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Show HN: TGIFound.com - Geolocating lost and found community
TGIFound (http://tgifound.com) is a community-based service that lets people report found items and search for them by location.
If you see a lost item on the street you can report it on the mobile app or on the website along with the GPS coordinates, which lets people search for items for a given location. The idea is unique in that it lets people report items as found, rather than lost. It relies on the community to report items as found. The exact location is not revealed but translated to an approximate location to prevent people from gaining possession of someone else's item.
This is a free service and I intend to keep it free for as long as I can manage.
The site was built in Django in a couple of months of spare time as I was learning Django along the way. An iPhone app is also available at (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tgifound/id555479564?ls=1&mt=8). The iPhone app was written in Titanium. It uses quite a few APIs, such as Google Maps so was a useful learning experience for me. I hope that it's a feasible method of reuniting people with their lost items, and I hope that this project can make the world a slightly better place.
The project is still in a very early stage and this is one of the first times I've searched publicity for this. I welcome any feedbacks, criticism and bug reports, or that you simply give it a try. Thanks!
- rheide 14y agoFull disclosure: I advised Terry on this project, although I didn't write any code. I think the idea'll need a fair bit of (localized) publicity to get going. But if it works, it'll make the world a better place :)
- grabeh 14y agoGreat work on putting the site together - I like the concept and it all fits together in terms of reporting and finding items so nice work! I did find an oyster card the day so I've reported that missing... I would personally go for TTIFound.com (Thank Terry its found) but each to their own. Oh, and as someone who is an anal lawyer, you might want people to warrant they own copyright in images they submit (maybe also indemnify you although that's overkill) and also grant you a licence to reproduce the images on your site.
- terrykfwong 14y agoHey thank you very much for your support, I will add this to the T&C to avoid any problem. Would you have more suggestion how might I promote this simply help each other facility?
- grabeh 14y agoI'm no marketeer I'm afraid! A cheap way would be for you to search for folks on twitter posting information about lost/found items and point them to your site?
- terrykfwong 14y agoHey that's actually a very good idea, I will do some searching tonight... Thank you so much :)
- mapsareawesome 14y agoJust the other day someone had forgotten one of her many shopping bags on The Tube. It'd be quite nice to reunite people with their items, however, given that there is no useable WiFi or mobile connection underground, how would you go about geotagging its location?? Manually estimate it above ground?
- terrykfwong 14y agoTGIFound allow search for distance, so even if you report it when you have signal and out of the original spot it should be easily searchable... I am open to opinion, is there anyway to make it even more accurate during offline?
- helen842000 14y agoI think this is a great area to work on. I set up something similar myself but just for cameras/photos - FoundCamera.com So far I've found that a bigger proportion of items are reported lost than found however I guess that shouldn't be an issue on tgifound as people can return anything. How are you facilitating the reunion of objects - do you just let people send messages to each other?
- terrykfwong 14y agoHey FoundCamera.com is well cool! How long have you put this live? Yes I love helping people and I agree this is a great area to work on :) I have not introduce "Report Lost" because people don't tend to browse what have someone else lost, and even if I do browse it I might not lucky enough to come across it. I think everyone want to help everyone, but that depends on how easy it is, so I hope this mobile app platform could simplify the process. Yes I just let people send message to each other at the moment. I allow people messaging each other without "claiming" it, do you think it's good idea? Is there any suggestion for me to promote this platform? Thank you so much :) Terry
- helen842000 14y agoThanks! I put it up as a quick weekend project about 3 months ago. I wanted to make it easy to comment, list & help out. The thing Ive realized about this type of site is that it needs the power of the crowd to review the posts & recognize people in photos. That's what I'm working on now.