Websockets are awesome (you can see everyone's cursor)! Please donate yours

http://www.davidvanleeuwen.nl/

by davidvanleeuwen • 16 years ago

190 61 16 years ago

davidvanleeuwen.nl

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

Please help me out here guys! Thanks :-)

Btw: you can donate your finger as well on iOS4.2

AndrewDucker• 16 years ago

Not working for me. The whole page loads except for the bit inside the cursor placeholder. I'm behind a firewall in an office, but I don't know if that's the problem.

(FF 3.6 on Windows)

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

FF 3.6 (on windows) needs javascript and flash. So that could be the problem. Maybe you could try Chrome/Safari instead.

And the server is having a busy day, because of all of you guys :D Sometimes it resets all connections, not sure why yet.

mise• 16 years ago

Yup, I'm behind a proxy server and this always seems to mess with sockets examples.

mihaifx• 16 years ago

Doesn't work here as well. Firefox 3.6

sid0• 16 years ago

Works fine in Firefox 4 (behind an HTTP proxy too).

eftpotrm• 16 years ago

Now, now. This poor student is just trying to get a job; it's not nice to give him the finger....

jonafato3• 16 years ago

Can you explain what exactly "donating my cursor" does?

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

It's something like the 'facebook like' button, but it's more like an experiment for my graduation. I want to become an intern at Valve, that's why I've made this website.

If you have any feedback, please let me now :) Thanks!

jonafato3• 16 years ago

Ok, cool, you've got my cursor. Do you have any ideas on what to add to steam stats on that site somewhere? I'm an avid steam (mostly valve) gamer myself, and I like to keep track of accuracy, headshots, etc. What would you add?

corin_• 16 years ago

Have you got in touch with Valve? If not give me a shout and I can give a couple of people a poke to take a look...

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

Lol, I didn't expect to have so many people on this site. I think the server is going to need a vacation soon.

PaulJoslin• 16 years ago

Is this using HTML 5 Web sockets?

It's a very cool experience. At first I just thought it was an animation, until I managed to coax all the other users into some sort of cursor mosh pit.

Could this be the potential future for social browsing, where each 'cursor' is tagged with the user name and you can actually observe users navigating through the pages of websites.

SimonPStevens2• 16 years ago

  "Could this be the potential future for social browsing,
  where each 'cursor' is tagged with the user name and you
  can actually observe users navigating through the pages of
  websites."

Makes note in list of cool project ideas I'll probably never get round to implementing.

pierrefar• 16 years ago

The server going down due to popularity might actually help your case.

acarabott• 16 years ago

As this is a job application of sorts I feel I should point out a typo:

"It gives you a peak at the engine of Steam."

should be

"It gives you a peek at the engine of Steam."

orta• 16 years ago

clever. I hope it works out for you

enneff• 16 years ago

Websockets are indeed awesome. I made this: http://powerhouse.nf.id.au/

chanux• 16 years ago

`Oh, did I mentioned I'm a fanatic gamer as well?`

Shouldn't that be "Oh, did I mention I'm a fanatic gamer as well?"

Good Luck.

sp4rki2• 16 years ago

This is a billion and one times better than sending your resume and contacting a recruiter. You leverage the power of the community and showcase that you actually do have competent skills. The only negative I notice, is that among the skills you showcase, proofreading is not one of them. Hah!

Anyways, if you did this to intern where I work, I'd give you an internship position in a heartbeat. Wish you all the luck to get what you want fellow hacker. Thumbs up.

marquis• 16 years ago

>proofreading skills

In his defense, he may not be a native English speaker.

sp4rki2• 16 years ago

I'm pretty sure he's from the Netherlands, so he definitely probably isn't a native speaker.

That doesn't mean that he shouldn't fix the mistakes. I'm just saying that he needs to proofread ;)

axod• 16 years ago

Whatever next? Next thing you know someone will write an IRC client using websocket!

Cool showcase though :)

calloc• 16 years ago

How does the Stackoverflow chat rooms work? I thought that was using WebSockets ...

jeff18• 16 years ago

Check out http://mibbit.com/

manish• 16 years ago

Looks like HN effect. I am getting connection refused error.

SimonPStevens2• 16 years ago

If we all coordinate our efforts and position our cursors we could spell out something.

rythie2• 16 years ago

Valve will want you to do stuff that works at scale, which you seem to be having some problems with.

What is the backend datastore/communications for this? redis? node.js? or just plain MySQL?

jasonkester• 16 years ago

I find that stuff like this works best with no database whatsoever. There's no particular reason to store cursor positions for longer than it takes to route messages, so you can keep them in memory.

Try writing something like this, and you'll be surprised how easy it is. Especially with some of the new frameworks that are built specifically for it (ie., node.js). I expect this to be the "Hello World" for realtime web apps, much in the way that little chatrooms were the "Hello World" for java and sockets.

rythie2• 16 years ago

I have written stuff like this in node.js that's why I suggested it as one of the options he would typically use for this.

I figured he'd either send directly from one host to another with node.js or poll redis.

smokinn• 16 years ago

Trying to cover up other people's cursor is surprisingly fun. They always try to run away and lose you in the crowd. =)

confuzatron• 16 years ago

For me, tangling cursors with strangers seemed somehow icky.

Mind you, I also avoided chat roulette...

beaumartinez2• 16 years ago

This is incredible, how come I didn't think of this? This is certainly a flash job application, well done. I wouldn't mind everyone's corrections; if they don't accept you because of a few typoes, Valve are idiots.

How often are you sending out cursor positions? I was trying to start a cursor ruckus but I think that all my cursor movement crashed your server.

Incidentally, this could be an interesting exercise in calculating when and how often to send out cursor coordinates. I'd add something about that on the page too, as I dare say that's a good skill to have as well.

All the best.

jkreeftmeijer2• 16 years ago

This is a really nice implementation, but here's how I did it a couple of months ago (with an explanation on how to do it yourself): http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/experimenting-with-node-js ;)

prat• 16 years ago

Is this link dead- or is it just me?

beaumartinez2• 16 years ago

It's down for me too. I think we crashed his server...

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.davidvanleeuwen.nl/

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

Hi guys. Thank you all for supporting me. I'm just reading all of this, because I've been at a meeting for a couple of hours. Server is up again, but I wasn't expecting it to be this huge. I'll make some changes, so please don't blame me if it's down.

I'm just another Dutch student trying his best to graduate. And yes, I did let a few people check the site before I launched it (not only Dutch people). Still, my English isn't the best and thank you guys for pointing that out. I'll change it as soon as possible.

I'll give all comments a closer look soon. Again, I didn't really expect this (otherwise I'll optimized it first and put it on a CDN and stuff). I'll also get into details (specs, technical details etc).

And again, thank you all :-)

aditya2• 16 years ago

Just curious: Have you heard of firef.ly from back in the day? :-)

http://gigaom.com/2008/07/30/firefly/ http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/05/13/demoOfFirefly.ht...

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

Never heard of it. But it actually does use the same technique (I use flash as fallback for browsers that doesn't support websockets... well actually, Socket.IO does it all <- love it).

gregory80• 16 years ago

pretty sure firefly is ChartBeat now.

redfloatplane• 16 years ago

This is brilliant. If a picture speaks more than a thousand words, an awesome tech demo shouts louder than a CV, for sure.

polynomial• 16 years ago

I have seen the future of job placement.

flacon• 16 years ago

Seems like this has been done before: http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/experimenting-with-node-js/

Using Node.js. The node js example even provides the code to replicate it. Is this person using node or some other websocket approach?

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

Actually, someone recommended Jeff Kreeftmeijer's work, when I was working on this (an old colleague). I liked the way he did this, so yes... his work was very inspiring.

But most of my inspiration on how to do this came from the Node.JS knockout. Those guys are really awesome.

I'm also working on something similar for a while now, check http://screenr.com/DDk

I used Node.JS, ExpressJS, Socket.IO and CouchDB (I should have used redis actually, but these things were familiar to me). I'm not trying to prove this is the newest, most greatest thing. I'm trying to get an internship at Valve.

cookiestack2• 16 years ago

Hey David,

I really like what you have done, a nice twist on the ol' like button. And its a pretty cool looking site as well.

One thing does, well, concern me a bit, and its that you haven't given credit where credit is due (http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/experimenting-with-node-js/).

There is no doubt that this is very similar to Jeffs blog post, and although it takes the idea a step further, I do think you should at least add a link to any and all code which inspired you and which you took ideas from, if it be Jeffs previous post, or a Node Knockout project.

Best of luck with getting Valves attention, and you have my pointers vote :)

RossM• 16 years ago

The new Opera beta does nicely here, just some layout problems (scrollbars) if cursors go too far to the side on large monitors - awesome example though.

Epitaph• 16 years ago

It's down for the count, but when it gets back up everyone should run this piece of java (requires you to import java.awt.Robot):

      try{
         Robot robot = new Robot();
         while(true){
            for(float t=0; t<1000; t++){
               robot.mouseMove(200+(int)(150*Math.cos(2*Math.PI*(t/1000))), 400+(int)(50*Math.sin(2*Math.PI*(t/500))));
               robot.delay(1);
            }
         }
      } catch (Exception e) {}

We would all be infinitely tracing the infinity symbol.

cookiestack2• 16 years ago

I noticed that when you refresh the page, you can revote, do you do any checking to make sure people can only vote once?

davidvanleeuwen12• 16 years ago

This has been a long and busy day. I've received a lot of comments, both positive and negative. I'm not sure what to do with all of these comments.

I saw a lot of questions about where I got my inspiration. Someone built something similar at the Node.JS knockout: http://tinyurl.com/2ch3nes. I started experimenting with PusherApp and NodeJS (I've worked with ape-project.org before doing this). Later on, I attended a developer meeting (http://rotterdamphp.tumblr.com) and they talked about Node.JS and CouchDB. At that same meeting someone pointed out Jeff Kreefmeijer's work and that I'm not the first one to build something like this. But I didn't care and kept on building (because it doesn't matter to me if I'm the first to build it). If you're curious on how I've build this, then you should check out my twitter (@davidvanleeuwen) tomorrow, because I'll submit it on github and will post the link there.

jkreeftmeijer2• 16 years ago

The problem wasn't that you're not the first to build it, but that there was a complete guide to build something like this published somewhere, you definitely knew it existed and people thought you used it and didn't credit the author. Since that's not the case: awesome work, your implementation looks great. Have fun at Valve. :)

luisns• 16 years ago

interesting technology, has a lot of potential. oh, i just added another item in "to learn" list

Websockets are awesome (you can see everyone's cursor)! Please donate yours

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