Couple Live Map | Hacker News Reader

Couple Live Map

map.couple.me

115 pointsmikeknoop61 comments

Running a 10 minute stopwatch over the message count (at 8:30pm pt, a popular messaging time I'd imagine), I recorded 43k messages sent; extrapolating, that's 6.2 million messages per day; given that there have been 1,593 million messages sent in total, this is a 0.388% daily growth rate, or compounded a 12.6% monthly growth rate.

Interesting - for a company/app that has to value security in order to keep users (unlike other apps, where sharing to a larger audience adds value) I could only assume that this type of marketing would only deter people and/or cause existing users to think twice about their data. I can just see Sally sitting with her iPhone in Charlotte, NC, looking at this thinking "Oh that's so sweet...what a minute how do they know I'm sending a txt to my bf in NYC?"

I was trying it, but I think I would have preferred to see higher security for something only used to communicate between two people. Since it's only two people, they could decide on a secret outside of the app and then encrypt all the information sent between them with this secret so that the server doesn't need to be trusted. Are there any apps for couples that do something like this?

Couple appears to encrypt information between client to server using SSL, but the information is stored plaintext on the server.

How do you know they don't encrypt it on the server?

It's not encrypted client side, so the server is getting it unencrypted. They also return the data unencrypted, so if it is stored encrypted, it's not that useful encryption since the server also knows how to decrypt it.

Also their privacy policy notes that they'll give authorities access to your messages if they receive a warrant.

Following in line with this thought, I've actually plugged in my iPhone (non-jailbroken), downloaded the sqlite database onto my computer, and was able to see all the messages and URLs of photos sent. Even photos marked as "secret" (the apps Snapchat-like feature of deleting and hiding photos).

I don't think they're billing it as a 'super-ultra secret encrypted messaging app', nor do they need to. "It's not Facebook" is enough to interest me.

As a Couple user, I can only say this doesn't really bother me. I was already aware that servers I communicate with can see my IP and that IP addresses tend to be correlated with geographic location. Additionally, the phone company whose network I use to send messages to Couple already knows all this and more about me. So this is simultaneously unsurprising and kind of cool to watch.

We're planning to do a larger tech focused write-up on this infographic soon. On the backend it's powered by Node and Redis and runs within an EC2 auto scaling group.

Let me know if I can elaborate on any of the tech behind this visualization.

Do you filter out data points within a given city? It seems like most couples would live in the same city...

Those data points appear as circular flashes without a line, there are quite a few of them there. The app appeals to a lot of long distance Couples so the map is somewhat biased towards long distance communication.

Also if you look at big cities (LA, NYC, SF) you'll see a continuous stream of circles flashing without lines. So the data just overlaps a lot.

Ah. I thought that was just artsy.

Very handsome visualization. I'm looking forward to the follow-up on how this was put together, especially the front-end.

This is a fantastic visualization. Would love to see as much as you're comfortable sharing with us!

I am not sure why this creeped me out as much as it did.

Maybe the visualisation rate makes it seem like your communication is not as 'private' as you think. Or the fact that it highlights all the data that is being collected for something that I consider private and intimate.

Collected...?

I don't follow. You're using a service that stores (read: collects) your data for you.

Of course. It is not that I wouldn't be aware before signing up (and hence don't), it is that this is such a good visualization to demonstrate that they have stored this information for|on you.

Irrationally, I am more comforted by large companies having this type of data on me, under the _wrong_ assumption that I am part of a larger dataset and hence more anonymous. I understand the fallacy of this, especially when considering the additional meta data big players like Google have on their users. Yet somehow this vis creeps me out as I watch that couple messaging long distance between Paris and Sydney. Even if the data is anonymised, details about their private lives are being shared.

Then again, I am the nut who never signed up to facebook et al, having rolled out a private communication site amongst friends beforehand.

Maxmind offers free databases to do IP localization : http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/downloadable/

It's not extremely precise, but is enough for applications like this. Notice for instance the point up north in Canada, a lot of IPs will be placed there. It's in the middle of Manitoba, and there's pretty much nothing there. I believe it's the geographical center of Canada, and the default value when no other coordinates are known.

That's pretty much exactly what's happening with some locations. We do our best to get an accurate location based on a few sources, but ultimately Maxmind is the database we fall back to for pure IP based location if that's all we have.

We have the same difficulties with our Maxmind IP database. An inordinate number of our users supposedly live in Potwin, KS, AKA the geographical center of the United States.

A fair few of these landing in the sea near Africa. Always makes me do a double-take seeing something pop up there and wondering why, before remembering it's 0,0 and generally means there's a null somewhere.

Similarly, there's quite a few messages going to a uninhabited point in Manitona Canada, that's usually where the label for Canada is. Country level geocoding in plain sight!

Good catch. I was wondering why there were so many people in Churchill, and Winnipeg isn't getting anything.

Really like seeing those long distance connections being made. Kinda awesome to think about couples making it work even if they are in the opposite hemisphere.

ok, anyone know what's up with all the pings to Churchill, manitoba, and to multiple different cities?

Seriously. I just spent a good deal of time roaming around Churchill on Google Street View and it seems utterly desolate. Wikipedia says there are 813 people. One of them's blowing this app up. Probably not so private for that person.

It's the geographic center of Canada, that's the coordinate that the geo-ip database gives us back when no specific city is available. Works well for smaller countries, but in Canada it's quite visibly "off" :)

Yup, you'll occasionally see the same "bug" result in a bunch of hits to Kansas.

Even more visible in Australia, nobody lives in the center.

Well the NSA's listening station is in Alice Springs, so that part makes perfect sense.

Zoom in on this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alice+Springs+NT+0870/@-23...

I do know that Alice Springs exists, but it's an error in the Geo IP database they are using rather than true data. That's where the general hand-waving "australia" marker is placed when they don't know more than the country of allocation. There's a huge disparity between the number of people that live in NT and in other states, so the large number of results "coming from" there is telling in itself.

I have this gripe with mapping in general - area of uncertainty doesn't seem to be plumbed well. The assumption that everything is a point seems to permeate everything.

Ha...was coming to ask the same thing. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why there was so much activity on the shore of the Hudson Bay!

First I thought; given the population density of Northern Canada, that seems very unlikely.

Then I thought; given the population density of Northern Canada, this makes a lot of sense...

Very cool visualization. It appears as though this buffers events if you leave the page. So leaving the page and tabbing back to it results in a flurry of activity.

Side effect of JS setinterval, it doesn't work when you leave the tab. Made sure to put a limit on the buffer to make sure the page doesn't use too much memory.

There are several similar apps. Does anyone happen have experience with them (Couple/Pair, Avocado, Between, ...)? This is one of those kinds of things that's annoying to cross-test because it requires someone who oftens doesn't care nearly as much, to help test.

I used Avocado heavily with my ex for about a year. Just by comparing my experience of Avocado with the video of Couple [1] I would say that Couple has impressed me more.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkveWyiU4Go

Instantly thought of that final scene in WarGames. Launch Detection...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s93KC4AGKnY

Love: The Only Winning Move...

Someone seems to message from Hawaii to Korea a lot. The visualization is taking the loooooong way to get there, instead of the short path, a portal on the edges of the screen. It's causing a bit of noise in the middle of the map. That's an interesting visualization problem for another day, I guess.

I love Couple, I really do. But they have seemed to slow down development and taken focus into different areas and not exactly improving the application.

Although this is cool, I really wish some features were brought to the app (data exporting, bringing search back, etc.)

Not sure the Total Messages Sent counter is completely accurate. Refreshing the page sometimes gives me a lower number than the one displayed before I refresh. It should ALWAYS be higher if it's accurate. Time has passed therefore more messages have been sent.

Good catch! There is a small variation depending on the server that you hit but the variation should never be more than 1,000 messages. It's just a side effect of how we're scaling the system.

If you can make this look like the map from the game DEFCON, that would be perfect.

I recently bought another copy of DEFCON as I'd lost mine. That's the most chilling game I've ever played (and looks amazing!), so I think the DEFCON map style is appropriate here...

Try changing the background-color of 'body' in style.css:7 to #14142F, and change the fillStyle/strokeStyle object attributes in canvasController.min.js from #5CBAD5 or rgb(92,186,213) to something like #7E5DEC or rgb(126,93,236), whichever is used.

You'll have to call cc.init() again though to take full effect. It definitely looks more DEFCON-ish with this palette.

Nice :-) Now they can change their motto to "love is war."

Between has been around for longer: http://between.us/en/

Is this app new? Very interesting. Can you give us a run-down on how it's different from You&Me?

Couple has been around for 2 years (used to be called Pair).

Quite mesmerizing. I cannot stop looking. Brilliant idea!

very cool... artfully done and rather touching, really.

Let's play Global Thermonuclear War

#BigData #BigLove

Maybe this is a sign of me getting older, but was I the only one to think, "go outside and spend time with each other instead of spending time via a phone app!"?

Perhaps I am no where near their demographic...haha.

Judging from the live-map, I'd say a lot of this app's users are using it to maintain long-distance relationships. Spending time in person may not be an option.

When my wife and I met playing video games online (back in 1998, before it was cool), we lived about a thousand miles apart, and maintained a relationship over that distance for about 3 years before we finally got married and moved to the same state.

I initially worried her grandparents wouldn't approve of starting a relationship online. It turns out they were reminded of their own relationship -- courting through letters during the war.

Relationships happen. So do significant life/world events that can separate people by vast distances.

Thanks for sharing!

It's not a sign of you getting older, specifically. It's a sign of you getting set in your ways.

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