Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

urbanairship.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 64 posts

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#4

Post by brianbreslin »

mikeocool wrote: post #2

Really disappointed to hear this news. The SimpleGeo Context API gas been a really great resource for geographic data that isn't otherwise easily/affordably available, like neighborhood boundaries.

zillow distributes free kml files for the neighborhood boundaries.

Edit: here is the link http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/neighborhood-boundaries.htm

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#5

Post by mikeocool »

brianbreslin wrote: post #4
mikeocool wrote: post #2

Really disappointed to hear this news. The SimpleGeo Context API gas been a really great resource for geographic data that isn't otherwise easily/affordably available, like neighborhood boundaries.

zillow distributes free kml files for the neighborhood boundaries. Edit: here is the link http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/neighborhood-boundaries.htm

Yeah, I've looked at those a while ago and it seemed that few cities, particularly NYC, the data was some what low quality. It was either really lacking in certain areas or the neighborhood boundaries were far off from what people who actually live in the city consider to be the boundaries.

Although perhaps they've gotten better, I'll give them a look.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#6

Post by sunkencity »

I really love SimpleGeos logos, but I have never grokked what problem they really solve for the user, but I totally get what urban airship solves. I've done a couple of app project with geo data but I don't see any benefit of having that part as a separate service.

This is such fantastic logo and identity design work: http://softfacade.com/simplegeo.html

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#8

Post by MatthewPhillips »

> In order to deliver on this aggressive vision in the shortest amount of time possible, we need to focus our product development efforts.

Let me get this straight. You want to focus on developing your product, but you want your customers to focus on migrating to another provider so that you can focus on your product. This is a pretty shitty way to treat a paying customer. A two and a half month notice is basically a fuck you, I'd be surprised if you kept any of those customers.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#9

Post by d_r »

sunkencity wrote: post #6

I really love SimpleGeos logos, but I have never grokked what problem they really solve for the user, but I totally get what urban airship solves. I've done a couple of app project with geo data but I don't see any benefit of having that part as a separate service. This is such fantastic logo and identity design work: http://softfacade.com/simplegeo.html

Thanks for posting this link! I've always wondered who designed the beautiful icons on their pages, and it's even more remarkable to see them in high-res.
Post reply on HN