Ask YC: Feedback please - Actual size visualization webapp.

by ptm • 18 years ago

23 39 18 years ago

mbleigh• 18 years ago

Haha, I love the concept! I'm not sure how often I'd go back and visit, but it was certainly an amusing little distraction.

iamdave• 18 years ago

Agreed, I'd love hear what you used for the back-end in rendering the image sizes.

ptm11• 18 years ago

Well, it's essentially Javascript.

It stores the ppi (pixels per inch) of the image, and the ppi of the screen and scales accordingly

mrtron• 18 years ago

Very interesting site - the interface is very clean and works well.

Nicely done!

Maybe have the threshold for abuse a bit higher (I added the giant cookie and reported it for abuse).

gz• 18 years ago

Can you use the User-Agent string is some intelligent way to guess the screen size instead of asking me to enter it?

Also, might be nice if you had some presets like, say, Macbook, Macbook pro, etc.

shawndrost• 18 years ago

Maybe the best solution would be to show a scalable picture of some coins, and ask them to hold a coin up to the screen make the image output the real size.

zach3• 18 years ago

I thought of that, but it doesn't internationalize well. A USB plug is probably more universal but a little weird.

asmosoinio• 18 years ago

For me screen size worked fine. This would be a lot slower than the current functionality, right?

Maybe have such a system as a back up, for fine tuning. Credit card would work for me, I always have some odd card in my wallet with me.

maxklein• 18 years ago

Heh, this is really cool. But after playing with it a bit, there's not really much to come back to.

You remember that graphic a long time ago that uses to be on the web that showed the relative sizes of different spaceships (like star trek enteprise etc). That was amusing, and if you had something like that regularly coming up, I'd put you in my rss feed. Amuse me.

But otherwise, it's really nicely done, and it does what it is supposed to do properly. I like it.

(Just think of adding some reason why I would want to go back)

zach3• 18 years ago

The real use of this kind of site is for new gadgets. If you can compare things to the size of an iPod, deck of cards, etc. it makes for a nice feature on a news story for an upcoming gizmo.

staunch• 18 years ago

It thinks my 20" LCD is 22". I'm flattered!

ptm11• 18 years ago

Do you mean the "Adapted for a XX screen" figure ?

boredguy8• 18 years ago

Yes. I'm in the same boat. I have a Dell widescreen 20".

cmos• 18 years ago

Add a 'scale' slider or buttons at the bottom. Then offer this service to companies that want to show pictures of their goods in 'actual size', with the scale used for larger objects.

Perhaps might have some traction in the 'adult entertainment' category.

brk2• 18 years ago

The images never seemed to load for me. But it appears that it creates a scaled version of what you selected based on your monitor size?

Would be helpful to build up a product comparison database, so that I can compare the new cellphone I am thinking about buying to my existing phone to get a real-world idea of the dimensions.

Suggestion for allowing people to catalog their own stuff: create a printable template that I can print out and photograph my object along with a reference item (us dollar, quarter, etc). Between the reference item and the printed grid you should be able to work out the dimensions of the photographed object. You could probably get a massive social effect from people photographing and cataloging their various objects.

ptm11• 18 years ago

The images never seemed to load for me. But it appears that it creates a scaled version of what you selected based on your monitor size?

Do you have cookies disabled ?

Yes, it does scale based on the monitor size to give you the actual size.

brk2• 18 years ago

No, I have cookies enabled. They finally loaded after a very long wait. Seemed like your site was sending connections to odd places (wikipedia.org, etc).

bouncingsoul• 18 years ago

Dude, make this work with online shopping.

This is probably hard since most product shots are perspective, but it would be awesome if I could point to an image at some online store and type in the dimensions and you scaled that photo to actual size.

Here's a product category where it'd be useful (and where the photos are mostly straight on): http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-SD1000-Digital-Optical...

ptm11• 18 years ago

Amazon does have an API with access to a front-shot image and dimensions.

If I could figure out the bounds of the product (in the image), then I could automate the whole process.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

You could do great things with macro-photography here.

prakash• 18 years ago

Extending the online shopping idea a bit, this would be of great use for folks buying jewelry, watches, etc. online.

Let's say you are buying a watch, amazon has images, but those are not actual sizes; although amazon lists the dimensions separately. Having the actual image size would, in my opinion increase sales in this category.

Also, check if you can integrate any of this with like.com.

Good idea, good luck!

ComputerGuru• 18 years ago

It's really neat, but your domain name really needs to be thought through....

zach3• 18 years ago

This is an idea I toyed with but could never bring myself to implement once I realized its most popular probable use. If you want to email (see my profile), I have a suggestion for a domain name that does not involve the word "size" or "big."

Also, forget the "screen size" thing. Just use physical measurements in CSS ("width: 1cm") - it works remarkably well on a variety of browsers.

iigs• 18 years ago

That fails rather dramatically (approximately .7x reality) on my machine.

If it furthers the matter, I'm on a ThinkPad T60p (15" UXGA), XP, Google Chrome (verified in Opera as well)

Pretty cool site, though. I was pleased that the several things I tested were sized as accurately as they were.

jonknee2• 18 years ago

The size is way off for me. Tried on my Mac Book Pro's 15" screen and the batteries are huge, a good 50% bigger than real life. I'd imagine you would need to get screen size and DPI to accurately resize the images. Perhaps you could have a sample image (like the AA batteries) along with a slider to allow the user to set the exact ratio.

ptm11• 18 years ago

Perhaps you've disabled your screen resolution tracking (screen.width / screen.height).

To calculate the DPI it uses the screen resolution (pixels) and your reported screen size (inches), if either is missing it would fail to work (for now).

jonknee2• 18 years ago

Safari might not report it, because I haven't changed anything (I wouldn't even know where to change that in Safari). I checked in FireFox and it was much closer to reality.

Update: Safari does report it, so it looks to be another issue. Perhaps a bug in the scaling for Safari?

alexkay• 18 years ago

Monitors with the same diagonal can have vastly different DPI resolution.

Other than that, a very nice website.

ptm11• 18 years ago

Of course, it does take into account both physical size (inch) and screen resolution (pixels) to calculate DPI.

tptacek2• 18 years ago

Matched my Macbook screen size to a CD by holding a real CD up to the screen. Every other picture is now way off; for instance, credit cards are 1/3 too small, but an Xbox controller is too big to get my hand around.

ptm11• 18 years ago

Perhaps you've disabled your screen resolution tracking (screen.width / screen.height).

To calculate the DPI it uses the screen resolution (pixels) and your reported screen size (inches), if either is missing it would fail to work (for now).

tptacek2• 18 years ago

I can disable that? How do I do that?

s3graham• 18 years ago

CD was about right, but 360 controller was off by > 2x. "Image" bug, or site bug?

ptm11• 18 years ago

It was user submitted, so neither :)

tesseract• 18 years ago

I submitted an image of the Hindenburg. The horizontal scaling actually seems to work, but without a vertical scrollbar I can't see the image. (Safari)

paraschopra• 18 years ago

How will you make money?

ptm11• 18 years ago

Not thought through, but an affiliate program (Amazon) might make sense.

Ask YC: Feedback please - Actual size visualization webapp.

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