A way to find other Y Combinator readers in your area

How about a little custom(?) microformat on our "about" sections that you fetch and refresh every X days? That solves the authentication and updating problems. That's not my idea either. It's what the Perlmonks starting doing maybe 7 years ago.<p>&#60;!-- location:latitude=34.05.14,longitude=-84.16.05 --&#62;<p><a href="http://tinymicros.com/pm/index.php?goto=BigMonkMap" rel="nofollow">http://tinymicros.com/pm/index.php?goto=BigMonkMap</a><p>More inspiration from the Perl Mongers:<p><a href="http://www.pm.org/groups/map.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pm.org/groups/map.html</a>

For the rest of the world and/or the US, just let people type in a location that works on google maps (city, country/zip code/even street address). Then geocode it with Gmaps API, and use that lat/lon to display thereafter.

Recently there have been quite a few posts on here, from people trying to find other hackers in their area to meet. Because the posts tend to get long and drawn out I created this. It's simple and just a start, but it should provide us a base for finding others in our area. If people use it, I'm thinking about adding a location based forum section.

Feature request: clicking on a marker causes a bubble to show up (like GMaps) instead of navigating the page away from the map.

You might consider asking for a zip code rather than a city. I personally live in an unincorporated area of Saint Louis county, and I was quite tempted to name one of the three surrounding suburbs (all of which are politically considered a city). While the decision to just put down "Saint Louis" came easily, I'm wondering how much internal debate I would have had had I lived in an unincorporated area in the middle of nowhere.<p>And then, of course, there's also the reason that just typing in a zip code is easier.

You forgot the UK.

<i>"... find other Y Combinator readers in your area ..."</i><p>Didn't work for me. Does anyone below the equator get listed? ~ Melb, Aus. Is there any other way to submit your location aside from form submit? What about a set of lat/lons, or selection by clicking on the map, or a drop down for instance?<p>There's gotta be more ways to enter than just by IP. I can understand the reasoning as it's verifiable but it should probably used to weight user entry of data.

there is no way to delete entries -- i created 3 by accident -- and also no way to delete entries when you don't want you location connected your username anymore.<p>

dottertrotter made hackrtrackr. That's poetic.<p>Doh! It couldn't find the location for my IP, and it only allows me to pick my state, but not my city (the textbox that should allow me to enter my city is oddly vanished).

Reading from Barcelona, Spain... It does not work :(

First on the list after you :) My city is wrong because the city ajax dropdown list appeared only after I had already clicked OK.

Feature request: on the state/country view, allow announcement postings of some sort. For example, in the Philadelphia area we are starting a hackathon group (<a href="http://www.groupomatic.com/haqsm3vj" rel="nofollow">http://www.groupomatic.com/haqsm3vj</a>), and new people putting their info in would benefit from knowing about it.

Feature request: give us a text box that we can use to zoom into an area we type in. That is, if I just type in Pennsylvania, it will take me to that area. This will be even more needed when you start from the world view. And/or capture the click event through the GMaps API and recenter and zoom in one tick every click.

Feature request: validate usernames by issuing a HTTP GET to <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=%s" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=%s</a>

I'm from Montreal in Canada so it's impossible for me to be found on hackrtrackr!

Our club is a little more exclusive than I thought.

cmon gotta be able to delete users. this is not considered a "feature".