https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-does-meta-mean-in-...

https://theretowhere.com

It currently supports complex heatmaps based on travel time (e.g. close to work + close to friends + far from police precincts), and has a browser extension to display your heatmap over popular listing sites like Zillow.

I'm thinking of making it into an API to allow websites to integrate with it directly.

I guess not.

The past couple months have been fun since I've implemented a lot of new highly-requested features into the site's city heatmapping capabilities. One thing I've found motivating is having my own private changelog that shows screenshots of feature requests people have given me, and then dates for when I finally finished those features.

It's easy to forget how much stuff you've built in a month or two, sometimes.

I've actually started getting some back and fourth feedback with a couple users, which has kept me motivated and validated. But I need more organic traffic somehow. I've recently released a new usecase (https://theretowhere.com/vacation) that might be more well suited for vacationers, so let's see if that sticks.

Funny anecdote from today - I just set up Slack notifications so I get more instant knowledge of errors on the platform, and the first notification came in just a couple moments after I deployed. It was for an error that I thought noone would run into for a couple days. Imagine my (bad) luck!

You can probably hack that experience by making use of the "rules" feature. You can have certain search engines or macros launch automatically upon pressing enter based on the content of the query. You if you set a rule to check if your search contains a vowel (which most will), it's effectively a catch all rule.

Hacky, but it will work.

I am also a heavy Kagi and Reddit user for search, and usually that's enough. But when it's not, its concerning how much better other search engines can be, especially since non-tech savvy folks will never use them.

Difftastic (https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic) is a popular tool that generates structural diffs. Its diffs are often nicer than git's default diffs, but it's a CLI only tool - so I made a browser extension that can display them directly within Github.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44201543

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

It's an website who's goal is to make it easier to find apartments/hotels/etc that fit your housing preferences (starting with places that are close to the people and things you care about). It's flagship feature is the ability to make heatmaps of cities based on your preferences.

Since February I've slowed down on feature development temporarily as I try and find a way to sustainably increase it's popularity and learn what's the most important thing to focus on next.

Kudos!

> Central Park OR Prospect Park OR Brooklyn Bridge Park OR Fort Greene Park

You can do this, actually. I kinda explain that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976053

The heatmap supports both AND and OR clauses

The second one (acrage, stars, etc) is harder, you're right.

The "Search nearby places" is really meant to be a convenience feature to fill your OR clauses. It works better for certain types of things. Like, sure, all parks is too broad because not all parks are equal. But use it for something like all Targets (the shopping chain) or something, and its more useful, since those are, more or less, all equal.

I'm still thinking of other convenience features for places that have more nuance, like parks.

> If I put the same thing in two different criteria (with different settings), it says the heatmap parameters are invalid.

That's odd, since the website does not differentiate places by coordinates. I think you might have been missing something else (like you clicked a "new place" button and didn't fill out that place, maybe)

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978067

I'll make this an impossible state, thanks for bringing this up.

I should probably make the UX better. When you're on the heatmap page (or the distance matrix page), look at the top right of the screen. It shows you where it's basing its searches on, and you can override that bias with any location you like.

You only need to update it once per session - all pages and components will be updated

To echo what loxias said, it is possible to make queries like this on the heatmap. You can use the "Search Nearby places" button - this takes in more general queries (like cafe, gym, walmart, etc) and gives you back a bunch of venues that fit that search.

https://theretowhere.com/we-got-an-extension-babyyyy