i've noticed..

http://instaplac.es - Instaplaces is a tool for finding cool things around you that you may have never knew existed. By using your phone’s GPS or your computer’s location, I’ve listed below the places near you where people are taking pictures most frequently using the popular Instagram app.

I was playing around with Instagram and noticed that there were locations for each picture, but seemingly no way to look at images taken at that location. So, instead of worrying about this missing feature… I built it.

I don’t know what got to me, I don’t really have free time, but I really wanted to get this done because I’ll be moving to a new city in the next few weeks and will be looking to do all kinds of exploring. With Instaplaces, I can figure out what places are fun just by looking how many pictures are taken there and of what.

There are a few issues - like a lot of pictures going un-tagged with a location and a limited amount of images, but Instamatic grows every day and hopefully this will encourage people to tag their photos with a location ;). I also noticed it didn’t work when I tested in Safari, but it works fine in Safari for iOS - so I’m just chalking that up to a gimmick for now.

Behind the scenes, Instaplaces is built with sintra and obviously powered by the Instagram API.

Seriously, if you are building any kind of web application, you should be using LaunchRock. LaunchRock is a service that creates a viral “Coming Soon” page that you can use to collect potential users. Sounds simple, right? Too simple? Actually… yeah. But the return on investment is just huge. Let me explain how it worked for me.

The Need

I had gotten to a point in building Self Compete where I was going to begin testing a feature that posted to Twitter and Facebook. This only way to test this feature (as in posting to Twitter and Facebook), is extremely public. If I was going to be doing testing that everyone was going to see, I better have something for them to look at. So I began to design a sign up page, hoping to turn the interest of these public tests into some sort of user base. I spent a few days designing something that I felt looked good and began working on a script to collect emails. Then I realized the headache that entails. “I have to convert this design to HTML”, “I’m going to need to pay for hosting to host a page”, “I’m going to have to write a script to store the emails that are entered”, “I’m going to write a script to display or send the emails that are stored”, “I’m going to have to market this page constantly”. For such a small page, with at most 2 fields, there is a lot of work to be done. That means a lot of time spent NOT working on my application which I need the sign up page for!

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If you’ve used DailyBurn’s new app, MealSnap, you’ve probably been mystified wondering how it works. MealSnap is an app that lets its user take a picture of the food they’re eating and, based on that image, will provide calorie information for that food.

I’ve used app for about 6-7 meals now and I’ve been pretty amazed at the accuracy. So much so that I had to find out how they did it.

There has been some speculation at how it works in articles, but I couldn’t find a solid answer. Is it image recognition? Do they have a team? Do they use Mechanical Turk? Well… one of those hypotheses is incredibly easy to test. 

I visited Mechanical Turk, typed in “food”, and ta-da! 

Well.. truth be told, I had to hit refresh because these HIT’s are moving fast and the first search turned up no results. Looks like they’re using Mechanical Turk to identify the foods at anywhere from $0.02-$0.05 per picture and then using the data returned from Mechanical Turk to search for calorie information in their already well established database of food.

With a $2.99 price point for the app, DailyBurn would start losing money at around meal 60. By that point, however, Daily Burn has a loyal user that can easily be converted to the sale of another app in their family of products.

It’s actually refreshing to see such a non-technical solution after apps like IntoNow, Shazaam, Google Goggles and Word Lens have amazed me with new breakthroughs in analyzing the real world. Sometimes the most simple solution gets the job done. Maybe I should use manual labor in Self Compete?

On the road here, to search for the new headquarters of Self Compete in beautiful Raleigh-Durham. Well, not exactly… I am on the road, headed toward Raleigh-Durham (which is beautiful), and Self Compete is a thing but it’s not a thing that’s ready for a headquarters. So… what exactly is Self Compete? Self Compete is my entry into the wonderful world of web applications. The idea started as a personal motif - a mission for each day, to improve upon the day before. It felt good. It felt like personal growth. It improved self confidence because I was growing and able (and willing) to take on new things.

This way of living wasn’t without its drawbacks. There was the risk of overdoing it and causing myself to degrade rather than improve. Also, it was difficult keeping track of where I had already been. I want to run further than the last time… but how far did I run last time? Around the time of realizing these issues, I was also a big fan of playing games on my iPhone. I would get 2 stars on Angry Birds and think to myself, “well I will definitely get 3 stars if I break 100,000.” That was the moment of realization - these high scores were what I needed for every day life.

Self Compete is my solution to these problems. It is an application that creates a way to measure any goal, break new personal bests and even do a little bragging. Through measuring where I had been, I was able to set realistic goals that were both attainable and still an improvement. Through incremental and controlled improvement, I could get better without over doing it and risking degrading myself. Along with the ability to set goals, I gained an emotionally valuable understanding of myself.

My newest goal is to bring those things to you and to make them fun. I’ve already begun to develop and hope to have something out very soon. In the meantime sign up for early access at www.selfcompete.com and I’ll post regular updates on this site. I’ll be listening for your feedback!