So I am sure I'm not the first engineer to build a technology without solving a specific problem, but when you have something you're excited about, it's hard to block that out.

Bashoto was built out based on the ideas developed in the systems used to communicate between Bing Maps streetside cars in real-time. We had the cars drive cities in small groups of 3-5 cars and mounted a tablet each of them. The cars communicated in real-time with only nearby cars to show where everyone was driving, so that roads wouldn't get driven over more than once. The cars would track the unique kilometers they drove (in real-time of course) and drivers would be compensated based on that. With Bashoto, I've generalized that technology into a simple API leveraging WebSockets, an asynchronous backend (Tornado) and some Geospatial knowhow. Cool shit, right?

Well now that I have built out the product in the form of an API (See it at https://bashoto.com), I'm not sure the specific problem I am solving and I'd love some input here. Saying that we're solving the problem of communicating locally in real-time is pretty much a cop out. Even figuring out what the problem statement for other players in the same space are would be super helpful; Pusher, Pubnub, Firebase, etc.

And of course check out Bashoto at https://bashoto.com

If you think this stuff is neat, follow us @bashotoapps

Adios!