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Rround

rround.me

59 pointselving39 comments

rround is a fun and simple way to discover people and things happening rround you!

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I don't particularly 'get' social media, but I can see myself using this, it's frictionless or whatever the word is.

Geolocation works fine for me, I'm in Australia.

I'm on my Macbook Pro at uni and it has my position perfectly. I'm way impressed with this website.

I'm in the same situation, but I guess being at a university would give better geo ip location data...

Very slick! And I agree with the others, this gets location quite well (except it put me north of the Thames).

There are so many location apps, so it's good to see something simplified.

Now the one thing you need to do is give me a reason to keep coming back to the site.

Add chat maybe? There are lots of location-based chat apps now, that allow you to chat with people in the same location as you. What I would love is an app that let me chat with people in different parts of the city. "Hey Jenny, how's Oxford street this morning?" "Anything fun going on in Trafalgar square right now?". You get the idea.

Yeah I've been thinking about what I can do with this, but a location based chat has been done before. I was thinking of keeping it simple. A mobile version maybe, I use CSS3 Media Queries to show different "versions" of the app on different devices but I was thinking of doing dedicated mobile app... When I find the time of course lol

rround is a simple HTML5 experiment I built to discover people and things happenings around you. What do you guys think?

Please tell me this took you a long time? The design is I impeccable and I can barely make fonts stick (hnnotify.com)

You designers are an enigma to me, you make beautiful seem so easy :(

Oh yea, and the app is very cool.

It took me like a month? I really don't know lol. I'm not that good of a designer so I was shocked when I read your comment. Thanks!

> I'm not that good of a designer so I was shocked when I read your comment.

<sigh> now I am infinitely more sad... apparently it comes so easily to you, that you don't even realize how nice this site looks.

I should show you some of my designs sometimes... after you are done laughing you'll have some better perspective on your own work ;)

It looks very nice! I've had the same idea for ages, but never really executed on it. Good job!

Very accurate. Has my position near perfect while I was at university and now at home.

I was surprised at how well it works—it's very polished. What are you plans for it?

I think you should've put some more information in the link title. I wouldn't use this because I'm one of those paranoid people.

I get a "Retrieving position timeout" error, even though I accept to share my location (on both Firefox and Google Chrome on OS X; geosharing works otherwise, for instance on this: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#geolocation.)

EDIT: Additionally, it would be nice to have a short description with screenshots of what it is supposed in the case that you cannot get through the location stage...

Yes, the geolocation API can act weird sometimes :( try to clear you cache or try a different browser. You can alway enter your location manually (not the same but it's something). I'm sorry if the app didn't worked for you :(

Tried on Safari, it timed out. Cleared my cache, tried again. Same thing. Tried Chrome, timed out.

I'll enter my location manually, it seems like a really awesome idea!

That sucks :( Maybe if you try on an ipad or smartphone (devices with gps)?

My Android smarphone gets a timeout too :(

Times out for me too. Pity.

Interesting so many people here are surprised at the precision of it, which shows HTML5 geolocation is doing well. (Though it comes down to how the browser gets geo data, I think some beyond Chrome are using Google, but not sure).

I notice its using the enableHighAccuracy flag, which probably helps. I've been told you also might be able to get better precision with watchPosition(), as the precision will get better with each call, though it's not used here.

Yeah, I've been thinking of using watchPosition. Maybe on the next update?

Wow, it nailed my location. Generally, HTML5 location never really works and thinks I'm about 50 miles away.

The design is really great too. Any plans for an API?

I have an idea for an app that needs to know user's physical location. I have planned on using HTML5 geolocation api to access user's location (Using HTML5 will save me effort in porting the app to various mobile devices). I was little skeptical on the accuracy of geolocation api. But looks like it is doing pretty good work, and I think I can go ahead with using geolocation for my application :)

Cool. I feel like having to click on the icons for them to show up on the map is too expensive. Perhaps just a hover over? And it looks like spots are already categorized; how about having a category that you can click (or hover!) to see all the nearby ones. Anyway, fun! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the suggestions! As I said, this is an experiment and I will continue to change and add new things. So stay tuned!

How do you get the data? I assume none of these people have added rround; I also assume you don't have access to the Twitter firehose...

Am using the APIs from twitter, instagram, foursquare and youtube to get the data. Google maps api to display the map, user locations, directions, etc. and the yahoo placefinder api for geocoding and reverse-geocoding. Everything is done client side with jquery, backbone.js and handlebars.js

EDIT: You don't need an account from none of these services. rround just uses your location and the rest is magic ;)

I forgot to mention that it also uses local storage to show you the people that were rround you on your last visit.

Whoa some of my own tweeted photos showed up after locating me.

Small town livin' I guess ...

Looks really good btw.

Thanks!

Very nice. Reminds me of what http://ban.jo/ is doing on mobile.

Hey ban.jo looks great!

Looks like you've maxed out your API calls for the current hour. Seems you're getting quite some traffic ;)

The expand map appears to be broken, not displaying anything. I'm using Chrome in Windows 7.

Doesn't seem to have my location right - off by quite a few clicks

Puts me on the opposite end of the country. Sigh.

Awesome!

Why your site no work?

I refresh three times before it find location.

Then, it finally find me, and all I get is a spinner arrow.

I am disappoint :(

Well, there's a lot of factors here... HTML5 Geolocation is not very accurate if the device doesn't have a GPS. You can always enter your location manually from tne settings pane (the more specific you are the better). If the app got stuck at "looking for data around you" then one of the services (twitter, instagram, foursquare or youtube) failed and the app tries to get results from the services again. Sorry if your expirience wasn't good :(

Being stuck in an endless loop is not a good way of informing the user of what's gone wrong.

Your'e right... I'll work on this as soon as I can!

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