Coffee & Power: Buy and Sell Small Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Coffee & Power: Buy and Sell Small Jobs

beta.coffeeandpower.com

67 pointsrglover29 comments

Got it unblocked (NoScript, Firefox 6.02, Debian Squeeze) and had to follow the 'back to coffee and power' link to see the map.

Nice idea, and deep not just an interface.

I'd like to be able to get the URL of individual 'missions' so that I can send them to people (I'm old, I use e-mail). E.g. cheapgirldraws and her postcards.

" URL of individual 'missions'"

Excellent idea.

If you click the "Share This" on an individual mission, it'll bring up the specific mission URL (and allow you to push it to a bunch of social networks if you want).

This is Philip Rosedale's (founder of Second Life) new project. Still very beta but coming along quickly.

Checkout the two foundation interviews that he did with Kevin Rose for a little bit more insight. (http://revision3.com/foundation)

Another newer video here too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laY1w3mmJv4

Nice idea if still a bit rough. My advice would be to start with one city like LA, NYC or Chicago. Spend all your time and promotion getting it working really well. Easier also to interest local media to publicize it that way on a modest budget.

Then collect locations of those wanting to use it so you know what cities to roll out to next.

I was looking at microcontracting for a while and came to much the same conclusion. Limited roll-out helps solve the criticality problem and increases relevance.

Also, C&P looks too convoluted; it's trying to fuse too many different things simultaneously which have been very problematic even when given greater focus.

The game elements are possibly a good idea depending on what sort of community you want, but they need to be refined significantly.

I think it will work regardless, most of the gigs will just be done remotely.

Remote work isn't really the problem.

Something like this has effectiveness which goes as a function of the number of active nodes. It's much easier to increase that locally. Scaling by adding other areas after you've knocked a few corners off and gotten a reasonably active network going is relatively straightforwards compared to trying to eat the whole pie at once.

Facebook and Craigslist both did this very successfully.

I don't see why this is an issue. The only reason to keep something at one city is if the 'missions' are all supposed to be physical errands. But that's not the case, and it should be allowed to develop into however people find it most useful.

Limiting it to one city or region would be a mistake, in my opinion. This isn't a local story, any more than Mechanical Turks or oDesk is.

Glad to see this up here. They have a cool open office space in SF on market. We work on our startup (SEscout.com) from there some times. If you're in the bay area, definitely check it out.

This is working fine for me. I'm very impressed. Looks amazing and so much more to this than many apps that people put out.

If you find the system interesting, do read up on LETS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems ), which I believe are a similar idea but taking the dollar out of the equation.

The problem with LETS is that they are generally seen by the government as tax evasion schemes. If I was to participate in one, I'd be extra careful to calculate the dollar value of my LETS credits and pay taxes on it.

I mean if you are doing it outside of a business context and semi-anonymously, or if you are otherwise planning on not reporting your transactions, that's different; but if you are using your real name and paying your taxes? generally speaking, using the coin in which you pay your taxes to settle your transactions makes tax day much less complex.

Cool! I've seen something similar in San Fransisco that was rabbit/carrot themed, but I don't remember then name.. anybody?

I'm also trying to do something similar myself for small programming jobs: http://gun.io

Task Rabbit: http://www.taskrabbit.com/

That's the one! Thanks.

This is slick visually. Seems to be very similar to Paygr at first glance, but also enables 'want X' requests.

I'm not terribly thrilled with the idea of yet another virtual currency though. Why the reliance on SMS? I'd actually prefer email.

You can get the same notification options via email. Click on Profile & Settings in the top right corner.

I was more referring to the 'free' C$20 offer. Requires SMS.

I tried signing up and, after it confirmed my mobile number, it claimed that that number had already been used for an initial grant of credit.

Anyone else get that part to work?

hmm, send a chat message to me on C&P (Becky) and I can look into that for you!

hah. I like the name. It sounds sort of neo-industrial (is that a thing now? it should be.)

Anyhow, the problem I spot is that without logging in (and let's be honest, you need to convince me it's worth my time before I bother) I see no way to limit my results to people close to me. Heck, even just letting that be an order by column would be enough.

But yeah, sounds like a cool idea. good luck.

great feedback lsc, clearly we need to work at making the location filtering more obvious. the map actually filters the mission list as you zoom in. so if the map is showing the region you're interested in, the mission list is showing the available missions for that region.

Couldn't get it to work even after I stopped blocking it with noscript.

I don't have noscript but even after temporarily allowing coffeeandpower.com and beta.coffeeandpower.com on CookieMonster it keeps showing me the no cookies page. Why does it absolutely need to set cookies to show me any content? This is so annoying.

Yeah, I'm the first one in Asia :)

Ugly name! But good idea trying to eat fiverr's lunch.

Precisely..!

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