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GeoURL: We Know Where You Live, Work and Blog!

Posted by timothy on Wed Jan 08, 2003 04:26 AM
from the and-other-stuff-too dept.
hrbrmstr writes "GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you. Many potential 'location-based services' can spring from this if the database gets big enough. The site has an easy process for maintaining your entries. And can even generate RSS feeds for a given geographical area."
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  • That's right! (Score:5, Funny)

    by JanusFury (452699) <(kevin.gadd) (at) (gmail.com)> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:32AM (#5038660) Homepage Journal
    That's right folks, now all you bored /.'ers can finally find an attractive local girl to stalk! Just enter your location into the convenient form, hit 'Submit', and stalk away!
  • There goes the neighborhood? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:33AM (#5038663)
    Doesn't anyone else long for the privacy and anonynimity that the 'net used to provide?

    Posting anonymously for effect, of course....
  • Probably bought by Google. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by $$$$$exyGal (638164) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:34AM (#5038665) Homepage Journal
    At first I thought this was just another lame whois database of url's. That's been proven to be idiotic. What this is is a human-edited database of url's to locations. You can submit your own.

    If they are successful (will need a very large database), then I bet Google would be very interested.

    --free sex [slashdot.org]

  • Ahem? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Noodlenose (537591) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:34AM (#5038666) Journal
    Why, oh why in this age of deranged stalkers, nutters and neverending digital identity theft would I tell the world where I live?

    Just so half of this planet's socially challenged would appear on my doorstep and want a beer?

    • Re:Ahem? by orthogonal (Score:3) Wednesday January 08 2003, @06:27AM
    • Re:Ahem? by TomDLux (Score:1) Wednesday January 08 2003, @09:51AM
    • Re:Ahem? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by digitalsushi (137809) <slashdot@digitalsushi.com> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:21AM (#5039892) Journal
      I think as the net gets more and more mainstream, it becomes safer and safer to share your personal information online- I think it'll get to a point where it's as safe as real life- whether that be sharing your phone number in your sig, writing your name on a bathroom stall, or filling out all the info on a Church flyer. That is, real life isn't that safe either, but it's safer than what we fear online. Also then again, I'm not in the right demographic for my claims to be bold. If I were a 16 year old girl saying the same thing, these words would have a different weight behind them. Instead, knowing that I'm a 23 year old male and having a phone number of 603 330 3532- I just proved that it's not a big deal cause there ain't but nobody who's gonna look that up, much less call it, and MUCH less stalk me by it. :D "As the Internet becomes less and less an exclusive club, it becomes a universe, common to all, and sacred to none." When's the last time you heard of someone getting hacked via YellowPages?
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Ahem? by fucksl4shd0t (Score:1) Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:41AM
        • Re:Ahem? by digitalsushi (Score:1) Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:56AM
          • Re:Ahem? by fucksl4shd0t (Score:1) Wednesday January 08 2003, @11:05AM
            • Re:Ahem? by digitalsushi (Score:1) Wednesday January 08 2003, @11:37AM
    • Re:Ahem? by Triv (Score:2) Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:43PM
  • Nice idea, but (Score:1)

    by it0 (567968) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:34AM (#5038667)
    Doesn't the whois/DNS database already do this?
  • yikes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tunesmith (136392) <{siffert} {at} {museworld.com}> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:36AM (#5038672) Homepage Journal
    For some reason this strikes me as a service to NOT sign up for... why would I want semi-anonymouse visitors to my blog to know where I live?

    Be good for signing up a business address, though..
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Only RSS per location? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by irc.goatse.cx troll (593289) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:38AM (#5038676) Journal
    I'm not about to give them ANY information unless I can download a full dump of their database whenever I want.
    Anyone remember how badly people got burned by CDDB? Its the same buisness plan;

    Phase 1) Invent neat idea with a few good uses so that people will populate your content
    Phase 2) ???
    Phase 3) Profit!

    where ??? becomes 'Fuck over users, start charging for access, bite hand that feeds.'.
  • by ItalianScallion (145653) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:48AM (#5038700)
    my friend lives half the year in vermont and half the year in california. his site is physically hosted in virginia. what would he be supposed to enter for his website location?

    this site might not always make much sense for individuals. the situation is similar to that of american telephone area codes; in our highly traveled world they are starting to lose their value as a location indicator, what with mobile phones, choice of area codes for faxes etc, and (in theory) relocatable phone numbers. you can choose a location, but it might only be true sometimes.

    better to link it to your frequent flyer number, perhaps?

  • geourl mapping using php and mysql (Score:4, Informative)

    by chrisranjana.com (630682) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:54AM (#5038710) Homepage
    Is it the same as this http://www.networldmap.com/TryIt.htm [networldmap.com] of is it different ?
  • idea stolen from google contest (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SobiOne (411695) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:56AM (#5038717)

    This looks similar to what was done in the google programming contest [google.com]!

    I wonder when google plans to implement this?
    It's a really neat idea! And google's method sounds like it should work better than GeoURL's
    (which requires people to submit their location info, rather than just swipe it off the web site.)

  • Just what we need... (Score:2, Funny)

    by grep_a_life (234527) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:59AM (#5038719)
    something the RIAA could use to locate "pirate sites" and then send some guys to rough up the place... They would of course call it "Market Demographics Analysis."
  • database (Score:2, Funny)

    by Zayin (91850) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:59AM (#5038721)

    Many potential 'location-based services' can spring from this if the database gets big enough.

    ...assuming they backed it up before the server melted.

  • Usuful application (Score:1)

    by Corporate Troll (537873) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @05:01AM (#5038725) Homepage Journal
    Wow, now we can track down the spammers that sign with their real name and kill them! Preferably gutting their entrails with a spoon!
  • slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)

    by zephc (225327) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @05:03AM (#5038729) Homepage
    Looks like no one will be stalking random local girls anytime until this story drops off the front page...
  • Geolocation is the future (Score:3, Informative)

    by edLin (5192) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @05:04AM (#5038732) Homepage

    Here are some Debian geolocation links for you:

  • DNS already has this (to an extent) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blowdart (31458) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @05:40AM (#5038803) Homepage

    Not that anyone uses the DNS LEO entries (RFC 1876 [ckdhr.com]).

    This allows DNS names (and thus via rDNS, IPs) to store longitude, latitude, even elevation. (I did have a nice diagram here, but the ever so shit lameness filter said I had too much whitespace). The entries themselves look like this

    loiosh.kei.com. LOC 42 21 43.528 N 71 05 06.284 W 12m
    kei.com. LOC 42 21 43.528 N 71 05 06.284 W 12m 30m
    vrx.net. LOC 43 40 N 79 25 W 30m

    But, of course, DNS on a host doesn't allow for all that stalking you can do should amihotornot start supporting this on a per URL basis ....

  • My Blog is 500+ miles away (Score:4, Insightful)

    by daniel_isaacs (249732) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @06:13AM (#5038861) Homepage
    Really. It's co-loed in Ohio. I'm not in Ohio. And my companies website? It's 300 miles away. How functional can this be, really?

  • by jez_f (605776) <jeremy@jeremyfrench.co.uk> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @06:25AM (#5038876) Homepage
    I remember reading something in NewScientist last year which is simalar to this
    I think it was HP, or some company like that. Were looking into spacial messaging. Ie your phone can look up messages/pages based uppon your location.
    At the time I thought it was really interesting and had a lot of applications. In theory you could get user reviews of the place you are going to eat, just before you go it. Find out if the shop you are in has better online prices than they do in store. Loads of stuff.
    This is another thing on my 'meant to look into but have forgotten all of the important details' list.
  • IP-based lookup (Score:4, Informative)

    by nwetters (93281) <ngourlayNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @06:51AM (#5038938) Homepage

    The site is slashdotted, so I haven't been able to have a look at it. However, if I were building a geo-search engine, I'd use the WHOIS data for the bulk of the indexing work, and for providing a default location for visitors. The tweaking around the edges (changing the location of the website or page), is just icing on the cake.

    No one really knows the accuracy of IP->Country lookup. There's an onlgoing thread on the london perl mongers list [pm.org] about this topic. Some geolocation companies state 98% accuracy [washingtonpost.com], which is pure bullshit. It's more likely to be around 70%, with most of the error occuring in overestimation of US addresses.

    By the way, if you want a fast IP locator, here's one [cpan.org] that's just as accurate as any of the commercial products. I'm surprised more people don't use this sort of stuff for providing intelligent defaults for their users when filling in HTML forms.

  • by tacocat (527354) <tallison1@@@twmi...rr...com> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @06:52AM (#5038942)

    This is a great concept! I absolutely love it!

    Now I can associate addresses to the script kiddies trying to break into my servers, hunt them down, and beat the ever loving crap out of them with baseball bats and chains.

    Finally, something useful on the internet!

  • Isnt there an easier way...... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NiteHaqr (29663) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @07:00AM (#5038958) Homepage
    Surely all that is needed is for people to put their location in an HTML meta-tag, then Google and the like will be able to search.

    For example I could embed the information

    city:London
    zip:SW9

    Then by searching for that string (I refuse to use the phrase Googling) in your fave search engine, you could find people in your area.

    Also someone could write a plug-in for browsers to pick up that info and display it in some-way.

    Hell if its that important, maybe a new formal meta-tag could be incorporated into the next version of the HTML standard.

    Just a few thought

  • Hm... (Score:1)

    by miketang16 (585602) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @07:05AM (#5038965) Journal
    They can track where you live based on your IP address, but can they survive the slashdot effect? I think not. =)
  • by fraudrogic (562826) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @08:07AM (#5039095)
    This is the greatest result of a slashdotting I've ever seen:

    System error

    error: Can't locate auto/DBI/connect.al in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 /usr/local/lib/site_perl/5.00503/i386-freebsd /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 . /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503/mach /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503 /usr/local/ /usr/local/lib/perl) at /home/joshua/work/geourl/site/autohandler line 5

    context: ...
    275: # whether they should generate a full stack trace (confess() and cluck())
    276: # or simply report the caller's package (croak() and carp()), respectively.
    277: # confess() and croak() die, carp() and cluck() warn.
    278:
    279: sub croak { die shortmess @_ }
    280: sub confess { die longmess @_ }
    281: sub carp { warn shortmess @_ }
    282: sub cluck { warn longmess @_ }
    283: ...

    code stack: /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503/Carp.pm:279 /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503/AutoLoader.pm:88 /home/joshua/work/geourl/site/autohandler:5

  • by John_Renne (176151) <zooi@NOsPam.gniffelnieuws.net> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @08:08AM (#5039100) Homepage
    Well this method sure beats searching whois databases for domains registered by someone geographically near to you.
  • Spatial Query (Score:2)

    by Boss, Pointy Haired (537010) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @08:09AM (#5039105)
    Anybody know how they've implemented their spatial query when grabbing URLs within $x kilometres of $lat,$lon?

    I hope it's not "SELECT * FROM urls WHERE latitude > $a AND latitude $c AND longitude $d;", however based on the slashdotting they've had....
  • Annoyed (Score:1)

    by redtail1 (603986) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @08:34AM (#5039247)
    Looks like the webmaster doesn't appreciate all of the attention a Slashdot mention brings to his website. The current contents of the index.html page:

    <html>
    <head>
    <title></title>
    <meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0; URL=javascript:history.back()">
    </head>
    </body&g t;
    </html>
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • My analysis (Score:2)

    by stinky wizzleteats (552063) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @08:55AM (#5039359) Homepage Journal

    It seems geourl.org is located... nowhere. It seems the /. effect can alter the very fact of your physical existence.

  • dig www.geourl.org (Score:1)

    by HeelToe (615905) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:07AM (#5039802) Homepage
    ;; ANSWER SECTION:
    www.geourl.org. 28m24s IN A 127.0.0.1

    So, whichever whacked out moderator moderated my original post on this as OverRated, buzz off.

    Why is their A record pointing to 127.0.0.1?
  • Is it just me..? (Score:1)

    by The_Doughboy (565172) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:12AM (#5039836)
    Hmm, FullXML, is anyone else getting a FullXML template there?
  • Thieves.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grub (11606) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:26AM (#5039924) Homepage Journal

    Thief 1: Let's see.. who in this area has a blog..
    Thief 2: Several!
    Thief 1:How many talk about the goodies in their house?
    Thief 2:Hmm new home theatre setup 3 doors down..
    Thief 1:Good, do they mention working day jobs?
    .
    .
    You get the idea...
  • By Postal? (Score:2)

    by phorm (591458) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @11:10AM (#5040216) Homepage Journal
    I know that a lot of "matching" sites (as in, for people like slashdot geeks who'll never meet a girl without a PC) use postal code or combined postal/phone-area-code as a geographic identifier. From what I've heard, it's pretty good, you can tell within about 50km or so where a person is at most times

    Why would we use longitude/latitude. It's one thing to know that a user is somewhere "nearby" and another to whip out the old GPS and track them down to Lat 34 Long 82. Sounds more like a tool to be abused to me.
  • ICBM? (Score:1)

    by mattyohe (517995) <matt DOT yohe AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @11:20AM (#5040272)
    Anyone else notice this site is the "GeoURL InterContinental Ballistic Missile Address Server"
    • Re:ICBM? by mojogojo (Score:1) Wednesday January 08 2003, @12:02PM
  • escort service (Score:1)

    by asscroft (610290) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @11:23AM (#5040287)
    was the first thing that came to mind. How sad is that? Pr0n, sex, etc, it's always what drives the technology.

    what a world. funny how nudity is outlawed on TV, yet violence is ok, then kids shoot eachother and we wonder why, yet pr0n drives every technological breakthrough we've had.

    fuckin puritans.
  • by bluestar (17362) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @11:37AM (#5040392) Homepage
    Why oh why did I register with InstaTrace?
  • Domain Name (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dze (89612) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @12:00PM (#5040556) Homepage
    Anyone can find my address from my domain name registration, therefore I'm not going to be extra-paranoid about giving the latitude and longitude (which I've already given out for the Perl Monks [perlmonks.org] Monk Map [tinymicros.com]).
  • by zachjb (221132) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @12:06PM (#5040605)
    There could be another approach to this geographic mapping of the web so you can find neighbors and what not.

    WHOIS databases also contain the address of the people who register the domain names. One could program a bot to lookup domains and parse out the geographic information from their entry and then put that into a database using the technology that the guy in the Google Programming Contest did in order to assign a lat. and long. number (or ICBM number).

    Then you could even allow people to update their entries like you can with the online phone books just in case the spider grabbed the wrong information.
  • This is strange (Score:1)

    by dallask (320655) <codeninja&gmail,com> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @12:09PM (#5040621) Homepage
    when I go to www.geourl.org or any link in the article, I am redirected to my LOCALHOST !!! the only way I know this is Im running a local server... at first I thought they were pointing to me :)
  • In the bad old days... (mildly OT) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Embedded Geek (532893) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @12:24PM (#5040746) Homepage
    ... circa 1988, I tried to convince the admin on the UNIX system (back when there were only two flavors) at school that we needed a where command to complement who, using the tty's of each user to figure out which lab they were connected from (or just flag 'external dialup'). I was willing to write an awk script to do it, but he was never willing to give me the mappings to all the ttys.

    And, no, I wasn't, er, trying to pick up on female CS students. No, never that. It's just conincidence I wound up marrying one.

    Honest.

  • I made a similar site, just for fun (Score:2, Insightful)

    by skurk (78980) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @04:06PM (#5042802) Homepage Journal
    It uses GeoIP and a Perl snippet to determine where the users are at. But ofcourse, it's nothing like that site.

    http://www.internetional.org/ [internetional.org] if you want to give it a try.
  • by DarklordJonnyDigital (522978) on Thursday January 09 2003, @05:49PM (#5050937) Homepage Journal

    GeoURL will be down until Friday, 9am EST.

    Sorry for the inconvenience.

    -- Joshua Schachter, joshua-geourl@burri.to [mailto]

    Slashdotted ;)

  • URL Seems Dead Now (Score:1)

    by tmjva (226065) <tmjva@veriz o n . net> on Friday January 10 2003, @08:12AM (#5054032) Homepage
    This site has undergone /. effect.

    The link seems dead now.

  • by squirmee (639478) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @05:33AM (#5038789)
    I'd know those error messages anywhere! www.masonhq.com
    [ Parent ]
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Re:Quick ! (Score:1)

    by johnraphone (624518) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @05:36AM (#5038793) Homepage
    here you go...

    Owner Name : RALSKY ALAN M
    Latitude : 42.5460
    Longitude : 83.4284
    Taxpayer Addr.: 6747 MINNOW POND DR
    City/State/zip: W BLOOMFIELD MI 48322-2663
    Census Tract: 1566.00

    more info here [spamhaus.org]

    [ Parent ]
    • Duck! by jhantin (Score:1) Friday January 10 2003, @04:12PM
  • by IXI (586504) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @07:58AM (#5039077)
    error: DBD::mysql initialisation failed: Can't locate auto/DBI/_new_drh.al in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd [...]


    At least we know they're using FreeBSD without consulting netcraft ;)

    [ Parent ]
  • by Kombat (93720) <kombat@kombat.org> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @09:18AM (#5039494) Homepage
    LOL! Right you are. I got my names mixed up. :) But I still detest this "blogging" flash in the pan.
    [ Parent ]
  • by fucksl4shd0t (630000) on Wednesday January 08 2003, @10:59AM (#5040154) Homepage Journal

    Remember those stupid little coloured disks with the characters on them, that kids were trading in the playgrounds?

    Those were called pogs not blogs, dude.

    Other than that, uh, *cough*, obvious mistake, I have to agree with you.

    However, it's supposed to be spelled 'blog, with an apostrophe, short for weblog, which of course is supposed to be taking a shit on the web, I believe.

    "What did Spock find in the toilet?"

    The Captain's 'blog.

    [ Parent ]
  • by mbstone (457308) <michael DOT b DOT stone AT att DOT net> on Wednesday January 08 2003, @02:14PM (#5041690) Homepage
    Somebody should start a movement to ban Blogging. Surely 259 members of Congress would sign on immediately just from hearing the term.
    [ Parent ]
  • by zachjb (221132) on Saturday January 11 2003, @11:13AM (#5062287)
    The term blog isn't stupid. It is short for weBLOG. So they just shortened it up. Like the word "web" sounds any better.

    "Hi. I hate the word blog, I'm a fucktard."
    [ Parent ]
  • 38 replies beneath your current threshold.