Ask HN: Has this been made yet?

[Johnnyboyy]

After a bit of googling, I couldn't find a service that could help me find out if my friends were busy or not.  I have a few close friends that I talk with on a regular basis, but there are a lot of other people whom I still consider my friends that I don't.  I don't care about sharing my videos, pictures, and thoughts with them online; I would just like to meet up with them in the real world.  When I have free time, it would be nice to see who else is free.  Facebook would do a good job of this, but my "friends" mostly post up song lyrics or other clutter and a lot of them I hardly know. Is there any service out there that is something along the lines of:

-I'm bored/ have free time

-I sign on and click a button that says so

-It gives my location to my friends which can be found like how facebook does it

-I can see other friends who are bored and message them to hang out

-Other buttons like I'm free to chat/text

-(Maybe) a section I can go into that shows me other people reasonably close by that   a. Are free to hang out   b. Do in fact want to meet new friends

If it exists already, I'd love to know what it's called.  If it doesn't then it's a nice idea for a mobile app.

[ChuckMcM]

Meta comment: Why create an account just to ask this?

Secondary comment: real time active/inactive status is a feature in pretty much most any chat protocol out there. You might make some headway with a variation on Lattitude where you can have phone identify 'I'm bored' places (like perhaps the couch in the den) and have it auto-change your status but other than that you would be hard pressed to get folks to actively turn on/off their available bit.

[Johnnyboyy]

Meta answer: I've been a long time reader and love how good the feedback is on most posts.

I'm not very concerned about the chat feature much at all. My problem is sending out "mass texts" and making many phone calls to find someone who is also free. I find myself waiting around a lot for people to respond to me and finding out most people are at work or busy elsewhere. If I could just load up an app on my phone and see that Mike is free for a few hours then I could get in contact with him and make plans.

[ChuckMcM]

Fair enough. You realize the 'nut' of this particular problem is capturing the 'free/busy' state. Capturing state requires a two things, a 'probe' (something which measures) and a 'policy' (something which looks at the measurements and produces a finding).

Fortunately, in your particular case, the challenge of creating a probe which can measure 'busyness' answers your question (which is effectively 'No' btw). Chat programs work because they limit the problem to 'are you currently in chat' and can probe for that but without instrumenting your friends you are stuck trying to infer their 'busyness', and many people that kind of probing is considered none of your 'business' (pun intended).

A limited (and its limited because it has to be proactive) conceptual idea is an app with a button that says 'bored' on your phone. When you press it, it would tell you how many of the friends you are 'following' have pressed that button in the last say 30 second, minute, or 10 minutes and offer to SMS that set. The downside is that it will not include folks who are doing something but they would rather be doing something else.

[Johnnyboyy]

I must have worded the question wrong to begin with but the button you were referring to was exactly my line of thinking.

Situation: I'm at home and feel like meeting up with a buddy of mine and am having this problem. I launch the app and click a button that says I'm bored and would like to meet up with one of these people I'm 'following'. This then bring up a list of the followers that are free as well and the SMS option would be available. I could then message them and possibly meet up with them.

This was just an idea I had come up with that could possibly solve this problem I'm having. I figured it would be worth sharing if someone was looking to build something like this. I was hoping somwthing like this existed already though because I believe I would use it a lot. I completely understand there's no magical program that can know you're definitely bored and would like to meet up with a friend hahaha.

[ChuckMcM]

Awesome, your next submission should be Show HN: This App I made over the weekend. :-)

You can build it with Corona [1] pretty easily, even if you haven't done much programming they have excellent tutorials. Then spin up either and AppEngine instance or EC2 instance to handle registration and its good to go. Do it for one of the Disrupt hackathons and maybe win a prize even.

[1] http://www.anscamobile.com/

[Johnnyboyy]

I'm downloading Corona as I write this and I'll give it my best shot! It might take a little more than a weekend but this might be the push I needed to really get into this game. Thank you!

[ImprovedSilence]

Hahaha, this might be showing my age, but it sounds like AOL instant messenger...

Am I wrong? Back in the day we'd get home and check peoples status, chat to see if anyone was up to something, then get moving. Times were great!

[Andrenid]

Sounds exactly like just about every IM app.

It's pretty much how me and my friends use Google Talk. We all actively update our statuses on it quite regularly... "At work" or "Playing Forza, join if bored" etc.

Combined with the presence icons (Away, Busy, Available etc) it does the job well, eg can have text status as "At work" but be set to Available, or switch it to Away if in a meeting.

And of course you get a chat feature with it ;)

[Johnnyboyy]

You're definitely not wrong here but I'm more looking for a quick way to see who is free and would be willing to meet up and get coffee or come over for a game of pool. The chat would mostly be just to make plans for hanging out in the real world.

[DistortedRhymes]

You could use a phone and just call. Old school I know but it works!

[Johnnyboyy]

Hahaha I know and I do but a lot of the time it takes 3 to 5 calls before someone answers and even then it's not a guarantee that they're free. I figured this could be a nice little short cut if it was out there. It seems like not too many others have a problem with this though so it might just be a specific problem for my area. My high school class only had about 110 kids.

[AznHisoka]

ditto. internet is making us lazy when it comes to taking initiative. i feel it might be an ego thing - noone wants to be told "No, I'm busy, and don't got time for you"