Ask HN: What problem am I solving? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What problem am I solving?

5 pointsagentargoh6 comments

Hey there,

So I am sure I'm not the first engineer to build a technology without solving a specific problem, but when you have something you're excited about, it's hard to block that out.

Bashoto was built out based on the ideas developed in the systems used to communicate between Bing Maps streetside cars in real-time. We had the cars drive cities in small groups of 3-5 cars and mounted a tablet each of them. The cars communicated in real-time with only nearby cars to show where everyone was driving, so that roads wouldn't get driven over more than once. The cars would track the unique kilometers they drove (in real-time of course) and drivers would be compensated based on that. With Bashoto, I've generalized that technology into a simple API leveraging WebSockets, an asynchronous backend (Tornado) and some Geospatial knowhow. Cool shit, right?

Well now that I have built out the product in the form of an API (See it at https://bashoto.com), I'm not sure the specific problem I am solving and I'd love some input here. Saying that we're solving the problem of communicating locally in real-time is pretty much a cop out. Even figuring out what the problem statement for other players in the same space are would be super helpful; Pusher, Pubnub, Firebase, etc.

And of course check out Bashoto at https://bashoto.com

If you think this stuff is neat, follow us @bashotoapps

Adios!

Sounds like it would be awesome for political parties sending out registration\get out the vote crews, power companies inspecting lines after a storm. Maybe search and rescue crews could use it to make sure everywhere is checked and done in an efficient manner.

Focusing on the coordination aspect is pretty interesting, since that's the original problem that the tech was made to solve.

Agreed! I think any kind of canvassers would find this useful, whether you're a "street-team" trying to blanket a city in concert posters, or a restaurant trying to hang a menu on every doorknob.

The search-and-rescue idea I think is really powerful, and could potentially do a lot of good in the world.

Hmm surely you had some idea of potential use cases before building it?

The website and your description here don't really match up. The website has some social stuff (local chat, music lists, etc) which isn't really hard to do and doesn't make any sense to do through a 3rd party API at the pricing you're suggesting.

Your description in the OP sounds like there is MORE going on behind the scenes. Tracking unique area covered sounds like a more unique offering. Like other posters, I'm thinking maybe it could be useful to things closer to it's original Bing Maps purpose - local services like snow ploughs, mail delivery, drone fleets, etc.

Why concentrate on B2C? Aren't there other businesses that need coordination of multiple vehicles? Police, rescue workers, farmers? Some high end tractors have GPS to store which part of field they worked on.

http://www.fendt.it/images/939Vario_Multifunktionsarmlehne.j...

B2B is definitely the way to go. I've been mainly focused on software products that can integrate the API, but looking at more of a general geo-coordination services. I know there are companies that do this, but it seems really fragmented to me. ATT partners with Telenav for this https://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/solutions/indust...

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