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Facelette: Chat Roulette for FaceTime
- zbruhnke 16y agonice ... could be a fun concept on a bored night!
- dotBen 16y agoNeeds it's own email validation system otherwise you just type in crap and harvest the email addresses. I would use FB Connect to validate the user, show a profile pic, and create a less anarchic community compared to (chatroulette)
- kneath 16y agoI can definitely see why you'd need a profile picture when you're about to randomly video chat with someone's face. Sometimes simplicity is a virtue. It's supposed to be anarchic.
- skybrian 16y agoAnarchy is fun and all, but it also might be amusing to combine it with a "like" button and reputation.
- patio11 16y agoMaking visible a picture of the user, and by extension their real identity, primes them for social interaction other than showing their penis to the other party. It is a "power of nudges" sort of thing. Sure, you could trivially get around it, but taking one's clothes off is fairly easy and yet we don't. There are definite community and marketing advantages to clothing being worn in the overwhelming majority of all interactions on your site. If that is not the case, that defines your site.
- holman 16y agoFor what it's worth, I whipped this up in about an hour. It just keeps track of who's actively looking for a FaceTime hookup and grabs one. Coincidentally, this entire app is dumb as hell. I love it so much.
- sephlietz 16y agoYou should really make users verify their email addresses.
- holman 16y agoI really like the low barrier of entry (ie, no verification). It could be cool to see a more "legitimate" take on all this, but for this quick proof of concept I love how brain-dead simple it turned out. I mean, you're randomly video chatting with strangers, how stringent do you need to make it? :)
- sephlietz 16y agoThe point is that you aren't forced to give anything up in return for another person's email address. I can input "test@test.com" and get as many email addresses as I want. I could also put in someone else's email address and they would potentially start getting random FaceTime calls.
- adammichaelc 16y agoLooks like the users are mostly fake or don't respond.
- sachinag 16y agoDo I have to have FaceTime running to get an invite?
- holman 16y agoNope; Apple must have something running in the background listening for incoming connections. FaceTime.app will open with the Accept/Reject box when someone calls.
- sachinag 16y agoThat's pretty baller.
- steveklabnik 16y agoIt really is. I was playing video games a few hours ago, and had my laptop open to read stuff between matches. I got a FaceTime call, and was able to reach over, click accept, and say "Hey Kelly, I'm playing some Halo right now, what's up?" It was actually a way more pleasant experience than trying to do the same thing on a phone.
- delackner 16y agoThis is awesome! The service appears to be "apsd-ft".
- gsharma 16y agoFacelette - Easiest way to harvest emails for people who own "i" products! http://facelette.com/queue http://facelette.com/queue
- geuis 16y agoCan't get it to work whatsoever.
- danfitch 16y agoOr just use mine. http://www.squarechat.com http://www.squarechat.com Shameless plug
- danfitch 16y agoor just http://squarechat.com/hackernews http://squarechat.com/hackernews to get into a room with others.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- DannoHung 16y agoWould there be any way to have it verify that it can establish a Facetime connection? That'd serve the purpose of validation perfectly without needing to have people confirm their address or anything.
- jaspero 16y agoThis will probably create too much traffic on 'facetime server' or whatever apple has. Degradation on quality of video is what I expect if Facelette picks up popularity.
- holman 16y agoAs the Facelette proprietor, I agree that Apple's FaceTime server capacity is the probable fail point, and guarantee that my freebie Heroku instance and shabby code is virtually infallible.
- danielsiders 16y agoWould be cool to pair it with a service that generated an ID with apple for throwaway usernames. Has apple blocked all the mailinator domains?
- holman 16y agoI've talked to a couple from @mailinator domains today, so that must still be legit.
- sssparkkk 16y agoI'd love to try it, but unfortunately I don't own a Mac, nor an iPhone. Besides, I wonder how long it'll take before the perverts take over Facelette, it hasn't happened yet I presume? For people without 'Apple products and stuff', try http://www.blurrypeople.com http://www.blurrypeople.com instead.