I'm just pointing out that I heard an idea a few months ago that was nearly identical. Our advice to the folks was "Yeah, this is cool--go code it!".

These toy campus apps are really great for building experience and learning; that said, they're still just that: toy campus apps.

The obligatory "but but but facebook" rebuttal is that it was a matter of timing more than anything else.

I'd say kudos to the author for actually rolling up your sleeves and making this idea happen; it's way harder and more admirable IMO to do that than it is to be an armchair critic or armchair ideationist.

That is indeed a "little app". The 30-something line regex parser Pike wrote (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/bea...) ? Also a "little app".

There is no shame in solving a small problem, solving it well, and solving it concisely.

As far as being a "rehashing of other ideas"--how many hackathons have you been to on college campuses, and/or how many students doing mobile dev stuff have you chatted with, and/or how many people with a great idea for a local messaging app have you met?

This is not, will not, and never has been a novel idea. That doesn't make it worthless, that doesn't make it pointless, but it also doesn't make it new.

As for the "toy campus app": that's what this is...a toy application (small, concise, single-function) targeting primarily college kids (see the comparisons in this very thread to JuicyCampus).

I honestly don't understand why you're getting so defensive just because I'm not getting down on my hands and knees to praise the obvious genius and ingenuity and novelty that went into this (this is sarcasm, by the way).

I can respect it as a work on its own merits, but I will not afford it more than that.

    "Don't get me wrong, it's a nifty little app. 
     You probably learned a lot! That said, it's still 
     just a toy campus app."

I'll bite your offer for you to mock it up in Ruby real quick. The problem with the "it's easy and I could do it" dismissal is that, even though you could, you didn't.

Maybe you can team up with this guy[1]. You can probably even reuse his repo[2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501 [2]: http://code.google.com/p/hackerexchange/

There you go--left out the boring HTML scaffolding (original chat example modified from here: https://github.com/igrigorik/em-websocket).

EDIT: It's super MVP, but the concept is there.

A very, very simple addition would have the server echo back to the clients the lat/long pairs in question to dynamically update, say, a Google Maps window.

For real usage, I'd use a PostGIS query--something like this: http://unserializableone.blogspot.com/2007/02/using-postgis-... .

EDIT2:

Looks like we're both Texans--if you're ever in Houston, I'd be glad to grab a beer with you.

I have heard of Popcorn.

Just because people dont know about something doesnt mean that it doesnt exist. Just because something exists doesnt mean that one shouldnt work solving the same problem.