[HN Gopher] Show HN: Radar Chat - Geolocation based communication
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Show HN: Radar Chat - Geolocation based communication
Author : tlhunter
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-01-07 16:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (app.radar.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (app.radar.chat)
| mikewarot wrote:
| That would have been fun back in the early days of the internet,
| before commerce and trolls ruined it. I'm not willing to trust my
| location information like that any more. I'm both sorry and sad.
| tlhunter wrote:
| The internet certainly isn't what it used to be.
| tlhunter wrote:
| Radar Chat allows users to leave digital messages that are
| attached to physical world locations. Most messages can only be
| seen if you're physically close to them which can be used to make
| scavenger hunts.
|
| My first customers non-profits in the STEM space who are using
| Radar Chat to tag the businesses they partner with (Planetariums,
| Science Museums, etc). When students visit these places they can
| then check into them (if they're close enough) and get entered to
| win a prize. Here's an example of a STEM customer channel:
|
| https://app.radar.chat/#/channel/glbra-stem-pipeline
|
| Paying customers unlock additional features like permanent
| messages, always-visible messages, and messages that can be
| checked in to. Non-paying users are able to leave messages that
| have a maximum radius and an expiration time.
|
| I do server programming by trade so any feedback on the UX would
| be greatly appreciated!
|
| Edit: Here's a link to the website with marketing information. It
| describes the produce a bit more than what's available in this
| post:
|
| https://radar.chat/
| sharikous wrote:
| In Israel there is an app called "Pillar of cloud" (`mvd `nn)
| which is somewhat similar.
|
| It's invaluable for hiking and exploring places. I guess it is
| moderated however, since I never saw spam there.
| tlhunter wrote:
| Just looked it up, "`mvd `nn" seems pretty cool for trail
| hikes!
|
| I do hope people use Radar Chat for hiking as well. They could
| put down markers for trail heads and stuff. But, the biggest
| differentiator with Radar Chat is that they can put down timely
| information, such as a tree being down, a trail being washed
| out, etc.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Mate, I live an hour and half from Antarctica, I'm never going to
| see a message hahaha
| tlhunter wrote:
| I also limit the Longitude to +85 / -85, so there's even a
| technical limitation around your area!
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Where do you live?
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Falkland Islands
| mmastrac wrote:
| Doesn't appear to work on Firefox at all.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| You have to click the Firefox Hamburger menu, then "install
| app" (to create a launcher). Then it seems to work correctly.
|
| I was also a bit confused because the home page buttons theming
| seems broken, and I had not read the instructions.
| tlhunter wrote:
| Firefox is my main browser! What issues are you having?
|
| If you've disabled geolocation access then Radar Chat is
| basically dead in the water.
| smegsicle wrote:
| you don't fall back to geoip?
| tlhunter wrote:
| Once I get some revenue I'll purchase a subscription to a
| geoip service.
|
| That said, we can only really use it to show a vague
| position for the user. Since everything is so precise (some
| message can only be seen if you're within 10m of them) the
| geoip data isn't as useful as one might think.
| technological wrote:
| How do you plan to remove or flag false information ? Like for
| example someone intentionally leave message which is not true or
| causes harm ?
| tlhunter wrote:
| I'll add a button to messages to flag/report them in the
| upcoming weeks.
|
| For individual channels the goal is to allow administrators to
| moderate them, kinda like with Reddit.
|
| For global channels it'll probably end up being me doing all
| the moderation until I can hire someone to do it.
|
| I also plan on importing Open Street Map data on school
| properties and then preventing most users from being able to
| post messages within such boundaries.
| donclark wrote:
| I want to say that I saw a similar app within the last 2 months.
| I do remember this one... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak
| manx wrote:
| Interesting idea! I'm wondering if this would also work in higher
| dimensional spaces, like embeddings. Or is this just social
| media? :D
| tlhunter wrote:
| It actually wasn't until about 4 years in to working on this
| that someone told me "it's basically social media". Certainly
| that wasn't my goal when I set out!
|
| My early customers have channels that only administrators can
| write to so the paying use-cases aren't as social media.
|
| I do hope to open the service up for more use cases outside of
| mobile apps. For example, it would be pretty cool if my
| customers could embed their maps on their website via iframe.
|
| The #sf-311 channel retrieves data from an external API, and so
| posting already isn't limited to the app (the data is all
| proximity based so you can't see incidents unless you're
| nearby):
|
| https://app.radar.chat/#/channel/sf-311
| senden9 wrote:
| Reminds me of Jodel. Just that here I can select the loudness and
| on Jodel it so controlled by the App based on thinks like number
| of posts around you.
|
| https://about.jodel.com/
| clbrook wrote:
| It's a bit like Tosslet. https://www.tosslet.com/
|
| Edit: But with Tosslet you don't need to (get to?) have an
| account to see (catch) messages or provide any other information
| (e.g. email). We have a privacy-first focus and don't require or
| allow the use of your actual location (gps).
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the developer of Tosslet
| 5rb42zi3th wrote:
| tlhunter wrote:
| I like your monetization strategy and how it combats spam!
| clbrook wrote:
| Thanks!
| clbrook wrote:
| To the newly created [dead] account that I can't respond to,
| you are correct that typical usage would be to download the
| app, however, there is a Start Exploring webpage that you can
| search on to just see messages without the app:
| https://www.tosslet.com/Home/StartExploring
| axby wrote:
| This is really well done, I like the UX and the messaging
| categories. I also like how you allow creating an account with
| just an email and the received auth code. Also very refreshing to
| try something as a web app and not have to install anything just
| to try it.
|
| It might be cool to show a rough estimate of how many people are
| able to hear your messages? I tried shouting to my entire city
| but I noticed the global channel had around 78 subscribers, so I
| figured it was unlikely that anyone heard my message.
|
| It would also be great at this stage to let you see a history of
| messages received in your location while you were away.
|
| Also maybe let people send or at least listen to messages
| anywhere in the world, at this early stage? I'd love to see if
| anyone in my hometown is using this, but I don't live there
| anymore. Maybe you could set up a limited number of spots that
| you always get messages for? Say your home, work, etc.
|
| Awesome job! Looking forward to updates. (If you have an RSS feed
| or something then I'd love to subscribe to it).
| diggum wrote:
| About 10 years ago, I taught myself web programming by writing
| https://dirtywalls.com which is still up and which occasionally I
| still see used by a handful of the folks I shared it with back
| then. Same basic idea: pseudonymous message boards attached to
| real-world locations, where you must be within a certain
| proximity to read or post.
|
| The concept at the time was "4chan meets foursquare." and the
| inspiration was rediscovering some graffiti in a bar bathroom
| that years before had particularly tickled some friends and I.
| For awhile, I added new locations as I traveled extensively for
| work, so there are hidden little message boards around NYC, SF,
| China, Seattle, Europe...
| tlhunter wrote:
| Threaded replies is actually the biggest feature on our
| roadmap!
|
| I do love the idea of "hidden messages", invisible communities
| that only a few will ever see.
| diggum wrote:
| Lots of possibilities, for sure. I liked the idea of a public
| layer as well as private or protected layers for every space.
| Patrons of a restaurant could chat on the public board for
| that location, while employees might bitch anonymously about
| management or warn each other of problematic customers on the
| private space. Or residents of an apartment building could
| complain about noisy neighbors or neglecting landlords
| without it being completely public.
|
| My concept had a sort of anarchic bent at the time, so
| anonymity and fighting the man was the guiding principles in
| theory, but as I was only just learning JavaScript and PHP,
| ideals were going to be a later development and design phase
| than I ever achieved ;)
| tpoacher wrote:
| > There really isn't anything else out there
|
| I've seen about a dozen apps that do just this. Here's one I used
| to use, called Kites: (https://www.krishan711.com/).
|
| It was a very nice app, but the network effect was missing, and
| eventually the novelty wore off. Which presumably is also why its
| creator pulled it from the appstore.
|
| I wish you luck, I still think it's a good idea. But beware that
| there may be a good reason why you can't find "anything else like
| it out there" at the moment...
| itake wrote:
| reminds me of:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/9/5699794/whatsapplebees-par...
| tlhunter wrote:
| That's great ;)
|
| I was only able to find a few direct competitors in my
| searches. They were mostly shut down with their apps no longer
| in the app stores.
| orev wrote:
| Be careful using this for things like prizes, as people _will_
| use tools that allow them to spoof locations to see the messages
| in that area.
| tlhunter wrote:
| Absolutely, geo-spoofing is going to be one of the biggest
| enemies for this product.
|
| I will say though that my early customers are giving away
| prizes that are only useful to locals, like coupons to offline
| stores, so I'm hoping that'll keep most cheaters at bay.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Probably this is way outside the scope of what you are doing now,
| but some sort of augmented reality phone viewer for these
| messages would be super neat and really emphasis the physicality
| (sort of like in the game Dark Souls, haha).
| tlhunter wrote:
| Just imagine spraying virtual graffiti on a building!
| bee_rider wrote:
| That would be fun. And socially responsible, no real world
| cleanup.
|
| One thing that made the game system work though, I think, was
| that they gave a very limited selection of phrases to
| combine. So you'd have a list of descriptions (dangerous,
| look out for, incredible, safe) and things (chest, monster,
| door, room). So people could put something like "look out for
| monster" to indicate an ambush, or "dangerous chest" to
| indicate a loot-chest that is trapped. Limited vocabulary
| mostly* kept the unpleasant** trolling to a minimum
|
| * people would occasionally put "incredible chest" in front
| of female NPCs, which was not the intended use of the
| messaging feature!
|
| ** leaving an "safe room" message in front of a trapped
| corridor full of monsters was, of course, entirely in the
| spirit of the game.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Ah like YikYak, but more precise locations.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| And all the problems, like bomb threats dropped near schools
| via spoofed GPS locations.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Moderation is needed for any communication platform.
|
| Flag all keywords you would need to do a bomb threat for
| review.
|
| Preferably have a client side filter, like profanity, so
| users can customize to their liking and you aren't censoring
| too heavily.
|
| Some server side filtering for illegal messages like threats.
|
| Open mod logs for even more transparency.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| YikYak found out how immensely difficult that is. So have
| Facebook and Twitter, despite billions of dollars to throw
| at such problems.
|
| There was a link a few days ago on the HN front page that
| rather humorously covered the difficulty of this.
| http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-
| of-t...
|
| "We thought it was the perfect solution, until we set our
| first 14-year old boy down in front of it. Within minutes
| he'd created the following sentence: I want to stick my
| long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny. "
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Does it really matter if messages like that get through?
|
| Client side AI filters can attempt to get rid of raunchy
| messages.
|
| Keyword filters and flagging for things like threats can
| stop the illegal stuff.
|
| Don't try to over censor and nanny state people.
|
| edit: to clarify, messages "like that" refer to the kid's
| message in your above post.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Does it really matter if messages like that get
| through?
|
| When they're veiled bomb threats against schools, yes.
| That gets media and regulatory attention that kills the
| brand - again, as YikYak quickly found out.
|
| > Keyword filters and flagging for things like threats
| can stop the illegal stuff.
|
| Again, the idea that keyword filters can handle this is
| silly. It was silly a decade ago. The big social networks
| have invested enormous time, money, and effort into
| increasingly sophisticated AI... and the result is people
| still get incorrectly and absurdly flagged for innocuous
| posts while clearly offending ones slip through.
| tlhunter wrote:
| My friend mentioned YikYak as a potential competitor to me
| several months ago. I tried to install their app but I think
| they had taken it down for a few months.
|
| Fast forward and YikYak does have some similarities. The main
| differences are that YikYak has a universal 5 mile radius, all
| messages are in the same "namespace", and they're anonymous,
| plus no map. I'm sure they anonymize the posting location with
| jitter to promote anonymity.
|
| Radar Chat definitely caters to a different use-case with the
| precision of the post being important. If you leave a "whisper"
| message (L1), it has a radius of around 10 meters, which isn't
| as useful for shouting ideas to the masses like YikYak.
| fer wrote:
| I like how the longer the range, the shorter the persistence. It
| should keep messages relevant.
|
| Is there any spam control in place?
| tlhunter wrote:
| I'm glad you noticed! The idea behind the inverse radius and
| duration relationship was that each specific message might only
| be seen by, say, 100 people. Certainly hoping this reduces
| spammy messages.
| nathias wrote:
| Cool concept, but the UI is terrible on desktop.
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