Show HN: Pocket Puter
pocketputer.com
Show HN: Pocket Puter
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Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#2In the "battery" section, perhaps it is useful to mention that if you have a phone with a removable battery, you can buy extra batteries (normally $5 each on eBay) and a battery charger (also $5) to charge two batteries at once. You can carry multiple batteries to extend your battery life to a week if you want.
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#3This project wouldn't exist without valuable feedback in conversation on HN and from someone "met" via the HN networking thingy called Kismet, which intros members here via email.
Thank you for making this possible. It has been rattling around in my head for years and failing to go anywhere until I got a smidgeon of valuable feedback.
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#4In the "battery" section, perhaps it is useful to mention that if you have a phone with a removable battery, you can buy extra batteries (normally $5 each on eBay) and a battery charger (also $5) to charge two batteries at once. You can carry multiple batteries to extend your battery life to a week if you want.
Thanks. I am just going to quote you direct for now and maybe edit it later. (If you object to that, I can remove it.)
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#5This project wouldn't exist without valuable feedback in conversation on HN and from someone "met" via the HN networking thingy called Kismet, which intros members here via email. Thank you for making this possible. It has been rattling around in my head for years and failing to go anywhere until I got a smidgeon of valuable feedback.
I love that this is a blogspot page :) what are your goals with this project?
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#6Nice project. Would it make more sense as a wiki, though? In order to better allow contributions, corrections and ideas from readers?
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#7This project wouldn't exist without valuable feedback in conversation on HN and from someone "met" via the HN networking thingy called Kismet, which intros members here via email. Thank you for making this possible. It has been rattling around in my head for years and failing to go anywhere until I got a smidgeon of valuable feedback.
I love that this is a blogspot page :) what are your goals with this project?
I think that's covered on the about page: https://pocketputer.blogspot.com/p/about.html. In case that isn't really sufficient:
Basically, I want to create the information piece to make it possible for homeless individuals and others at risk of homelessness to use minimal tech, like a smartphone or tablet, to start addressing some of their problems. As one element of that, I explicitly want to support the ability to earn an online income, even with very minimal tech.
Locally, I hope to collect phones and tablets, put a link to this site on them and give them away to the homeless community here. I would like to also generally foster digital microenterprise locally (the link to a site with the name Digital Microenterprise on the links page is also a project of mine) for not just the homeless community, but anyone with barriers to regular employment as this is a risk factor for homelessness.
I'm in a small town with high unemployment. This is fueling the homeless epidemic here. But there is good internet service here, so I see a solution at hand. I was able to earn money online while homeless and eventually get off the street.
Last, having it be a public site means anyone anywhere in the US can readily replicate the project with minimal resources by collecting used phones and tablets, adding a link and giving them away.
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#8Nice project. Would it make more sense as a wiki, though? In order to better allow contributions, corrections and ideas from readers?
I am kind of a subject matter expert here. My experiences suggest that, no, crowdsourcing information isn't particularly effective.
I left a question on Metafilter yesterday. I am very much regretting it. Their solutions involve an awful lot of "Just buy more stuff!" and "Why don't you get a laptop?" type answers.
Most people who are tech savvy make good money. They can't seem to wrap their brain around the constraints involved in using tech while homeless. It is an alien experience for them.
Hopefully, the site will have some appeal for, say, campers, digital nomads and others and hopefully that will foster development of the site as well as helping to get traffic. But if I make it a crowdsourced resource, I am quite confident that it will soon stop being useful information for the intended purpose.
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love that this is a blogspot page :) what are your goals with this project?
I think that's covered on the about page: https://pocketputer.blogspot.com/p/about.html . In case that isn't really sufficient: Basically, I want to create the information piece to make it possible for homeless individuals and others at risk of homelessness to use minimal tech, like a smartphone or tablet, to start addressing some of their problems. As one element of that, I explicitly want to support the ability to…
I’ve heard people talk about Amazon Turk which seems to be a way to get paid for filling out online surveys or something like that. You could look into that as a way for someone with no technical skills and lots of free time to use this provided phone for income.
Re: Show HN: Pocket Puter
#10I've used my smartphone as my only personal computer for the past 3 years. Overall, it's been a positive experience.
The only thing I can't do efficiently is software development. Is anyone familiar with the state of the art in mobile software development?