation of) this idea, it
was years ago and brought up by a co-worker. I have been tinkering with the
idea, and also came to the same conclusion, that virality / marketing in
general were probably going to play the part hugely, as like you've stated,
this has been done a lot..

Maybe it's something that people do not want.

I could see this having great potential in the dating/flirt sectors obvously
;) But you could also imagine things like "shit I think I left my jacket at
x/y, anyone found it? " at a festival. Anonimity would probably be mandatory
for success.

Remember how well Latitude faired?

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mceoin
You guys should check out Yobongo. A similar location-based chat app which has
since closed down post-seed round. You might like to see what worked / didn't
work for them.

~~~
mceoin
They were around in 2011.

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Falling3
I often find myself wondering about an application like this. Anyone know if
there's something similar for android?

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fencepost
Google has in a vague and useless way attempted something like it in Google+
on mobile - there's a "Nearby" option that at this point appears to be people
within the same metro area.

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Globz
This app makes me think of Popcorn..

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popcorn-
messaging/id71841670...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popcorn-
messaging/id718416705?mt=8)

I wonder if more people are using Ripple because so far I haven't had much
conversations with Popcorn.

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orta
I've been using the beta since it came out and have loved the way the app has
grown. I'm really interested in seeing its potential in conferences or large
towns.

It's small and well focused, they've opened some code from it and seem to be
doing a good job of being active in chat. Give it a try.

~~~
mengto
It's just fantastic to hear from the Cocoapods team. Ripple wouldn't exist
without it!

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mk3
I'm not sure about the timeline who released first, but there is popcorn chat
app which allows to chat with people who are within one mile from you it was
featured here a while back. The functionality seems to be the same less or
more.

~~~
mengto
Hmm, popcorn is a single chatroom within a location. Ripple is multiple
chatrooms within a location, but based on a topic. There is no signup. That
actually creates some really interesting use cases. Hopefully, you'll decide
to try it out! :)

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popey
Reminds me of Trepia which tried a similar thing only on desktops, 10 years
ago. It died, unsurprisingly. I had been wondering when someone would revive
the idea.

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mknits
When its android app is coming?

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verystealthy
As Jeremy Clarkson would say... What can possibly go wrong?

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MichaelTieso
Nice work guys. Loved the articles on Medium as well.

~~~
mengto
Thank you, hopefully our little hackathon experience will inspire others to
build their own Apps too! :D

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taproot
Random? Why not all the people?

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jamztang
Yes you can by inviting people with our per room invitation feature. There
will be a need to have chat room concept so people know what to chat on.

~~~
taproot
Cool, think you can get a lan based room going?

As others have said been keen to do something very similar. Glad someone got
off their ass and did it.

I always envisioned it useful at parties and places where the internet may be
too congested but the lan/wlan not so much: read conferences

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martin1b
Looks nice, but IOS only...

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yadongwen
nice work. great if can read and send contact info like fb/email..

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cb060
having trouble finding on the app store!

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jamztang
Here's the direct link [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ripple-
chat/id787142731?ls=1...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ripple-
chat/id787142731?ls=1&mt=8)

Probably take some time for AppStore to process those keywords, stay tuned :)

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glibgil
Sausage party

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herghost
is there anyway you can forcibly push the app to the attractive woman that
gets on my train?

no? oh ok.

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notastartup
how does the chat happen through bluetooth? what are the technical details?

~~~
jamztang
It's through the internet

