Comments on: i can haz housesitting tool pls?

By: jonathan berger

jonathan berger — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 01:19:14 +0000

We worked on Sparekey at Startup Weekend NY, got some working code, but fell well short of a full app. The planning we did (captured in the tracker project linked below) is pretty solid. If anyone wants to continue on with this software, please keep us posted. Good luck!

project management: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/90125/overview
source code: http://github.com/jonathanpberger/sparekey

By: Chris Leeder

Chris Leeder — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:28:33 +0000

Echoing John Lindal, this sounds like leaving yourself open to be burglarized.

By: Katie

Katie — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:02:15 +0000

What about Second Porch?

By: jonathanpberger

jonathanpberger — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:26:28 +0000

I kind of buy this. Dopplr or Facebook alone don’t really do the trick, but a service that lets you control privacy and hits their APIs (as well as those of Tripit, Foursquare, etc) to see who’s traveling and / or which friends are out of town are might do the trick.

Startup Weekend New York is this weekend; I’ll pitch this app and if there’s enough interest, maybe it’ll get built. Any ideas for a catchy name?

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:39:20 +0000

Diaspora.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr?pos=4&ref=spotlight
http://www.joindiaspora.com/

If they deliver the boundary mechanisms described it should provide some answers.

Ian

By: Kim Pallister

Kim Pallister — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:47:06 +0000

Sounds like something maybe you could use Neighborgoods.net for? Someone needs to do a mashup of that with Dopplr.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:00:21 +0000

p.s. For that matter, I want to know which of my friends are currently in the city I’m traveling to, as well. Haven’t found a good solution to that yet, but better search tools on dopplr would be one way.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:56:47 +0000

I was going to suggest Dopplr too. Don’t know that the API would allow any of this, but Dopplr would need to add just: (1) a list–the subset of friends who are allowed to hear about your empty apartment. (2) a checkbox, when you set up a trip, for “AND my place at home is available.” (3) ideally, a calendar for finer-grained management of your empty apartment’s schedule.

As for facebook groups and spamming your friends–definitely non-ideal, but it’s a reasonable interim solution. And it still works if, as people noted, one’s network turns out to be too sparse for the better methods to take off.

By: Jack Vinson

Jack Vinson — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:55:20 +0000

I think one of the first commenters has it: most people don’t know so many people who also travel. The first-level graph isn’t big enough. And the second level graph might be big, but then you don’t know the people well enough. That’s why the services that offer house sitting (or similar) are members-based: you pay a fee that grants you some level of credibility to swap houses with nearly anonymous strangers. And all the other options essentially get you back to spamming your friends with a note of “anyone want to cat-sit on XYZ days?” or “Does anyone have an empty place in Cleveland during conference ___?”

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:36:11 +0000

The hubs is teaching software engineering this fall & is always looking for projects to have the kids develop… I’ll pass this idea on to him!