Ripple – Chat with people nearby • Hacker News Board

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#31

Post by DigitalTurk » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 9:53 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #11

est wrote: post #9

WeChat (by Tencent) has similar feature, but you must first add people to friend list then chat. However this raise an interesting topic: How to securely verify that a device is indeed nearby and not spoofing it? You can spoof your GPS coordinates easily on Android at least.

Why would that be a problem? Your location should not be an identifying value but more or less a topic. Being able to set your parameters to some location somewhere and chat with "random people" there seems like a feature, not a bug.

It's a problem because of spam.

On WeChat it happens that if you send a message to a 'nearby pretty girl', you get a link to some dodgy website back.

And before you call people who would send a message to a 'nearby pretty girl' naive. WeChat is in fact used a lot for hooking up with strangers.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#32

Post by _asciiker_ » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 10:57 AM UTC

digitalengineer wrote: post #21

runn1ng wrote: post #17

If I want to chat with people nearby, I would go up, come to them and start chatting with them. In person. ...just kidding, I am an asocial person, I don't speak with other people.

Exept with us or course. So I take it you'd be someone willing to try the AI as shown in the 'Her' movie? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4

ha, I just saw that movie last night, great ideas in there and I like how everything works so seamlessly.

Kind of gets you thinking about the singularity doesn't it?

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#33

Post by mk3 » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 11:08 AM UTC

I'm not sure about the timeline who released first, but there is popcorn chat app which allows to chat with people who are within one mile from you it was featured here a while back. The functionality seems to be the same less or more.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#34

Post by MichaelTieso » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 11:35 AM UTC

Nice work guys. Loved the articles on Medium as well.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#35

Post by herghost » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 12:44 PM UTC

is there anyway you can forcibly push the app to the attractive woman that gets on my train?

no? oh ok.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#36

Post by popey » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 1:28 PM UTC

Reminds me of Trepia which tried a similar thing only on desktops, 10 years ago. It died, unsurprisingly. I had been wondering when someone would revive the idea.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#37

Post by mceoin » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 1:28 PM UTC

You guys should check out Yobongo. A similar location-based chat app which has since closed down post-seed round. You might like to see what worked / didn't work for them.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#38

Post by mceoin » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 1:29 PM UTC

mceoin wrote: post #37

You guys should check out Yobongo. A similar location-based chat app which has since closed down post-seed round. You might like to see what worked / didn't work for them.

They were around in 2011.

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#39

Post by mengto » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 1:53 PM UTC

MichaelTieso wrote: post #34

Nice work guys. Loved the articles on Medium as well.

Thank you, hopefully our little hackathon experience will inspire others to build their own Apps too! :D

Re: Ripple – Chat with people nearby

#40

Post by mengto » Wed, Jan 15, 2014, 1:55 PM UTC

mk3 wrote: post #33

I'm not sure about the timeline who released first, but there is popcorn chat app which allows to chat with people who are within one mile from you it was featured here a while back. The functionality seems to be the same less or more.

Hmm, popcorn is a single chatroom within a location. Ripple is multiple chatrooms within a location, but based on a topic. There is no signup. That actually creates some really interesting use cases. Hopefully, you'll decide to try it out! :)