Product Launch
anonymous
44 points
27 comments
Posted3d agoActive3h ago
Geofence Social
localvideoapp.combetamobile_appconsumers
Key Features
custom perimeter geofencinglocation-based chat roomspolygon geofence loading
Tech Stack
Java
Key Features
Tech Stack
In case it's useful, a stripped version of Radar Labs was essentially what I was recreating on the backend. I was only sending coords from the mobile client, it was fairly straightforward getting that to work. If you haven't seen them, you should check it out as an example of structuring geofences as a service and handling notifications and events on enter/exit.
I'm into the idea, so I wish you the best and I'm looking forward to playing with your app.
But the framework itself is still more complex, allowing for very stable long-term Android applications. It includes dynamic configurations parsed from the database on the backend and then used on the backend and Android app via the commons library. Dynamic user messages. A full commons REST framework with REST processing that's in the commons library.
Overall it's a large system. And in fact, I'm getting close to publishing it so that users can build their own 100% Java full-stack Android applications: enterpriseandroidfoundation.com
In an experimental identity system I prototyped as a civic tech project[1], I paired this with scraping a government "voter registration check" form and comparing against, and it was a two-fold guarantee: someone had to either submit false info to the voter registry or intercept mail. In theory it was very cheap to get very high assurances, for only the cost of a postcard API per user
[1]: https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#ab...
Play Integrity passes for devices unpatched for several years, which makes it a joke.
If it gets very popular, those who don't want to be tied to Google will be excluded from something important.
And the maker of this app thinks it could have a tremendous impact, so...
Is that possible on iPhone, or only on Android?
Also, I hope you're not using Play Integrity (lol), because that means all the old phones you allow can be rooted, hide it from you and/or spoof positive chdck result........ because they're insecure like sieves..... Whilst you'd be banning modern and unrooted phones.
But location is already baked into many social media apps anyway, though. https://gemini.google.com/share/68d4fd324d94 ...that'd be the real issue here, perhaps.
Locally produced food is the important one, going forward. It can be much cheaper living away from a city, yet people still want their services. They want to know where the best place to live is.. even to the nearest mile for walking reasons. They want to know where a doctor is, if the nearest hospital is over an hour's drive away. Also language.. how can digital nomads move about and find same-language speakers.
What's wrong with Google maps for this type of stuff? Is there a competitor with downloadable data? What if a war breaks out in your region or the internet goes out or is inaccessible. Need offline data. What happens if service providers don't trust users enough to want to share their data?
A good idea would be for people to take photos of their local community board and share that.
Then once people exploit the app, that doesn't mean they wont add value (e.g. contribute positive content). Maybe they are just a high school kid that wants to talk to his friends in his last town?
Once you have users, then there will be other easy signals to detect: Is the person teleporting? Do they hit rate limits freq? Is their GPS location the exact 'center' of the city? Is there GPS a nice pretty number? Does their GPS location never move?
Many people will refuse, on principle, to provide this information to any company, unless perhaps it's for home delivery of some good.
Obviously social apps like this are faced with a chicken-and-egg dilemma of how to acquire users. I'm no marketer, so I don't have any suggestions on how to solve this one.
For myself, I avoid non-free/open-source programs in general, but especially chat apps. I think that especially the programs we rely on to communicate should at least be transparent on the client-side. That being said, I would absolutely try this out if the app were released as FOSS (which it doesn't look like it is?).
It lost quite some activity in the last decade though, gaining fewer users than it loses.
Similarly, in the US YikYak was also popular at colleges but killed itself by forcing user accounts instead of full anonymity.
WTF is wrong with these social apps!?!? Who wants to chat on a tiny screen when they have a computer available. Especially for local apps that function only when you're home.
Other than that, touché.
I agree with you personally... But at this point it is clear the answer is "everyone". The average consumer is not using a desktop for personal computing daily, just work.
Instagram had photo filters; Strava had activity stats. What could this have?
Like what is the highest rated/longest Wikipedia article in the area.
Or maybe what's the 3 top radio stations and a link to them.
There is plenty of local content that Google does not surface
It faced a fair few controversies & got taken offline and not sure what became of it...
Always wanted something with that... casual fence... to think of a better word again
Why add new features instead of trying to gain traction?
This seems super counter productive in my opinion. It creates way more friction that I want.
Maybe I want to save a location I have been to as a chatroom, sure but my primary interest would be to have my location determine the chat. So if I enter a university building: boom university chat. I enter Cern: boom Cern chat.
The hard part would be to not just use rectangles but actually make the shapes meaningful. I don't want to walk past a high school or live next to one and then be included in that chat. So yeah. Tricky
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