Open News

JoatU: A novel currency system

This is an interview that was conducted with the founder of JoatU, a novel currency system.

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JOATU – The Online Community Marketplace

Novel currency with code(love)

What is the ultimate long-term vision behind your startup, the moment where you begin to dominate your field? What is the guiding vision for your startup?

Our ultimate vision is to mix instant gratification with job opportunities.  And to transform the idea of a “job” into “play”.

In detail: You have skills in carpentry and want to teach people how to build a basic shelf, so you fill out a form, set up a class, and get currency for doing it.  You’ve created your own job with a few clicks and it’s something that you want to be offering.

Can you walk me through what the experience would be like of an average user using your product? Do you have any particularly good use cases you’d like to bring up?

We have several types of use-cases that would be entirely distinct in JoatU.

I would say the average user would be a casual user, one that has filled out their profile with details of their offerings (e.g. social marketing skills) and that logs in periodically to see what types of new offers or events have popped up in their local community.

So I login, I check out my local events to see if there are any events that suit my interest, maybe I’ll attend the woodworking class next week (the course is free of charge as it is a community offer, material costs are extra), so I mark it down on my calendar.  I have some time in the next week, so I respond to a request to help Mrs. Johnson paint her house in exchange for a large batch of her lasagna that I can request anytime with a few days of notice.

After the exchange, I receive a positive review for painting her house.  After the event, I leave a positive review for the woodworking class.

The usefulness of the application is to make quick exchanges with locals, learn about and promote free events that benefit the community, and to leave references for neighbors so they can gain feedback within the system for their skills.

Taken into the near future, you can mix JoatU with couchsurfing and you’ll be able to exist nomadically and work abroad learning about job opportunities on the fly and having your work experience already laid out for the local community that you move into.

Why did the founding team choose this particular project, and what particular expertise, and insights do they have?

The founding team have been crowdsourced almost entirely through my individual outreach efforts.  Everyone has been volunteering for this project (70+ people have lent a hand and yes, nobody is getting paid or holds any equity) because they believe that JoatU is an incredibly strong idea with legs.

Everybody who has contributed to the project has left their mark in one way or another.  Whether it comes to the design work, marketing efforts, communications, or fundamental architecture of ‘how JoatU will function’ in one of hundreds of long conversations about JoatU’s structure.

I would say our strongest collective attributes are design and systems building.  Every theoretical ‘problem’ (most specifically in regards to economic function or security) that has been presented to our team as a future issue for the development of JoatU has been effectively solved.

The team is fluid and expanding on a continual basis and we are always looking for more interested and dedicated individuals who believe in altruistic apps.

What are some of the interesting developments with regards to traction?

What’s different about local community projects aren’t its online reach, but their offline reach.  In the Montreal community, anybody who is in the know about alternative economy projects is following JoatU’s developments.  I presented to a group of people about Exchange based economies in the last month and am recognized in the startup community for my dedication to this project after less than a year.

We have a list of 400 people’s emails who are following closely, but I’d say the fact that we’ve gotten 70 people to donate their time for nothing at all in exchange speaks best to our credentials.  Our animated video(in my biased opinion) is brilliant and was offered to be done after I posted about JoatU on reddit.  Our website was completely redone thanks to a conversation I sparked after sitting down and speaking with a stranger at Concordia University.

I would also like to mention that the crowdfunding campaign is dual purpose, to increase the awareness of JoatU to find the right talent to have it built and to raise the money to pay for that talent.  I am incredibly grateful for all of the volunteer work and aspire to make retroactive community requests to pay for it with JoatU Units.  But until that day, cold hard cash is our currency and I can acknowledge that.

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JoatU is crowdfunding in order to get started.  Support them here!

Open News

Freeboard: A dashboard for IoT and Web

Freeboard is a trending open-source project that looks to have some promise. It describes itself as “a damn-sexy, open source real-time dashboard builder for IOT and other web mashups. A free open-source alternative to Geckoboard.”

In an age where data is critical, the means for displaying it intuitively will come at a premium. Luckily, the open-source bug has caught dashboards as well. Now, if you want to display the data that you collect, you can do so easily, and you can collaborate with others to ensure that it will always be this way.

Weather

Freeboard dashboard https://github.com/Freeboard/freeboard

Freeboard is HTML-based, and is simple enough to run as a stand-alone web application. This is why it is ideal for Internet of Things devices  that have a limited ability to be able to serve up complex, dynamic pages. It can be run from a local server or hard drive by downloading or cloning the index.html page from Github.

Freeboard is one component of the Internet of Things chain that was missing: a sexy, open-source dashboard that could compile all of the information interconnected devices are passing amongst one another, and display it in an alluring format for human eyes.

You may well see it being used the next time you turn on that smart watch you’ve always wanted.

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Freeboard’s source code. You can contribute there.

Freeboard’s creator Jim Heising, and Bug Labs.

Learning Lists

Five Brilliant Resources to Learn Code by Doing

I’ve always been a kinetic learner. It’s something that comes naturally to me: I learn by doing, and making enough errors so that I can pick myself up and learn how to overcome in the future. It’s an attitude that lends itself to entrepreneurship.

For everybody here, here are five ways to learn code interactively—learning by doing rather than staring blankly at an endless array of pages.

1-Codingbat

Codingbat gives you a simple array of interactive problems so that you can apply your basic coding logic into action. It also offers a login feature so you can record your achievements. Codingbat offers nice warm-up problems that even beginners can get comfortable with to learn code, and they’re a great way to start executing code rather than just reading about it.

2-LearnPython.org

A godsend for me. LearnPython.org features lessons in several languages (don’t be deceived by the name, Java, Javascript, PHP, and C are included as well) where you can read what you are supposed to do, and then work to put it into motion with interactive code modules placed within the text. You can learn code by playing around with different case studies.

3-Python.org

The official site of the Python community not only features tons of useful documentation on the Python language and an introduction to the community, but also an interactive shell you can activate by clicking on the yellow button on the screen. Featuring PythonAnywhere, it allows you to play around with Python as you’re reading about it.

4-KhanAcademy

KhanAcademy is always a fun place to learn about a variety of subjects through gamification, but its coding module deserves special plaudits. It’s especially useful for children who want to have more visual feedback when they learn code, rather than the simple feel-good rush of not having any errors pop up in the module.

5-CodeAcademy

What is a list of coding resources without it? I learnt the foundations of my web knowledge there, and you can learn code there too. Book yourself some time at CodeAcademy: it will be time well-spent.

Learning coding shouldn’t have to be about poring over page after page of a book. One of the coolest things about building things in the digital sphere is that there is an instant feedback loop: you can literally see what you are building. These resources will ensure that you’ll be able to experience that loop while you’re learning to code.

For more resources, follow me on Twitter, and sign up for the mailing list.

PS: If you’re looking for curated resources on how to get into digital basics and become a UX designer, look no further than Springboard’s UX bootcamp.

[follow_me]

 

Technology and Society

A Children’s Book about Entrepreneurs

Somebody brought up a very interesting point at a panel I attended. It was the sort of moment that sticks with you because it resonated, like a thorn in a rosebed—a sharp point in an otherwise flat surface.

Panels typically bring interesting people together to say somewhat interesting things, but nothing nobody has not heard before.

So it is that when you get an original insight, you can physically feel a certain rush of excitement, and you can mentally have a vista of possibility opened to you that never was before.

The point was that there were no children’s books about entrepreneurs, or at least not one that came to mind easily.

A fair point, I thought.

I remember when I was a kid, I wanted so badly to be Michael Jordan. I didn’t have the height or the jumping for it, but it didn’t stop me from dedicating hours of work into a pursuit that was never really going to go anywhere, but which helped me grow nonetheless.

When we were all kids, I’m sure we all dreamed of being many things: astronauts, basketball players, firefighters. I wager that few of us would have had the foresight to think of being an entrepreneur.

That probably has to do with the fact that children’s literature is scarce with real heroes, but filled with imagined ones.

What would a children’s book about entrepreneurs look like, I wondered?

If I were to write one, it would go something like this—

“Sally is an entrepreneur. She’s in front of a computer now. But she’s not playing games. She’s building things. She’s building things for me and you.”

Entrepreneurs with code(love) from http://marketingtowomenonline.typepad.com/

Entrepreneurs with code(love) from http://marketingtowomenonline.typepad.com/

“Sally is an entrepreneur.

She’s in front of a computer now.

But she’s not playing games.

She’s building things.

She’s building things for me and you.”

Open News

Hemingway Strengthens Writing

This is an Open News article for technology that is making the world simpler to deal with without millions of dollar signs attached. If you’re doing something similar, contact us at [email protected].
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Hemingway Strengthens Writing

Writing can be difficult. It can be hard to convey exactly the right message in a way that is simple and enjoyable enough for your audience to play with. At its’ core writing is about making a message resonate with people: for that there are some tools that can help.

One of the niftiest out there may be the Hemingway App, a single-page application that draws on the simplicity Hemingway embodied. Through a set of algorithms that evaluate readability, the Application is a constant reminder to keep things as simple as they can be.

Hemingway App with code(love)

Hemingway App with code(love)

Crafted by a pair of brothers (Ben and Adam Long), the application is something that was created by writers for writers. When the application was founded, Adam was working in marketing, and Ben was working as a copywriter in an ad agency.

They created it because they wanted some objective distance between a writer and their craft. What writers used to achieve by asking others to read their works, Ben and Adam want to make possible through the power of algorithms.

This is important because the Internet opens up countless outlets of expression to everybody, which has enabled content to be shared effortlessly. The amount of writing has exploded. Ben and Adam want to ensure that the quality of what is available matches the quantity.

They’ve made a lot of progress already, without dedicating too much effort.

They’ve made a lot of progress already, without dedicating too much effort. Traction has come from posting in a few writing-focused sub-Reddits, and seeing their app go to the top of Hacker News.

They have a hypothesis that if you solve a real pain, you won’t need to tell your story: others will tell it for you. That has been borne out, time and again, with many people using the application to simplify their story giving Hemingway the plaudits it deserves.

Time and again, the algorithms that power the application itself crank out rules that help simplify writing. The application uses the Automated Readability Index to gauge the clarity of the prose.  Using some detection rules, the application can also point out when you are using too many adverbs, when you are using words that have simpler synonyms, and when you are writing in the passive voice. It seeks to encourage reflection about writing that leads to strong, clear prose that can convey any message effectively.

What the Long brothers have built works, and it works well. They’ve seen it used by a high school special education teacher to help their students, and by somebody who was not a native English speaker to clean up their CV. Writers everywhere swear by it, and already, both Adam and Ben are working on a desktop version, driven by the demand and success they have seen.

It’s an exciting prospect: two talented writers using technology to help improve the calibre of writing online.

It’s an exciting prospect: two talented writers using technology to help improve the calibre of writing online. It’s a daunting goal, but one for which the brothers say they have big plans for. They’re excited. Judging by what they have built so far, everybody else should be as well.

Meaningful Multimedia

Oculus Rift helps terminally ill grandmother see the world once more

A reminder once again of the potential for technology to have a significant positive effect on our lives.

Oculus Rift is used here not for gaming purposes, but to help a terminally ill grandmother experience the great outdoors once more, something she cannot physically do.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, an editor of the French version of ELLE was tragically struck down by a massive stroke. He suffered locked-in syndrome: and had to transmit his experiences through the only organ left of his that could move, his eyes.

He wrote out a book detailing what it felt to be stuck within physical confines that were imposed on him by painstakingly blinking  one letter at a time with an assistant. One of the lines that has haunted me the most is when he asks “Does the cosmos contain keys for opening my diving bell? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking.” 

One can’t help but think that if, through some miracle, he had managed to hang on for a few more years, he would have been able to find the keys and currency he was crying out for.

Meaningful Multimedia

Storytelling is Power

A lot of people have differing opinions about who rules the new digital era. Some think it is those with capital (a high proportion of whom are the ones with capital). Some think it will be the engineers who shape and structure logic so that it, tamed, can no longer hurt us.

There are a few voices in the wild who say it is storytellers who rule with them.

There should be more. A good story delivered in the digital realm can now reach hundreds of thousands of people within a day. It can resonate with people from around the world—and pass through physical borders as though they have never existed at all.

Stories can spark dialogue and thought that lead to the world of tomorrow. Stories can start revolutions that change the world of today.

The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi sparked the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring.

Technology was not responsible for the power that singular act of utter defiance conveyed, but with every tweet and status update, the story grew stronger—until regimes that had lasted for decades buckled under the power of storytelling.

In this new digital age, that will become the rule rather than the exception.

Through our online connections, a story becomes chopped up and distributed in a million different ways. It has never been easier to have an opinion, and to share it with complete strangers.

Storytellers have never had to deal with such entropy, but they have also never been so liberated as to express themselves as plainly and as genuinely as they can: and watch the power of the crowd carry their story forward.

We rely on stories to root us to our humanity: our deepest fears and aspirations—to make the future make sense. Engineers will build the future.  Financiers will fund it. Storytellers will define it.

Storytelling is power.

Open News

Bootstrap Love

Open News is a new section of code(love) dedicated to announcing resources that will help entrepreneurs, cool new technologies, or open-source/open-data applications that will change the world with no dollar signs attached. 
If you think this is a good outlet for your story, email us at [email protected].
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Bootstrap Love with code(love) 

Bootstrap Love is a new initiative by Montreal marketing agency Brendan & Brendan to help provide bootstrapped startups with the essentials of startup marketing they’ll need to help grow their ideas.

“Sometimes all an early stage company needs is a one off item. We think of it as a sort of pit stop for the self-funded business”, said Beth Thouin of Brendan & Brendan.

It covers the whole host of essentials any startup needs to get its’ foot in the door of early users, press members, and investors: from PR kits, to good blog content.

Check it out!

Longform Reflections

I rejected a top law school for tech entrepreneurship—here’s why.

I have thought about this long and hard, and law school isn’t for me.

I have a firm belief that in our new digital economy, those who are able to scale their ideas most effectively will triumph. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape once said: “Software is eating the world”. My corollary to this statement is that “the geek shall inherit the Earth.”

The geek shall inherit the Earth.

From hospitality, to transportation, we live in a world where minute connections of individuals can actually change the world for the better—within a span of months, rather than decades.

Technology has accelerated both the potential for good, and for bad, but as a catalyst the effects are undeniable. From sidestepping the conventional financial system, to underpinning the democratic aspirations of a people, the ability to communicate frictionlessly has fundamentally changed what we view as possible.

Download / By Namphuong Van

Changing the possible with code(love)

While I appreciate the value a law school education holds for those who want to learn and practice law, I no longer think that is my true calling. Having talked with multiple lawyers, I have come to the conclusion that the impact I can have is best served by scaling my aspirations, and those of others throughout the digital realm, rather than through slogging it out one jurisdiction at a time.

I hold a high amount of respect for those who fight the good fight throughout legal and political channels: society has a need for this. I just don’t see myself being as effective at that as I can be with digital engagement.

My feeling in the startup scene is one akin to coming home.

I have advised on several ventures that have the potential to grow into something beautiful and meaningful not only from a monetary sense, but from a societal one as well.

When I sit down to talk with people, it’s about creating a secure communications platform for doctors and underserved patients in rural Bangladesh, or about tackling urban homelessness through a crowdfunding solution—these are not only realizable, but people are working on these right now. It is liberating to be able to talk about these issues, and see action straight away that helps chip away at some of the biggest problems this world faces—all of this in a matter of days, rather than years.

This isn’t only a passion-borne argument. Fundamentally, I believe working in technology is a more rational decision for me than working in law.

Fundamentally, I believe working in technology is a more rational decision for me than working in law.

Download / By Marco sama

Rejecting Law School with code(love)

I am motivated by three things in life: knowledge, impact, and love. It is only in technology that I have found all three—and it is only in technology where my passion can be translated into tangible, and material well-being. While I believe the current valuation bubble will burst, leaving true technologists behind to pick up the pieces, the truth is Silicon Valley is on the upswing, while Wall Street and Main Street is on the downswing.

With the doubtful legal market in Canada and the United States, and the overwhelming need for engineers across both sides of the border, I think I am better suited to learn outside of school, or to pursue a formalized degree in computer science (an option I have not precluded) for the age we live in.

I’d rather fight it out getting paid to gain experience rather than taking on debt for experience for a field I’d rather not be in. I have always been more of a kinetic learner, someone who learns by doing. I cannot afford either the time nor the money that would be invested in learning less efficiently otherwise, and this has been made even clearer in the last few weeks than all of the preceding year.

I’d rather fight it out getting paid to gain experience rather than taking on debt for experience for a field I’d rather not be in.

I love what I do, and I know what I am fighting for. The next following days will determine where I will head, but I feel that I can preclude law school, even though I recognize it is a great opportunity.

This is not a choice I made lightly, but it is something I have to do to move towards the love, knowledge, and impact I believe I can have. I hope you can understand.