Getting people to do things for free

I read this interesting article on TechCrunch:

We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet for $200. Help Us build it

Simple thoughts and reasons and then you look at the reaction of people claiming they want to help. The pattern I found that is very interesting is people saying that they can code anything in a set of languages that usually starts with PHP. So sad that there are so many PHP coders out there. It's a very weak language with powerful libraries, in my opinion. But I'm not here to get into PHP. Back to the analysis of the people that respond to this article.

The response has been pretty huge. Lots of people got easily excited about the project: a cheap computer that does 80% of what you usually do on the internet. It won't help on making me blog more often or actually write emails to my friends, but it certainly would be a great piece of technology. People can see it, but they can't really see the actual complexity of the problem. You find comments like:

"College student will help with writing the marketing aspect." - huh?

"Wow, this sounds like an awesome idea. I’d love to contribute in some way, I have lots of education contacts and some limited coding expertise. Maybe my biggest asset is enthusiasm and time? Contact me if I can help."

"Finally! I can help promote this in and bring it to Canada. Let me know if you’re interested - I am!"

"I would be happy to contribute my companies resources and expertise to the project." - and this guy has a web hosting company

There are too many other hilarious things to quote.