Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?

burningmanrides.com

93 pointsjasonshen32 comments

Hey HN, I'm a long-time reader and this is my first Show HN (exciting!) It's a collaboration between me, jasonshen (of rejection therapy / cold showers / winning isn't normal), and randy.

We'd love feedback. Do you belong to any of these categories?

1) Going to Burning Man? (it's a weeklong festival in the Nevada desert, 50K attendees)-- how can we make this better for you?

2) Potential user of a more general ridesharing site? (we're talking long occasional drives, not daily commutes/carpooling)-- how can we improve on this so you'd use it?

3) Have opinions on ridesharing? -- tell us.

If you note which group(s) above you belong to in your comment that'd be great :)

Thanks so much for the help!

Oh yeah, and if you're a Double Rainbow fan, that guy (the actual one - we talked to him on the phone, haha) needs a ride from Yosemite here (and posted a video about it for us): http://burningmanrides.com/rides/52-mariposa-ca-to-burning-m...

I definitely like grouping rides by the date that the driver is starting his/her trip - maybe make that a tad more obvious? A small aside like a jQuery calendar or simple title like "Find a Ride by Date..." would get that message across.

Random idea: Instead of some calendar or other search/organization method, you might look at a map with jQuery slider. The idea would be to hook people up with drivers that might drive past their location (but not start there), and otherwise help discovery.

You might jerry-rig a single map with all "active" routes laid on it, and a jQuery slider that changes the date. It would be a cool way to see all the rides/routes available on any given day. Multiple colored routes on a single map should be possible - see here: https://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api/browse_threa...

Oh god, please don't do this. Said "jQuery sliders" and "jQuery calendars" are awful to use on touch-based devices. The click targets usually aren't big enough.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the slider doesn't work at all on touch-based devices, because their browsers usually don't generate onmousedown or onmousemove events. (There are specific touch events for this, but most programmers tend to ignore them.)

Potentially very useful. I often attend dance exchanges; most of those going know each other but logistics are a hassle.

One event organizer is currently using a google-doc hosted spreadsheet. Something that was announced and promoted with the event could make attendance easier (which organizers love).

A web UI could help show people on the way - maybe graphically with a map, so you don't need to do any algo work.

Please let me know if you do this; chebuctonian at gmail. Thanks!

I'm in group 2. I usually use Craigslist. Here are my main gripes:

-No standardization of locations, so no way for the system to show you who's going where at what time automatically.

-People shouting past each other a lot, like somebody offered a ride to a place three days ago and then a ton of people pile on the day of the ride looking to go to that place

-Reputation scoring, i.e. how often do they flake, etc.

I would use the shit out of a general-purpose rideshare site if you build it. Also, I am a front-end engineer mainly interested in helping people share stuff. So there's that.

Good work!

I'm enthusiastically behind the ridesharing idea. It's ecologically intelligent, saves people money and the hassles of vehicle ownership, and with looming fuel price spikes/peak oil/economic uncertainty, I see it as a futureproof business.

Looks like you've also got a solid team in place too (the importance of this cannot be overstated).

Btw, I'm in the "potential user" camp, and will use your service when I've got a chance.

In short, this is a startup I can feel good about. Good luck!

Can you share some good ridesharing services?

I don't know of many, sorry. I think the time is ripe for a startup to own this market though.

http://zimride.com is the only other one I know of.

Tie in Airbnb recommendations based on how long you're staying, and this is possibly the cheapest (and most exciting) way to travel around.

Please add a section for planes :)

Then pimp it on https://lists.burningman.com/mailman/listinfo/aviators-list

Yee Haw!

You could do our contradance theme camp a great favor by implementing this ASAP. We had a key musician drop out and the person who is by far the best replacement has a conflict that can only be solved by a flight at just the right time (ie this might provide the miracle we need).

Make a deal with HipMunk to show your long-haul ride-shares (if they exist) as a last hit on their flight search :)

There's a similar site in Germany that has more or less replaced hitchhiking. Very popular. Someone is going from, for example from Hamburg to Berlin, and says how many places are free, and how much money you have to chip in to cover expenses.

http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ is the URL.

It's worth taking a look so you don't have to reinvent everything.

Same in France, there's a very popular site with several millions of members: http://www.covoiturage.fr

I used the service myself and they have plenty of good ideas, feedback, voting, preferences, good ride search etc.

I myself wanted to start a ridesharing site some time ago but it seems like a tough proposition as it's very much a chicken/egg problem. Good luck with this new site though, we need more people ridesharing in the world :-)

I love the design you got going on. I don't say this often. Nice work.

Thanks! That's all randy. =)

I'm certain that "Burning Man" is copyrighted. You might have to tangle with that.

http://www.burningman.com/press/pressRandR.html#bmanRR

Thanks for pointing that out! We've been in touch with folks at Burning Man HQ and they're fine with our using their name since our site is entirely free to use and without ads.

You misunderstand copyright law. I can use Burning Man as much as I want as long as I don't use the name to make money.

He misunderstands copyright law, because copyright doesn't cover names.

Burning Man may be a trademark, though.

Cool idea. Its similar to a site http://RideHack.com that launched recently

Nice job! I'm interested in the tech details-- what is the site built with? How long did it take? Thanks!

Thanks!

The site was built with Ruby 1.9.2 + Rails 3.1 (+ SASS and Coffeescript), jQuery (+ UI), and PostgreSQL on top of Heroku (Cedar Stack + Unicorn + Memcached) using Facebook Connect and the Google Maps API. We've just been hacking on it for a little while now but the more pertinent point is that we still have plenty of hacking to do :)

I find it cool and potentially very useful. Good luck guys.

How have you been promoting the site? Looks great!

what's to prevent users from getting stabbed

Don't think of it in comparison to driving your own car or taking a train – think of it in terms of its advantages over free-form hitch hiking.

Stabbers have many better options for finding stabbees.

We definitely want to make sure our users are safe. Check out our safety page (which is linked at the footer) with tips on how to rideshare safely: http://burningmanrides.com/safety

We're also always looking for suggestions on how we can make the experience safer and better for our users. Let us know what else we should do!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com