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Show HN: Our new ridesharing site, BurningManRides.com. Feedback?
- trusko 15y agoI find it cool and potentially very useful. Good luck guys.
- kalvin 15y agoHey HN, I'm a long-time reader and this is my first Show HN (exciting!) It's a collaboration between me, jasonshen (of rejection therapy / cold showers / winning isn't normal), and randy. We'd love feedback. Do you belong to any of these categories? 1) Going to Burning Man? (it's a weeklong festival in the Nevada desert, 50K attendees)-- how can we make this better for you? 2) Potential user of a more general ridesharing site? (we're talking long occasional drives, not daily commutes/carpooling)-- how can we improve on this so you'd use it? 3) Have opinions on ridesharing? -- tell us. If you note which group(s) above you belong to in your comment that'd be great :) Thanks so much for the help!
- jasonshen 15y agoOh yeah, and if you're a Double Rainbow fan, that guy (the actual one - we talked to him on the phone, haha) needs a ride from Yosemite here (and posted a video about it for us): http://burningmanrides.com/rides/52-mariposa-ca-to-burning-man-on-august-28 http://burningmanrides.com/rides/52-mariposa-ca-to-burning-m...
- egiva 15y agoI definitely like grouping rides by the date that the driver is starting his/her trip - maybe make that a tad more obvious? A small aside like a jQuery calendar or simple title like "Find a Ride by Date..." would get that message across. Random idea: Instead of some calendar or other search/organization method, you might look at a map with jQuery slider. The idea would be to hook people up with drivers that might drive past their location (but not start there), and otherwise help discovery. You might jerry-rig a single map with all "active" routes laid on it, and a jQuery slider that changes the date. It would be a cool way to see all the rides/routes available on any given day. Multiple colored routes on a single map should be possible - see here: https://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api/browse_thread/thread/d541a389c8c7d463?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api/browse_threa...
- jannes 15y agoOh god, please don't do this. Said "jQuery sliders" and "jQuery calendars" are awful to use on touch-based devices. The click targets usually aren't big enough. And I wouldn't be surprised if the slider doesn't work at all on touch-based devices, because their browsers usually don't generate onmousedown or onmousemove events. (There are specific touch events for this, but most programmers tend to ignore them.)
- danielharan 15y agoPotentially very useful. I often attend dance exchanges; most of those going know each other but logistics are a hassle. One event organizer is currently using a google-doc hosted spreadsheet. Something that was announced and promoted with the event could make attendance easier (which organizers love). A web UI could help show people on the way - maybe graphically with a map, so you don't need to do any algo work. Please let me know if you do this; chebuctonian at gmail. Thanks!
- beatpanda 15y agoI'm in group 2. I usually use Craigslist. Here are my main gripes: -No standardization of locations, so no way for the system to show you who's going where at what time automatically. -People shouting past each other a lot, like somebody offered a ride to a place three days ago and then a ton of people pile on the day of the ride looking to go to that place -Reputation scoring, i.e. how often do they flake, etc. I would use the shit out of a general-purpose rideshare site if you build it. Also, I am a front-end engineer mainly interested in helping people share stuff. So there's that. Good work!
- dfischer 15y agoI love the design you got going on. I don't say this often. Nice work.
- jasonshen 15y agoThanks! That's all randy. =)
- jnburnham 15y agowhat's to prevent users from getting stabbed
- beatpanda 15y agoDon't think of it in comparison to driving your own car or taking a train – think of it in terms of its advantages over free-form hitch hiking.
- gojomo 15y agoStabbers have many better options for finding stabbees.
- jasonshen 15y agoWe definitely want to make sure our users are safe. Check out our safety page (which is linked at the footer) with tips on how to rideshare safely: http://burningmanrides.com/safety http://burningmanrides.com/safety
- randy 15y agoWe're also always looking for suggestions on how we can make the experience safer and better for our users. Let us know what else we should do!
- tadruj 15y agoMake a deal with HipMunk to show your long-haul ride-shares (if they exist) as a last hit on their flight search :)
- jmtame 15y agoTie in Airbnb recommendations based on how long you're staying, and this is possibly the cheapest (and most exciting) way to travel around.
- gourneau 15y agoPlease add a section for planes :) Then pimp it on https://lists.burningman.com/mailman/listinfo/aviators-list https://lists.burningman.com/mailman/listinfo/aviators-list Yee Haw!
- BurngMnContrDnc 15y agoYou could do our contradance theme camp a great favor by implementing this ASAP. We had a key musician drop out and the person who is by far the best replacement has a conflict that can only be solved by a flight at just the right time (ie this might provide the miracle we need).
- blackboxxx 15y agoI'm enthusiastically behind the ridesharing idea. It's ecologically intelligent, saves people money and the hassles of vehicle ownership, and with looming fuel price spikes/peak oil/economic uncertainty, I see it as a futureproof business. Looks like you've also got a solid team in place too (the importance of this cannot be overstated). Btw, I'm in the "potential user" camp, and will use your service when I've got a chance. In short, this is a startup I can feel good about. Good luck!
- listic 15y agoCan you share some good ridesharing services?
- blackboxxx 15y agoI don't know of many, sorry. I think the time is ripe for a startup to own this market though.
- SkyMarshal 15y agohttp://zimride.com http://zimride.com is the only other one I know of.
- sown 15y agoI'm certain that "Burning Man" is copyrighted. You might have to tangle with that. http://www.burningman.com/press/pressRandR.html#bmanRR http://www.burningman.com/press/pressRandR.html#bmanRR
- jasonshen 15y agoThanks for pointing that out! We've been in touch with folks at Burning Man HQ and they're fine with our using their name since our site is entirely free to use and without ads.
- dreamdu5t 15y agoYou misunderstand copyright law. I can use Burning Man as much as I want as long as I don't use the name to make money.
- icebraining 15y agoHe misunderstands copyright law, because copyright doesn't cover names. Burning Man may be a trademark, though.
- stevoski 15y agoThere's a similar site in Germany that has more or less replaced hitchhiking. Very popular. Someone is going from, for example from Hamburg to Berlin, and says how many places are free, and how much money you have to chip in to cover expenses. http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ is the URL. It's worth taking a look so you don't have to reinvent everything.
- toumhi 15y agoSame in France, there's a very popular site with several millions of members: http://www.covoiturage.fr http://www.covoiturage.fr I used the service myself and they have plenty of good ideas, feedback, voting, preferences, good ride search etc. I myself wanted to start a ridesharing site some time ago but it seems like a tough proposition as it's very much a chicken/egg problem. Good luck with this new site though, we need more people ridesharing in the world :-)
- OstiaAntica 15y agoNice job! I'm interested in the tech details-- what is the site built with? How long did it take? Thanks!
- randy 15y agoThanks! The site was built with Ruby 1.9.2 + Rails 3.1 (+ SASS and Coffeescript), jQuery (+ UI), and PostgreSQL on top of Heroku (Cedar Stack + Unicorn + Memcached) using Facebook Connect and the Google Maps API. We've just been hacking on it for a little while now but the more pertinent point is that we still have plenty of hacking to do :)
- frankdenbow 15y agoCool idea. Its similar to a site http://RideHack.com http://RideHack.com that launched recently
- danoc 15y agoHow have you been promoting the site? Looks great!