sethherr

19 ms·

211.
by sethherr 13y ago
Having worked in a shop in ruralish Indiana I can tell you that winters are long, no one comes in, and the internet is a magical wonderland. We made pixel art, checked every webcomic to see if anything new was published and raced bicycles a
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by sethherr 13y ago
We're already doing all the above (except magazine ads, which we're working on).
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by sethherr 13y ago
1. Ok. 2. Let's say 15 shops in the 10 cities. 3. The third party will undoubtedly need to call the police. But what are you allowed to do until they arrive? And what will they do when they arrive? 4. Y'see, we aren't aiming
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by sethherr 13y ago
Great! Don't back the project.
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by sethherr 13y ago
I worked as mechanic for quite a few years - the whole reason that I built the service was because I wished that I could do this for customers. We've had shops in Chicago registering all the bikes they sell all summer long. I do agree
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by sethherr 13y ago
Sites like stolenbikeregistry.com and chicago.stolenbike.org have been amazingly successful at recovering bikes - their biggest problem is that people don't have good records of their bikes after they are stolen, and that people take t
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by sethherr 13y ago
I don't think many people buying bikes on craigslist want to get a stolen bike. Bikes are stolen because they're easy to sell - check out the link someone posted here earlier: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post&#x2F
218.
by sethherr 13y ago
We believe a registry is an important part of the solution. There will always be more tools and tricks that can be added on. There was a bike alarm on Kickstarter, our friends the Bike Spike - http://www.kickstarter.com/proj
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by sethherr 13y ago
1. We're a staff pick and were project of the day last week, so they don't think we're violating their terms of service. 2. The whole point is to make registration convenient by having bike shops register bikes for their cust
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by sethherr 13y ago
That's what we're doing.
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by sethherr 13y ago
Bike Shepherd doesn't solve the central problem of bike registration - how to register people who don't know about bike registration. It also doesn't offer a way of verifying used bike sales. That is what makes the Bike Index
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by sethherr 13y ago
Huh? That's exactly what we do solve - we offer a search that is easy to use and isn't tied to a specific region.
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by sethherr 13y ago
We want average joe to know that bikeindex.org exists and we want to give people a way to prove they aren't selling stolen bikes. If you had indexed the bike you would have proof of ownership.
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by sethherr 13y ago
The first 10,000 bikes will be free, and we may make registration free/cheaper in general, but we want to make sure that bike shops are able to offer something of value to their customers.
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by sethherr 13y ago
Almost all bikes have serial numbers. Including the ones sold at walmart. You can read about them here: https://bikeindex.org/serials Ironically, it's expensive hand made bikes that don't
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by sethherr 13y ago
We're working on integrating with the police, it's the next step and a big part of the reason for the Kickstarter. But more important than the police doing it is bike shops doing it for free when you buy a new bike, before it leav
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by sethherr 13y ago
The app itself isn't expensive - it's the time and resources to connect with local governments (so police search the database too) and the expense to reach more shops and integrate with various point-of-sale systems in bike shops.
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by sethherr 13y ago
Thank you!
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by sethherr 13y ago
We make bikes public - but not ownership information, including removing location data from photos. You can check out the way it works at https://www.bikeindex.org You can also check out the code at https://github.com
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by sethherr 13y ago
It's a ruby on rails. You (or a bike shop) enters the serial number, and a few other pieces of information and your email and we send you the information. If you ever log in, all the bikes sent to the email you sign up with are connect
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by sethherr 13y ago
It will always be free to register through a bike shop or an advocacy organization. It shouldn't be tough to get registered for free ever - but by charging a fee we give bike shops a value they can give to their customers.
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Fight bike theft with the open source bike registry(kickstarter.com)
20 points by sethherr 13y ago|56 comments