Shyloc: A webapp for the ruthless moneylender

I emerged from this year’s mock trial season not sure whether I was in the red or black—between the various celebratory dinners and California Pizza Kitchen runs I couldn’t keep track of how much money I had lent and how much I had borrowed. Verbal contracts, though binding here, do not lend themselves to later recall.

Enter Shyloc. After the disastrous little project I called deX I decided it was about time I learned to do PHP properly, and my financial dilemma seemed like a perfect subject for the project. Shyloc has been slowly evolving over the course of lazy afternoons suddenly not occupied by swim team or Midrasha, and I think it’s about ready to be released to the world. I’ve actually been using it myself for a little while and have found it remarkably handy. It is a very simple application designed to do one thing well, in the style of the various 37signals apps.

Shyloc provides both a web interface and a twitter interface for recording new transactions, and provides a convenient way of recording immediately whenever you borrow or loan money. You can make your profile private or public, so you have the option of letting your friends check their current debts themselves. You can see my user page in action here.

Now it’s your turn to sign up - just go to shyloc.jacobandreas.net and hit register. There are probably a few kinks that need to get ironed out and possibly some pretty big bugs, so I would especially appreciate signups from people who have, you know, lots of angle brackets and backslashes in their names.

If you discover anything out of the ordinary, please contact me immediately at jda2129 [at] columbia [dot] edu. If anyone desperately wants to contribute I would also be happy to make the codebase available. I love feedback.