hckrnws

There was (is?) a VR app/"social browser" called JanusVR once, that rendered every website as a room (either how it was explicitly defined through an extended HTML language on the website itself including custom 3d objects (https://janusvr.com/docs/build/introtojml/index.html, exportable from 3d software, or by some default 3d layout process for those sites that don't) and other users visiting it in it - and you could walk seamlessly from room to room like in the game Portal, and see/talk/interact with others! https://youtube.com/watch?v=O4rstRgUsBs

Never took off unfortunately (yet? maybe due to a lack of social/avatar/rendering features?)

Not quite the same thing, but Matrix had (it's come upon financial hardship, unfortunately) "Third Room", where a chatroom became an actual room you can edit

The cursors don’t move on iOS Safari for me, but I love that people are trying things like this! Maggie Appleton has explored some ideas about how to make the presence indicators feel less intrusive: https://maggieappleton.com/ambient-copresence

Flashbacks of ScreenHero and even earlier Linux experiments have brought me a wave of nostalgia. Or even Mumble servers and when proximity voice chat came to games. So, yes please, I'd love to try that world again.

I had flashbacks of the movie "The Others" (2001) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/), just like when I came across Google Wave for the first time back in the day!

I thought it was broken until I decided to try it in another browser. I guess it works in Chrome on Windows but not Firefox on Windows. Not sure if it works in Safari or not since I don't have my macbook handy right now.

On mac and firefox here. Sad that it doesn't work on FF.

Seems to be a lot of console errors in firefox

Get used to more and more websites not working in FF.

Why? What changed?

It works on Safari. Neat idea.

Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at wss://disco-party.genmon.partykit.dev/parties/page/[random-string]

Uncaught TypeError: CSS.highlights is undefined Or https://cursor-party.genmon.partykit.dev/cursors.js:19

That's cool. I love ideas that make the Web come alive.

But I also feel like many more people need a fourth place, somewhere to think: https://www.dsebastien.net/you-need-a-fourth-place-a-place-t...

It's a cool concept, though distracting as all hell. Might work okay for something special like an /r/place successor, but I sure hope this doesn't become the norm for web pages in general.

It’s a fun idea, though generally I want all my web activities to be solo, not multiplayer, so I’m clearly not the target audience for this feature.

This is not the same but reminds me that every piece of writing deserves annotations and discussion. I don't care much for the "live" part. I wish there was some social network built around that idea, kinda like reddit and twitter, but with in-place comments and side annotations.

I agree, it would be a great feature. Medium kind of has this. There was another tool that I found with much better functionality, I will try to find it.

Doesn't work on FF on mac sadly. But the idea of togetherness and shared place on each URL is very curious to think about.

It took me a solid minute to be 100% sure the background color was, indeed, slowly changing.

This is really cool actually. It also makes me think that more places should have like a chatroom or something. Just brainstorming here, maybe it needs to be fleshed out more than that.

That's so cool! Is there a way to talk on mobile? Maybe we could add a talk button in the bottom right. I might add this to my website!

I like the general idea, but the execution here is lacking. The inclusion of the "type to reply" feature quite terrible turn off, because it's abused by other users immediately. Further, these cursors are really distracting—ideally they'd be less intrusive and more ambient in nature, at least by default.

The keys used mean that it doesn't work properly for me on Firefox, hitting / opens a search box (in the browser) that I have to close and the Return key to send a message doesn't work at all.

I also don't see any other cursors though that may just be that no-one else is on the site.

edit: works fine in Safari.

Backspace goes back a page on Windows in Chrome, so it barely works there either. I also wasn't sure if return was supposed to do anything.

Also no idea why the X is there, since the bubble follows my mouse and I can never click it.

Cool idea, needs a lot of cross-plat support work.

Yeah not sure if there’s a way to activate chat on mobile either. Some said hey “to me” but all I could do was tap around and hope they could see I was acknowledging them

Cool concept. Anybody know of a project with realtime spontaneous interactions like this that fits a defined use case?

On isitchristmas.com, this happens for several days surrounding Christmas. The defined use case is informing you of whether it is Christmas.

Google Docs.

This is wonderful. How would this work with more than, say 100+ users? Is there some cut off?

I added it to our page https://pollinations.ai :)

I've always liked the idea but found it a little gimmicky. I would love to find a good use case for it, like in Pollinations' case, it could be a collaborative art-making game.

This feels ripe for a browser extension moreso than code on a page itself.

love the concept, i want to be able to chat to the people on all pages I visit. why do i have to socialize OVER THERE when I could do it right here?

This page is unreadable on mobile - safari on iphone.

bro is nudging me to get up from bed and use his site on my laptop or desktop.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa<breath>aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Needs a dark mode, or at least Dark Reader browser extension compatibility. As it stands, the bright BG hurts my eyes.

People don't want this. It was tried endless times during the web2 craze (when tech like AJAX and WebSockets picked up steam). At best it's a cute gimmick, at worst it's distracting and annoying.

There have been browser extensions, website plugins, and many, many startups that tried to make this a thing. It's not a thing. Social elements have moved from the comments section to Slack or Discord or WhatsApp or Twitter.

Interesting — do you happen to remember any names? I was just a wee lad, so this is new to me. Wouldn’t make a great startup, but I thought it was a pretty smart blog feature!

IIRC, the lyrics site Genius started life as one in the long line of “hey let’s let people share annotations on arbitrary web pages around the world” projects that went nowhere. They pivoted to using their annotations to let people provide extensive footnotes on song lyrics.

“_why the lucky stiff” had one of these for a while too, I can’t remember the name.

Annotating other websites was a side quest along the way for Genius, but its original creation was focused on annotating rap lyrics. It took them 5 years to drop "Rap" from the name "Rap Genius". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(company)#History

I am incorrect!

Though Wikipedia makes it sound like there was a lot of pressure from investors to pivot into that side quest:

In 2012, the company received an additional $15 million investment from Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z),[1][3][11] prompted in part by partner Marc Andreessen's own past effort to build a group annotation feature into a web browser.[1] Ben Horowitz described Genius as "one of the most important things we've ever funded"

The web has a different audience now, old things can be new again.

Just because you don't want this doesn't mean people in general don't want this. Plenty of people both in this commentary section and the older ones about this web page dig it.

I agree. This is such an old and beaten idea that used to be present on every other webpage back in the day. I'm surprised by the comments here praising it as something novel.

Yeah, I hate this. I don't want websites to stream my cursor position in real time for any reason to use for who knows what besides the advertised gimmick.