alooPotato

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781.
by alooPotato 16y ago
I've been working on GobiCab, a super easy way to find someone to share a cab with, on the side for a few months. It's actually homegrown here in Boston and we're working on partnerships with Logan airport and the City of Boston to help wit
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by alooPotato 16y ago
Unfortunately the answer is no and no. Foursquare returns the closest 50 venues, period. Facebook on the other hand is much better. They let you set a radius and a limit to the number of results you want. The limit can be huge, you just hav
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by alooPotato 16y ago
Yep - planning on doing it one more time in May. Not sure how I could get the number of venues in a particular city WITHOUT doing these crazy number of API requests. The API doesn't have venue counts for a particular geographic region. For
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by alooPotato 16y ago
No problem! There was no normalization by time - that is, this was a snapshot of current data as if April 1, 2011. Unfortunately, there is now way to see for a particular venue, the historical timestamps of every checkin on Facebook. It is
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by alooPotato 16y ago
HN - I performed a quick analysis of checkin counts for different kinds of businesses on both Foursquare and Facebook places. Also, looked at sheer number of places in their respective databases. Mostly obvious conclusions, Foursquare has a
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Show HN: Comparing checkin counts from Foursquare and Facebook Places(aleemmawani.com)
11 points by alooPotato 16y ago|7 comments
787.
by alooPotato 16y ago
Another way we have discussed solving the mobilization challenge in addition to the one I listed above, is to proved so e standalone value of the app in the absence of having critical mass. For example, a primary benefit of the app is that
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by alooPotato 16y ago
I actually think I got fairly lucky on the designer front. I think I it was successful because: 1) I already had the general UI layout I wanted 2) I was very specific on what I wanted (from color schemes to font sizes, etc) 3) Iterated very
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by alooPotato 16y ago
Yes this is one class of mobilization of a network effect business - exploit irregular network topologies. In our case that means targeting areas with high trip density (defined as locations where people are all leaving by cab to nearby des
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by alooPotato 16y ago
I did the UI design myself but paid ~$300 for the actual graphics (image buttons, icons, backgrounds, logo, etc.).
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by alooPotato 16y ago
I mainly built it because I wanted to exist so monetization wasn't a top priority for me. That being said, I've thought of a few possibilities: - clearly can't charge for downloading the app as its success is so network effect driven and yo
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by alooPotato 16y ago
Yes, my undergrad degree was in computer science/software engineering - so fairly easy for me to pick up iOS programming
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by alooPotato 16y ago
HN - this was a project I built for a class at HBS (Online Economies). The class covered strategies for solving the network effects problem of a lot of online businesses. I thought it would be great to actually build one of these platforms
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Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy(gobicab.com)
38 points by alooPotato 16y ago|24 comments
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by alooPotato 16y ago
> - Build apps fast and be agile; don't focus on one app for months on end without launching. MVP and get real-world feedback. In general I believe the whole lean/MVP thing, but I wonder about its applicability in the app store. Launchi
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Is ZipCar really environmentally friendly?(blog.gobicab.com)
1 points by alooPotato 16y ago|0 comments
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by alooPotato 16y ago
The one way that people break out of the chicken and egg situation is by using the "Bowling pin strategy" (more info here http://edgehopper.com/ ). So you start with one niche and then scale out intelligently from there. Again, this is wh
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Ask HN: Ideas for Building Critical Mass for Taxi Sharing App
2 points by alooPotato 16y ago|2 comments
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by alooPotato 18y ago
Have you seen www.betterplace.com? Their basic idea is to have a standard set of batteries which can be topped up at charging stations at home, work, and elsewhere. For longer trips, there are automated battery switching stations. From the