Latest investigations

[Charles Cossé]

Hi Everyone, 

Hope you are well.  In the name of Communication I'd like to share my latest thoughts and findings ...

1.  An idea from yesterday, actually:  Use SurveyMonkey to determine the end-of-month distribution of subscription fees among developers.  This falls under the category of "Ecosystem", and refers to my proposed method of handling (proposed, from parents) subscription fees in a direct-funding style.  We leave the platform and activities wide-open for anyone to access, but we also provide the credit-accounting / credit-transfer infrastructure, and if a parent wants to use the system (in its intended way!), i.e. with the credit-meter and credit-feeder working together, then we "ask" that they make a "donation", but also allow them to decide where their donation goes, i.e. to which developer(s).  The practical implementation details with bank accounts and dynamic allocation of money could be problematic in this scenario, so how about just conducting some sort of survey at the end of each month and let the survey results be the tally for which-developers-get-how-much.  There could be one "question" per developer, with a range of numerical answers 1-10.  If we could get that data (SurveyMonkey) then we could normalize their answers and translate it to a payout distribution.  Then we could pay everyone ourselves (a Treasurer?) from a single account.  Quantifying people's subscription distribution preferences was the main challenge in this area, and a stand-alone survey could suffice.   Would anyone like to look-into this with me?  I'm thinking of trying to put some of these pieces together in the coming 1-2 weeks, even though we don't have developers or subscribers ... that's a chicken-and-egg problem ... and topic of item #2 ...
   
2. Advocacy.  My new pitch to would-be developers is going to be "Let me just try to get your app to earn some money".  I'm thinking of having the above (#1) set up and in-place, then going down a list of candidate educational webapps that I'm aware of and fork/wrap/avail them through the credit-feeder website, and then invite the developer to become involved, or at least just check back to see if their app is earning anything.  This is feasible if use the simple fixed-reward ifram-wrapping technique which I proposed in an earlier post.
3. The micro-router which I bought to experiment with:  I logged-in and refreshed my memory a bit about OpenWrt ... the main thing is that IPTables on that little guy is very complicated.  It's got a lot of interfaces and bridging going on, much more than we've got going on in the Raspberry-Pi.  One idea I had was to approach the company (Taiwan) and ask if they could develop a credit-meter and integrate with their own software.  Their site seems to suggest that that's a possibility, though not sure if they mean user-customization or mfg-customization. 
   
4. I made some modifications to ColorMyWorld (my personal webapp, using as a prototype for project NetDispenser) such that it now awards credits upon successful identification of just one country (interactive mode).  There's also the color-linez application which I added last week with a couple of added lines to enable credit-earning with it, as well.  That was added just to demonstrate how simple it can be to integrate ones work and thus have the possibility of making a few bucks on-the-side. 
   
5. I've also been experimenting with D3 and character animation.  Then I discovered this and am still experimenting with using rigs versus hand-drawn animation.  
6. The last item, #5, brings up another point:  You can pay kids in credits, or with BitCoin ... or with new animated characters.  Consider a game in which you only get to use a little baby penguin, let's say, on level 1, and if you want to use the flash rock-hopper penguin character then you've gotta play the more difficult level IV.  I recently did some researching on the web, trying to find "where the action is" w.r.t. education software, discussions, who's advocating what, which things are really getting used, who links to who ... and the one thing I am pretty sure about is the allure of animated characters.  Like, if your game doesn't have some, forget it (or unless you're stuck behind a NetDispenser and having to play games without characters).  It's expected now.  So I'm rewriting a few of my own apps and developing my character animation skills anew, in preparation for continued demand for new animated characters.  I'm using D3 to toggle classes and otherwise control/orchestrate CSS3 maneuvers of characters.  Transitioning smoothly between maneuvers is the issue-of-my-day. 
   
7. Off Topic, but fireworks displays make great PyGame projects ... Build fireworks similar to real life, i.e. nested payloads of different munitions and timings.  But why am I advocating PyGame?  (much as I love pygame).  The same would be possible in d3/svg and run faster and be more portable. 
   

All of this d3 investigating goes together, in fact.  I want to overhaul websites and webapps, alike, but I'm doing everything in D3, personally, going forward, and thus I've gotta take this little while to re-familiarize myself with it in several different contexts, and, this time, to appreciate how they (those contexts) are all just variations on a theme.  In theory I'm going to get everything looking "great" before hitting the campaign trail again and, in particular, before promoting netdispenser.github.io.  Please post your feedback and critique of things I've written. 

Best regards from New Mexico,

Charles

[Charles Cossé]

On Monday, July 3, 2017 at 1:13:48 PM UTC-6, Charles Cossé wrote:

I've also been experimenting with D3 and character animation.  Then I discovered this and am still experimenting with using rigs versus hand-drawn animation. 

https://youtu.be/ERZEkkj2Ajk

I bought a $0.98 stylus and suddenly my Android tablet is a sweet drawing pad.  The zooming in the above is done with CSS3 transform::scale (or whatever the notation).  There are 8 images, but I mirrored 4 of them (only drew 4).  I could not come close to such a waddle as the above using the CSS3 2D rigging  technique.  But CSS3 works great, on the other hand, for this zooming effect.   Oh yeah, why am I doing this?  I want to re-develop TuxMathScrabble and make it nice, complete with animated penguins.  I'm shooting for a kid's character which is a hybrid between Tux and Sonny the Cuckoo bird from Cocoa Puffs.  That bird has some enthusiasm!  A side-project anyway ...

[Charles Cossé]

On Monday, July 3, 2017 at 1:13:48 PM UTC-6, Charles Cossé wrote:

 An idea from yesterday, actually:  Use SurveyMonkey to determine the end-of-month distribution of subscription fees among developers.  This falls under the  ...

I just made an example here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3YLWCZR

Their survey maker offers several types of response, including sliders, which is perfect for this.  The only thing is that you can't programatically re-adjust all sliders to sum to 100%, but that's easily done in javascript, and I'll send an email to Survey Monkey asking about possibly adding such functionality to their surveys ... to make them usable in more ways, like this. 

I heard back from the makers of the micro router running OpenWrt which I was investigating.  Rather than try to summarize it I'll just paste it:

Hi Charles,

Thanks for your inquiry.

To make such a device, we recommend you use one existing from the market. For example, this one:

https://www.amazon.com/KoalaSafe-Friendly-Wireless-Parental-Technology/dp/B014RVI6EY/ 

This is one of our client and they provide very good app and parental control. 

It is not cost effective to customize the software. Now we don't provide such customization.

Best,

 

So if we wanted to modify the software we'd be on our own.  I won't pursue this further for now, as IPTables is tricky enough on the Raspberry-Pi with arb #s of users, arb #s of devices, metering and all that's going on.  Simple yet complicated, especially with all the interfaces present on that little micro router.

-Charles

[Charles Cossé]

just forwarding to list with @david's permission

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <da...@intknowledge.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 9:39 PM
Subject: Re: Latest investigations
To: "\"Charles Cossé\"" <cco...@gmail.com>


Hello!

#2 seems promising and exciting to me.  A non-BS way to "monetize" your
apps/applications.  I wonder if this couldn't finally make it easier to
understand why they should pay for Free Software.  Maybe.

 -- > Hi Everyone,

>
> Hope you are well.  In the name of Communication I'd like to share my
> latest thoughts and findings ...
>

>    1.  An idea from yesterday, actually:  Use SurveyMonkey to determine

>    2. Advocacy.  My new pitch to would-be developers is going to be "Let

> me
>    just try to get your app to earn some money".  I'm thinking of having
> the
>    above (#1) set up and in-place, then going down a list of candidate
>    educational webapps that I'm aware of and fork/wrap/avail them through
> the
>    credit-feeder website, and then invite the developer to become
> involved, or
>    at least just check back to see if their app is earning anything.  This
> is
>    feasible if use the simple fixed-reward ifram-wrapping technique which
> I
>    proposed in an earlier post.

>    3. The micro-router which I bought to experiment with:  I logged-in and

>    refreshed my memory a bit about OpenWrt ... the main thing is that
> IPTables
>    on that little guy is very complicated.  It's got a lot of interfaces
> and
>    bridging going on, much more than we've got going on in the
> Raspberry-Pi.
>    One idea I had was to approach the company (Taiwan) and ask if they
> could
>    develop a credit-meter and integrate with their own software.  Their
> site
>    seems to suggest that that's a possibility, though not sure if they
> mean
>    user-customization or mfg-customization.

>    4. I made some modifications to ColorMyWorld
>    <https://github.com/ccosse/colormyworld> (my personal webapp, using as

> a
>    prototype for project NetDispenser) such that it now awards credits
> upon
>    successful identification of just one country (interactive mode).
> There's
>    also the color-linez application which I added last week with a couple
> of
>    added lines to enable credit-earning with it, as well.  That was added
> just
>    to demonstrate how simple it can be to integrate ones work and thus
> have
>    the possibility of making a few bucks on-the-side.

>    5. I've also been experimenting with D3 and character animation.  Then
> I
>    discovered this
> <http://joey-lane.com/code-your-character-with-html-css/>

>    and am still experimenting with using rigs versus hand-drawn animation.

>    6. The last item, #5, brings up another point:  You can pay kids in

>    credits, or with BitCoin ... or with new animated characters.  Consider
> a
>    game in which you only get to use a little baby penguin, let's say, on
>    level 1, and if you want to use the flash rock-hopper penguin character
>    then you've gotta play the more difficult level IV.  I recently did
> some
>    researching on the web, trying to find "where the action is" w.r.t.
>    education software, discussions, who's advocating what, which things
> are
>    really getting used, who links to who ... and the one thing I am pretty
>    sure about is the allure of animated characters.  Like, if your game
>    doesn't have some, forget it (or unless you're stuck behind a
> NetDispenser
>    and having to play games without characters).  It's expected now.  So
> I'm
>    rewriting a few of my own apps and developing my character animation
> skills
>    anew, in preparation for continued demand for new animated characters.
> I'm
>    using D3 to toggle classes and otherwise control/orchestrate CSS3
> maneuvers
>    of characters.  Transitioning smoothly between maneuvers is the
>    issue-of-my-day.

>    7. Off Topic, but fireworks displays make great PyGame projects ...

>    Build fireworks similar to real life, i.e. nested payloads of different
>    munitions and timings.  But why am I advocating PyGame?  (much as I
> love
>    pygame).  The same would be possible in d3/svg and run faster and be
> more
>    portable.
>
> All of this d3 investigating goes together, in fact.  I want to overhaul
> websites and webapps, alike, but I'm doing everything in D3, personally,
> going forward, and thus I've gotta take this little while to
> re-familiarize
> myself with it in several different contexts, and, this time, to
> appreciate
> how they (those contexts) are all just variations on a theme.  In theory
> I'm going to get everything looking "great" before hitting the campaign
> trail again and, in particular, before promoting netdispenser.github.io.
> Please post your feedback and critique of things I've written.
>
>
> Best regards from New Mexico,
>
> Charles
>
>
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "NetDispenser" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to netdispenser+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to netdis...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/netdispenser/5d79091f-2162-43e6-a5e1-bbdda98991de%40googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

--

Linkedin | E-Learning