Show HN: Mapsaurus, the visual map of the Android Store

by c0da • 14 years ago

34 10 14 years ago

Neat UI, like the animation.

The idea is well executed, very slick, but I'm not sure how this site would help me discover fun new things as the friction is high (eg, have to remember your site first) - I'd almost want some sort of slide-like toolbar that scrolled apps with their descriptions at random at the bottom of my computer screen (yeah, that's distracting, but if I were into trying lots of different apps and had more time, that might be fine)

One more thing - you have the main headline "Discover great apps for your Android Phone" and a little below in green you say "Also available on Android" which seems unnecessary?

edit: I think my mistake might be that I was using it on my mac instead of using it from an android device (which I don't have) - so that use case makes more sense....

c0da2• 14 years ago

Hey! Thanks for the input.

The subtitle "also available on Android" is a link to the Android Play Store because we're both a website and a native Android app. I think the Android app solves a bit of the problem with the friction; if a user has downloaded our app, they can easily go back to it later without having to remember the name.

I really like the idea of a sliding random list of apps (perhaps trending ones). The cool thing about our interface is that even if those random apps aren't perfect for the user, they can still provide great starting points for exploration.

ninetax• 14 years ago

Wow, this is awesome! How long did this take? What do you use for the map UI?

c0da2• 14 years ago

Thanks!

We built it in about 3 months.

We use SVG and d3.js for the web interface. In the Android app, we use native Canvas (and share Javascript code with the website-- about half of our code is shared between the Android app and website!)

zanny• 14 years ago

This http://mapsaurus.com/static/javascript-warning.png is amazing. Best "please turn on JS" ever. Dinosaurs have a tendency to do that.

VertiGuo2• 14 years ago

Hi! I'm another member of the Mapsaurus team. Alice (http://mapsaurus.com/about.html) drew that up in the middle of a late night coding session. We think Rex is pretty awesome too.

alexvay• 14 years ago

Great stuff!

Your Android app says "Double click an app to start." I think it would be more fitting to read "Double tap" instead.

DeepDuh• 14 years ago

I really like the idea and I hope you will release it for the iOS appstore as well.

Just a small detail: While sharing it on facebook I noticed that the sharing popup was cut off by the navigation frame and it was a bit hard to complete the message.

Kiro• 14 years ago

"We're sorry, but our website doesn't work on Android."

A bit funny considering it's for finding Android apps.

VertiGuo2• 14 years ago

Sorry, we're going to reword that message. The website itself doesn't work on mobile browsers, but that's why we provide a link to our native app.

Show HN: Mapsaurus, the visual map of the Android Store

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