

Show HN: TGIFound.com - Geolocating lost and found community - terrykfwong

TGIFound (http://tgifound.com) is a community-based service that lets people report found items and search for them by location.<p>If you see a lost item on the street you can report it on the mobile app or on the website along with the GPS coordinates, which lets people search for items for a given location. The idea is unique in that it lets people report items as found, rather than lost. It relies on the community to report items as found. The exact location is not revealed but translated to an approximate location to prevent people from gaining possession of someone else's item.<p>This is a free service and I intend to keep it free for as long as I can manage.<p>The site was built in Django in a couple of months of spare time as I was learning Django along the way. An iPhone app is also available at (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tgifound/id555479564?ls=1&#38;mt=8). The iPhone app was written in Titanium. It uses quite a few APIs, such as Google Maps so was a useful learning experience for me. I hope that it's a feasible method of reuniting people with their lost items, and I hope that this project can make the world a slightly better place.<p>The project is still in a very early stage and this is one of the first times I've searched publicity for this. I welcome any feedbacks, criticism and bug reports, or that you simply give it a try. Thanks!
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grabeh
Great work on putting the site together - I like the concept and it all fits
together in terms of reporting and finding items so nice work! I did find an
oyster card the day so I've reported that missing...

I would personally go for TTIFound.com (Thank Terry its found) but each to
their own.

Oh, and as someone who is an anal lawyer, you might want people to warrant
they own copyright in images they submit (maybe also indemnify you although
that's overkill) and also grant you a licence to reproduce the images on your
site.

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terrykfwong
Hey thank you very much for your support, I will add this to the T&C to avoid
any problem. Would you have more suggestion how might I promote this simply
help each other facility?

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grabeh
I'm no marketeer I'm afraid! A cheap way would be for you to search for folks
on twitter posting information about lost/found items and point them to your
site?

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terrykfwong
Hey that's actually a very good idea, I will do some searching tonight...
Thank you so much :)

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helen842000
I think this is a great area to work on. I set up something similar myself but
just for cameras/photos - FoundCamera.com

So far I've found that a bigger proportion of items are reported lost than
found however I guess that shouldn't be an issue on tgifound as people can
return anything.

How are you facilitating the reunion of objects - do you just let people send
messages to each other?

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terrykfwong
Hey FoundCamera.com is well cool! How long have you put this live?

Yes I love helping people and I agree this is a great area to work on :) I
have not introduce "Report Lost" because people don't tend to browse what have
someone else lost, and even if I do browse it I might not lucky enough to come
across it. I think everyone want to help everyone, but that depends on how
easy it is, so I hope this mobile app platform could simplify the process.

Yes I just let people send message to each other at the moment. I allow people
messaging each other without "claiming" it, do you think it's good idea? Is
there any suggestion for me to promote this platform? Thank you so much :)

Terry

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helen842000
Thanks! I put it up as a quick weekend project about 3 months ago.

I wanted to make it easy to comment, list & help out. The thing Ive realized
about this type of site is that it needs the power of the crowd to review the
posts & recognize people in photos. That's what I'm working on now.

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mapsareawesome
Just the other day someone had forgotten one of her many shopping bags on The
Tube. It'd be quite nice to reunite people with their items, however, given
that there is no useable WiFi or mobile connection underground, how would you
go about geotagging its location?? Manually estimate it above ground?

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terrykfwong
TGIFound allow search for distance, so even if you report it when you have
signal and out of the original spot it should be easily searchable... I am
open to opinion, is there anyway to make it even more accurate during offline?

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rheide
Full disclosure: I advised Terry on this project, although I didn't write any
code. I think the idea'll need a fair bit of (localized) publicity to get
going. But if it works, it'll make the world a better place :)

