Hi guys. Thank you all for supporting me. I'm just reading all of this, because I've been at a meeting for a couple of hours. Server is up again, but I wasn't expecting it to be this huge. I'll make some changes, so please don't blame me if it's down.
I'm just another Dutch student trying his best to graduate. And yes, I did let a few people check the site before I launched it (not only Dutch people). Still, my English isn't the best and thank you guys for pointing that out. I'll change it as soon as possible.
I'll give all comments a closer look soon. Again, I didn't really expect this (otherwise I'll optimized it first and put it on a CDN and stuff). I'll also get into details (specs, technical details etc).
Never heard of it. But it actually does use the same technique (I use flash as fallback for browsers that doesn't support websockets... well actually, Socket.IO does it all <- love it).
This is a billion and one times better than sending your resume and contacting a recruiter. You leverage the power of the community and showcase that you actually do have competent skills. The only negative I notice, is that among the skills you showcase, proofreading is not one of them. Hah!
Anyways, if you did this to intern where I work, I'd give you an internship position in a heartbeat. Wish you all the luck to get what you want fellow hacker. Thumbs up.
Actually, someone recommended Jeff Kreeftmeijer's work, when I was working on this (an old colleague). I liked the way he did this, so yes... his work was very inspiring.
But most of my inspiration on how to do this came from the Node.JS knockout. Those guys are really awesome.
I used Node.JS, ExpressJS, Socket.IO and CouchDB (I should have used redis actually, but these things were familiar to me). I'm not trying to prove this is the newest, most greatest thing. I'm trying to get an internship at Valve.
There is no doubt that this is very similar to Jeffs blog post, and although it takes the idea a step further, I do think you should at least add a link to any and all code which inspired you and which you took ideas from, if it be Jeffs previous post, or a Node Knockout project.
Best of luck with getting Valves attention, and you have my pointers vote :)
Could not agree more with cookiestack. The inspiration is quite clear and not giving any credit to what influenced your work is somewhat surprising. Especially given the fact that this is supposed to be a job application.
This is incredible, how come I didn't think of this? This is certainly a flash job application, well done. I wouldn't mind everyone's corrections; if they don't accept you because of a few typoes, Valve are idiots.
How often are you sending out cursor positions? I was trying to start a cursor ruckus but I think that all my cursor movement crashed your server.
Incidentally, this could be an interesting exercise in calculating when and how often to send out cursor coordinates. I'd add something about that on the page too, as I dare say that's a good skill to have as well.
It's a very cool experience. At first I just thought it was an animation, until I managed to coax all the other users into some sort of cursor mosh pit.
Could this be the potential future for social browsing, where each 'cursor' is tagged with the user name and you can actually observe users navigating through the pages of websites.
"Could this be the potential future for social browsing,
where each 'cursor' is tagged with the user name and you
can actually observe users navigating through the pages of
websites."
Makes note in list of cool project ideas I'll probably never get round to implementing.
This has been a long and busy day. I've received a lot of comments, both positive and negative. I'm not sure what to do with all of these comments.
I saw a lot of questions about where I got my inspiration. Someone built something similar at the Node.JS knockout: http://tinyurl.com/2ch3nes. I started experimenting with PusherApp and NodeJS (I've worked with ape-project.org before doing this). Later on, I attended a developer meeting (http://rotterdamphp.tumblr.com) and they talked about Node.JS and CouchDB. At that same meeting someone pointed out Jeff Kreefmeijer's work and that I'm not the first one to build something like this. But I didn't care and kept on building (because it doesn't matter to me if I'm the first to build it). If you're curious on how I've build this, then you should check out my twitter (@davidvanleeuwen) tomorrow, because I'll submit it on github and will post the link there.
The problem wasn't that you're not the first to build it, but that there was a complete guide to build something like this published somewhere, you definitely knew it existed and people thought you used it and didn't credit the author. Since that's not the case: awesome work, your implementation looks great. Have fun at Valve. :)
Not working for me. The whole page loads except for the bit inside the cursor placeholder. I'm behind a firewall in an office, but I don't know if that's the problem.
It's something like the 'facebook like' button, but it's more like an experiment for my graduation. I want to become an intern at Valve, that's why I've made this website.
If you have any feedback, please let me now :) Thanks!
Ok, cool, you've got my cursor. Do you have any ideas on what to add to steam stats on that site somewhere? I'm an avid steam (mostly valve) gamer myself, and I like to keep track of accuracy, headshots, etc. What would you add?
I'm really not sure what kind of data I can use for all the statistics (not sure what kind of data they collect from everyone, except your status and achievements). But I'm hoping to make it somewhat more personal, so you could share it with your friends and stuff.
But I sure can use some help on what kind of data is interesting.
One thing I'd personally like is an analytics type of view for my stats. i.e. graphs of different stats over time to show improvement. I don't know how much social stuff there is to be done, because steam already has a decent community view. I'd definitely like to talk in depth about it if you're looking to discuss things. My contact info is in my profile if you're interested.
I find that stuff like this works best with no database whatsoever. There's no particular reason to store cursor positions for longer than it takes to route messages, so you can keep them in memory.
Try writing something like this, and you'll be surprised how easy it is. Especially with some of the new frameworks that are built specifically for it (ie., node.js). I expect this to be the "Hello World" for realtime web apps, much in the way that little chatrooms were the "Hello World" for java and sockets.
The new Opera beta does nicely here, just some layout problems (scrollbars) if cursors go too far to the side on large monitors - awesome example though.
I'm just another Dutch student trying his best to graduate. And yes, I did let a few people check the site before I launched it (not only Dutch people). Still, my English isn't the best and thank you guys for pointing that out. I'll change it as soon as possible.
I'll give all comments a closer look soon. Again, I didn't really expect this (otherwise I'll optimized it first and put it on a CDN and stuff). I'll also get into details (specs, technical details etc).
And again, thank you all :-)