Pwn Yr Phone

How about a programming project centered around customizing the use of real people's phones. People we know. People we don't know yet.

Just about everybody has a phone of some kind. Some are really nice, others are really primitive. Basically, it is a computer in your pocket. On this piece of hardware are a lot of common input and output devices: Keypad, screen, earpiece and microphone, pagermotor, backlight for keyboard, connection to one or more network systems. Some phones have other things that are neat for input and output: camera for video and still photos, flash, speakerphone, even gyroscopes and global positioning systems(gps).

So if everybody has these things, and they are so powerful (probably more computing power than they used to land on the moon), why aren't more people using them to their fullest possibilities?

This would teach us a lot about programming for real devices, and would give us the opportunity to find out how to really own the thing that is sitting in our pockets all day. Would your friends play your game, just because you made it?

We could post our code on Google Code to make sure everybody can see what progress has been made. We can make downloads available, show screenshots, post videos and share our successes and setbacks through text and code documentation.

Some people will program together in a classroom environment, others will serve as mentors and facilitators with code assistance and guidance. This would be a collaborative, distributed open source programming project.

We could start by learning some basic coding protocols in [Scratch.mit.edu|Scratch], downloading apps to whatever phone is available, try them out, pick apart some code. Then maybe make some relatively simple program like tic tac toe that would employ the use of personalized code. Then move on to more advanced stuff that calls on the various hardware outputs of each person's code.

To demonstrate the projects, there would be a series of project demonstrations. These would be done in person at some common gathering place for most of the people, but there must also be an online component as well, videos and photos and text posted online on Youtube, Facebook, Google Code, Flickr and other appropriate venues.

For more information, see: Facebook Group

Google Group

Google Code

- 8-16-08