larryfeltonj

This is a crosspost, but I think it's a potentially useful one. I'm fishing for ideas for a facebook app for cyclists. Here's the post I originally posed to the blogger forum.

=====================================================

I'm interested in writing a social media app on facebook, and I'm fishing for ideas which might benefit the cycling community. I have a couple of reasons for wanting to do this.

First, I'm a freelance programmer, and many of the jobs up for bid in the milieu in which I work are to develop or debug apps for the facebook api. Hence I'm interested in doing a serious app to familiarize myself with their application programmer interface (API).

Secondly, although I have significant problems with the creepy attitude facebook has regarding privacy, they are the 900 pound gorilla in the social media world, and as a programmer, I'm interested in experiencing the considerations which go into developing an app in that world.

I'm also a long-time cyclist (commuter and club ride roadie, and at 60 years old my "second childhood" has manifested itself in me acquiring and riding a fixed gear bike

I'd like to know what sort of app might be interesting to cyclists. I thought about some sort of mileage log, but my guess is that it's been done to death. On the other hand even something that simple might be good if no one's done it better on facebook, and if a sufficiently social angle could attract cyclists who aren't plugged in to the more formally organized cycling community. I think about the way Zynga pulled millions of non-gamers into Mafia Wars (which I consider a sub-standard role playing game of the "click and wait" variety).

The best sort of app would include some sort of individualized tracking, and a strong community social component.

Any ideas?

Blackdays

Well, an idea I was toying with (I'm also an amateur programmer) was creating an app that let you share routes, log milage (much like yourself), and plan/organize rides. Of course, all three of these have been done by external services, but I can't pinpoint one of them that has a substantial audience.

Using facebook, you could pinpoint locations much better. For example, if I am interested in finding a ride in Pittsburgh, I could just as easily use the app to find routes that local Pittsburgher-ers are riding.

However, I never even attempted to get this project off the ground because I figure it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Ikarios

I are dumb

Blackdays

^You clearly didn't read his post.

johnny99

How about an app that allows you to ask for a bike route, based on certain parameters (location, destination, distance, etc.)? Your friends or other app users could respond with their favorites. You could include some kind of mapping tool or hook into Google Maps or the like.

Or how about a tool to organize group bike rides?

I agree that there are already way to many logging tools.

getaklug

Games!!! Who doesn't get addicted to facebook games (a lot of people but i sure as hell do). How about a game where you build an LBS, and let the player choose the prices and stock and stuff like that, then they get to buy their own bikes and do races and win monies and i get to be happier then anyone else.

craftygeek

I think you'll be a bit limited in what you can do by using the FB api compared to what you could from scratch remotely & then hook it into FB.

I think something that allows users to create, share & invite others on rides is a possibility...with the ability to show the route on a google map & then search events/routes by ride distance & distance from your location.
Not sure if you can also hook into things like Runkeeper/Endomondo/MapMyRide as well...if you could, that might be a winning edge.

LesterOfPuppets

Strava and Endomondo are already closely linked to Facebook, but don't have Facebook apps.

Strava has some pretty cool features (it's kinda like Facebook for cyclists) so I'd check into that and see which ones you could incorporate into your Facebook App.

Specialized2k10

anything that has to do with tracking routes has been done. Strava, ridewithgps, mapmyride, etc. maybe some sort of game.

A game where you advance from cat 5 all the way to cat 1 or pro. All based on rides that you actually do.
Either set certain goals for distance, climbing, and time on saddle to advance or make it a competition. Make the competition a week long. About 30-50 riders per race. Riders get points based on where they rank in distance, avg speed, climbing, and a few others. Accumulate PTS to advance categories. This way ppl of the same riding level will eventually race against each other. Or not. Just a rough idea. I don't know how hard all this would be.

larryfeltonj

Darn! This is the disadvantage of a cross-post. Now I have to monitor three threads!

larryfeltonj

Yeah, the advantage to facebook is its market saturation, though. Mileage logs, route planning, etc have been done done to death, but unless a cyclist is a serious longtime club roadie who's been involved in the online community for a long time, that cyclist may not have those tools linked.

One really good suggestion I got on the General forum was an app to coordinate information about road conditions (including construction/ unresponsive traffic signals, etc). It would be tricky to focus, but I think it's promising.

danvuquoc

Technically -- they have to have an application to Facebook login or automatically post from their page over to your facebook wall, it requires an oauth access token with the publish_stream and offline_access permissions. It just doesn't have a Canvas Page application thats visible on Facebook.com itself.

To the OP:
Sorry I can't suggest anything everything has been done more than once-over. If I had any good ideas, I would have done it myself, hehe. Maybe you might wanna familiarize yourself with Google APIs instead in anticipation of the Google+ API that will come out. You could poise yourself to be the first to do something there instead -- maybe come up with something unique to the "Circles" concept. I'd imagine all the big names are just waiting to do something there as well though.

larryfeltonj

This could be a REALLY fun one to develop. I'll mull it over. The danger with any facebook gaming app is that it could become yet another click-and-wait, and spam-your-friends game (anything by Zynga comes to mind). But if it were based on actual self-defined challenges it could be fun to play and fun to program. Of course you'd get a lot of Walter Mittys posting nonsensical numbers, but as long as the culture of the game was "keep it based on reality" it could be awesome.

larryfeltonj

I haven't looked at the Google APIs with respect to this, yet, but the good thing about facebook's api is that you basically program a general web app within the allowable screenspace, then link it to facebook, along with any facebook specific function calls you want to perform. So in all probability it would be easy to port it to any reasonable API. So I write my LAMP program, keeping the Facebook-specific stuff in a php "require" file, and hope for the long-run best (maybe Diaspora will actually get off the ground).

Seattle Forrest

Meh. There are millions of sites like Garmin Connect, and Route Loops, etc, that let you create maps and charts of past rides, discover new ones, etc. Facebook is for having your personal data sold to marketing firms.

larryfeltonj

Yes it is. But read my statement about facebook in the OP (or my much more detailed one in the general cycling forum). There are millions of online role-playing games, too, some good and some wretched. Zynga managed to take a pretty wretched, inconsistent, and spam generating role-playing click-and-wait game (Mafia Wars), and pull millions of people into online gaming who'd never done it before.

My personal reason for wanting to do this is to learn the facebook API.

The way I justify even bothering with facebook is to point out to myself that facebook is like the phone company. We may hate it, but most people use it.

larryfeltonj

And one other thing. I was an early contributor to Diaspora (the proposal by the young fellows who are creating a privacy-aware social networking site). When they produce a reasonable beta version I'll send them more money. I'm well aware of the problems with Facebook, I agree with you and appreciate the comment, but Facebook has grabbed control of a niche, and it's a niche I'd like to figure out. As for Garmin, etc, there are fragmented specialty sites for just about anything I can imagine. Some of them may be able to do what they do much better than I can, but that really doesn't matter. I'd like to create a simple, available, clean, and useful app, which my 63 year old cousin, who road cycles every day (and has for the past 43 years), but isn't plugged in to the online cycling community might find useful.

On the other hand, the gaming suggestions sound like they might be much more fun :-)

Seattle Forrest

I understand all of that. And I make my living and pay for my bike gear by writing medical software. Learning an API hands-on is important. I get all that. I won't be using a Facebook bike app, though, when I already have stuff that works for my purposes. I'd probably make a game over a cycling app if I wanted to have an FB project under my belt ... except that I (personally) hate UI coding, and games are pretty graphic intensive.

larryfeltonj

I'm actually terrible at the graphics (I'm a web back-end developer, not a web designer). If I do a game, I'll probably attempt a symbiotic relationship with my son-in-law or ex-wife. Both of them are artists. Most of the graphics in facebook games are really static. Any artist capable of doing a basic comic book or graphic novel could handle them.

larryfeltonj

But as for UIs in general, I've been a Jakob Nielsen groupie for many years. Even with the backend stuff I ask myself "How would Nielsen make this navigable?"

Seattle Forrest

I guess one thing that could be neat, though ... is if you did the mapping thing, and could tell cyclists who else is riding in same places. When you have somebody upload their GPS track logs, you could split the data into an array of individual points, store those in a SQL Server (2008) table with the new geography types, and then use a pretty simple query to see who else has ridden within N feet/miles/whatever of any of the points on the route.

Then you could suggest a list of potential riding partners.

larryfeltonj

Really cool suggestion. I'm mull it over, and play around with it on my testbed web hosting account.

lesiz

Posting of stolen bikes. Sources of water in remote areas like the Santa Monica Mountains. Alerts about street conditions.

larryfeltonj

Thanks!!! Someone suggested the street conditions on the General forum. The stolen bikes and sources of water are a unique suggestion.

tanguy frame

are you the larry felton that worked at RPI in the early 90's?