Facelette: Chat Roulette for FaceTime

http://facelette.com/

by mojombo • 16 years ago

119 27 16 years ago

facelette.com

zbruhnke• 16 years ago

nice ... could be a fun concept on a bored night!

dotBen• 16 years ago

Needs it's own email validation system otherwise you just type in crap and harvest the email addresses.

I would use FB Connect to validate the user, show a profile pic, and create a less anarchic community compared to (chatroulette)

kneath• 16 years ago

I can definitely see why you'd need a profile picture when you're about to randomly video chat with someone's face.

Sometimes simplicity is a virtue. It's supposed to be anarchic.

skybrian• 16 years ago

Anarchy is fun and all, but it also might be amusing to combine it with a "like" button and reputation.

patio11• 16 years ago

Making visible a picture of the user, and by extension their real identity, primes them for social interaction other than showing their penis to the other party. It is a "power of nudges" sort of thing. Sure, you could trivially get around it, but taking one's clothes off is fairly easy and yet we don't.

There are definite community and marketing advantages to clothing being worn in the overwhelming majority of all interactions on your site. If that is not the case, that defines your site.

holman5• 16 years ago

For what it's worth, I whipped this up in about an hour. It just keeps track of who's actively looking for a FaceTime hookup and grabs one.

Coincidentally, this entire app is dumb as hell. I love it so much.

X-Istence• 16 years ago

This brought a smile to my face! It is awesome that someone took the time to quickly whip something up!

mkramlich• 16 years ago

I predict a $50 million buyout offer by the end of the week. :)

sephlietz2• 16 years ago

You should really make users verify their email addresses.

holman5• 16 years ago

I really like the low barrier of entry (ie, no verification). It could be cool to see a more "legitimate" take on all this, but for this quick proof of concept I love how brain-dead simple it turned out. I mean, you're randomly video chatting with strangers, how stringent do you need to make it? :)

sephlietz2• 16 years ago

The point is that you aren't forced to give anything up in return for another person's email address.

I can input "test@test.com" and get as many email addresses as I want.

I could also put in someone else's email address and they would potentially start getting random FaceTime calls.

adammichaelc• 16 years ago

Looks like the users are mostly fake or don't respond.

sachinag2• 16 years ago

Do I have to have FaceTime running to get an invite?

holman5• 16 years ago

Nope; Apple must have something running in the background listening for incoming connections. FaceTime.app will open with the Accept/Reject box when someone calls.

sachinag2• 16 years ago

That's pretty baller.

delackner• 16 years ago

This is awesome! The service appears to be "apsd-ft".

gsharma• 16 years ago

Facelette - Easiest way to harvest emails for people who own "i" products! http://facelette.com/queue

geuis• 16 years ago

Can't get it to work whatsoever.

danfitch2• 16 years ago

Or just use mine. http://www.squarechat.com Shameless plug

danfitch2• 16 years ago

or just http://squarechat.com/hackernews to get into a room with others.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

Would there be any way to have it verify that it can establish a Facetime connection? That'd serve the purpose of validation perfectly without needing to have people confirm their address or anything.

jaspero• 16 years ago

This will probably create too much traffic on 'facetime server' or whatever apple has. Degradation on quality of video is what I expect if Facelette picks up popularity.

holman5• 16 years ago

As the Facelette proprietor, I agree that Apple's FaceTime server capacity is the probable fail point, and guarantee that my freebie Heroku instance and shabby code is virtually infallible.

danielsiders• 16 years ago

Would be cool to pair it with a service that generated an ID with apple for throwaway usernames. Has apple blocked all the mailinator domains?

holman5• 16 years ago

I've talked to a couple from @mailinator domains today, so that must still be legit.

sssparkkk• 16 years ago

I'd love to try it, but unfortunately I don't own a Mac, nor an iPhone. Besides, I wonder how long it'll take before the perverts take over Facelette, it hasn't happened yet I presume?

For people without 'Apple products and stuff', try http://www.blurrypeople.com instead.

Facelette: Chat Roulette for FaceTime

Related Stories