Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? (February 2014)

Short story:

1. immediate effect of your effort is always fun

2. spinning something gives you that immediate effect

3. earlier phones were easy to spin, smartphones are like a brick, we wanted to change that.

I invited a psychologist to explain why ~600 users like to have a spiniot on their phones. He came up with these 3 ideas:

- immediate effect of effort gives you a rare positive sensation

- contrary to angular forms circular forms are engaging, when spinning your smartphone, you draw several colorful circular forms

- adults play for the same reason as kids

During occasional breaks, spinning your smartphone gives you a short but fulfilling positive sensation. After that you don't feel the urge to check all the usual distracting sources of procrastination (news, twitter, email...) and you are motivated to get back to what you were doing immediately.

Free video chat using WebRTC for teachers/students doing online English lessons. You can click on a chat bubble and correct your partner's English. The app then automatically color codes and annotates the mistakes. The app will also track your mistakes (by type) over time.

https://github.com/ConceptPending/fincrypt

Backups are verified at regular intervals to reduce the amount of trust needed in the system, and every file is stored multiple times.

Eventually the goal is to attach a marketplace where end users will pay for the space they use and those who provide storage will get paid for doing so.

With the pick up in the Japanese economy recently I've noticed a few nice comments about it on blogs and forums. Not only is it satisfying to think I've helped people find a job, it's given me the incentive to improve it and maybe find a way to monetise it beyond just break-even AdSense revenue.