

Rround - elving
http://rround.me
rround is a fun and simple way to discover people and things happening rround you!
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Gatsky
I don't particularly 'get' social media, but I can see myself using this, it's
frictionless or whatever the word is.

Geolocation works fine for me, I'm in Australia.

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dorian-graph
I'm on my Macbook Pro at uni and it has my position perfectly. I'm way
impressed with this website.

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thatjoshguy
I'm in the same situation, but I guess being at a university would give better
geo ip location data...

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revorad
Very slick! And I agree with the others, this gets location quite well (except
it put me north of the Thames).

There are so many location apps, so it's good to see something simplified.

Now the one thing you need to do is give me a reason to keep coming back to
the site.

Add chat maybe? There are lots of location-based chat apps now, that allow you
to chat with people in the same location as you. What I would love is an app
that let me chat with people in different parts of the city. "Hey Jenny, how's
Oxford street this morning?" "Anything fun going on in Trafalgar square right
now?". You get the idea.

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elving
Yeah I've been thinking about what I can do with this, but a location based
chat has been done before. I was thinking of keeping it simple. A mobile
version maybe, I use CSS3 Media Queries to show different "versions" of the
app on different devices but I was thinking of doing dedicated mobile app...
When I find the time of course lol

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elving
rround is a simple HTML5 experiment I built to discover people and things
happenings around you. What do you guys think?

~~~
rkalla
Please tell me this took you a long time? The design is I impeccable and I can
barely make fonts stick (hnnotify.com)

You designers are an enigma to me, you make beautiful seem so easy :(

Oh yea, and the app is very cool.

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elving
It took me like a month? I really don't know lol. I'm not that good of a
designer so I was shocked when I read your comment. Thanks!

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rkalla
> I'm not that good of a designer so I was shocked when I read your comment.

<sigh> now I am infinitely more sad... apparently it comes so easily to you,
that you don't even realize how nice this site looks.

I should show you some of my designs sometimes... after you are done laughing
you'll have some better perspective on your own work ;)

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pom
I get a "Retrieving position timeout" error, even though I accept to share my
location (on both Firefox and Google Chrome on OS X; geosharing works
otherwise, for instance on this: <http://slides.html5rocks.com/#geolocation.>)

EDIT: Additionally, it would be nice to have a short description with
screenshots of what it is supposed in the case that you cannot get through the
location stage...

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elving
Yes, the geolocation API can act weird sometimes :( try to clear you cache or
try a different browser. You can alway enter your location manually (not the
same but it's something). I'm sorry if the app didn't worked for you :(

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peterhajas
Tried on Safari, it timed out. Cleared my cache, tried again. Same thing.
Tried Chrome, timed out.

I'll enter my location manually, it seems like a really awesome idea!

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elving
That sucks :( Maybe if you try on an ipad or smartphone (devices with gps)?

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1880
My Android smarphone gets a timeout too :(

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mmahemoff
Interesting so many people here are surprised at the precision of it, which
shows HTML5 geolocation is doing well. (Though it comes down to how the
browser gets geo data, I think some beyond Chrome are using Google, but not
sure).

I notice its using the enableHighAccuracy flag, which probably helps. I've
been told you also might be able to get better precision with watchPosition(),
as the precision will get better with each call, though it's not used here.

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elving
Yeah, I've been thinking of using watchPosition. Maybe on the next update?

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Mithrandir
Wow, it nailed my location. Generally, HTML5 location never really works and
thinks I'm about 50 miles away.

The design is really great too. Any plans for an API?

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ajhai
I have an idea for an app that needs to know user's physical location. I have
planned on using HTML5 geolocation api to access user's location (Using HTML5
will save me effort in porting the app to various mobile devices). I was
little skeptical on the accuracy of geolocation api. But looks like it is
doing pretty good work, and I think I can go ahead with using geolocation for
my application :)

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mvzink
Cool. I feel like having to click on the icons for them to show up on the map
is too expensive. Perhaps just a hover over? And it looks like spots are
already categorized; how about having a category that you can click (or
hover!) to see all the nearby ones. Anyway, fun! Thanks for sharing.

~~~
elving
Thanks for the suggestions! As I said, this is an experiment and I will
continue to change and add new things. So stay tuned!

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aba_sababa
How do you get the data? I assume none of these people have added rround; I
also assume you don't have access to the Twitter firehose...

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elving
Am using the APIs from twitter, instagram, foursquare and youtube to get the
data. Google maps api to display the map, user locations, directions, etc. and
the yahoo placefinder api for geocoding and reverse-geocoding. Everything is
done client side with jquery, backbone.js and handlebars.js

EDIT: You don't need an account from none of these services. rround just uses
your location and the rest is magic ;)

I forgot to mention that it also uses local storage to show you the people
that were rround you on your last visit.

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callmeed
Whoa some of my own tweeted photos showed up after locating me.

Small town livin' I guess ...

Looks really good btw.

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elving
Thanks!

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jzting
Very nice. Reminds me of what <http://ban.jo/> is doing on mobile.

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elving
Hey ban.jo looks great!

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instakill
Looks like you've maxed out your API calls for the current hour. Seems you're
getting quite some traffic ;)

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wiradikusuma
The expand map appears to be broken, not displaying anything. I'm using Chrome
in Windows 7.

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andreipop
Doesn't seem to have my location right - off by quite a few clicks

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cipherpunk
Puts me on the opposite end of the country. Sigh.

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flexterra
Awesome!

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andrewljohnson
Why your site no work?

I refresh three times before it find location.

Then, it finally find me, and all I get is a spinner arrow.

I am disappoint :(

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elving
Well, there's a lot of factors here... HTML5 Geolocation is not very accurate
if the device doesn't have a GPS. You can always enter your location manually
from tne settings pane (the more specific you are the better). If the app got
stuck at "looking for data around you" then one of the services (twitter,
instagram, foursquare or youtube) failed and the app tries to get results from
the services again. Sorry if your expirience wasn't good :(

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Peaker
Being stuck in an endless loop is not a good way of informing the user of
what's gone wrong.

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elving
Your'e right... I'll work on this as soon as I can!

