

Show HN: HourlyPuppy - jfi
http://iacono.heroku.com/writings/2011/11/16/gift-to-my-girlfriend-and-now-to-you/

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bobbles
It wasn't until after 'Version 1.0' that I realised this was about pictures of
puppies and not actually letting people hire puppies for cheering people up in
the hospital or something

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johnnyn
This would actually be great if I could rent a puppy for an hour for my kids
or something. Maybe you should turn this into an AirBnB for pets. I'm sort of
kidding, but sort of serious. I bet PETA would love you ;)

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BasBenIk
I think you can "rent" a puppy/dog for an hour at your nearest animal shelter.
I think the people who work there would be more than happy if you walk a
puppy/dog with your kids and give it some love for an hour.

~~~
gavingmiller
Different animal shelters will vary on their policy, some being more open than
others. For example a shelter where I volunteered put in a policy that
volunteers had to commit to (something like) 15 hours/month. Needless to say
volunteerism dropped significantly the next month...

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blhack
Did you work at the luckiest shelter on the planet? The one I used to
volunteer at [moved away] was usually clamoring for volunteers (at least in
the summer).

That seems like a very odd policy.

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gavingmiller
They certainly weren't overflowing with volunteers if that's what you mean.

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ChuckMcM
I thought this was touching. I wonder if you could hack one of those picture
'frame' gizmos so that it just came up with a new picture of a puppy every
hour. No browser, just a sort of 'happy fun time pictures' picture frame.

~~~
essayist
Or a private Roku channel - streaming puppies FTW!

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marquis
Sadly, not economically viable in TV form:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppy_Channel>

I'm not sure how well their website does either.
<http://www.thepuppychannel.com/>

~~~
enmaku
Came here to post this exact thing. I think the trick to viability is small
doses at intervals. The Puppy Channel was all puppy all the time - puppy
overdose. Hourly Puppy delivers a picture, not video, at one hour intervals so
you can go "d'awwwwww" and go back to your day. Or I could be wrong, time will
tell...

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wladimir
The fun with young animals for me is seeing how they move and play, the
activity, the energy... A picture doesn't convey this as good as a video.
Still, I love the idea of the OP's site.

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ericd
I would love to be able to sign my girlfriend up for hourly email updates...
(I was planning on doing that, but I ended up having to just tell her about
it)

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jfi
so a subscriber could get an email with a link to the current pup? I'd suspect
not many people would want an email from me every hour. perhaps making it easy
to toggle on / off would make that option more desirable? I could also
integrate the site better with @hourlypuppy on tw. thoughts?

~~~
femto
Some digital picture frames will accept an RSS feed. Why not make your site
able to automatically update such a frame every hour?

Are there any companies out there offering RSS based image feeds, intended for
such devices? One can imagine a digital frame hanging on a wall and the owner
can subscribe to themed RSS streams. Owners might be householders, or
companies looking for attractive wall art. A set of free streams could be
offered, based on the Commons. There could also be paid or ad supported
streams, based on proprietary images.

~~~
jfi
rss: <http://hourlypuppy.com/feed> (raw)
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/hourlypuppy> (feedburner)

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cperciva
Can I have an HourlyKitty instead?

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palish
Hmm! You've contributed a lot to HN / BSD / world, so I wanted to give you a
gift. But, alas, HourlyKitty would be too much of a time investment for me
right now. (Getting my family's cell phone service turned back on is perhaps
more important.)

But! I present, for you, my next best effort, "YearlyKitty":
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/scuzzle.JPG>

Thanks for everything you've done Colin. I hope you're able to maintain your
drive and ambition throughout your lifetime, and I look forward to seeing
"your next thing", whatever it turns out to be. (For example
<http://www.daemonology.net/papers/cachemissing.pdf> was especially cool IMHO,
but all of your projects have been interesting.)

~~~
cperciva
_YearlyKitty_

Awww...

 _I look forward to seeing "your next thing"_

It hasn't received a huge amount of attention yet, but my guess is that
kivaloo will end up being my "biggest thing" in 2011.

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steve8918
Can you actually copy someone else's images and serve them from your own
website, or does that violate copyright? If you find someone else's images,
should you instead link to the original site?

I'm actually asking because I'm curious, I don't know what the actual answer
is.

~~~
slig
Before getting to the site, my first guess was that he was pulling the images
from flickr CC search.

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angryasian
you should check out

<http://www.dailypuppy.com/>

<http://cuteoverload.com/>

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rglover
Make sure to check out the little message with the paw next to it in the top
right corner on refresh. Nice touch.

~~~
jfi
thanks :) if you have any other tag lines to add to the rotation, let me know!

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dubrie
Whoa, I've been working on something extremely similar for my wife:
<http://www.pupgrade.com>

It's not strictly about cheering people up but kinda the same thing. It's like
we were reading each others minds!

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jobby
I love you. You are a hero.

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rwar
In addition to e-mailing for Submit Puppy, have you considered adding a Drag-
and-Drop or a Browse/Upload? (You could even add a captcha!)

~~~
jfi
yeah, the submission via email is not ideal, but for the mvp I wanted a basic
submission feature so mailto fit the bill. I'll look to make it submit via
browser this weekend! Appreciate the feedback

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raheemm
I want a new puppy with every refresh.

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joshmanders
Awesome job! I sometimes see great ideas like this and smack myself. "Why
didn't I think of that?!"

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vvertex
t

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whackedspinach
I need one every minute.

