This is an app I developed to handle the volunteers for a local café. They're considering between this and http://volgistics.com and their reservations are mainly that my software is untested. So, check it out and poke around a bit.
Something that bitcoins have that gold doesn't is as their value increases, it encourages the adoption of infrastructure to exchange bitcoins for commodities. This increase of real world value figures into the exchange price.
I'm trying to design an alternative to the investment economy. I would like to digitize cost information and use computers to determine fair prices. I want do it by keeping metadata about bitcoin transactions.
By making the system of production computer accessible we can run businesses at cost.
I'd like to start with the information systems for the One Acre Cafe. They are a pay-how-you-can restaurant opening in Johnson City, TN. (I wish it was pay-what-you-can rather than volunteer for food, but that's something to worry about later.)
Their initial need is for a volunteer management system. Apart from three people, the entire staff is volunteer. I've not done any coding on it yet, but it will almost certainly be a rails app.
Eventually I'd like to integrate this with an inventory and pos system, so you get a bill that tells you what the meal cost the cafe to provide based on the accumulated cost information associated with the business.
You get a receipt that includes a QR linking to a profile for your server. You are able to give feedback by entering adjectives and ranking them -1–1.
There is also the ability to give a tip in bitcoins. I'd like to have a service where the money can be conditionally given. I'm interested particularly in housing.
I want people to be able to give specifically for shelter and they get it back if it isn't used.
Phase two would involve mortgaging a house and then renting the space at cost and payable in bitcoins. What I'm trying to work toward is the ability to sustainably travel. A chain of restaurants that accepted each others' electronic work reputations combined with easily accessible housing could allow a new sort of nomadic life.
