Google Keyhole

ColinDavies

There is no spoon. :-) Yeah the site is down for me also. I'm sure I saw a demo of this running a few months back. :confused: Regardz Colin J Davies The most LinkedIn CPian (that I know of anyhow) :-)

Christian Graus

Never heard of it. I keep meaning to ask you tho - I notice that you bid on a RAC job that we bid on also ( the bidder cancelled ). Are you getting any reasonable work out of that site ? We have got a little work, but at next to no pay, and some of it has involved working with the stupidest people I have come across in my life. I'm on the verge of giving up. Is there real work out there, or does it all go to India for less than I could earn flipping burgers ? Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer

Tom Archer

I've gotten some side work from it; where people have seen my bio and approached me for non-rac work. On rac itself, I've found that the rate has to be so ridiculously low that you can't get many jobs. One thing I've noticed is that when you win a bid, you can see other rejected bids. I found that on a current job there were others that spent quite a bit of time designing the system and proposed to work for $5 an hour! Luckily, I still got the gig. However, in looking at winning bids, most come from countries where people can bid far less than I can possibly bid. I simply bid what I think is a minimum that I can accept and let the bidder choose according to their priorities. I don't exactly hold my breath. I've had numerous situations where I thought I would be a shoe-in and never heard back. I've also noticed a lot of cancellations lately so I'm wondering if that's a case of people delivering free code in order to get the job as so many people on the site are desperate for work. Cheers, Tom Archer - Archer Consulting Group Programmer Trainer and Mentor and Project Management Consultant

Vivi Chellappa

It is illegal to ask for any sample code on RAC. I was once threatened with permanent banishment when the RAC folks misunderstood my specs -- I asked for not just a VC++ control but also a demo program using the control; they thought I was asking for the demo program up front before the award of the bid which is illegal. On the whole, RAC seems to be the place for getting your homework done. While I have seen one bid for $12,000 for the development of an Inventory system, most go for a few hundreds of dollars. Russians seem to deliver good, solid code if you can get them to bid. Most of the highly-ranked coders seem not to be greatly active on RAC. I can't afford US rates on my project (my profile shows a North Carolina location which is a billing address, I actually live in India so I can afford to pay only Indian rates ;P or slightly better!). Most of the time what I want is an extension to controls I find on CodeProject so one would think that a couple of hundred dollars is a reasonable price to pay. My last project was directed to about 10 coders and just one responded with a bid! So there may not be as many desperate people out there as you think.

Tom Archer

>>>It is illegal to ask for any sample code on RAC. I didn't say it was asked for. It's provided. If you look at my profile I've posted about 20 jobs on RAC and several times people have sent me solutions or partial solutions with their bid. >>> My last project was directed to about 10 coders and just one responded with a bid! So there may not be as many desperate people out there as you think. <<< YMMV, but my experience as both a buyer and coder has been that coders will do just about anything and bid down to almost nothing to get a job. Cheers, Tom Archer - Archer Consulting Group Programmer Trainer and Mentor and Project Management Consultant

Charlie Williams

I downloaded and played with the demo a while back. I believe it was not too long after they were purchased by Google. Definitely not vaporware, and pretty darn neat, to boot. BTW, the web site[^] comes up fine for me. Charlie if(!curlies){ return; }

Tom Archer

The site is now coming up but the application is timing out connecting to the server for registration. Evidently, I'm not the only one that saw the 60 Minutes spot on Google and wanted to see this :) Oh well. I'll wait a day or two and try it again. Cheers, Tom Archer - Archer Consulting Group Programmer Trainer and Mentor and Project Management Consultant

Jerry Hammond

Back in Novenmber one of our DotNetGroup[^] members gave a demonstrations of this nifty application/service. Impressive to say the least. Jerry He said this was like painstakingly assembling the first layer of a house of cards, then boasting that the next 15,000 layers were a mere formality.--The Code Book, pp. 331 Toasty0.com The Recipe Project

Tom Archer

I finally got it to work. It is amazon - although they got my address wrong :) They have my house on another part of the street as for some reason the numbering on our street got messed up and the houses are not numbered correctly Cheers, Tom Archer - Archer Consulting Group Programmer Trainer and Mentor and Project Management Consultant

Roger Wright

Tom Archer wrote: Is it vaporware? Nope. I tried it out a couple of years ago, and it's fantastic! Just not worth the cost... Keyhole, btw, is the codeword for a series of top-secret satellites placed in orbit by the USAF - the KH-xx series. I can't be sure if it's the same source since I've been out of the loop for so many years, but it looks to me as if the USAF has licensed at least a part of the technology for public use. Good for them - it's a great move, and might help to fund some of our more advanced projects. "If it's Snowbird season, why can't we shoot them?" - Overheard in a bar in Bullhead City

Christian Graus

Yes, I'm in basically the same boat, except that I'm not as cool as you, so no-one seems to offer me work !!! Actually, my image processing articles here in CP remain my main source of work. On RAC, I basically state in my bid that I don't live in the third world, and so it's up to the buyer to decide if they think I'm worth it or not. We've got several jobs from people burned by cheap, worthless coders on RAC and have gone for us above lower bids because they want to see the job done. Even then, the rate was nothing I could live on. I had assumed that people cancelling jobs were just finding solutions elsewhere. One other thing that I've noticed is we seem to be getting a fair bit of work from companies in the USA and Canada that are essentially finding local contracts, getting cheap RAC coders to do the work, and making a profit by being the middle man. I'd never do that, I'd certainly not flow money into India or Russia, or any other country that seems set to cost me my livelihood. I don't get how these people keep a straight face while telling me that they want something ready to show the client. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer

Paul Watson

It costs only $29.95 now for personal use. regards, Paul Watson South Africa The Code Project South-East Asia Disaster: How you can help Pope Pius II said "The only prescription is more cowbell. "

Allen Anderson

I've purchased a significant amount of web work from both elance and RAC. I've had good and bad experiences though. The bigger and more complicated the project the worse the results have been. So I generally only put up small well defined pieces for bidding. It would be hard to be a programmer from a developed country and get work that paid anything there though.

Christian Graus

Allen Anderson wrote: The bigger and more complicated the project the worse the results have been. Yes, I suspect that most people bidding on RAC don't really look much past the money. I've certainly done some work fixing larger projects where the people who won the first round of bids ( to write the thing ) should never be allowed never a keyboard. Really excrable stuff. We're yet to win a larger project on RAC, we're hanging in there in the hope that all this essentially free work we're doing will pay off in some $5000+ contracts, although we have to be picky, some of those are of incredible scope, and as hard to make money off as the smaller jobs, but on a larger scale. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer

markstu

Seems like it would be useful, if you need that kind of thing for personal use. It's actually kind of amazing.