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Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

burningmanrides.com

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Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#21

Post by danielharan »

kalvin wrote: post #2

Hey HN, I'm a long-time reader and this is my first Show HN (exciting!) It's a collaboration between me, jasonshen (of rejection therapy / cold showers / winning isn't normal), and randy. We'd love feedback. Do you belong to any of these categories? 1) Going to Burning Man? (it's a weeklong festival in the Nevada desert, 50K attendees)-- how can we make this better for you? 2) Potential user of a more general ridesha…

Potentially very useful. I often attend dance exchanges; most of those going know each other but logistics are a hassle.

One event organizer is currently using a google-doc hosted spreadsheet. Something that was announced and promoted with the event could make attendance easier (which organizers love).

A web UI could help show people on the way - maybe graphically with a map, so you don't need to do any algo work.

Please let me know if you do this; chebuctonian at gmail. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#22

Post by BurngMnContrDnc »

gourneau wrote: post #14

Please add a section for planes :) Then pimp it on https://lists.burningman.com/mailman/listinfo/aviators-list Yee Haw!

You could do our contradance theme camp a great favor by implementing this ASAP. We had a key musician drop out and the person who is by far the best replacement has a conflict that can only be solved by a flight at just the right time (ie this might provide the miracle we need).

Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#23

Post by jannes »

egiva wrote: post #8
kalvin wrote: post #2

Hey HN, I'm a long-time reader and this is my first Show HN (exciting!) It's a collaboration between me, jasonshen (of rejection therapy / cold showers / winning isn't normal), and randy. We'd love feedback. Do you belong to any of these categories? 1) Going to Burning Man? (it's a weeklong festival in the Nevada desert, 50K attendees)-- how can we make this better for you? 2) Potential user of a more general ridesha…

I definitely like grouping rides by the date that the driver is starting his/her trip - maybe make that a tad more obvious? A small aside like a jQuery calendar or simple title like "Find a Ride by Date..." would get that message across. Random idea: Instead of some calendar or other search/organization method, you might look at a map with jQuery slider. The idea would be to hook people up with drivers that might dri…

Oh god, please don't do this. Said "jQuery sliders" and "jQuery calendars" are awful to use on touch-based devices. The click targets usually aren't big enough.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the slider doesn't work at all on touch-based devices, because their browsers usually don't generate onmousedown or onmousemove events. (There are specific touch events for this, but most programmers tend to ignore them.)

Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#24

Post by SkyMarshal »

listic wrote: post #18
blackboxxx wrote: post #15

I'm enthusiastically behind the ridesharing idea. It's ecologically intelligent, saves people money and the hassles of vehicle ownership, and with looming fuel price spikes/peak oil/economic uncertainty, I see it as a futureproof business. Looks like you've also got a solid team in place too (the importance of this cannot be overstated). Btw, I'm in the "potential user" camp, and will use your service when I've got a…

Can you share some good ridesharing services?

http://zimride.com is the only other one I know of.

Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#25

Post by dreamdu5t »

sown wrote: post #17

I'm certain that "Burning Man" is copyrighted. You might have to tangle with that. http://www.burningman.com/press/pressRandR.html#bmanRR

You misunderstand copyright law. I can use Burning Man as much as I want as long as I don't use the name to make money.

Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#26

Post by stevoski »

There's a similar site in Germany that has more or less replaced hitchhiking. Very popular. Someone is going from, for example from Hamburg to Berlin, and says how many places are free, and how much money you have to chip in to cover expenses.

http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ is the URL.

It's worth taking a look so you don't have to reinvent everything.

Re: Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

#30

Post by randy »

OstiaAntica wrote: post #27

Nice job! I'm interested in the tech details-- what is the site built with? How long did it take? Thanks!

Thanks!

The site was built with Ruby 1.9.2 + Rails 3.1 (+ SASS and Coffeescript), jQuery (+ UI), and PostgreSQL on top of Heroku (Cedar Stack + Unicorn + Memcached) using Facebook Connect and the Google Maps API. We've just been hacking on it for a little while now but the more pertinent point is that we still have plenty of hacking to do :)

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