[HN Gopher] Show HN: Mani - Place virtual sticky notes in real-w...
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       Show HN: Mani - Place virtual sticky notes in real-world spaces
        
       Author : narenkeshav
       Score  : 70 points
       Date   : 2021-06-02 07:01 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.mani.ai)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.mani.ai)
        
       | flakiness wrote:
       | A decade ago, there was a similar product called "Sekai Camera"
       | [1]. In Japan it was heavily hyped and then spectacularly failed.
       | Maybe it was too early. Maybe the implementation was bad. Or the
       | idea isn't as great as it appears. We'll see.                 [1]
       | https://wsa-global.org/winner/sekai-camera/       [2]
       | https://thebridge.jp/en/2013/12/sekai-camera-closes
        
       | janikvonrotz wrote:
       | Had a similar idea years ago, but thought more of a gps-located
       | twitter. A tweets sticks to a location an can be private or
       | public. People who use the app may have access to special deals.
       | Monetizing in the sense of coupons. The app would incentivize
       | people to explore and find gps-tweets.
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | Looks amazing. How do you handle the changing environments?
       | 
       | A sticky note placed on a wall with something written on it
       | should disappear if it's painted over. How do you handle that?
       | 
       | What about indoors where gps may not work?
        
         | justusthane wrote:
         | > should disappear if it's painted over
         | 
         | Why?
        
           | smusamashah wrote:
           | It would because it won't recognize that wall anymore. Gps
           | can tell the location with limited accuracy. Rest is done by
           | recognizing through camera.
        
             | justusthane wrote:
             | Oh, I see, sorry. I misunderstood you. I thought you were
             | saying that you wouldn't disappear if the wall was painted
             | over, but that you would want it to disappear.
        
       | oliv__ wrote:
       | Looks like there are a few of us out here, but I had the exact
       | same idea years ago as well :)
        
       | purplecats wrote:
       | Oh hey, I had this absolute exact idea 10 years ago. I ended up
       | pivoting to something else, but I'll watch your development with
       | keen interest :)
        
         | handrous wrote:
         | Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is one of the use-cases _lots_ of
         | people 've thought up for location services + AR, over the last
         | decade-plus.
         | 
         | It has the following problems:
         | 
         | 1) A bad chicken/egg critical-mass problem for adoption.
         | (Apple, Google, and maybe Facebook are best positioned to
         | overcome this, if they built the feature in to their OS or
         | apps)
         | 
         | 2) Content moderation.
         | 
         | 3) Even if you treat it as a friends-and-family thing rather
         | than a more broadly social experience (which solves #1 and #2
         | fairly well) AR on a screened device is approximately 1,000x
         | worse to use than on the hypothetical non-dorky and
         | practically-useful-battery-life AR glasses that every major
         | tech company seems to expect in our nearish future (judging by
         | their continued emphasis on AR, despite its being kind-of a
         | shit and gimmicky interface outside some niche uses on current
         | hardware)
         | 
         | I suspect 2 and 3 are why FB, Google, or Apple haven't taken on
         | the challenge in 1, yet. I expect they will if/when 3 gets
         | solved, and this kind of real-world commenting/tagging thing
         | will be widespread in a hurry.
        
         | spacebear wrote:
         | Haha, likewise. I've been walking around for the past year
         | thinking about how this should exist. Glad it does now!
        
           | azinman2 wrote:
           | This has literally been done tens of not hundreds of times.
           | It's probably one of the go-tos for students in any kind of
           | art/hci class. I did it myself back in 2007 as a student with
           | a partnership with Telefonica and the Catalan government in
           | Spain!
        
             | mgkimsal wrote:
             | every "hackathon" I went to for years had some try a
             | variation of this. and "bill-splitting" apps. but... wtf -
             | you're an adult who can afford an apple smart phone. how
             | many times are you "splitting a bill" and having to settle
             | up with people such that this is such a burden that you'll
             | want to use an app for that? that one truly flummoxed me,
             | but every hackathon event (pre-covid) I went to had people
             | talking about this sort of problem.
        
               | vbsteven wrote:
               | I've seen these apps used at almost every company I've
               | worked at that orders food delivery once or a few times
               | per week.
        
               | lixtra wrote:
               | What precisely where they using it for? Beware of the dog
               | here?
        
               | vbsteven wrote:
               | I was talking about the bill splitting apps that are used
               | in situations where the same group of people frequently
               | orders food together.
        
             | mypalmike wrote:
             | Yeah, I worked with a team in 2001 developing a Palm Pilot
             | version of something similar for military use.
        
       | vbsteven wrote:
       | I'll add one more comment as a person who once worked on
       | something similar to this. It looks like lots of people were
       | working on "location based tweeting" around 10 years ago.
       | 
       | It makes sense as around that time Twitter was growing fast and
       | location based services like Foursquare and Gowalla were popular.
       | As well as Google/Niantic Ingress.
       | 
       | Our iteration was based on the concept of "shouts" that had a
       | location and a visibility radius. Reshouts would increase the
       | radius further.
        
         | huachimingo wrote:
         | Like the Darksouls soapstone inspired app, where people wrote
         | messages on the coordinates they were.
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | Neat idea, it just needs to be less centralized. A lot more
       | people (myself included) would be interested if this was a
       | federated protocol or API, and not limited just to iPhones. The
       | real limiting factor here is going to be how well you can get
       | other devices to work with it and developing the extensibility.
        
         | chewmieser wrote:
         | Not a bad suggestion but I would suggest that OP focuses on the
         | main features rather than something like this. Otherwise you'll
         | have a handful of very happy HN'ers while missing out on 95% of
         | the market that doesn't care about a federated protocol.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | It really depends on what kind of market you want to foster.
           | It's nice having the 95%, but sometimes all you need are
           | 1,000 True Fans[0].
           | 
           | [0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
        
       | manigandham wrote:
       | What's the background for choosing this name?
        
       | tristanb wrote:
       | I started a company that did something very similar. Flook.it -
       | We had grand ideas of locating all of the worlds geo data into
       | what we called a location browser. We were one of the first apps
       | on the iPhone. Still think it has legs...
        
       | siavosh wrote:
       | Cool to see this space get some more activity. Wasn't this the
       | general idea of Color Labs [1] way back like 10 years ago? It was
       | a neat social experiment that suffered from over-hype and
       | geographical limitations of networking effects.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs
        
       | jessehattabaugh wrote:
       | Twitter lets you search for tweets near any location. It's not an
       | exact location because nobody really wants strangers on the
       | internet to know their exact location.
        
       | tarr11 wrote:
       | Reminds me of Findery
       | 
       | https://findery.com/
        
       | numlocked wrote:
       | I'd like to use this around my house. We are renting it to some
       | friends this summer, and it would be great to stick notes around
       | each room, explaining various quirks and where things are. But
       | it's a bit weird to "publish" the notes and have my house show up
       | on a map. Is there a way to "not publish" my notes publicly, but
       | perhaps be able to share them selectively via e.g. a URL or an
       | invite in the app?
        
         | numlocked wrote:
         | To be clear: I would pay for this app, happily, for that
         | functionality.
        
         | ipsum2 wrote:
         | Why not use real sticky notes?
        
           | thih9 wrote:
           | I guess there are many reasons, e.g. for some people it's
           | easier to find their phone than a pen; or lack of sticky
           | notes.
        
       | pimlottc wrote:
       | It's not a bad idea, but the landing page needs more clear non-
       | video illustrations of exactly what the experience looks like.
       | The videos are somewhat helpful but they are so jumpy with lots
       | of quick cuts that it's hard to get a good look.
        
       | nell wrote:
       | Unsolicited idea: Constrain your marketing focus to a university
       | town and you got yourself a million dollar idea.
        
       | jarmitage wrote:
       | Have you considered linking this to Notion / Roam Research API
       | etc?
       | 
       | Higher level concept than standalone 'sticky note' is worth
       | exploring. Lots of indigenous cultures were/are based on memory
       | techniques based on tying specific pieces of knowledge to exact
       | locations: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29759605-the-
       | memory-code
        
       | squiggy22 wrote:
       | I love this. There's a virtual treasure hunt / digital geocaching
       | application in there.
        
         | jjice wrote:
         | Absolutely agree! This is a really neat use of AR to me. I'm
         | not sure how practical, but can definitely be fun.
        
       | scottrogowski wrote:
       | Interesting concept! Personally, I'm not seeing much in terms of
       | a practical application here but possibly a recreational one? I'm
       | imagining a game of clue where you follow the notes to some sort
       | of geocache location.
        
       | hhh wrote:
       | This is awesome, I would love to see this as a feature in some
       | documentation tools. It should not be the _only_ way to consume
       | it, but being able to put notes on a physical device could be
       | awesome in some industrial applications.
        
       | kumarvvr wrote:
       | If the positioning is precision enough, this could be have great
       | applications in many industries.
       | 
       | Imagine having to tap into the work history of a machine and add
       | latest repair works and notes for others.
        
         | zardo wrote:
         | Pretty stiff competition from attaching a clipboard to the
         | machine. Also Siemens, Microsoft, and PTC.
        
       | nynx wrote:
       | This is great. As AR starts to take off, I hope an industry
       | standard for this gets created.
        
       | johnchristopher wrote:
       | I love the idea of juxtaposing real world location and invisible
       | data.
       | 
       | There used to be an app that allowed to tag and write things on
       | wall. It's of course only visible when you are on the spo.
       | 
       | I am huge believer in the coming of time and location restricted
       | layering of data/art/app.
        
       | slig wrote:
       | Nice concept! But what's stopping people from being a-holes and
       | leaving shitty notes?
        
         | ArekDymalski wrote:
         | I'd say the same the same thing that stops (most of people)
         | from writing shitty things on the walls (most of ppl don't feel
         | the urge to) + usual moderation/flagging.
        
       | spidersouris wrote:
       | Would be better with AR glasses :-) but amazing work!
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-03 23:01 UTC)