Anyone have experience with Elance or RentACoder?

[lovelaureng]

I have a small personal programming project I am considering having made, if the price is right. It is really no big deal, but for some reason I really want it. Does anyone out there have some advice for me?
Thanks in advance.

[FormerDittoHead]

1. This is pretty interesting reading on RentaCoder...

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=25943">Great thread on Rentacoder and more

[lovelaureng]

2. Thanks for the reply.

It was an interesting read about RentaCoder.

[GregD]

3. What sort of project do you have in mind?

[lovelaureng]

4. This is the project that I want.

A simple address book program. You can enter names(for the entire family), addresses(physical address and PO boxes, if necessary), phone numbers(home, work, cell phones) and email too. You could then save and print it out at your leisure. All entries could be edited with ease. I have looked at possible shareware/freeware programs out there and don't care for any of them.
I have a form I use in Open Office that I made as a address book,but when you add a new contact, there is a lot of cutting and pasting required to make it alphabetically correct again. It seems silly but what the hell.
Thanks for the response.

[FormerDittoHead]

5. I hear you. I ended up having to write my own in MS Access..

I used to use Lotus Organizer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Organizer ) - it came close to being perfect but it wasn't stable, which was, IMO, the most important thing in an address book!



I agree with you there isn't a GOOD but BASIC address book program. Every one I've seen is either an "index card" program or something which wants to "integrate" itself with some "suite".

And in Linux, for example, there's NOTHING "out of the box" (that wouldn't require me to learn Java or C++) which will print said addresses in a multi-column format for something like, oh, AN ADDRESS BOOK.

So I wrote one up in MS Access (2000) and it does the job. If ONLY there was a good open source EASY TO INSTALL AND USE database report generator like MS Access or even Crystal Reports.

[lovelaureng]

6. Good point.

I figured that it would have to be written in Java or C++ as well. I am a non-coder who sees a need for this type of good open source stand-alone program. Thanks for the response!