Moby: Share your location in real time | Hacker News Reader

Moby: Share your location in real time

mo.by

57 pointspriley60 comments

I think the original title referred to how this was some group of teenagers' first coding project. I think the mods should change it back - this shouldn't be viewed with the same harsh eyes as many startups are.

What was the original title?

I dont remember exactly, but I think it was something like "Mo.by: first coding project by a group of teens"

The original title was: "Moby: Location Sharing App coded by teens (their first app)"

Not sure why it was changed. This app was coded by Berkeley freshman as their first app in honor of a professor that passed away this year who wanted this app when getting picked up by others to visit the hospital often. You can read it in the Apple Store notes of the app:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moby-simple-location-sharing...

"This application was made in honor of Professor Yale Braunstein (1945 - 2012)."

I personally use Path and love the "neighborhood" alerts which periodically post to Path "Nathan is in Downtown Austin", "Nathan is in Barton Hills, Austin", etc. This system is very elegant and seamless because it posts directly to the social feed without any effort.

From the landing page for the app I'm unsure of how this app works, or what purpose the shortlink serves. Why not make the app link to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and just post neighborhood information automatically like Path does? (Or maybe if they have privacy concerns with the press of one button.) This would be much simpler, easy to explain, and would doubtlessly be well received by those whose social networking apps don't have this useful feature of Path built in.

You are absolutely right. This is just our first version and we these are great tips. Thank you for your suggestions and we will improve in the next version.

We wanted to get this out early so we can learn from all of you.

It's not simple if your friends aren't already in your social network. The link will work for anyone you send it to.

I can try to extrapolate what I would use this for and what will happen when I share the link, but I'm unsure at best.

Really wish I had friends that used Path :/

I'm really happy that my circle of closest friends all use Path. As a result Path is the social network I use for my best friends, and the other social networks are all the spammy stuff I don't really want to see anyway.

give me your friends! :P

Interesting.

I tried to get my friends to sign up for Google Latitude but they didn't like the idea of it broadcasting a location when not needed.

So maybe an expiring short link is a better approach.

I like it.

Great point. The short-link makes it sort of like Bit.ly for location and easily shared in SMS, Tweets, etc. I also like the temporal aspect that you can control how long you will be sharing the link (ex: I pick someone up at the airport, so I share my location for a few hours to that person).

I agree. I think that a very simple, single function service like this could be useful. You know exactly what you are sharing and who you are sharing it with.

In the past, I've been known to take a screenshot of my open maps application (with my location shown on the map), and sms that to friends to let them know where I am if I didn't have the address handy. This is clearly a better solution.

Yeah, I like the single-purpose paradigm.

No demo video, no explanation. Why do I need yet another app for this?

html5, javascript, geolocation apis, social networking sites with client-side sharing capabilities. These are all the things I need to build a simple service that does what's described here. Why is this an app?

As far as I gather, these kids have been doing it as a hobby because other apps for quickly sharing a real-time location suck. The short link makes it ideal for sharing via SMS/Twitter, etc.

But great point, they should have a quick demo video, even if they are just a few young hackers. That's probably coming next.

What apps do you need? I know how to share my current location on all major smartphone OSes without needing any apps that aren't built in.

Ok, pretend you are picking me up. Share with me a link where you are right now... even if you are driving.

iOS: Drop a pin in apple maps then click share location within the pin.

I said pretend you were driving.

You're making this too easy.

Pretend you are scuba diving with a propulsion jet, and need to share your location urgently.

:) Love it.

I can do it in about 3-4 clicks. I have never been in a situation where I could not afford 20 seconds to look at my phone, at a light or some such at the worst. I could make a Taskr shortcut or an on{x} shortcut, but that's probably not what you meant.

I think most people use Whatsapp for that. There's a built in feature.

And there were photosharing apps with filters before Instagram. Sometimes solid UX, strong brand, and focusing on what users want can mean the difference. I think these kids are on the right track.

> These are all the things I need to build a simple service that does what's described here. Why is this an app?

I don't understand how listing technologies that might go into making this app obviates the app. How do your two sentences here flow together?

How is this different from 'Find My Friends' by Apple[1] considering that this is iOS only at present?

[1] - http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/find-my-friends.html

Try using FMF and share with me (Android user) and the HN audience here with a link your location for an hour. I'm also hoping these kids come out with Android soon. Moby guys.. can you promise the HN audience an Android version soon?

The android app is currently being developed. Stay tuned!

I don't want to broadcast my location constantly. But I would like the ability to grant permission to some of my friends and family to be able to look up my location when they need it. I'd also like a log and a notification when they look it up, so I know I'm not being stalked, and so they actually put thought into deciding whether or not it's appropriate to look up my location before doing so.

I imagine an app which doesn't send my location to a third party service on an interval. When somebody wants to look up my location, the app on their phone sends a request to some third party service over the Internet, which then pushes a request for my location to my phone. The first time the request comes in from a particular user, it asks me if I'd like to grant them this privilege permanently, temporarily, or to block it. If I grant it, then I don't need to approve future lookups but I am alerted to them happening.

[edit] The requests could also be of the style: "Let me know when you arrive at location x", instead of just "Let me know where you are now". Would be handy for meeting up at places on nights out.

It's a great hobby project, but as a product it is late to the market.

http://www.glympse.com/what_is_glympse has had a product out for several years now.

I never understand arguments like this. There as Orkut before Facebook, Loopt before Latitude, Yahoo before Google, and Digg before Reddit.

You can copy stuff and make them better, and this better can be even just simpler, or with better community, or other odd declinations of "better" that are enough to win in the market.

EDIT: and in case there is already something in the marke that is yet not famous, you can almost ignore it at all unless this is an hint about the fact that the app may be not useful (more likely it is bad execution, bad marketing, ...)

Yeah but this time, there's literally no difference in the products lol. Plus, Glympse has deep integration into many cars, the UPS uses them, etc. AND its super popular amongst consumers. Sure you may be able to get some consumers to switch to Moby for whatever reason, but money only really comes in this case from businesses

Also, Glympse has some important relevant patents they should be careful not to tip-toe about

Glympse was founded by dinosaurs.. retired Microsoft guys. I'd put my money on three talented teens with a better UX in their first version every day of the week. Keep on shipping, Moby team!

I'm not arguing that Moby should not try to do better.

However, there should some acknowledgement that an almost identical product has existed for years and how this differs (better UX?, more features, etc).

It should implement a "Launch in Maps app" feature for Android and iOS on web interface. This will help users to get directions and make this 2x useful.

Great suggestion! This is why the HN community is so valuable for young developers like these guys.

Checkout http://0.mk/maps - True, its non-realtime but

- it has directions for the link recipient. Voice directions. (ok, the voice is basic but sufficient)

- you can also draw and tag other stuff on the map - if you want.

- its fully HTML5-based. Works on desktop, iOS, Android.

- works without a backend server (bit.ly for URLs, map quest open directions). You can host your own easily. Infact this one is hosted on github pages.

I know I'm going off on a tangent but I'd be weary on putting anything on a Belarus domain name. If you're not selling to or dealing with Belorussians directly, you're most likely not affected by it but a country that can do this – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16407235 – should be treated with caution.

This looks a lot like Glympse [ http://glympse.com/ ] to me.

Agreed, but way easier and done without >$10M of funding like Glympse. Try it. Just like how Instagram stripped down other apps and made a better experience, I think the short mo.by links make sharing location easier.

Here's Aaron Iba's version of the same concept (his app is called Spacetime): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-time/id508723489?mt=8&...

Yes, very cool, except as far as it seems, it does not enable moving tracking (driving) and is instead stagnant like others. Also, no shortened link.

Some landing page optimization to explain the product would be really helpful: since this is a mobile app, you want to give people a good idea of what they're getting into before they go to their phones, find it, and download it.

We totally agree. We wanted the HN audience to get access to this first and then improve the explanation soon after for general users. Thank you!

Did you miss the screenshot? It seems pretty self explanatory to me...

Like the idea and liking the app. Solves some of my issues I'm having with find my friends. Would love to see some kind of location requests and settings on how often my location is updated. I'm keeping an eye on this app.

Great point. I can how it may evolve there.

Thanks for all the support and suggestions. This is just something we coded in a little over a month a will be iterating quickly. And, yes, an android version and awesome demo video for the splash page are in the works.

Very nice. I recommend checking out the Whatsapp share location feature, they did a great job also.

Mobypicture would love that domain..

I was initially confused by this - it would have been a pretty big pivot for a picture-sharing startup.

classic problem and a good project to do some side programming (I think these guys executed nicely). my own variant is a slightly less polished version running in the browser: http://geoteo.net/

Immediately thought of mobynow/mobypicture...

How is that different than glympse?

the domain is gold

go bears!

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