3 ms·

Show HN: Nowy Friends – Know when your friends are nearby, e.g. same subway car

7 points by silviu_nowy 11y ago

silviu_nowy 11y ago
Do you ever wonder who of your friends are nearby? For example, in the same subway car, festival, or street. Nowy Friends tells you when your friends are actually nearby, not that they were 1 km away 10 minutes ago! Nowy Friends transforms a boring subway ride into something fun. Nowy Friends works anywhere (no GPS, no Internet), protects your privacy, and is battery friendly.
- a_lifters_life 11y ago
  Big whoop!
  - silviu_nowy 11y ago
    Thank you!
doublerebel 11y ago
Works using Bluetooth LE for privacy, nice. And you received some TC coverage [1], congrats! My issue would be, how to give my position only to a subgroup of my FB friends, since I would only want to advertise availability during certain times to certain people. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/nowy-friends-app/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/nowy-friends-app/
- silviu_nowy 11y ago
  Thank you for the compliment! Nowy Friends is not a friend-tracking app: you don't see friends on a map, the app doesn't track where you or your friends are. If you're asking how to restrict who of your friends can know when you're nearby (e.g., Jack and Jill, but not John), then, in its current form, you cannot do this. We have ideas on how to build such a feature, but our current ideas make discovering your nearby friends slower. Regarding advertising availability only at certain times, the app enables you to go in stealth mode, where basically advertising and friend discovery are turned off, it's as if you turned bluetooth off for the app. Finally, when you talk about sharing your position with a friend, do you imagine this happens when they're nearby? For example, you're in an underground pub, and Nowy Friends tells you that Jack is nearby, but you can't see him, so you'd like to send him your GPS coordinates? If so, we think GPS coordinates is not the best option as it may not be precise enough. You could, instead, text them to set up a meeting point or the 2 phones could coordinate to show the same color, and then you'd raise your phone and look around for a phone showing the same color as yours.

7 points by silviu_nowy 11y ago

Do you ever wonder who of your friends are nearby? For example, in the same subway car, festival, or street. Nowy Friends tells you when your friends are actually nearby, not that they were 1 km away 10 minutes ago! Nowy Friends transforms a boring subway ride into something fun. Nowy Friends works anywhere (no GPS, no Internet), protects your privacy, and is battery friendly.

a_lifters_life 11y ago
Big whoop!
- silviu_nowy 11y ago
  Thank you!

doublerebel 11y ago

Works using Bluetooth LE for privacy, nice. And you received some TC coverage [1], congrats! My issue would be, how to give my position only to a subgroup of my FB friends, since I would only want to advertise availability during certain times to certain people. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/nowy-friends-app/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/nowy-friends-app/

silviu_nowy 11y ago
Thank you for the compliment! Nowy Friends is not a friend-tracking app: you don't see friends on a map, the app doesn't track where you or your friends are. If you're asking how to restrict who of your friends can know when you're nearby (e.g., Jack and Jill, but not John), then, in its current form, you cannot do this. We have ideas on how to build such a feature, but our current ideas make discovering your nearby friends slower. Regarding advertising availability only at certain times, the app enables you to go in stealth mode, where basically advertising and friend discovery are turned off, it's as if you turned bluetooth off for the app. Finally, when you talk about sharing your position with a friend, do you imagine this happens when they're nearby? For example, you're in an underground pub, and Nowy Friends tells you that Jack is nearby, but you can't see him, so you'd like to send him your GPS coordinates? If so, we think GPS coordinates is not the best option as it may not be precise enough. You could, instead, text them to set up a meeting point or the 2 phones could coordinate to show the same color, and then you'd raise your phone and look around for a phone showing the same color as yours.