Very nice service. Using unicode emoji for flags would be better than pngs IMO.
Both of these are redundant as long as there is the country code already included in the API response object.
Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
61–70 of 168 posts
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#62> Get the following datapoints from any IP address; Again :-( I just wonder if people will ever stop making assumptions about others given their IP address or hair colours and divide the Internet on these slippery grounds. The only legitimate and valid way to determine the client's location automatically is the browser or the OS geolocation API, and for the language it is the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header. The fact I h…
True but for most users it's enough.
And it's sometimes the only information they have if the geolocation api doesn't give them anything.
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#63Very nice service. Using unicode emoji for flags would be better than pngs IMO.
Both of these are redundant as long as there is the country code already included in the API response object.
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#64> Get the following datapoints from any IP address; Again :-( I just wonder if people will ever stop making assumptions about others given their IP address or hair colours and divide the Internet on these slippery grounds. The only legitimate and valid way to determine the client's location automatically is the browser or the OS geolocation API, and for the language it is the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header. The fact I h…
True but for most users it's enough. And it's sometimes the only information they have if the geolocation api doesn't give them anything.
If the geolocation api doesn't give anything - that probably means the user has chosen to configure it this way because they don't want to share their location. You should probably ask them in case you actually need to know where they are.
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#65Very nice service. Using unicode emoji for flags would be better than pngs IMO.
That's a very intriguing idea. I'm definitely going to look into the mechanics of this. I don't know if it'd make it possible to have them in different sizes, but thanks for this! I'm definitely going to look into adding a field with this.
Well they are characters so they are in different sizes by design (like vector graphics).
For the reference here you have one with description how they are generated: https://emojipedia.org/flag-for-united-states/
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#66Are you able to flag an IP address as an IP coming from a VPN?
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more fun to sell metered services to people than "plans". You can get the best of both worlds by having a per unit price, and then giving people discounts for committing to certain usage levels. Plans are kind of a pain because you have to have a sales process to get people to change. Mailchimp automatically upgrades/downgrades people between plans, which is a decent workaround, but still a little weird to custo…
I bet you mean something along Postmark's pricing https://postmarkapp.com/pricing . I'm probably going to start work on incorporating this soon. Thanks for the input!
Yep! Also will you email me? We're working on some stuff I'd like to run by you. :D
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#68How do you compare to Maxmind in regards of data quality?
I can't speak for anyone else, but it's got me pegged 571 miles from my actual location. Not even close enough for an ICBM.
You'd at least get your windows cracked if it was something along the lines of the Tsar bomba https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can download the Maxmind database locally. I don't see the option for that from IpData. That's worth the price increase for me. Having a web API is great for low- or mid-volume applications, but adding 10ms per user for an HTTPS call would still be like 1000x slower than hitting a local DB.
Just cache the responses so that only the first time a new IP connects it needs to be looked up (until cache fills) Integrating maxmind is a bit of a pain and it’s a massive database. Not well suited to use cases like single purpose or ephemeral containers. You’ll probably end up storing the maxmind db in a separate node on your local network, anyway. So you still have a latency issue (although lower, obviously). Mor…
We already do something like that, marking up the user information with geoip information when we first see them, but we just get a lot of unique users. (Yes, we could do batch lookups, but that would be a complete rewrite of our workflow.)
I found Maxmind integration to be pretty straight-forward. They have APIs for most popular languages and most of the time, usage amounts to instantiating a reader object with the path to the database, then calling methods on that object with the IP in question. So, db.city(ip) returns all of the city information, etc.
Massive is a relative term I guess. But the databases are segmented, so you only take what you need and all the ones I've worked with have been tens of megabytes in size.
Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API
#70Are you able to flag an IP address as an IP coming from a VPN?
This is something we'd really like to add to our API and something we're working on.