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These projects are what keep me up at night (ordered by a weird mix of most-interesting & most-recent)
An Reflux/React powered Tinder client for FirefoxOS
Kindling was a project which was similar to Firegraph in that it was made to fix the fact that there was no Tinder web client or FirefoxOS app. Unfortunately, before the app could be reviewed and put on the app store, devleopment on FirefoxOS ceased. Kindling was mostly built by working with the sniffed parts of the Tinder API (a certain Github Gist somewhere has a very long thread with many contributors trying to figure out how to access the API). This project was particularly fun to work on because I got to reimagine and implement an API for Tinder, and deal with React in a non-trivial context.
An EmberJS powered Read-only Instagram client for FirefoxOS
Firegraph is a project borne out of frustration with the (now improved) Instagram web app. The app looked terrible, had very few features, and was not even responsive, so I built Firegraph as a way for people who have Instagram accounts (Instagram does not allow programmatic registration) to view their Instagram streams. Unfortunately there are lots of limits to the Instagram API (no signup, relatively low limits on access, even lower limits on actions that create/modify data), but Firegraph has been well received (except for people who expected to be able to sign up with the app).
Firegraph on the FirefoxOS marketplace
An EmberJS powered FirefoxOS App
VCFPorter was a project I did on the developing (as of 2014) platform FirefoxOS. It was a great chance to “kick the tires” of both EmberJS and the FirefoxOS platform, and I was pleasantly surprised by both. While I made this project due to FFOS 1.3 not being able to read my contact card, FFOS 2.0 can read the card just fine, so the utility of this app does drop quite a bit. The app does let you choose the contacts you’d like to import though (unlike default contact import functionality on FFOS 1.3/2.0).
VCFPorter on the FirefoxOS marketplace
A javascript plugin for carousel-based forms
Merry Go Form was a project created to try and solve the problem of long, tedious forms. By representing forms as a carousel, it’s easier to focus the user on what’s important, one section at a time, and show more contextual information without overwhelming the user. While vanilla javascript plugins are kind of old, the development practices we used for this project were modern (Grunt, NightmareJS (powered by PhantomJS), Jasmine), and it was great fun to work on vanilla javascript.
An AngularJS-powered GIF URL saving chrome extension, backed by Sinatra & RethinkDB
While the description is a mouthful, loltrove was made to simply help save and repost (through pasting) links to funny gifs (and other content, as features evolve) that you come across on the internet. I tried to make the least-invasive product I could make (allowing for completely offline mode), while still allowing for people to share and contribute. It’s been a fun project to work on (though challenging, due to the difficulty of not wasting time on the internet). Got a really good chance to fool around with Sinatra (deployed with unicorn) some more, along with RethinkDB and develop a Chrome extension.
A NodeJS-powered public configuration/dotfile storage service
Yeah, it’s as simple as it sounds, but I one day wanted a place where I could download my configurations for EVERYTHING from one place (and could easily share configuration files with others). I built that thing, and I’m glad I did. This also served as a great exercise for me in deploying with nginx, postgres, node, and other tech I had not tried before.
A web app developed in PHP (LAMP Stack + Yii Framework)
I built this web app to help catalog and curate the growing and ever changing landscape of best practices, conventions, and articles of knowledge somewhat scattered around the internet at this point. Though resources like stack overflow are tremendous, they are somewhat less focused (as Stack Overflow is a large mostly-benevolent beast), and I am sure that some focus, and a purpose-built “crowd-sourced” database of what we all consider best practices and conventions would be useful. Why the “K”? For fun.
Himaberi(Essentially unusable, Discontinued)
A Flask-powered & KnockoutJS web chat program
An intensely naive implemenation of a japanese-language chat application. Seriously, not even as good as what you make in a 20 minute node tutorials, but a probject that gave me a chance to play with Knockout, il8n, and Flask a little more. Due for a revisit.
A web app developed with Django (LAMD?)
The purpose of this webapp is to build another photo-sharing service. But unlike any other service, this photosharing service attemps to force only great pictures (or at least the personal best of each artist) to shine through. In this world of over-sharing and instagrammed pictures of food, I wanted to build an app that uncompromisingly took only the best. How? By limiting the amount that any one user can upload. Want to upload 500 pictures you’ve taken? Find another app. Feel you’ve got a good grasp on what your best work is, and want the world to see it? Then join Handpict.
A web app developed with Ruby on Rails
An SaaS implementation of simple documentation storage. This app is meant to hold easily navigable links to documentation for all sorts of things. Usefulness will most likely scale with amount of documentation stored, but at the very least the service is very simple and should serve well as a resource when it’s full.
“WHY SO MUCH WEB STUFF?”, you ask?
I’ve been on a real web kick lately (last year or so), but it’s OK, it’s wearing off. I’ve got some great stuff in the works (only one more semi-web project, I promise!), and I am excited to be working on spending cycles outside of a browser.
