Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mustacheemperor 1421 days ago
I have been wishing Apple or Google maps would add this as a feature for at least five years now. When I’m in a new city for work, and I know I have 90 minutes til my next meeting, it would be massively helpful to see every lunch place in a 15-25 minute walking radius. The fact that there’s still not a “search/filter by transit time” feature in any Maps app seems like proof there’s not enough competition in that space in 2022.
5 comments

I think what Maps really needs is more widgets that reduce the screen real estate of the map until we can finally drop that feature entirely.
On iphone 4 there is no map left now
Then you'd love degoogled android!

I'm shocked how many apps rely on the google maps widget. It's expensive and mediocre, and ridiculously flaky on my phone.

The web touch UI is laughable, but at least the average third party occluding widget size keeps growing on mobile web pages -- I wouldn't want more than 10% of my phablet screen to be wasted displaying the map I just pulled up, after all!

I started a similar project a few years ago and the real problem for any new player is just data availability. I was able to get Open Street Map data, but I also needed data on businesses with ratings and photos. IMO this creates a huge moat against anyone entering the market.
There is also Mapillary (now owned by Facebook unfortunately) and Yelp. I am not familiar with their APIs however.
Not sure about Mapillary, but Yelp license agreement were to restrictive for me and I assume for most really interesting use cases
I made this app a bunch of years ago where I sourced events starting in the next 0-3 hours nearby. Unfortunately not enough people had this problem. Still found it useful.
Overpass[0] is made for exactly these kinds of queries, I'd recommend playing with it.

[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API/Overpass_AP...

Have you tried a "restaurants near X" query? In my experience it's smart enough to calibrate "near" to your surroundings (walking distance in cities, driving distance in suburbia).