Top
Best
New

Posted by walz 4 days ago

Payphone Go(walzr.com)
309 points | 69 commentspage 2
tantalor 15 hours ago|
Would benefit from seasons i.e. wipe the leaderboard every once in a while
acrophiliac 12 hours ago||
This is a fun idea. It occurs to me that I would enjoy seeing unvisited phones on the map in a different color. [Edit: Oh, now I see green dots for visited phones. Was this always there and I just hadn't noticed?]
thebigship 11 hours ago||
Been following this guy's work for a bit now, and I feel like it's more in the spirit of what art is supposed to be than what you see in 99% of galleries these days.
macintux 10 hours ago||
Apropos of absolutely nothing, and impossible to prove, but I've long suspected I might be the youngest person in the U.S. to have won tickets from radio stations both from a rotary phone (at home, ~1989) and from a payphone (while I was delivering pizzas ~1990).

Unfortunately I've never really taken advantage of my absurd luck to do something more useful, like retire early.

teddyh 12 hours ago||
If you just want to find a payphone: <https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2lHO>
acrophiliac 11 hours ago|
Cool, thanks for this. It seems this data comes from OpenStreeMap and has some phones not listed in Payphone-Go. Curious about the discrepancy.
dom96 5 hours ago||
This is really cool, I wonder if it would be doable in other countries? In particular UK?
jonty 5 hours ago|
See my comment elsewhere in this thread...
kmoser 8 hours ago||
> Every payphone has a unique phone number. When you call (888) 683-6697, I see the number you're calling from and match it in my database.

Has anybody tried to win by spoofing the caller ID? For science, of course.

apparent 8 hours ago|
I think it's harder to spoof toll free numbers. For example, you can't block caller ID in the same way. I'm sure it's still possible to spoof, but just might be a little harder.
rickcarlino 15 hours ago||
Please expand this to other states. This is such a fun and creative idea.
Nzen 13 hours ago||
It looks like Mark Thomas maintained a phone number database up until 2007 or 2023 for many areas in the USA. I guess that could be a basis for starting 'my own' instance of payphone-go, maybe with twilio (or equivalent) to receive the calls.

[0] https://www.payphone-project.com/numbers/usa/ going through the state map feature only shows a subset compared to navigating through the links on this page.

thaack 14 hours ago|||
This works because California requires licensing for payphones and Riley was able to FOIA state payphone database. I'm not sure if other states require licenses for payphones.
plusplusungood 13 hours ago||
Probably could just ask the phone companies. Free advertising to visit their dying phones?
nthdesign 14 hours ago||
I second this! I'd love to have this for PA or NJ.
ihaveone 5 hours ago||
That is super fun, if I had a motorcycle in Cali, I would so do this!
drkrab 10 hours ago|
In Denmark there are no payphones. Like none. The copper network is being decommissioned.
flyinghamster 9 hours ago|
That's happening piecemeal in the US as well. Any "landline" phone service at this point will be coming from a box hooked up to your internet service, quite the flip from the old days of dialup internet.
toast0 3 hours ago|||
I still have a copper landline direct to a real central office; for my Mother in Law. $60/month and the phone company made it very difficult to setup 3 years ago; they really don't seem to want to be a phone company anymore.

Pulse dialing still works, and the automated voicemail system that the CO switch runs has zero perceptible latency (unfortunately, they won't give me the PIN to set it up)

golem14 7 hours ago|||
The dismantling is usually faster in other countries, as Telcoms owning this equipment either are or were state owned monopolies. In the US, the payphones were probly owned and swapped and back and forth between myriad providers.

Kudos for pulling all these into one database

More comments...