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Biketrials mobile app - yes? your requests


Peter Green

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Hey,
We are playing around with an idea to make a mobile app.
Here's the pain I'm trying to solve: Whenever I want to (usually spontaneously) go riding, I want to know who else rides right now, so we can meet and ride together.
To do this I have to call/txt every local rider. What I want to do is to have an app, that has 1 button: "I'M RIDING" that I push when I'm going riding. My friends will see that I'm riding and can call me and meet me.
Works for cities, obviously. I have one main question to you:
Would you use it? (it will be free and provided all your friends have it and imagine you have a smartfone if you don't)
Other questions could be:
- what other features would be important to have
- what other features would be nice to have
For example:
- Map / gps to see where exactly other riders ride right now
- Settings to filter / select different cities
- See stats how long you ride, where, etc.
- Ability to quickly call / text the active (riding) rider
If there's good response, there's higher chance that this will happen. Also might be useful for other kinds of riders, such as bmx, street etc. Thanks!
:yum:
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I'd use it. Some sort of notification feature would be cool. E.g you could ask the user a radius of miles that they would want to meet and ride. Say I chose '20 miles' and then someone within 20 miles of my current location said they wanted to ride, I would get a notification saying 'John Doe is riding (destination), want to ride?'. You could add some sort of text feature too, especially if it is riding with people you don't know and you don't have their number.

Could have a 'Group Ride' feature too. Same aspect as above, except if you got the notification and you said 'I will ride' then it would add you to that ride. Then when other people get the notification they will see who is meeting at the same place at that time.

Could also give the ability to add contact details to the app. This way if that person can't get internet access or has no internet signal at their location other people can text/call that person if they don't already have their contact details, however I would recommend making this an optional choice.

If you were to do this for different sports as well you might want to add a Sport filter. That way they can choose what type of riders they want to meet with.

Would be good to see how this turns out! :)

Edited by dannytrialskid
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While i don't know how much I would use it, i think it'd be a good idea overall.

Might want to go speak to the guy over at www.ridden.it to see if you could integrate his map in some how to the app...could be an idea.

p.s. make sure its iphone and android compatible as well ;)

Edited by ben_travis
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Doesn't even have to be about sport, could call the app "Out for an ale?" then you can see which of your mates is on the lash!

Pretty sure that has been tried, but everyone just uses facebook for these kinda things.

Unfortunately it's no good having a better way unless everyone adopts it. :(

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Doesn't even have to be about sport, could call the app "Out for an ale?" then you can see which of your mates is on the lash!

That's true.

Maybe you'd call it Get Together.

It'd have a flag for if you're out, and a map to show where your friends on it are, realtime. A bit like apple's find friends.

You could have an option to team up with people to show when you're in a group. This would mean you can see who else is going, and be able to get in touch with them too.

To be honest, I just looked at find friends just now and it's more or less all you need. The only thing would be to make a cross-platform version.

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Yeah I don't think it needs to be bike specific. A more simplified but detailed Facebook if that makes sense - no photos or complex posts, just a list of mates with a short status, such as:

Mike - Home

or

Mike - Riding, Hastings (Perhaps have a small text box to allow road name)

You could use it for any sport or social event. Great idea anyway, go for it.

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To be honest, I just looked at find friends just now and it's more or less all you need. The only thing would be to make a cross-platform version.

Find friends only gives you friends' locations, but you have no idea if the're riding or not. Plus it's about everybody, not filtered to, say, trials riders. Doesn't solve the problem..

Thanks all for the feedback. I think it's worth doing :)

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Isn't this Facebook check in ?

Kind of, but not everyone on your friends list sees the check in on FB and also you may have hundreds of friends on there that don't want to know where you are.

I see this app as being similar to that but more specific for a smaller group of close mates.

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I see it as this, you sign up with name, location and interests, you choose these interests off a predetermined list created by the app. Then when you are doing a sport the app will enable you to make this obvious e.g Rich, Bristol, Trials then perhaps with the use of location services like on phone maps and stuff will give an exact location or with a text function could input Lloyds.

With the interests it means say I was also a climber I could view both sports in my area and choose based on what I can see others doing, it also enables a filter too, I could look at just trials or perhaps I want to go watch BMX could see whats going on within 2 miles of my location.

Perhaps a search function with interest, location and distance from location.

The ability to "follow" people would be good too and perhaps optional in app notifications of when people are in your area or when your followed people are riding.

I think it's a great idea but relies on two things, people using it and people being friendly.

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I may be missing the point but I just have whatsapp and have numerous group convos. I have one for football, bouldering, mountain biking, a festival one for this summer, hiking one for next month and just a general lash one with all the boys. And depending on what you are trying to arrange,talking about or who you want to talk to is the group convo you whack it in. Can start a new group in about 10 seconds if you want to leave one person out as its their birthday, and you want to plan a surprise for example.

My best mate lives in London, he will put in the large group one 'Anyone fancy London this weekend?' we all reply, and when we know who is keen. We usually start a new convo so the others dont get naused with all the messages.

edit: Just read the other post. I can see it being good for finding new friends to ride with maybe.

Edited by arw_86
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edit: Just read the other post. I can see it being good for finding new friends to ride with maybe.

Right.

Plus, let's imagine you want to use text messages (sms, facebook, whatsapp) for this. You would send "I'm riding" to everyone. That's like "cool story bro, but who cares"?

Here, you post "I'm riding" and whoever is interested will see it, others won't be bothered. It's a post mechanism, as opposed to ping mechanism :)

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