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Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

businessinsider.com

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Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#241

Post by BloondAndDoom »

bit_logic wrote: post #68

Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do: - allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app - effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except f…

I think we are except Apple lockdown experience for this is total shit show, not only you need to spend so much time but also if you need to change something (at least for me) it just reset all the previous options, because I turned it off to manually install something that was locked down

I have a device setup like this but I hate it, it’s possibly the worst UX I’ve used from Apple.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#242

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

mikepurvis wrote: post #40
ripplefringe wrote: post #28

A year ago, I got my 8 y/o a landline (we used Ooma). It has been absolutely wonderful. By far the best thing is that he makes his own playdates. I'm not the middleman anymore. He just makes plans and asks me if it's ok. And if his friend doesn't have a landline, I let him call their parent. It surprises them, but when he leaves a message, they love it. He's definitely had more time with friends because of it. Anothe…

My 9 and 12 year old share a "kid" phone that's just a hand-me-down parent phone. This partially meets that need, but it still gets used for way too much unsupervised YouTube time. The thing for me that has really unlocked voice-based socializing has been the 12 year old jumping on Discord with his buddies from school. I feel like this mirrors well how I myself chat with my adult male friends—it's rarely in the conte…

You can always get them an old school payphone... https://payphone.com/Pay-Phone/Personal-Pay-Phone.html

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#244

Post by Zachstr »

neuralkoi wrote: post #239

The one on their website is now $100, not $75 as per the article. Surely someone can build a more privacy-friendly decentralized solution? It doesn't take much for Tin Can to start charging $50 / month for a subscription.

I think it is mostly a supply/demand issue. Most of their models are sold out, so they are trying to raise prices so that only those who really, really want/need one gets one. I think that they simply just mispriced the product initially. Soon enough there will probably be more competition that will help drive down the price.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#245

Post by drewsonian »

philips wrote: post #181
drewsonian wrote: post #180

This concept has been amazing for my family and kids. Shameless plug: I started my own service without vendor hardware lock in. https://chatterboxphone.com

Oh nice! I have been working on my own too! ( https://havenphone.com ). I was planning on the exact same model and pricing as well. I am curious: have you gone down the tr069 rabbit hole? If not how do you plan to do endpoint management? Are you using a Fanvil H2W? Too? That was my first phone choice. I also learned of https://www.beanstalk.club from this thread as well. Looks like there are a few folks trying to do…

I’ll send you a message to your support account :-)

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#246

Post by growrow »

MattGrommes wrote: post #235

I just watched this great mini-documentary about a local landline system in Bellingham WA. Well worth a couple of minutes. https://youtu.be/UhVi3smmvTs?si=ow6zw_xTKo22WpLZ People can call each other but also businesses have 4-digit phone numbers that are shortened versions of the business name, like GUIT for the guitar shop.

How lovely and so very Bellingham-esque! $5/mo and looks like it can be used outside Bham.

https://telehamster.net/node/7

I hope these guys do well or more local options keep on popping up.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#247

Post by growrow »

drewsonian wrote: post #180

This concept has been amazing for my family and kids. Shameless plug: I started my own service without vendor hardware lock in. https://chatterboxphone.com

No vendor or hardware lock-in is key. Can you give insight into the costs that inform the monthly rate? Emergency services / telephone network?

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#248

Post by ndriscoll »

closeparen wrote: post #205
autoexec wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to collecting all the metadata they also collect the voices of children recorded in voicemails. Their policy says that the information they collect is used to "Send you marketing communications (see the section below for information about how to opt out of these communications at any time)" and to "Monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Phones and Services, including to g…

It would be better if they specifically excluded advertising uses of call metadata, etc. I assume this is getting mixed in from their ecommerce efforts to sell the devices. But how do you expect them to play back the voicemail if they don’t have it? What would be the point of "please leave a message after the beep" if the audio is going to /dev/null?

If it's a landline it could store the voicemail on device, which is how phones used to work (or prior to that, you'd plug an answering machine into the phone, but it was still "with the phone"). A GB of flash would be basically unlimited and cost a couple cents. You could play an old school "your call could not be completed as dialed" message if it's actually unavailable due to a power/network outage or something.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#249

Post by drewsonian »

growrow wrote: post #247
drewsonian wrote: post #180

This concept has been amazing for my family and kids. Shameless plug: I started my own service without vendor hardware lock in. https://chatterboxphone.com

No vendor or hardware lock-in is key. Can you give insight into the costs that inform the monthly rate? Emergency services / telephone network?

Sure thing! Behind every "unlimited" plan out there, there is a per minute rate that small carriers like us have to pay in order to get access to the regular phone network and connect to any phone number in the world. On top of that, there's a monthly cost per phone number, per E911 address registration, per voice channel, etc. Then, you have the ever popular "taxes and fees", which can vary based on the user's location and can become complex very quickly. Not to mention FCC registration fees and taxes. Then there's the cost of the server infrastructure to register the phones and keep them online. And finally - STIR/SHAKEN implementation has a cost of registration and verification as well.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#250

Post by lostmsu »

BeetleB wrote: post #198
bit_logic wrote: post #68

Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do: - allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app - effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except f…

How do I lock down the iPhone so it works only at home?

Never put a SIM in it?
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