Your World of Text, my current side project. Requires FF3+ or Safari 4, I think.

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/

by bdr • 17 years ago

136 71 17 years ago

bdr8• 17 years ago

An explanation from the author: This isn't a startup, it's just an idea I thought would be cool. I'm announcing it on HN first, hoping to get technical and aesthetic feedback before I throw the URL around.

The two browsers in the submission title are the only ones I have on this machine. Right now it doesn't run as smoothly as I'd want in FF3. There are a couple big optimizations ideas I have, but I was comfortable enough to post this without them. Was that a mistake? If you can try it out in some other browsers I'd appreciate that. I have no idea what IE will do.

That's all. Hope you have fun.

ekiru• 17 years ago

It also works fine in Chrome.

yread• 17 years ago

works OK in Opera 9 and 10

Pistos2• 17 years ago

If it works in Opera, then it is too CPU-heavy on this older machine. I don't understand what it is, and can't interact with it.

endtime• 17 years ago

Confirmed, works in Opera 10b2.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Looks like it already arrived at 4chan :)

davepeck3• 17 years ago

This is oddly entertaining. Could you explain how you represent the "world" in the AppEngine data store?

(Also, could you use cookies to bring me back where I left?)

bdr8• 17 years ago

It's really simple. This was my first App Engine project. There's only one model, Tile, that has contents, namespace, and x/y coordinates. The contents field is a string representing the text in this tile. The namespace tells you what page the tile belongs to (e.g., /newsyc), and the coordinates are relative to the starting position. Namespace, x, and y are part of the keyname, so contents is the only model property. I don't create a tile until someone writes to that area.

I don't want to use cookies, but I'm thinking about implementing some kind of directions feature. ("Where am I?" "How do I get to X?") But I also want to keep the system really simple, so I don't know.

hyperbovine• 17 years ago

doesn't load on my iPod so I can't speak to the functionality but I'd just like to commend you on not choosing some idiotic name like Floovr or Meeerrblap or Dooglity or Phlambo or Hogchaw or Speebu for your project. Makes it that much easier to take seriously.

joshu2• 17 years ago

i think you could make some good money as a naming consultant.

"Meeerrblap denontes speed, reminds the user of flapping, perhaps like a glorious seagull."

patcdr• 17 years ago

It actually runs better in IE8 than it did in Chrome on my work machine...

makecheck• 17 years ago

Interesting. :) It works in OmniWeb 5.9 (WebKit-based, though an older version).

simanyay• 17 years ago

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/newsyc

calcnerd2563• 17 years ago

Does it take the path as the name of the world?

Radix• 17 years ago

Yes. http://ianab.com/yourworld/

joez2• 17 years ago

Maybe have a minimap feature? In the right hand corner, or a way to jump to the activity? I scrolled around for a while before I found where all the action was.

Or a search feature. I think the trending topic is penis right now.

snprbob862• 17 years ago

I added a top feature requests table with a votes column. Time to get our collaboration on!

Sephr• 17 years ago

Doesn't work in Shiretoko 3.5.3pre.

jokull• 17 years ago

It works in IE4. Just kidding.

KiwiNige• 17 years ago

same for IE 6 & 7

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

doesn't work in links2 either ;0)

calcnerd2563• 17 years ago

he should add telnet support

Oompa• 17 years ago

Cool, but it's starting to drop some keystrokes for me.

peteysd• 17 years ago

Backspace doesn't work for me but everything else does - I'm on Chrome.

mojombo• 17 years ago

Same on webkit nightly. Needs more backspace!

bdr8• 17 years ago

I disabled backspace because I wasn't sure whether it should delete the char before the cursor (better for typing) or under the cursor (more natural if you click on something to delete it). Guess I'll just pick one... or have it delete under only if you clicked there?

joez2• 17 years ago

A few other suggestions:

It is too chaotic but I can see you taking this in different directions. You need a way to direct the flow, potentially even in a useful direction (I am thinking Yahoo/Mahalo Answers), or just like a trending topics feature in which different worlds are based on tags.

Another thing you could do is to have a reset or form a new world every few minutes. This way there is a new slate.

What you will probably need to end up doing in order to monetize this idea is to build a site around it. User profiles, trending topics, different links, regional worlds, answers, /random/, and /ANSI art/ (read: penises)

rwolf• 17 years ago

It's painfully slow, and I ran into some glitches (ctrl v outputting only first letter). pretty fun, anyway.

what about different (random) colors for different users, and a fade over time so older words decay?

bdr8• 17 years ago

Ctrl-v is intentional. I want to keep it "natural" as long as possible, although I'm sure someone will start crafting spammy POSTs soon enough.

omouse• 17 years ago

I don't get it, what are you supposed to do?

Hexstream• 17 years ago

Read and write. (You can scroll by dragging)

jlees• 17 years ago

I love how everything's penis, or gay, or some variation thereof. Scrolling around to find the more erudite conversations was remarkably fun though. I kind of like it just as it is..

calcnerd2563• 17 years ago

if you find the good conversations, try to make breadcrumbs to them, but nothing that attracts vandals

qeorge• 17 years ago

Like it a lot! Its fun how it is, more features might take away the appeal.

mcotton• 17 years ago

That is a really clever idea, I like it.

cellis• 17 years ago

wow that is addictive

joepestro• 17 years ago

Isn't working in FF3.5, but works fine for me in Safari 4.

JeremyChase• 17 years ago

Worked fine for me in FF3.5.1

Raphael• 17 years ago

Is there any way to navigate by keyboard?

ryoshu• 17 years ago

Fun, but someone kept deleting my Angband game.

petercooper• 17 years ago

This site proves the old "normal person + anonymity == total retard" maxim. Trending topics seem to be "gay", "penis", and "Django sucks" - lol.

3pt14159• 17 years ago

Me and about 5 other people were talking about slashes, for like an hour. Made up a good joke out of it:

--Two slashes walk into a bar, one says to the other, "you got to make sure you help me 'escape' from here"

Totally had a blast \\\\\

PostOnce4• 17 years ago

Try adding /somesubdir which will give you a private page. The front page is vandalized but in time communities will form around subdirs

die_sekte• 17 years ago

I'm not sure what it is good for, but it looks and feels awesome.

zoba• 17 years ago

I had a lot of fun when I drew a face, and then got to watch other people alter (and improve!) it...until someone smeared through it with letters...

nikolayv• 17 years ago

It does not appear to work for me in FF3 or Chrome at 6:23 PDT (linux).

optomas• 17 years ago

Working here. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080827 Firefox/2.0.0.16

ah. try ff2 maybe? Other possibility is that what ever issue you were having has been fixed in the last five days.

Absolutely brilliant idea!

edw519• 17 years ago

  ...................I love it!............................
  ........cool..........dont' overwrite thiWhere is my dog?
  .......................................I can't find u.....
  ..What about zoom?.........*&^*#$&^@*#&@*......this sux...
  ..........How about timeout?---Can't overwrite for x secs.
  ...-----..................................................
  Why are there no girls in HTML5 Canvas Experiment.........
  . . ................... ...              ....
  . . ..         8675309            
  ....                                          ...
  .....                     ...                 ...
  Creativity:10  ..........   Usefulness:Now a word from...
  ..a little too slow 
                              CCCC  OOOO   OOOO  LL      ...
  ... needs.....             CC    OO  OO OO  OO LL
  . .  cut                   CC    OO  OO OO  OO LL
       and         ..        CC    OO  OO OO  OO LL
  .   paste                   CCCC  OOOO   OOOO  LLLLLL
  ..        
  .....   
  .                          It's lonely down here

bdr8• 17 years ago

btw, this comment made me really happy :)

auferstehung• 17 years ago

This reminds me of the 34th Street wall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/34th_Street_Wall

tessro• 17 years ago

This reminds me of the Million Dollar Homepage.

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

You could probably convince people to buy letters close to the "origin".

diiq• 17 years ago

So, it's chaos, and a lot of it is junk, but there's a good bit of good stuff in there too.

If the interface were better (navigation & editing commands) that would be sweet.

Privacy would be a matter of picking a distant enough location, if you could jump to it.

I also want zooming, but that would be a pretty major undertaking.

alex_c• 17 years ago

Cool, it's multiplayer notepad!

Works in Chrome for Mac.

dnaquin• 17 years ago

Cool buddy.

cmkrnl• 17 years ago

Very cool :)

whyleyc• 17 years ago

Doesn't work for me in Mosaic.

oscardelben• 17 years ago

I'd be interested to know how you did that.

jhrf• 17 years ago

I enjoyed this immensley. I tried to make a kingdom of "x"s.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

    ==.
  /     \
 | 6  6 /
  \  - )  I am God.
   )  (

skip• 17 years ago

Works in Chrome 2.0 on Vista.

PostOnce4• 17 years ago

Brilliant. Obviously the front page is full of spam but this will be super-cool as soon as subcommunities establish what their page will be (yourworldoftext.com/whateverpagehere) and I figure out how to find them. I love it already.

PostOnce4• 17 years ago

subdirectories are case sensitive? pros and cons people, discuss!

PostOnce4• 17 years ago

Hate to get spammy by commenting too much, but now that I've been using this for two days, words fail to convey how brilliant I think it really is. It's beautiful. It's art. It's a type of thing people rarely experience. I love it. Thank you for creating it :)

edit: i want timestamps saved to some place every 10 minutes so that i can explore it chronologically.

Your World of Text, my current side project. Requires FF3+ or Safari 4, I think.

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