The CC licensing of the images on this site is more than a little suspect. I'd love to know how this user https://thngs.co/users/4 owns the rights to thousands of professional catalog shots spanning the last ~100 or so years.
It's one thing to lift images for use on your site but quite another to release those stolen images under a CC license.
Not really much to share other than you can get you in some legal hot water. Luckily for me it was caught before I got in too much trouble. Now my terms just say something along the lines of "images are property of their owners".
Same could apply to text too. If some user comes and pastes an entire section of a website that's also not good. I haven't run into that yet so I'll have to see how that turns out.
With the cryptic HN titles, I like to make a guess on the content behind the title, then compare. [x]
Expectation: A system for organizing things around the house by attaching programmable chips to things, tracked by a device/app that notifies if out of place.
Reality: A catalog database of products, old and new, with descriptions and attributes (manufacturer, materials, prices, etc). Like a Pokedex, [1] but for things.
> Thngs is a simple tool for the preservation and structuring of data about physical things.
Not much data...
It's clear that the data is geared toward a graphic design/visual artist mindset rather than a engineer mindset. When I see something like the Optima M12[1] all I want is to see what's inside, but they never open it up.
EDIT: Infinite scroll that breaks your back button remains an anti-pattern. I scrolled down to Asimo, clicked Asimo, and after reading a bit, clicked back, only to discover myself at the top of the page with none of the content I had already looked at loaded. Cool, I guess I'm done looking.
So is this like a curated catalog version of Google image search?
It certainly is very cool, I clicked on the Olympic torch on the home page, then clicked on the category of the item's page, and got a whole list of Olympic torches - https://thngs.co/search/Typology%3AOlympic%20Torch. This is something that wouldn't work as nicely with image search.
On the other hand, this is restricted to "things", but that kind of search is something I do for all kinds of terms.
First of all: I think this is a very cool idea. It's like a generalised Pokedex! Imagine you could just take a foto of something with your phone and ask the Index what it is, how cool's that? :D
So yeah, I get why people are connecting this with wikipedia but to me that's not the point. Wikipedia is a knowledge base of important stuff people want to seriously look up.
With the pokedex I can just snapshot some sneakers the guy next to me wears on the tube and get the some infos and maybe personal opinions. It's way more silly and informal but thats what you get when you can add ANYthing.
Think about it, I could add my old Gameboy and have people share their memories and good ol' stories about "back in the day". You could even add your old dog and if somebody asks the index about your dog it will say "That's Dave's dog" xD
This "thing" is way more personal, individual, informal than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is as steril as an OR, with sharp knowledge like a scalpel.
This is just things. Simple, but I can definitely see a trajectory where we end up thinking: how did people live without it? :D
(not this particular version, but if you take the idea and turn it up to 11)
I can open you a small secret - there is fully dynamic structure of things. Also there are "renderers" for any kind of special inputs in editor and they are easily extendable. (editor: http://imgur.com/wPgJ27L )
I love your idea about visual search! We already have idea of visual "ruler" to mark known dimensions directly on photo.
This reminds me of an app my friend of of mine built (or started to) a few years ago. skore.org (SSL isn't current). The idea was basically similar, except it included people and was meant to include connections (e.g. Bill Gates associated with Microsoft).
I feel like the objects I found in the page are only the ones that are notable due to something (design, popularity.. ). It's an example of survivor bias.. Do not misunderstand me, It's a great idea, but maybe a title like "Awesome Thngs" would be more appropiate.
I mean that Thngs consists of everything that could be considered "thing" - from subway cards to ancient artifacts, from japanese cola bottles to Vespa scooters. I really don't know if hamburger is suitable "thing" for this, but salmon in a can surely is!
The links at the bottom of the screen promptly disappear as the next batch of infinite scrolling loads. That's pretty annoying when trying to click them and I'm always surprised when this kind of thing survives to production.
I love the general idea of this site though. A friend asked if it was possible to view items by year, but I didn't see any way to do so, and searching for a given year doesn't do it.
It's one thing to lift images for use on your site but quite another to release those stolen images under a CC license.