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Comment by kirchhoff | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to gatecrash, but as I have been running a near identical site for a few years I feel compelled to comment.

The street views generated on this site are not really random; they are picked from a predefined list in a db. This is why duplicates appear after a number of clicks.

I run http://www.mapcrunch.com which also generates random street views, but with more options - you can define a region on a map (like a city) and generate street views from within it. You can also restrict the generated views to those taken within buildings, or within urban areas. The views generated are also totally random.

I don't have any objection to someone copying the concept of an existing site / service, but I feel that if you do so, you should at least try to differentiate it in some way - most easily done by making improvements or including superior functionality.

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This idea isn't terribly original. Matter of fact, I was just remarking that the idea is so unoriginal I'm surprised more people haven't implemented it. It's a good idea, just not incredibly unique. It's not too hard to believe that this person just came up with it on their own.

I don't have any objection to someone copying the concept of an existing site / service

To be fair to the OP, nothing says it was copied from your site. They could have had the idea from GeoGuessr http://geoguessr.com/ the game where you have to guess where in the world you are based on StreetView, or they could have had it totally on their own too.

I don't know if it's fair to say he's copying - there's always the chance that they came up with it on their own. Are you really saying that you're the first person to come up with this idea?

Anyways, I think your site is much better... thanks for sharing. This is cool.

I didn't say he copied my site directly (clearly the design is totally different), and even if he did I don't mind at all.

My site wasn't the first, http://www.globegenie.com was. I liked the concept and built an improved version.

My only point was that if you are going to take an existing idea, build something better.

That presupposes that he realizes the idea was already executed.

In any case, even if he did, I can think of a number of very good reasons why building something similar to another already executed idea is still a worthwhile endeavor. For example, maybe he wanted a new portfolio piece or maybe he wanted to learn some new technologies.

I like both. Yours is nicer though.

I created a random street view site while learning javascript. It was pretty basic like OPs except that it was actually random. Then I googled it and landed on your site. Decided it would be too much work to bring it to the same level and dropped the project.

I also don't think someone would intentionally copy the idea of your site. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that Google's streetview has an api. There are other sites as well. This one [1] I particularly like.

[1] locatestreet.com

Any thoughts to have the defined searched represented in the URL, so that I can link to say, my city's randomized street view?

By default Random Street View puts the country in the url, which is sort of what I'm talking about.

Also you should maybe do a full screen thing (aka minimize the UI), like Random Street View.

http://randomstreetview.com/se#fullscreen

Thanks for the comments. I suppose I could represent the state in the URL, though it might be an ugly URL if many countries are selected.

I did already try to minimize the UI as much as possible - I'll see what else I can do.

I like this, but I am getting a lot of weird behavior. Sometimes clicking the image so I can pan it moves me to the previous image. Using the arrow keys sometimes pans the image, sometimes it takes me to the previous image.

Firefox 26.0, Windows 7

Heh, well that will teach me for boasting about my site. I just did a big UI update and am ironing out the bugs.

When you say 'previous image' do you mean the same image that you would see by clicking the back arrow next to the address?

Yes. playing with it a bit more, it seems when clicking in a location that does not give you the circle (to move your position) that this happens. If the circle is there it advances you along the road as it should. I am not sure, but I think it may be correlated with using the left/right arrow keys. i.e., use arrow keys to move forwards/backwards on the road, click "go" to go to the next image, and then click in the video with the mouse, and it displays the previous scene. But I can't make it 100% repeatable.

Also, I have it set on 'auto', and it seems to stop and not continue playing after several images. The play/stop button shows "stop(0)" and does not update. If I press the button twice to toggle playing it resumes (again for a short time).

Not complaining - I found the issues because I like it and am using it.

I'll try to reproduce the problems you mentioned. There are some keyboard shortcuts - J and K for previous and next image, and G for go. Maybe these are being triggered somehow.

When you see stop(0) it might still be searching for a Street View, especially if you're using the map.

Thanks again.

map crunch is awesome. I was totally obsessed with it for a while last year.

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