bike_index

Agreed. Open source ftw! I'd love to see this app.

Having run Cloud66 for the past year, I can say that actually managing infrastructure and dealing with security management such things would have been prohibitively expensive. Cloud66 has taken care of things like heartbleed and package updates (and alerts for rails updates). It's been a good experience in that I learned that I really do want a managed hosting environment - since I can see what they've done, but don't actually have to do it myself.

I would also love to hear a cost benefit analysis a year into managing your own servers.

I'd like to chime in here in support of Cloud66. I've been running normal (non-dockerized) Cloud66 for about a year on a wide variety of projects, including the main Bike Index site (https://bikeindex.org), and it's fantastic.

It's all the ease of Heroku and all the flexibility of actual servers, and way cheaper than Heroku. The only reason I've touched Docker on Cloud66 is JRuby - since this article is about a python app, it would be also require Docker. But for Ruby MRI applications, the logical first step as soon as Heroku stops being cost effective is immediate (and painless) migration to Cloud66.

We've been working on updating our API to V2[1], and decided to go with grape because it automatically generates documentation via grape-swagger[2].

Initially we considered Apiary, but we wanted more flexibility and preferred to host things ourselves. And the fact that our documentation is generated automatically from the code via grape-swagger is a game changer.

[1] https://bikeindex.org/documentation/api_v2

[2] https://github.com/tim-vandecasteele/grape-swagger

As someone who doesn't have a car and is broke, investing in my bike makes a lot of sense - public transit costs 100/month[1], my transportation bike cost 800$ and my yearly cost to maintain it is 100$ (tires, tube, chain). Therefore, in the first year, I save money.

My bike is fast and convenient for getting around, which makes it a reasonable alternative to other transportation methods (it's faster than traveling by car within the city limits of Chicago).

In contrast, a ~100$ bike is much slower and more expensive to maintain. Suggesting only fools ride nice bikes is short sighted.

We need to make bike theft less profitable instead of telling everyone to ride shitty, impractical bikes.

[1] in Chicago - http://www.transitchicago.com/travel_information/fares/unlim...

Register your bike. https://bikeindex.org

We've successfully recovered thousands of bikes (three in the past two days!). We've made it easy to id stolen bikes, and more difficult to sell stolen bikes - which makes ultimately bike theft less appealing.

GPS trackers are great - but unfortunately, they have yet to meet these vital requirements: easy to charge, difficult to remove, waterproof, cheap enough to put on everyone's bikes.

Thanks for recommending the Bike Index! We recommend registering even if you have a cheap bike, since it's easy and free.

Here's another article about what to do if your bike is stolen - https://medium.com/@stolenbikessfo/what-to-do-after-you-bike...

We aren't "pretending" to care about honesty and openness, we actually do.

Selling users isn't the only way to make money.

User privacy, giving out all of our user's emails for instance would be dishonest since it would completely violate all of our promises to them. And why would us seeking investment lead to someone wanting to fork the Index?

Yeah, that's essentially what the Jason Cohen talk is about. Our small size is a virtue, since we care a whole lot.

I'm feeling the same way. Had an interesting conversation last night where someone said they would totally give us a bit of money after telling him what we're spending per month and how. I'll think about where and how to talk about it.

Thanks to donw for suggesting the Jason Cohen talk. It's a really good video.

Thanks!

That's what we've been working on since we started - and why we're open source and have an open API https://bikeindex.org/documentation/api_v1

1. Reporting stolen bikes makes it harder to sell stolen bikes, making bike theft less profitable - and ultimately making it less likely that you'll be looking for a good deal on a new bike, since your old one won't have been stolen.

2. Some people actually do care.

3. Buying stolen property is illegal

You should register it before it gets stolen, so that you have all the important information if it does. https://bikeindex.org/bikes/new (you have to create an account)

We're really excited to see more uses for the Index API. Thanks so much for working on this!

Done. It's now "open source bicycle comparison and research"

Ummmm? What? Yeah, Everything is open source and is in the repo. ALL THE DATA IS IN THE REPOSITORY. The repository is deployed, as is, to the internet, it has no database - the data is in the bike_data folder.

You can view the code here, https://github.com/bikeindex/bikebook at the same place the link in the BikeBook footer goes.

It is AGPL, so not creative commons. This is the license the Bike Index is under, so we just went with it. We'll consider a different license for the BikeBook, because maybe that makes more sense. Thanks for bringing it up.

We have shareable urls now! Just added them in. just copy the link on the bottom of the bike.

Also prices. That was a good suggestion.

Thanks!

Great! Sending you an invitation to register bikes on the Index through Chuck's Bikes too.

Yes

Yeah, but bikepedia is ugly and isn't useable on mobile. It also, most importantly, doesn't have an API.

We actually asked bikepedia multiple times if they had an API, or if we could help build one and were told they weren't interested. So we built a prettier, more useable, open source solution. The kinks will work themselves out.

Absolutely more will be added.

And any listing of bike weight is bullshit. You have to find the bike and weight it, because manufacturers weigh different things (and different sizes). So we won't be adding that.

Love and Richard Stallman's facial hair, just like all the best open source projects.

We're prioritizing brands based roughly on the number of bikes registered on the Bike Index from that brand. So register more Author bikes and it'll happen.

And yes, category search would be nice. It's something we'll work on.

Clearly we need to make some. There was that cardboard bike guy?... But I think that flopped. The future is yours!