Ask HN: Please review our placemarking site - Amidst

1. Don't spawn a new page for Google Directions. You can show directions on your site and your map:

directions = new GDirections(map, gel('directionsId')); ... directions.load("from:" + startLoc + " to:" + endLoc); })

2. You should use a little ajax to fetch waypoints on pan and zoom. For example, using YUI:

GMap2.prototype.getSurroundingData = function () { size = this.getSize() center = this.getCenter() var dataURL = '/get_quadrant/' + center.lat() + '/' + center.lng() + '/' + size.width + '/' + size.height + '/' + this.getZoom(); var cObj = YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest('POST', dataURL, { success: function(o){ this.fetchQuadrantCallback(o)}, scope: this });

3. Use the new Google zoom control, instead of the old one you use: this.addControl(new GLargeMapControl3D(), topLeft);

4. Use a function to clear input boxes (such as your search box) when they are clicked:

function clearInitialValue() { this.value = ""; this.onclick = null this.style.color = "black"; }

I have other suggestions, and if you are interested email me at andrewljohnson [AT] trailbehind [dot] com.

The concept is basically "Delicious for places". It's a social placemarking app, meant to make it easier to keep track of the places you like, want to go, etc.

Rather than encouraging long-winded reviews of places, ala Yelp, we want to encourage people to just keep notes on places. Also, ala Delicious, we want to make it as easy as possible to get info into and out of the system via RSS feeds, an API, etc. An iPhone app is on the way.

Suggestions and feedback would be greatly appreciated. :-)

So immediately I think "Four Square". I see you arent, but that sounds like it'll be your biggest competitor. How you plan to get users on board? B2B? B2C?

Little things: 1) I like the map where I get to click on the bubbles of numbers to a point. But once I zoom in on San Francisco, its a little weird to still have bubbles over neighborhoods. At that point I'd rather just see a list of the top places on the bottom, with pointers ala Google that change as I scan through the list.

1.a) ah, and when I got too close, all the bubbles just go away. How do I actually find the places? I thought it would be through the map...

2) The white check is a little confusing for "I want to see it" Can it be a totally different icon?

3) Ah, was worried I would have to remember the address of the place I added. Love that you have ACCURATE suggestions. :)

4) Rating with the stars is a bit tricky. I love that you do %, but I was momentarily confused when it scanned back down even after I clicked.

5) Super easy to use, congrats. Your UI is clear and concise - I was able to post with ease.

6) Do you have a phone app? In the works? That seems like it would be your most important thing. I would never think to do this sitting at home, but I would definitely do it while just leaving a restaurant, or sitting in a park with friends.

What? I think this line needs to be rewritten.

Your map is a little confusing for me. Clicking through to Texas shows me 32 places in Austin and 10 in San Antonio. I assumed this meant that there were no places listed in Dallas, but if you continue to click down, 2 show up. I probably wouldn't have gone that far if I wasn't exploring.

On the plus side, the design is great. There was just an article at the top of HN that mentioned being "Pixel Perfect" in web design. Your site is a good example of that.

Tighten up your front page to really make it stand out.

I viewed it through a 20" iMac, so I've got plenty of screen real estate. First time visitors shouldn't have to scroll to get to the bottom bar and the /places/all resource is hidden below the scroll as well.

1. Definitely go mobile

2. Detect my location and immediately show me stuff nearby (there was a geolocation database on HN recently)

3. You're making me zoom in too much with those nice aggregated bubbles, at some point I just got tired

4. Socialight built a nice community, but they don't seem like they're going anywhere (incidentally they're based in NY too!) - they do some good things, like mobile strategy but the interface is hard.

5. Don't force the sign up before someone adds content, let them add content and then ask them to sign up or provide an anonymous nickname

6. Placemarking and location based services is a massive but very hard and less understood market, keep innovating and develop based on feedback - community is very important!

1) Great look and feel, very nice and clean.

2) Process is simple

3) Not a fan of the single percentile fine-grained rating. At the finest I'd do half stars, but really I spent a good 10 seconds trying to rate my favorite comedy place 100% and could only get 99%. So I'd say roll it back to 5 stars or just half stars.

4) A small pet peeve: Just put the USA at the top of the country list. Your greatest majority of users are going to be from there.

5) Copyright is out of date, it says 2008 in the footer.

And to be honest I'm not sure why I'd use this over Yelp right now. I understand your separation, one is for reviews and long-winded info, but I mean even with an iphone app I don't really see any added value for myself.

If this can be done efficiently using Twitter search then the data is automated and makes your site more interesting because content is indirectly being created via Twitter.

Bug: I created an account and clicked on 'settings' in the top right, and my email address displayed in the "city" field.

Also, both the city and the password fields had a green background initially, but once I clicked in them the green went away.

Also, the "Upload New Place Photos" page doesn't have a back button.

It ended up that I was registered fine, but I still saw the error rather than be redirected.

Don't know if it's been said but I get an error message (from Mal the duck) when I click on the link to your blog.

One issue: on the 3rd most zoomed level no markers show up.

KeyError at /signup ...