Pointer Pointer (2012)
pointerpointer.com
pointerpointer.com
Reminds me of a "user locator" website I once saw. It claimed to use advanced algorithms to locate the person using the website, so when you clicked go it spent a while printing various "reticulating splines" type technobabble before finally showing a picture of a big finger pointing at the user with big H1 text saying "You are right there".
We should have always known, as anything is possible at ZomboCom.
For those curious if how it works, Paul Irish did a breakdown of it quite a while ago: https://youtu.be/Z2ZXW2HBLPM
TL:DW - Vornoi Diagrams[1] and manual tagging, no machine learning needed.
The interesting bit is it keeps a list of the 4 point/images you've most recently seen, and will ignore those when searching for the new nearest point/image. Then scales that image to point at your cursor more accurately. This is why it feels pixel-perfect or so, because you won't get a repeat image until you refresh, or try the same location 5 times.
To test that out, ctrl+tab away and back to the tab without moving your cursor. You'll always get a different image. Then refresh the page, and ctrl+tab away and back again without moving your cursor. You'll see the same images in order.
Also neat that what was once a jQuery app now uses React and Typescript.
[0] https://pointerpointer.com/new-positions.json
[1] From /static/js/Point.ts
const bruteClosest = (position: Point, positions: Point[]) => {
let index = undefined;
let closest = Number.MAX_VALUE;
for (let i = 0; i < positions.length; i++) {
const pos = positions[i];
const distance = distancePoints(pos, position);
if (distance < closest && !lastPicked.includes(i)) {
closest = distance;
index = i;
};
}
lastPicked.unshift(index!);
lastPicked.length = Math.min(lastPicked.length, 4);
return index;
};https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4095237 (2012, has a video on how it works)
Another similar pointer idea from Moniker https://studiomoniker.com/projects/do-not-touch
It would be cool if this was a bit faster, so you'd be able to move the mouse around and see it flashing up different pictures of people pointing at it in real time.
I can't see any ads on the site. Is this load due to the site being hosted on a Google platform like GCP or Firebase?
Does anyone know where this database comes from? I feel like they were all scraped off old MySpace pages.
This is what I’d call 'user experience'.
* Now at https://puckey.studio, but I think he was still working at/for https://studiomoniker.com at the time.