Show HN:San Francisco JavaScript API | Hacker News Reader

Show HN:San Francisco JavaScript API

8 pointscehlen5 comments

I recently developed a JavaScript library that determines what San Francisco neighborhoods and/or districts someone is in. The application is served from Google App Engine so if no one is using the application the server instances are shut down and your first couple queries might be slow. But after a couple instances are spun up it performs quite well. The example application is just an example so it's not very sophisticated or pretty to look at. For the example to work properly it must run on a device that supports the HTML5 geo location API such as an iPhone. If you get chance take a look at it and tell me what you think. I actually live in Gilbert Arizona so it's a bit hard for me to test it in the real world any input on quality of my output is appreciated. In the next couple of days I plan on documenting the API and posting on HN again. In the meantime just look at the JavaScript code, it's a very simple API to understand.

Example Application: http://www.iamnear.com/examples/sfjslib.html

URL to JavaScript Library: http://www.iamnear.com/js/iamnear/sfjslib.js

Thank you in advance for any and all input.

I am near you, in Chandler, so cannot help test SF but would be interested in PHX. After reading your JavaScript I have a question: HTML5 geolocation returns lat/lon so what are you using that isn't shown in the script to get neighborhood?

Oh I see, it passes coordinates to your rest api which returns neighborhood based on fences you have created. Cool. I can imagine this would be useful for drawing fences around businesses and making an app that changes its display of closest businesses as the user drives around town.

Yes, you are correct that is how it works. I’m still in development and have about three major bugs I still need to work out, plan on doing that this weekend. And performance is bit slow due to I have not minified the JavaScript yet, also a weekend project. The goal of “I Am Near” is to associate content and services to specific geographic locations. Currently content and services can take the form of full blown applications, embeddable widgets, or SOAP/RESTful web services. The basic premise is that a user’s experience should change depending on where they are. For example if a user goes to http://www.mcdonalds.com in their home they would be presented with general information about McDonalds and listings of the closest locations. If a user is in the same shopping mall at lunch time they would be presented with specials and deals to help entice them to go to the McDonalds 50 yards away. If they are in an actual McDonalds they would have the ability to order their lunch and even pay for it using their smart phone/mobile device. The HTML5 geolocation API gives you the latitude and longitude but often that is meaningless. As a developer I would much rather be given information such as “user is in Old Town Scottsdale” or “user is in Store #2345” than “user is at 33.26552, -111.89116”. Fundamentally that is the problem “I Am Near” is trying to solve. If you get chance please play with it. Right now it’s just me so any additional developer input is greatly appreciated.

Cool. Any possibility of putting the source code on Github?

I plan on putting the sfjslib.js in Github in about a week, but not the source code for "I Am Near".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com