Support The Team And The Production!

[Letalis Sonus]

All of the usual desktop stuff is already fully translated into gazillions of languages, they just need to be put on the NAND, and that's the wound point: E.g. Ubuntu's German Gnome base translation package is over 28MB large, they simply sum up and at some point everyone will find a reason to be happy about what could be done with every free KB saved by omitting stuff like that.
Anyway, there's simply too much stuff with a much higher priority requiring attention, translations are something we should start talking about when the OS reached a far more solid state.

 

[wardred]

I think a lot of enthusiasm will kick up again once the first 4k are out in the wild, and especially if the 2nd batch start shipping in quantity. I like the news that has been trickling out as late, and look forward to "The nubs have been produced!" and "The board company has everything they now need for full mass production." I especially look forward to the e-mail that MY Pandora's in the mail!

I'd purchase Merch in a heartbeat... 'Course, I'd think you'd have to be careful here. You still have a really small fan base so it may not make sense to get 20 different T-Shirts and other paraphernalia out there if we're your only audience... (This can turn into a whole side business with good/disastrous results, especially if the team is already strapped for time.) What about posters or wall scrolls? Or some smaller picture or stickers? Some with logos, some maybe with artwork from the community - with appropriate royalties? I liked what everybody was producing, and I'd be willing to pay Monk/Open Pandora for a busy sci-fi Frankenstein's lab with Jar Brain, for instance. Hell, add the Pandora Girl in as the mad scientist, or the skeleton as a forgotten subject...still chained to the wall, and still playing his game. As a for instance. Again, audience size may not make this practical. I'd pay a LITTLE more for quality. That usually puts the T-Shirt into the, sigh, $15 or $20 category for small run / artwork that won't dissolve after the first wash or two.

I like the idea of continuing bounties for those things people don't seem to want to code but could make the Pandora better. I'd guess this would have to be for submitted and approved code, Maybe with a clear price for the project, and a place to indicate who's working on it. Git repository maybe. (I know this was something that was discussed for the dev funds, don't know if it ever got implemented.)

I know it would've cost an arm and a leg to produce the case molds in the U.K., the rest of Europe, or the U.S., but after batch 2 how much would it cost to get the molds moved to the U.K. plant making the iControlPad? That seemed to go so much smoother... May be a moot issue if the Chinese company keeps producing and the quality's right. Nubs and boards I get the impression you're kinda stuck with, but the nubs sound like they can be churned out in huge numbers once everybody's satisfied with them. (I'll stop back seat driving now. I know all this and more have been looked at, and if appropriate will happen. :-b )

Edit: added link to the wallpapers thread... and changed the order of a sentence.

 

[wardred]

And I'd be willing to throw some money into an AndroidControlPad - though I understand that there's probably a lot more form factors for Android phones than there are for iPhones which can make getting the right clamps out there tricky.

 

[DaMummy]

on a sidenote
http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/product_info.php?products_id=14095

 

[Lorkile]

Cute keyboard.

 

[chame]

Or, to put it another way: Product revisions shouldn't be confused with new products. You cannot say that the Pandora is outdated compared to machines that were launched six years ago, and which probably went into development a year or two before that.

You are right. the hardware was not greatly improved, but for the important is the feeling transmitted to the market. with each revision there were small changes, (slim, camera, etc) that makes people think they have a new toy.

About the number of units limited by the parts. We know the chinese factory doesnt work. I wouldnt mind to pay 20 extra bucks in a european or american made case, if it guaranties the availability of cases.

Seriously, something should be optimized in the building process. they major flaws of the whole pandora movement are not the pandora specs, OS or games, we all know.

to build all the parts in USA (where the boards are) could speedup everything.

 

[Reyhn]

All of the usual desktop stuff is already fully translated into gazillions of languages, they just need to be put on the NAND, and that's the wound point: E.g. Ubuntu's German Gnome base translation package is over 28MB large, they simply sum up and at some point everyone will find a reason to be happy about what could be done with every free KB saved by omitting stuff like that.
Anyway, there's simply too much stuff with a much higher priority requiring attention, translations are something we should start talking about when the OS reached a far more solid state.

I was talking about the website, it's not such a huge task and i think it can help promoting the pandora a lot.

 

[WizardStan]

About the number of units limited by the parts. We know the chinese factory doesnt work. I wouldnt mind to pay 20 extra bucks in a european or american made case, if it guaranties the availability of cases.

I seem to recall it was quoted as closer to 100 USD more per case to have it made in Europe.

 

[chame]

I just wrote a plastic manufacturer 10 minutes ago, they told me 60 eur 60$ / case estimation, however this is not the type of cases they are used to
I am pretty sure it is possible to find 40 eur per case (or less) in Europe or USA
These guys can do 4000+ per day
Include the money saved in shipping cost and time save if the cases were made and assembled in USA

I viewed the cases via the link you sent to us, an unfortunately this type of case is not something we can emulate with our process economically. You would need a molded solution in order to maintain the current price point for the quantity you are looking for. If we were to build something like this it would cost at least $60 per case (rough estimate) at the 4000 piece quantity.

Thanks again for contacting Envision Plastics.

-Dan
Dan Pakulski
Business Development
Envision Plastics & Design
3513 Commerce Blvd.
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
651.765.6737
www.envplastics.com

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Ed should just make some pandora t-shirts.Dare i say preorder.....
Maybe a thread to gauge interest and a paypal link.Small batches of t-shirts would make sense.Pandy merchandise is a good idea evildragon

 

[Fishbong]

Seriously, something should be optimized in the building process. they major flaws of the whole pandora movement are not the pandora specs, OS or games, we all know.

to build all the parts in USA (where the boards are) could speedup everything.

The town hall manufacturing is the only thing that has worked reliably up to now. All delays have been caused by things that were not under OPT's control (although they possibly could have been handled better with more experience) and you are suggesting they give up the only thing they actually have control over?

 

[Blue Ion]

^ Agreed, if it works, don't touch it. While slow, it is reliable and predictable.
They may start experimenting with the second batch, but then again, the second batch is going to happen right after the first one, so I don't know how much experimenting are they willing to do.
Perhaps the third batch they may ask the texas company to do the building.

 

[chame]

I dont know the details and costs, so I cannot think about the planning.
is not logical to make a market campaign all over the net with no available units to send

what I propose are changes to focus on the main problem: number of units available. chinese factory is a problem as is shipping time.

I dont know, I really cant complain, didnt helped so much appart from buy one pandora, and the task is very difficult, not as simple as I described. the Team are doing great job

 

[Bosbeetle]

I think the best thing we can do for the team is stop complaining. And either be more costructive or just lay low until your unit ships. Remember having a nice forum atmosphere is also a thing that attracts potential new buyers. I think that making the new official forums also helped with that.

For now I will just use my pandora as much as possible. I have experienced that you dont need to do a lot to provoke interest towards it. A couple of days ago i was playing some treasure hunter G via the snes emulator and a group of students just 'dropped' their iphones to start speculating what this thing they were seeing could be, the new DS perhaps, something very experimental, what OS did it run! OMG what is this thing!! I told them what it was and they have probably visited these forums by now.

In my opinion the pandora sells itself, having a nice forum and clear instructions about getting one will be all the team needs right now.

 

[eeekubuntu]

ED - This is not a negative post, far from it but I really must state that I am *INCREDIBLY* worried that your initial posts reads like you wish to use next batch preorders to pay for current batch expenses, this is basically using the preorder inertia as a pyramid scheme as you will require ever escalating numbers of orders to cover the cost of making ones that are committed sales. And while I personally am quite happy to wait for however long it takes for my Pandora to turn up, right now I cannot in good conscience advocate to my friends and family who trust my judgement to invest in purchasing something that will arrive "when it's done" (Duke Nukem forever anyone?).
I have made various groups aware of the Pandora but so far no one seems too willing to put money down unless they know the order will be fulfilled within a sensible timeframe.
You can be assured that once I get hold of mine I will be pimping the living s*** out of to all and sundry. Speaking of which I am willing to put banners up on my community sites and I have influence with other groups who could help promote it too, I just haven't seen the point right now as OP havn't had the capacity to deal with the customer they already have including many hundreds who have been around this community FAR FAR longer then I have (and I only came out of lurk mode and put my order in relatively late in the game.)
I can't code (I last used C like 15 years go) but I do have about 2.5TB/month transit spare and plenty of hosting capacity which I did offer to craig when I preordered (although I don't think he got the PM as he didn't reply)
I would love to help raise the awareness of the Pandora but to what end? Do you really want to have even more people getting aggravated at having to wait for something that frankly is still in a very experimental build process?? That's PR suicide! Surely its much better to have a small community of enthusiasts who understand just what a monumental project this has been and the problems it has had to overcome then thousands of casual gamers posting over the entire internet that OP's name is mud as it can't even get the hardware out of the door (this is before they start slating it for things like the wifi performance).
So yeah I would like to help out as much as I can, and it would be nice to help raise your income (I really want to see the OP project succeed and become one of the dominant forces is mobile gaming (and general computing for that matter) I want to do it in way that 1) doesn't put the projects long term survivability at risk 2) Isn't complete madness on the PR front.

+1 !!!!

Im not going to pay anything more, i have been waiting two years, and still no pandora.
And why does "support" meens monney?

Isnt it good enough that the community will help porting, programming and developing if we ever will get a pandora?

Spread the word! - I already did two years ago, all of my friends was intrested, now i dont dare to speak of it, cuz they'll only make fun.

 

[EvilDragon]

And why does "support" meens monney?
Isnt it good enough that the community will help porting, programming and developing if we ever will get a pandora?

You DID see that the financial thing was ONE out of multiple points and the rest included programming, etc.?
Also, nobody FORCES you to donate something, but while you all bought and supported the project from the very beginnning (and we really do appreciate it), we made a big loss so far (covering it with out private money...).
Basically, I've been paying to work on the Pandora for the last few years - instead of earning money - and it's the same for the rest of the team.

While it's not needed, it surely helps keeping the servers, erc. alive

Also, I'd love to see some more up-to-date kernel and OS, and notaz, DJWillis, skeezix, etc. have done a GREAT job so far. But they did that in their spare time - and right now, their all busy with real life stuff which means not much is happening here right now.

I don't doubt that a lot of people will develop and port once the Pandora is out, but it's hard finding devs who could help out with drivers, kernel, debugging, main OS, etc.
Hiring one guy for stuff like that might be a good option, but, you know, that also does cost money.

So while money is not needed that badly, it surely does help as every other support does.

 

[zapman]

I think the dev-support fund is a good idea. The only thing that kept me from buying one or two shares is that I'm missing some info as to what is done with the money. Right now the only thing I remember is ED saying that there is a few hundered $ in the dev-fund and that it's not a big deal compared to the expenses that came with the hardware, the loss of OPT etc..

What do you think about raising money for specific projects; for example 'Update the kerlel to version xyz'?
If there is a money-meter where everyone can see how much money should be raised, how much money is already in and who donated (anonymity should be optional), people (like myself) would more likely donate money. Not only does it give the money collecting some purpose (getting the updated kernel in the end) but it also highlights the Pandora community spirit.

If not organized by OPT themselves, maybe pandora-press could take the lead here.. Gruso? :B

The last thing to consider is the right time to start off with sth like that. Right now might not be the best opportunity, maybe when production is eventually gaining the speed so that batch 2 (the real batch 2, not mini-batch ) gets in reach.

 

[CPUnltd]

I'm thinking something with a "google summer of code" feel to it would possibly work... developer bounties and such which the funds could be raised by donations, Pandora memorabilia, (possibly collaborating something with Pandora-USB like doing the testing of products for them and having them send OPT 1 - 5% commission on "Pandora Certified Products"), also individual devs or companies who make Pandora specific games for sale could opt for a similar situation where OP can make a small commission on game sales... there are a LOT of ways money can be brought in for funding software development (which I feel the bounty option is the best, because those who sign on to do the work make the money, and if multiple people sign on for a single project and agree to work together, they can split the bounty accordingly... which would be something discussed between OP and the individuals/groups involved)... it's all a matter of thinking outside the box and coming up with ways that everyone can benefit from (besides just the good feeling you get for doing something for others for free... cause as we can see, that sometimes gets old and/or hard to do).

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

I think the dev-support fund is a good idea. The only thing that kept me from buying one or two shares is that I'm missing some info as to what is done with the money. Right now the only thing I remember is ED saying that there is a few hundered $ in the dev-fund and that it's not a big deal compared to the expenses that came with the hardware, the loss of OPT etc..

What do you think about raising money for specific projects; for example 'Update the kerlel to version xyz'?
If there is a money-meter where everyone can see how much money should be raised, how much money is already in and who donated (anonymity should be optional), people (like myself) would more likely donate money. Not only does it give the money collecting some purpose (getting the updated kernel in the end) but it also highlights the Pandora community spirit.

If not organized by OPT themselves, maybe pandora-press could take the lead here.. Gruso? :B

The last thing to consider is the right time to start off with sth like that. Right now might not be the best opportunity, maybe when production is eventually gaining the speed so that batch 2 (the real batch 2, not mini-batch ) gets in reach.

Yeah maybe pandora press should set up a direct donate to openpandora to cover losses and get thinngs we all want done.Id trust Gruso with this.