If you want a true long tail street picture app, there is a new one - Mapillary - with only phones and HTML5 no cars etc involved, e.g. http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/jvEX_s9fM7SwTDoMdeYDOw - works everywhere where you can have a smartphone and GPS fix.
Show HN: Random Street View
161–170 of 171 posts
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#162Nice! So interesting. This is the kind of thing that, 30 years ago, you could only dream about. Stuff like this reminds me how much we take things like the Internet and Google Street View for granted, and sometimes you need to step back and think how amazing they are. But stepping forwards to a minor detail... are there keyboard shortcuts? If you click on the image, you can already use Google controls to pan/walk aro…
Sounds like something you could build with Mapillary, they have an API to get the images, the web view is all HTML5, key nav would be easy. See http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/WNYdrxB1Q8tiICsCFTra0A for an example
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#163Nice! So interesting. This is the kind of thing that, 30 years ago, you could only dream about. Stuff like this reminds me how much we take things like the Internet and Google Street View for granted, and sometimes you need to step back and think how amazing they are. But stepping forwards to a minor detail... are there keyboard shortcuts? If you click on the image, you can already use Google controls to pan/walk aro…
"so many locations seem to have... not much going on"
I think that's a problem today. We have a lot of things shouting at us. And when we are in the open we think nothing much is going on. But take a closer look ... ;)
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#164Interesting! A few things: - Some locations repeat after a short while - Not sure how the randomization is done, but some countries like Botswana and Bulgaria seem over-represented - Address language seems random (often English, sometimes other, not much relation to where location is -- e.g. some US locations had addresses shown in Czech etc.)
A small bias towards more variety was introduced to prevent 80% of locations being in the US. Repeating locations are possible but should be increasingly rare.
I'll further tweak the randomization patterns for the better. And fix the address language indeed.
Thanks for the feedback!
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#165Some interesting non-street views in there: http://randomstreetview.com/#fnso2_17h6mm_b0_a_-8 http://randomstreetview.com/#68vsh_19xpmm_100_a_-1 http://randomstreetview.com/#vbpgr_60bxi_b6_a_-1 http://randomstreetview.com/#953ql_19j07c_1ix_a_-g
That one in Rajasthan is good, but a pity they put that massive GSM antenna so close on the hill next to it!
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, no! Don't do it by population distribution! The rural areas are what I want to see! Ahem . . . I mean, the random distribution ensures that everyone gets to see things they weren't looking for, and that's good.
I second this. Cities get boring pretty quickly.
OK, it seems that guys from cities want to see country sides more often and the guys from country side want to see cities and people. I guess the randomization engine should be biased to use the location of the user & serve him what he does not see very often.
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#167I don't mean to gatecrash, but as I have been running a near identical site for a few years I feel compelled to comment. The street views generated on this site are not really random; they are picked from a predefined list in a db. This is why duplicates appear after a number of clicks. I run http://www.mapcrunch.com which also generates random street views, but with more options - you can define a region on a map (l…
I created a random street view site while learning javascript. It was pretty basic like OPs except that it was actually random. Then I googled it and landed on your site. Decided it would be too much work to bring it to the same level and dropped the project.
I also don't think someone would intentionally copy the idea of your site. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that Google's streetview has an api. There are other sites as well. This one [1] I particularly like.
[1] locatestreet.com
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I second this. Cities get boring pretty quickly.
OK, it seems that guys from cities want to see country sides more often and the guys from country side want to see cities and people. I guess the randomization engine should be biased to use the location of the user & serve him what he does not see very often.
Nope; I live in the country, and I'm curious about how rural people around the world live. The cities are neat too. Random is good.
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#169This was on mobile as a game a while ago
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/map-mayhem/id608008620?mt=8
Re: Show HN: Random Street View
#170It’s quite banal, but it always baffles me that everywhere something is happening at the same time. A wast complexity which we can only make sense of because it all works according the same principles. People build roads, houses, raise families and eventually die. Isn’t there a word for this feeling?
Do you mean "sonder"?
http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/s...