
Facelette: Chat Roulette for FaceTime - mojombo
http://facelette.com/
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holman
For what it's worth, I whipped this up in about an hour. It just keeps track
of who's actively looking for a FaceTime hookup and grabs one.

Coincidentally, this entire app is dumb as hell. I love it so much.

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mkramlich
I predict a $50 million buyout offer by the end of the week. :)

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dotBen
Needs it's own email validation system otherwise you just type in crap and
harvest the email addresses.

I would use FB Connect to validate the user, show a profile pic, and create a
less anarchic community compared to (chatroulette)

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kneath
I can definitely see why you'd need a profile picture when you're about to
randomly video chat with someone's face.

Sometimes simplicity is a virtue. It's supposed to be anarchic.

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patio11
Making visible a picture of the user, and by extension their real identity,
primes them for social interaction other than showing their penis to the other
party. It is a "power of nudges" sort of thing. Sure, you could trivially get
around it, but taking one's clothes off is fairly easy _and yet we don't_.

There are definite community and marketing advantages to clothing being worn
in the overwhelming majority of all interactions on your site. If that is not
the case, that defines your site.

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gsharma
Facelette - Easiest way to harvest emails for people who own "i" products!
<http://facelette.com/queue>

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DannoHung
Would there be any way to have it verify that it can establish a Facetime
connection? That'd serve the purpose of validation perfectly without needing
to have people confirm their address or anything.

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sssparkkk
I'd love to try it, but unfortunately I don't own a Mac, nor an iPhone.
Besides, I wonder how long it'll take before the perverts take over Facelette,
it hasn't happened yet I presume?

For people without 'Apple products and stuff', try
<http://www.blurrypeople.com> instead.

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sephlietz
You should really make users verify their email addresses.

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holman
I really like the low barrier of entry (ie, no verification). It could be cool
to see a more "legitimate" take on all this, but for this quick proof of
concept I love how brain-dead simple it turned out. I mean, you're randomly
video chatting with strangers, how stringent do you need to make it? :)

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sephlietz
The point is that you aren't forced to give anything up in return for another
person's email address.

I can input "test@test.com" and get as many email addresses as I want.

I could also put in someone else's email address and they would potentially
start getting random FaceTime calls.

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adammichaelc
Looks like the users are mostly fake or don't respond.

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danielsiders
Would be cool to pair it with a service that generated an ID with apple for
throwaway usernames. Has apple blocked all the mailinator domains?

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holman
I've talked to a couple from @mailinator domains today, so that must still be
legit.

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danfitch
Or just use mine. <http://www.squarechat.com> Shameless plug

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danfitch
or just <http://squarechat.com/hackernews> to get into a room with others.

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sachinag
Do I have to have FaceTime running to get an invite?

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holman
Nope; Apple must have something running in the background listening for
incoming connections. FaceTime.app will open with the Accept/Reject box when
someone calls.

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sachinag
That's pretty baller.

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steveklabnik
It really is. I was playing video games a few hours ago, and had my laptop
open to read stuff between matches. I got a FaceTime call, and was able to
reach over, click accept, and say "Hey Kelly, I'm playing some Halo right now,
what's up?"

It was actually a way more pleasant experience than trying to do the same
thing on a phone.

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geuis
Can't get it to work whatsoever.

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zbruhnke
nice ... could be a fun concept on a bored night!

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jaspero
This will probably create too much traffic on 'facetime server' or whatever
apple has. Degradation on quality of video is what I expect if Facelette picks
up popularity.

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holman
As the Facelette proprietor, I agree that Apple's FaceTime server capacity is
the probable fail point, and guarantee that my freebie Heroku instance and
shabby code is virtually infallible.

