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Show HN: Mani – Place virtual sticky notes in real-world spaces
- purplecats 5y agoOh hey, I had this absolute exact idea 10 years ago. I ended up pivoting to something else, but I'll watch your development with keen interest :)
- handrous 5y agoYeah, I'm pretty sure this is one of the use-cases lots of people've thought up for location services + AR, over the last decade-plus. It has the following problems: 1) A bad chicken/egg critical-mass problem for adoption. (Apple, Google, and maybe Facebook are best positioned to overcome this, if they built the feature in to their OS or apps) 2) Content moderation. 3) Even if you treat it as a friends-and-family thing rather than a more broadly social experience (which solves #1 and #2 fairly well) AR on a screened device is approximately 1,000x worse to use than on the hypothetical non-dorky and practically-useful-battery-life AR glasses that every major tech company seems to expect in our nearish future (judging by their continued emphasis on AR, despite its being kind-of a shit and gimmicky interface outside some niche uses on current hardware) I suspect 2 and 3 are why FB, Google, or Apple haven't taken on the challenge in 1, yet. I expect they will if/when 3 gets solved, and this kind of real-world commenting/tagging thing will be widespread in a hurry.
- purplecats 5y agoyeah that makes sense. I was actually planning to do it based on hyper-geolocation as opposed to using the camera
- spacebear 5y agoHaha, likewise. I've been walking around for the past year thinking about how this should exist. Glad it does now!
- azinman2 5y agoThis has literally been done tens of not hundreds of times. It’s probably one of the go-tos for students in any kind of art/hci class. I did it myself back in 2007 as a student with a partnership with Telefonica and the Catalan government in Spain!
- mgkimsal 5y agoevery "hackathon" I went to for years had some try a variation of this. and "bill-splitting" apps. but... wtf - you're an adult who can afford an apple smart phone. how many times are you "splitting a bill" and having to settle up with people such that this is such a burden that you'll want to use an app for that? that one truly flummoxed me, but every hackathon event (pre-covid) I went to had people talking about this sort of problem.
- vbsteven 5y agoI’ve seen these apps used at almost every company I’ve worked at that orders food delivery once or a few times per week.
- mypalmike 5y agoYeah, I worked with a team in 2001 developing a Palm Pilot version of something similar for military use.
- johnchristopher 5y agoI love the idea of juxtaposing real world location and invisible data. There used to be an app that allowed to tag and write things on wall. It's of course only visible when you are on the spo. I am huge believer in the coming of time and location restricted layering of data/art/app.
- nell 5y agoUnsolicited idea: Constrain your marketing focus to a university town and you got yourself a million dollar idea.
- billylo 5y agoPittsburgh for example.
- kumarvvr 5y agoIf the positioning is precision enough, this could be have great applications in many industries. Imagine having to tap into the work history of a machine and add latest repair works and notes for others.
- zardo 5y agoPretty stiff competition from attaching a clipboard to the machine. Also Siemens, Microsoft, and PTC.
- kumarvvr 5y agoClipboards are perishable, can be lost, tampered with, etc. Don't know what you mean by Siemens, Microsoft & PTC. One alternative is to have QR codes that point to a dataset in a database.
- zardo 5y ago>Clipboards are perishable, can be lost, tampered with, etc. They sure are easy to set up and use though. >Don't know what you mean by Siemens, Microsoft & PTC I mean the corporations that already sell software licenses to factories have AR offerings that integrate with their systems. Convincing smaller shops to convert from a clipboard mounted to the machine to an app is probably more realistic than a start-up getting conquest sales from these companies.
- janikvonrotz 5y agoHad a similar idea years ago, but thought more of a gps-located twitter. A tweets sticks to a location an can be private or public. People who use the app may have access to special deals. Monetizing in the sense of coupons. The app would incentivize people to explore and find gps-tweets.
- pimlottc 5y agoIt's not a bad idea, but the landing page needs more clear non-video illustrations of exactly what the experience looks like. The videos are somewhat helpful but they are so jumpy with lots of quick cuts that it's hard to get a good look.
- DougN7 5y agoAgree completely - the video should be slowed down a lot, and less bouncy
- jarmitage 5y agoHave you considered linking this to Notion / Roam Research API etc? Higher level concept than standalone 'sticky note' is worth exploring. Lots of indigenous cultures were/are based on memory techniques based on tying specific pieces of knowledge to exact locations: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29759605-the-memory-code https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29759605-the-memory-code
- hhh 5y agoThis is awesome, I would love to see this as a feature in some documentation tools. It should not be the only way to consume it, but being able to put notes on a physical device could be awesome in some industrial applications.
- smoldesu 5y agoNeat idea, it just needs to be less centralized. A lot more people (myself included) would be interested if this was a federated protocol or API, and not limited just to iPhones. The real limiting factor here is going to be how well you can get other devices to work with it and developing the extensibility.
- chewmieser 5y agoNot a bad suggestion but I would suggest that OP focuses on the main features rather than something like this. Otherwise you'll have a handful of very happy HN'ers while missing out on 95% of the market that doesn't care about a federated protocol.
- smoldesu 5y agoIt really depends on what kind of market you want to foster. It's nice having the 95%, but sometimes all you need are 1,000 True Fans[0]. [0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
- oliv__ 5y agoLooks like there are a few of us out here, but I had the exact same idea years ago as well :)
- manigandham 5y agoWhat's the background for choosing this name?
- scottrogowski 5y agoInteresting concept! Personally, I'm not seeing much in terms of a practical application here but possibly a recreational one? I'm imagining a game of clue where you follow the notes to some sort of geocache location.
- smusamashah 5y agoLooks amazing. How do you handle the changing environments? A sticky note placed on a wall with something written on it should disappear if it's painted over. How do you handle that? What about indoors where gps may not work?
- justusthane 5y ago> should disappear if it’s painted over Why?
- smusamashah 5y agoIt would because it won't recognize that wall anymore. Gps can tell the location with limited accuracy. Rest is done by recognizing through camera.
- justusthane 5y agoOh, I see, sorry. I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that you wouldn't disappear if the wall was painted over, but that you would want it to disappear.
- vbsteven 5y agoI’ll add one more comment as a person who once worked on something similar to this. It looks like lots of people were working on “location based tweeting” around 10 years ago. It makes sense as around that time Twitter was growing fast and location based services like Foursquare and Gowalla were popular. As well as Google/Niantic Ingress. Our iteration was based on the concept of “shouts” that had a location and a visibility radius. Reshouts would increase the radius further.
- huachimingo 5y agoLike the Darksouls soapstone inspired app, where people wrote messages on the coordinates they were.
- spidersouris 5y agoWould be better with AR glasses :-) but amazing work!
- nynx 5y agoThis is great. As AR starts to take off, I hope an industry standard for this gets created.
- jessehattabaugh 5y agoTwitter lets you search for tweets near any location. It's not an exact location because nobody really wants strangers on the internet to know their exact location.
- squiggy22 5y agoI love this. There's a virtual treasure hunt / digital geocaching application in there.
- jjice 5y agoAbsolutely agree! This is a really neat use of AR to me. I'm not sure how practical, but can definitely be fun.
- flakiness 5y agoA decade ago, there was a similar product called "Sekai Camera" [1]. In Japan it was heavily hyped and then spectacularly failed. Maybe it was too early. Maybe the implementation was bad. Or the idea isn't as great as it appears. We'll see. [1] https://wsa-global.org/winner/sekai-camera/ [2] https://thebridge.jp/en/2013/12/sekai-camera-closes
- tarr11 5y agoReminds me of Findery https://findery.com/ https://findery.com/
- tristanb 5y agoI started a company that did something very similar. Flook.it - We had grand ideas of locating all of the worlds geo data into what we called a location browser. We were one of the first apps on the iPhone. Still think it has legs...
- numlocked 5y agoI'd like to use this around my house. We are renting it to some friends this summer, and it would be great to stick notes around each room, explaining various quirks and where things are. But it's a bit weird to "publish" the notes and have my house show up on a map. Is there a way to "not publish" my notes publicly, but perhaps be able to share them selectively via e.g. a URL or an invite in the app?
- numlocked 5y agoTo be clear: I would pay for this app, happily, for that functionality.
- ipsum2 5y agoWhy not use real sticky notes?
- thih9 5y agoI guess there are many reasons, e.g. for some people it’s easier to find their phone than a pen; or lack of sticky notes.
- jagged-chisel 5y agoOr the notes fall off, etc
- WesleyHale 5y agoIt would be cool, but you could also place a piece of paper on the nightstand in each room with instructions for the same effect. Technology doesn't have to be the answer for everything.
- robofanatic 5y agoFor static notes paper and pencil is the simplest and best technology. Smartphone app might come into picture if you want the notes to be dynamic or have personalized content.
- slig 5y agoNice concept! But what's stopping people from being a-holes and leaving shitty notes?
- ArekDymalski 5y agoI'd say the same the same thing that stops (most of people) from writing shitty things on the walls (most of ppl don't feel the urge to) + usual moderation/flagging.
- siavosh 5y agoCool to see this space get some more activity. Wasn't this the general idea of Color Labs [1] way back like 10 years ago? It was a neat social experiment that suffered from over-hype and geographical limitations of networking effects. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs
- elliekelly 5y agoI’m curious about the name? I assumed (and I suspect most women would) it was going to have something to do with manicures or nail salons.
- vort3 5y agoWill there be android support?