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Show HN - usernique.com: Generate usernames and check availability

usernique.com

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Re: Show HN - usernique.com: Generate usernames and check availability

#13

Post by conroy »

trevorah wrote: post #10
citricsquid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the reddit check, a username can be unavailable for registration even if there is no profile, after an account is deleted the username is reserved forever. Not sure if there is any way to check if a username is actually available with out trying to register it. For example "citricsquid" is unavailable on reddit but your service reports it is available.

Damn, I only just added the reddit check. Looks like I might have to revert that...

Just found the API that reddit uses to check for usernames[1]. I'll be adding it to handlehelp right now.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/api/username_available.json?user=foo

Re: Show HN - usernique.com: Generate usernames and check availability

#14

Post by trevorah »

nsp wrote: post #8
trevorah wrote: post #2

Any feedback would be really cool...

Could you include domain names (.com, maybe .io/.ly) and maybe Facebook url? If you had those this could be great for finding pronounceable names. It's be great if you could set it so that it would just keep trying until it found one that was available on all services, but I can see that adding a ton of overhead, so I can see why you haven't done that yet.

I've just added the .io and i'll add .com in a bit. Adding in the loop might be a bit much if you're not bothered about certain services - e.g constantly updating the page just because a twitter name cant be found.

Re: Show HN - usernique.com: Generate usernames and check availability

#17

Post by aoetr »

trevorah wrote: post #2

Any feedback would be really cool...

Well for starters it needs to support many more websites (Facebook, Google/Youtube, Reddit, etc.) and needs to actually do the check automatically.

And it must be able to register the usernames in bulk, bypassing registration limits using multiple proxies and bypassing captchas using deathbycaptcha.com or similar.

Finally, support for generating realistic-looking activity on the websites would also be really useful.

Add an API and it would become a solid service.

Re: Show HN - usernique.com: Generate usernames and check availability

#18

Post by trevorah »

bdc wrote: post #15

What are you using to determine whether *.io domains are "free" vs "taken"? It seems to be incorrect. http://www.usernique.com/io/x -- "free" http://www.nic.io/cgi-bin/whois?query=x.io -- The domain is unavailable for use.

just checking the return code on a GET request. src is on github if you're curious. You're right though, looks like the domain lookups need a bit of work.

Re: Show HN - usernique.com: Generate usernames and check availability

#20

Post by nsp »

trevorah wrote: post #14
nsp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you include domain names (.com, maybe .io/.ly) and maybe Facebook url? If you had those this could be great for finding pronounceable names. It's be great if you could set it so that it would just keep trying until it found one that was available on all services, but I can see that adding a ton of overhead, so I can see why you haven't done that yet.

I've just added the .io and i'll add .com in a bit. Adding in the loop might be a bit much if you're not bothered about certain services - e.g constantly updating the page just because a twitter name cant be found.

Yeah, I agree. You could do a sortable list of services so the user could rank their importance and then pick the best result from the first X(10?) iterations given their preferences. Obviously, that adds a lot of complexity, you just got me excited.
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