Frog: Bitmessage for the web!

[Jaxkr]

i already thought bitmessage was easier to use than email. installing the program and running it was far more painless than filling out some form to get an email account. if you are going to make it even easier still than that sounds awesome.

You'll have to fill out a form to use Frog, but all it will be is username, password, and repeat password. No existing email required.

[1714681577]

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[1714681577]

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[AliceWonder]

Why do you need BTC 3.5 for your idea? I don't think anyone would pay without seeing a prototype, I mean we don't even have a code sample to see if your skills are capable of doing a project like this. Just give us some security here, cause this project isn't really that simple.

Servers and potentially the hiring of a designer. I can code, but I can NOT make things look pretty.
Here is my Github: https://github.com/Jaxkr
Here is an article about me (provides my identity and prevents me from scamming): http://www.timescall.com/news/longmont-local-news/ci_23032800/sunset-middle-school-student-wins-first-longmont-hackathon
Unfortunately, I can't use those prize funds for this project as they were directly invested in my college account, to avoid taxes.

I hope this doesn't come off as mean, but learn to bootstrap. I think this is actually a great lesson for a young person to learn. Cause in the real world without a prototype no one gives funds. Even without testing the market you don't really get funds. I think you should try and do as much as you can with little or no funds. Your a programmer, try and get BTC3.5 by working for someone else.

Also don't tell your parents this but college is a scam.

Don't listen to him. Get your degree.
After my junior year, I took a year off that ended up being an eternity - I never graduated. Not having that piece of paper has closed so many doors for me.

Go to college and graduate and don't let anything stop you.

[gweedo]

Why do you need BTC 3.5 for your idea? I don't think anyone would pay without seeing a prototype, I mean we don't even have a code sample to see if your skills are capable of doing a project like this. Just give us some security here, cause this project isn't really that simple.

Servers and potentially the hiring of a designer. I can code, but I can NOT make things look pretty.
Here is my Github: https://github.com/Jaxkr
Here is an article about me (provides my identity and prevents me from scamming): http://www.timescall.com/news/longmont-local-news/ci_23032800/sunset-middle-school-student-wins-first-longmont-hackathon
Unfortunately, I can't use those prize funds for this project as they were directly invested in my college account, to avoid taxes.

I hope this doesn't come off as mean, but learn to bootstrap. I think this is actually a great lesson for a young person to learn. Cause in the real world without a prototype no one gives funds. Even without testing the market you don't really get funds. I think you should try and do as much as you can with little or no funds. Your a programmer, try and get BTC3.5 by working for someone else.

Also don't tell your parents this but college is a scam.

Don't listen to him. Get your degree.
After my junior year, I took a year off that ended up being an eternity - I never graduated. Not having that piece of paper has closed so many doors for me.

Go to college and graduate and don't let anything stop you.

Yes certain degrees are required for certain jobs. I have met many, many people in the computer science sector and if your code is great, and you know what your doing, which this kid certainly does. He would not learn anything from college.

[QuantumQrack]

Love the frog art!  Can't wait to see what you come up with as far as an actual implementation.  I would love to beta test if possible.

[Anon136]

i already thought bitmessage was easier to use than email. installing the program and running it was far more painless than filling out some form to get an email account. if you are going to make it even easier still than that sounds awesome.

You'll have to fill out a form to use Frog, but all it will be is username, password, and repeat password. No existing email required.

i wouldnt make them repeat password and i wouldnt differentiate between account creation and login. just have it be assumed by your server that if someone tries to log in with information that doesnt currently exist than have it create a new account. if they type something wrong they will figure that out when they see that they have no messages in their inbox.

a card game i used to play did this, shadow era. check it out, its awesome how low the barriers are to playing that game. you dont even have to confirm your email, the email you enter doesnt even have to be a real email.

*edit* actually why not take it even further. instead of having username and password just have 1 field (userword?, passname?) i dont see any reason not to.

[bytemaster]

I second those who argue skipping college.  Like you I was programming in high school and college taught me nothing.   I now interview people on a regular basis and NEVER look at their college.   I would go so far as to say you don't want to work any place that does.

If you want a job send me a message and we can see how you can join the team.    You can make more money on you own than in a 9 to 5 job.

[gweedo]

I second those who argue skipping college.  Like you I was programming in high school and college taught me nothing.   I now interview people on a regular basis and NEVER look at their college.   I would go so far as to say you don't want to work any place that does.

If you want a job send me a message and we can see how you can join the team.    You can make more money on you own than in a 9 to 5 job.

I regret going to college everyday, and if bitcoin didn't talk off I would be in $200,000 loans and I wouldn't be able to start my own companies, or anything I have to go to work.

[bitcoinstarter]

I second those who argue skipping college.  Like you I was programming in high school and college taught me nothing.   I now interview people on a regular basis and NEVER look at their college.   I would go so far as to say you don't want to work any place that does.

If you want a job send me a message and we can see how you can join the team.    You can make more money on you own than in a 9 to 5 job.

I regret going to college everyday, and if bitcoin didn't talk off I would be in $200,000 loans and I wouldn't be able to start my own companies, or anything I have to go to work.

I miss college :/

[bytemaster]

My advice, move to a college town, date college girls, sit in on classes like a student, and teach yourself everything.  All of the benefits, none of the costs.   Then use your time saved by skipping worthless general classes and performing pointless projects and instead focus on developing a real business.   

You could even claim you attended classes at school X and learned everything they had to offer if anyone asks.   

[moltenmich]

My advice, move to a college town, date college girls, sit in on classes like a student, and teach yourself everything.  All of the benefits, none of the costs.   Then use your time saved by skipping worthless general classes and performing pointless projects and instead focus on developing a real business.   

You could even claim you attended classes at school X and learned everything they had to offer if anyone asks.   

That could actually work for a number of classes. Anything larger than 50 students you could easily sneak in. Problem is, a lot of good classes are generally smaller and you'll have a harder time getting away with it. But that being said, you could get a job on campus in an office or something, and then befriend the professors you want to learn from. No doubt they'd be cool with you stopping by for interesting lectures.

My college experience had a lot to offer. But I do think there were requirements that just weren't necessary. It's really where you go and what you do with it.

[harningt]

I miss college :/

Agreed, while I may have ended up paying a ton for college, it helped me broaden my view in the computer science realm and helped developed me into the "polyglot" that I am today, trying every tool available instead of using one tool, no matter how inappropriate.

It also looks good to the HR folks and gets you past many filters that exist. I do have to admit that I've run into people that have degrees and guess that they were the ones who "coasted" and didn't learn a thing... or have been so distant from college time-wise that the problem-solving skills and flexibility from then are long-gone (if ever present).

As a point - the whole road that got me to programming in security and eventually getting involved in Bitcoin was a "computer security" seminar where an entrepreneur presented and we got in contact... eventually leading me to my job right out of college that I've held and evolved up to the current moment.

[prophetx]

Frog is a great idea.

However I think for bitmessage to be a success there needs to evolve a market for pow, people are not going to want to drain mobile computing resources to send potentially 100s of benign  msgs in 1 day. Or trade pow credits from other computing resources

Just my opinion but I think that is an important missing piece

[Jaxkr]

Frog is a great idea.

However I think for bitmessage to be a success there needs to evolve a market for pow, people are not going to want to drain mobile computing resources to send potentially 100s of benign  msgs in 1 day. Or trade pow credits from other computing resources

Just my opinion but I think that is an important missing piece

You read my mind.
I already have a "stamps" program planned. For about .3 mBTC, you will be able to purchase a credit (or "stamp") that gets your messages processed by powerful PoW servers will a lot of GPUs.
This is how the service will pay for itself, and be usable on mobile devices.

[gollum]

I like your idea!
We need both a frog website and a frog app for iOS / Android / WinPhone so all noobs can start to use bitmessage

[Jaxkr]

I like your idea!
We need both a frog website and a frog app for iOS / Android / WinPhone so all noobs can start to use bitmessage

Phonegap application for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone will be probably be available as soon as Frog leaves Beta.
Native apps will probably take a lot longer, though.

[prophetx]

Frog is a great idea.

However I think for bitmessage to be a success there needs to evolve a market for pow, people are not going to want to drain mobile computing resources to send potentially 100s of benign  msgs in 1 day. Or trade pow credits from other computing resources

Just my opinion but I think that is an important missing piece

You read my mind.
I already have a "stamps" program planned. For about .3 mBTC, you will be able to purchase a credit (or "stamp") that gets your messages processed by powerful PoW servers will a lot of GPUs.
This is how the service will pay for itself, and be usable on mobile devices.

you may want to think of monthly/qtrly/annual flat fee instead, maybe stage it for personal, business, enterprise, etc - think of it like a mailchimp service or hosted email.  or for the phone app just give it away for free trial then some low yearly cost for up to XXXX msgs

maybe for large volumes you can do the per mail tx but otherwise you will just be processing for such small amounts and it will eat up cycles, and clog up the network with these micro tx.

to promote it let people send a couple hundred msgs for free per month if they had an account on here since some day (like what ripple/opencoin did) for the first year or whatever

instead of having to invest in the hardware if you allow the community to provide this proof of work, then you can act as an intermediary, collect your fee for the service, and pay the community for providing the hardware and hosting, rather then taking that on as an additional operation. but i am unsure how capable the current system is to support something like that. this also provides incentive for the greater btc community to support using this

[bbit]

Frog is a great idea.

However I think for bitmessage to be a success there needs to evolve a market for pow, people are not going to want to drain mobile computing resources to send potentially 100s of benign  msgs in 1 day. Or trade pow credits from other computing resources

Just my opinion but I think that is an important missing piece

You read my mind.
I already have a "stamps" program planned. For about .3 mBTC, you will be able to purchase a credit (or "stamp") that gets your messages processed by powerful PoW servers will a lot of GPUs.
This is how the service will pay for itself, and be usable on mobile devices.

you may want to think of monthly/qtrly/annual flat fee instead, maybe stage it for personal, business, enterprise, etc - think of it like a mailchimp service or hosted email.  or for the phone app just give it away for free trial then some low yearly cost for up to XXXX msgs

maybe for large volumes you can do the per mail tx but otherwise you will just be processing for such small amounts and it will eat up cycles, and clog up the network with these micro tx.

to promote it let people send a couple hundred msgs for free per month if they had an account on here since some day (like what ripple/opencoin did) for the first year or whatever

instead of having to invest in the hardware if you allow the community to provide this proof of work, then you can act as an intermediary, collect your fee for the service, and pay the community for providing the hardware and hosting, rather then taking that on as an additional operation. but i am unsure how capable the current system is to support something like that. this also provides incentive for the greater btc community to support using this

I agree with this thinking ^^ .

[Rampion]

Great project!

[bitcoinstarter]

Great project!

20 hours to go! very cool 

[marcus_of_augustus]

Frog is a great idea.

However I think for bitmessage to be a success there needs to evolve a market for pow, people are not going to want to drain mobile computing resources to send potentially 100s of benign  msgs in 1 day. Or trade pow credits from other computing resources

Just my opinion but I think that is an important missing piece

You read my mind.
I already have a "stamps" program planned. For about .3 mBTC, you will be able to purchase a credit (or "stamp") that gets your messages processed by powerful PoW servers will a lot of GPUs.
This is how the service will pay for itself, and be usable on mobile devices.

Interesting ... so people with lots of mBTC can afford to send junk mails I suppose ... can a receiver set his 'postage' high enough to discourage low-ball (i.e. low difficulty PoW" messages from arriving?