I think the original title referred to how this was some group of teenagers' first coding project. I think the mods should change it back - this shouldn't be viewed with the same harsh eyes as many startups are.
Not sure why it was changed. This app was coded by Berkeley freshman as their first app in honor of a professor that passed away this year who wanted this app when getting picked up by others to visit the hospital often. You can read it in the Apple Store notes of the app:
I personally use Path and love the "neighborhood" alerts which periodically post to Path "Nathan is in Downtown Austin", "Nathan is in Barton Hills, Austin", etc. This system is very elegant and seamless because it posts directly to the social feed without any effort.
From the landing page for the app I'm unsure of how this app works, or what purpose the shortlink serves. Why not make the app link to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and just post neighborhood information automatically like Path does? (Or maybe if they have privacy concerns with the press of one button.) This would be much simpler, easy to explain, and would doubtlessly be well received by those whose social networking apps don't have this useful feature of Path built in.
You are absolutely right. This is just our first version and we these are great tips. Thank you for your suggestions and we will improve in the next version.
We wanted to get this out early so we can learn from all of you.
I'm really happy that my circle of closest friends all use Path. As a result Path is the social network I use for my best friends, and the other social networks are all the spammy stuff I don't really want to see anyway.
I agree. I think that a very simple, single function service like this could be useful. You know exactly what you are sharing and who you are sharing it with.
In the past, I've been known to take a screenshot of my open maps application (with my location shown on the map), and sms that to friends to let them know where I am if I didn't have the address handy. This is clearly a better solution.
Great point. The short-link makes it sort of like Bit.ly for location and easily shared in SMS, Tweets, etc. I also like the temporal aspect that you can control how long you will be sharing the link (ex: I pick someone up at the airport, so I share my location for a few hours to that person).
No demo video, no explanation. Why do I need yet another app for this?
html5, javascript, geolocation apis, social networking sites with client-side sharing capabilities. These are all the things I need to build a simple service that does what's described here. Why is this an app?
As far as I gather, these kids have been doing it as a hobby because other apps for quickly sharing a real-time location suck. The short link makes it ideal for sharing via SMS/Twitter, etc.
But great point, they should have a quick demo video, even if they are just a few young hackers. That's probably coming next.
I can do it in about 3-4 clicks. I have never been in a situation where I could not afford 20 seconds to look at my phone, at a light or some such at the worst. I could make a Taskr shortcut or an on{x} shortcut, but that's probably not what you meant.
And there were photosharing apps with filters before Instagram. Sometimes solid UX, strong brand, and focusing on what users want can mean the difference. I think these kids are on the right track.
Try using FMF and share with me (Android user) and the HN audience here with a link your location for an hour. I'm also hoping these kids come out with Android soon. Moby guys.. can you promise the HN audience an Android version soon?
I don't want to broadcast my location constantly. But I would like the ability to grant permission to some of my friends and family to be able to look up my location when they need it. I'd also like a log and a notification when they look it up, so I know I'm not being stalked, and so they actually put thought into deciding whether or not it's appropriate to look up my location before doing so.
I imagine an app which doesn't send my location to a third party service on an interval. When somebody wants to look up my location, the app on their phone sends a request to some third party service over the Internet, which then pushes a request for my location to my phone. The first time the request comes in from a particular user, it asks me if I'd like to grant them this privilege permanently, temporarily, or to block it. If I grant it, then I don't need to approve future lookups but I am alerted to them happening.
[edit] The requests could also be of the style: "Let me know when you arrive at location x", instead of just "Let me know where you are now". Would be handy for meeting up at places on nights out.
I never understand arguments like this. There as Orkut before Facebook, Loopt before Latitude, Yahoo before Google, and Digg before Reddit.
You can copy stuff and make them better, and this better can be even just simpler, or with better community, or other odd declinations of "better" that are enough to win in the market.
EDIT: and in case there is already something in the marke that is yet not famous, you can almost ignore it at all unless this is an hint about the fact that the app may be not useful (more likely it is bad execution, bad marketing, ...)
Yeah but this time, there's literally no difference in the products lol. Plus, Glympse has deep integration into many cars, the UPS uses them, etc. AND its super popular amongst consumers. Sure you may be able to get some consumers to switch to Moby for whatever reason, but money only really comes in this case from businesses
I'm not arguing that Moby should not try to do better.
However, there should some acknowledgement that an almost identical product has existed for years and how this differs (better UX?, more features, etc).
Glympse was founded by dinosaurs.. retired Microsoft guys. I'd put my money on three talented teens with a better UX in their first version every day of the week. Keep on shipping, Moby team!
It should implement a "Launch in Maps app" feature for Android and iOS on web interface. This will help users to get directions and make this 2x useful.
- it has directions for the link recipient. Voice directions. (ok, the voice is basic but sufficient)
- you can also draw and tag other stuff on the map - if you want.
- its fully HTML5-based. Works on desktop, iOS, Android.
- works without a backend server (bit.ly for URLs, map quest open directions). You can host your own easily. Infact this one is hosted on github pages.
I know I'm going off on a tangent but I'd be weary on putting anything on a Belarus domain name. If you're not selling to or dealing with Belorussians directly, you're most likely not affected by it but a country that can do this – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16407235 – should be treated with caution.
Agreed, but way easier and done without >$10M of funding like Glympse. Try it. Just like how Instagram stripped down other apps and made a better experience, I think the short mo.by links make sharing location easier.
Some landing page optimization to explain the product would be really helpful: since this is a mobile app, you want to give people a good idea of what they're getting into before they go to their phones, find it, and download it.
Like the idea and liking the app. Solves some of my issues I'm having with find my friends.
Would love to see some kind of location requests and settings on how often my location is updated.
I'm keeping an eye on this app.
Thanks for all the support and suggestions. This is just something we coded in a little over a month a will be iterating quickly. And, yes, an android version and awesome demo video for the splash page are in the works.
classic problem and a good project to do some side programming (I think these guys executed nicely). my own variant is a slightly less polished version running in the browser: http://geoteo.net/
