Feature Requests--What do you Need?

Hi Bill,
Thanks for the question. Funny, I'm also tripping out right now on how 2 side by side devices are getting incredibly divergent location information on the built in Maps application.
Something might be happening over at Skyhook?

When it's working again, give us another try.
Nearby will bring up a handful of 'popular' places, stories, or photos around you (i guess it's a bug that a manually specified location doesn't come thru with the API call asking for places).

Where are you in Portland anyway? I wonder if the edge network isn't active in some pockets? Are you on a 3G or other device?

I'm on a 3G device over at CubeSpace. I've noticed that this device gets low to no bars most of the time here and as of right now no 3G. It's a fact that my BlackBerry got much better reception.

I'll fire up Nearby when I go outside and I'll let you know.

Mkay. So I manually turned off 3G (in general prefs) and turned the iPhone off/on. Now both Google Maps and Nearby can locate me (indoors no less). Wow Nearby is so much more obvious once location services are working.

phew, I thought maybe we had some incredibly terrible bug :D

but seriously, we could use some better handling when certain things are not available, location data, network connection, etc.

Thanks for retesting and reposting the answer!!

how change the distances from meters to miles.

Thanks.

Hey, it'd be good to have a pub category, right now I've been using the food one which is not always appropriate... That and the clunkiness of the map please.
I really do like this app as I do a lot of travelling and ilike to explore places thoroughly; it lets me share places for other people to find. Thanks!

Also I'd like to be able to add photos to posts that have already been made please!

oh and one more thing :P
Could you have filters on the map, so you could select food and it'd only show the food categories. Things start to get awfully cluttered with everything showing up at once.
THANKS!

Just started using this and it's not bad! Is it possible to add "I've been there" to a post on iphone. Also, it's annoying to be taken back to my exact location when I want to add a marker from my iPhone especially as it's a bit slow loading the map

Hey! it's me again! In my area and there about there are posts for gigs and things that are years out of date. Can there be something in the filters to dismiss ye olde things like that so they don't keep popping up likes?

Tracklogs would be nice. I would have expected to see a simple tracklog app pop up in the App Store by now. I'd guess that certain limitations of the device (e.g. no background apps, etc.) make something like this less appealing. One solution might to tack the feature on to another app like Nearby which can serve as the one app to have open when out and about with the device. I'm thinking of a couple of possibly complementary features here:

1. A traditional tracklog, i.e. an ordered sequence of coordinates along with timestamps stored in a useful (preferably standard) format. Such data would be helpful for geotagging photos and as the basis for new places.


2. The ability to mark places with no details by just tapping a 'mark place' button, which records the date and time and the coordinates of the current location (the ability to add a description immediately would be nice but isn't necessary). It should be possible to access/update these places later from a PC, or the mobile device. Something like this allows for the accuracy and convenience of location awareness. But less fumbling with the iPhone while out (presumably doing other things).

Place history: Everytime I visit a place record the date and time associated with the place. Display a simple visited count attached to the place (unique to each user). Clicking the number or some other interface element would allow me to see the place history. The ability to add descriptions next to each visit would be really nice, but is not strictly necessary.

This could be the basis for a number of other features. For example, the counts could be anonymously aggregated (opt-in/opt-out?) to track th most popular places. A list of the most popular places in a city organized by category is the start of a compelling city guide. Combine this with ratings and we can begin to ask interesting questions about all of these places.

Where do I go the most/the least in my home town? What did I do the last time I visited another area? What's the most visited restaurant in the area? Is the most visited restaurant also the highest rated (Why or why not)?

Itineraries (User submitted): This has me thinking about the limitations of typical travel guides. Let's say I'm traveling to a new place. I pick up a travel guide to plan what I want to do while I'm visiting. What's wrong with this. I would say that there is a lot wrong with travel guides. First they list only a small number of places. Secondly, they are quickly out of date. But that's just the beginning. Actually making a plan requires a lot of work on my part, as someone unfamiliar with the area, because I know what I want to do but not how I should go about doing it. For example, In Boston where I live, Fenway Park is a short walk through the Fens (part of the Emerald Necklace parks) from the MFA. These are two of the more popular attractions in the city (three if you count the park) but most people don't think of them near each other. There must be a better way.

Let users stitch connect places with paths to create itineraries which:

1. help with planning little excursions through an area


2. help us think about the relationships between the places in our lives


3. help other users find their way around.

I know I've been posting bits of information that I think others will find useful such as free parking and interesting places that are a bit off the beaten track.

With the place history idea, I'd be interested in how many people visit a place - yes you'd be able to see what's popular. If I could record the number of times I visited a place it could really skew the numbers - somewhere might have a high count from one person but not be that interesting/popular (if I understand Rob correctly)

I'm thinking of a 'place history' working on two levels.

1. Yes keep a count of the total number of times a user visits a place. This history is available to that user, and is unique for all users (I can access my own place history).


2. Pulling and aggregating just the counts as one measure of popularity. DalekKiller I think you're right that there should be some conversion that takes place when aggregating these values. Such a conversion may or may not discount the number of times an individual user visits any one place. It's certainly something to think about!

In regards to #2, there would be at least a couple of issues to think about:

Though it may be reasonable to count my visits to a place literally, (which may number in the thousands). It may be less good to treat potentially thousands of visits by thousands of users literally. I suppose it's just a matter of whether or not we want to potentially see some big numbers. I don't believe that converting that number to a more abstract value would be difficult.

In response to DalekKiller more specifically...

> If I could record the number of times I visited a place it could really skew the numbers - somewhere might have a high count from one person but not be that interesting/popular...

True. You could of course do something simple like count each user who visits a place just once, regardless of the number of times they visit. These are just two options (count every visit for every user, or count every user at most once). There are many other ways to handle this. With some thought it might be possible to find the right recipe (i.e. a happy level of individual influence).

These are great ideas, I'm especially into the ideas that work with the low accuracy issues of triangulation, where that issue isn't seen as a 'problem', but is seen as 'totally fine'

so, since the app is making an api call each time you launch it already,
it would be simple to just translate those queries into some special sort of 'draft' place inside your platial account.
you wouldn't even have to hit a button, it could just happen every time you launch the app. or is that too aggressive? would you prefer to have control over it?

our buddies here in portland are doing an art project along the 'loose tracklogs' thread, but it just runs a cronjob in the background, uploading your location to a server every ten minutes. obviously the official sdk doesn't allow for background stuff, but the results are quite nice: http://hook.org/whereis is a combination of a few participants' tracks

In response to Jason's post:

> so, since the app is making an api call each time you launch it already,...

I'm not sure that I'm following your description.

Right now, when I launch Nearby and I might briefly see a world map before it begins to fix on my location and zoom the map. At that point I can do a number of things (navigate the map, search, adjust my settings, etc) including add a new marker.

If I want to add a marker, I click the plus button in the upper right hand corner, which puts an icon for a new marker at the center of the map (also my current location if I haven't moved the map). At this point I can move the map to adjust the position of the marker (by the way I find that this is a much better way to handle manually positioning than moving the marker itself the way that the native Maps app works), and then I must either pick an existing place or add a new place before I can save. Either way I must at least enter a value for the Title field before I can save.

Let's pretend that instead I could choose to save the marker for the place without picking the Place, Title, Category, or Description.

Maybe these markers, let's call them 'draft-markers' are treated differently than places. For example, they might be assigned a special icon and not be included on the map normally. At some point later on I could work through the draft-markers adding the details and then saving the marker as a full-fledged place.

Why do I think this would be useful?

Essentially we're unbinding two tasks:

1. the job of locating a place, which is easiest when we're out and can use the location services to do most of the work for us.


2. the job of describing a place, which might be much easier/more convenient to do at another time, maybe at a computer for example (with a full-size keyboard, faster network connection, and without worrying about the limited battery life on the iPhone).

If I don't want to enter any information about a marker at all then it might make sense to skip the Add Marker screen altogether. In this case it should be possible to 'save as draft' directly from the map after positioning the icon.

Ideally, I would have the option of saving none, some, or all of the place information associated with a draft-marker and still have it treated as a draft, so that I would have the option of doing whatever makes the most sense at the time.

For example, If I'm in an area I know very well then it's probably enough just to mark the location as efficiently as possible without any details. Seeing the marker on the map later will be enough to remind of the title, description and all of the rest of the information I might want to add to the place. The ability to quickly mark the map without a lot of fuss while I'm out would allow me to better incorporate Nearby into my normal routine, which means more and better map data.

On the other hand, If I'm someplace unfamiliar, I may want to enter at least a title or description to provide me with enough of a clue to allow me to fill out the place completely later on.