Last updated 7/18/2010 The creator of Chatroulette has contacted us and let us know that he finds the site enjoyable. * UPDATES HERE * We are now listing image ID's on the popup, please use this ID # for removal requests, it allows us to remove images much quicker! Also, we are now contributing some of our data to Chatroulette in an effort to help their site remove some of the spam bots. The data being provided is the IP address associated with spam accounts only (ie. Chatroulettehof, bunny-chat), no data regarding actual users. For more information regarding online anonymity check out the paper below, they referenced us at one point: http://csel.cs.colorado.edu/~xingx/project/privacy.html * OLD STUFF BELOW * Q: Why doesn't the site ever update!? A: Updates aren't automatically scheduled, we hit the update button when a decent number of updates are queued. We also have to parse through images before hand to remove duplicates/blanks Q: Why are some points in the water? A: In an effort to un-group points which were mapping to the same lat/lng, we've added a small degree of 'jitter' to marker placement, which also may push points which are near a body of water slightly off land Q: Is this legit or are you randomly placing images? A: Photo placement is as legitimate as IP -> geocoords results were able to produce. All images are captured by us. Q: How does it work? A: Chatroulette utilizes Adobe's Stratus platform as a means of reducing their bandwidth costs while providing video services. Chatroulette mearly handles the behind the scenes handshakes involved in making two clients connect, the actual connection however is a peer-to-peer link between the two users. Edit: Andrey from CR has informed me that the site does fallback to server-based connections when Stratus fails, forcing him to continuously add dedicated RTMP servers to support growth. Q: How is the mash up generated? A: We utilize MarkerClusterer to group results together, otherwise the amount of points being drawn quickly brought the browser to a snails pace. We recommend trying MarkerClusterer out if you are dealing with large volumes of points in a Google Maps project. We also fiddled with the stripped down MarkerLight component, it also provides a significant performance gain over the default marker implementation, check it out! Q: How can I get an image removed? A: Email us directly, chatroulettemap@gmail.com, we read every piece of mail which passes through and handle them accordingly. Please note that in most cases we do ask that you include some form of proof that matches you with the image you wish to have removed. Q: How can I rate photos? A: You will be able to rate photos at some point, the feature is already complete, but was disabled during the switch to MarkerClusterer Q: Can I filter the map by X? A: Sometime soon, maybe. We do plan to attempt to flag all of the offensive images, or allow for community flagging, in the hope of allowing users to disable/enable seeing said images.