I'm still developing readthekanji.com, a site for helping Japanese students learn to figure out how to read kanji. It's been one of the best learning experiences, and I'm loving every minute of it.
So what projects are you currently working on, or planning for the new year? Is it a startup, or research perhaps? And how's it going?
I did cheat a bit and steal pieces from PyScheme and Lython as well as someone else's S-expression parser, but it's capable of evaling ((fn (a) a) 1) as well as Arc's "if" currently. I'm not certain whether it's Turing complete right now, but I suspect that it is because I can create and call functions, branch, and bind values to names. (IIRC, just being able to create and call lambdas is enough because you can count, branch, etc. Is that right? I haven't taken PL.)
Big problems right now are:
1) Proper lexical scoping. The current model is broken (it might be dynamic scoping), and Python 2.x's closures are broken so I can't just use Python functions to punt the problem to Python.
2) The shortcuts for quote, quasiquote, complement, compose, etc. The S-expression parser I stole doesn't have them. I don't want to use a parser generator because that seems to defeat the point of Lisp's lack of syntax (i.e., being easy to parse).
This is a toy that has nothing to do with my research interests (security), so it's not going to be actively maintained or developed. pg will probably make some breaking changes to Arc and kill the project.
♫ All you need is Lambdas ♫ :)
fuck compilation.
fuck lexical scoping.
do something for real in lisp, like
* entity relationships over a graph db
* webframework
* flightsimulator
This year I start a new position at the company I work for. Hopefully it'll bring more visibility and access to the people who make decisions. There's so much that needs fixing here, and with a little elbow grease I think I can fix it all.
In the meantime I'm starting a re-write of my alpha 0.1 web service to help connect people with friends and friends of friends. The existing one still exists, and I'm still collecting comments, so if you'd like to know more, drop me an email.
And I've got a full time day job, and 8 talks/presentations in the next four weeks.
My e-mail address is in my profile.
What ever happens, I will announce it here for sure.
and continually working on what pays the bills, http://paulstamatiou.com
"Neptune's Pride is a multiplayer game of Strategy, Intrigue and Galactic Conquest!
Neptunes Pride is real-time, but games are played over several weeks. Players log in at any time of the day to check the progress of their fleets, view the results of battles and issue new orders.
Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate.
It's the game you know and love with a twist. A 4x Strategy game with it's complexity striped away to reveal a sophisticated game strategic command and diplomacy.
How will you conquer the Galaxy?"
PCs in the living room (everything from custom linux distro, XBMC Live modified, and windows 7). 140 million HDTVs sold in 2009 alone, hardware is getting cheaper, and content is readily available.
Education space. ie- how do we provide easy access to all the materials that exist out there? My hypothesis: everything we could ever want to learn exists already on the net or can be taught to us by a person we can be connected with in seconds. How do we easily organize it? think more of a directory than a search engine.
Bringing local businesses into the 21st century. Most don't have a website and still use yellow pages. The existing solutions out there suck and are filled with slime.
Email newsletters. Why not create the weblogs inc of newsletters? Look at what thrillist, dailycandy, etc. have done. Create a network of these around a plethora of wide open niches along with building a strong advertising platform for email newsletters (it doesn't exist yet).
Human powered purchasing decisions. How do we help people know what to buy with specific criteria that transcends checkboxes and a search engine? Something human powered is the way to go about it. As geeks, I'm sure you're constantly asked- what phone should I get for price x, features y, etc. Purchases such as these are expensive and spending a few bucks more to get a personalized recommendation would be worth it.
http://github.com/meqif/0xCOFFEE
It's quite fun, but I had to fork llvmruby (the ruby bindings for LLVM), since it lacked some things, like allowing access to part of the LLVM API and raising RuntimeErrors instead of segfaulting (especially because of some code mutations that heckle[1] generates).
Currently, this is just a little project to keep me busy during the past holidays and the current university exam month, but I hope to create a nice language.
[1] http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2006/12/19/tormenting-your-test...
It was used successfully in beta for Thanksgiving-day feeding coordination and we're getting very close to our first non-beta release.
http://collabbit.org http://github.com/elitheeli/collabbit
If you'd like a look around the demo or are interested in contributing leave a comment or send me an email.
I'm not intimately familiar with Sahana, but from what I understand it's a fairly large system and can do a lot of specific things. Consequently, most of its deployments have been at sites of major disasters or for very large agencies.
Collabbit takes a different approach. Our goal is to facilitate communication inside groups and between groups, rather than to provide a means of accomplishing specific tasks. That means that Collabbit is quite simple and broad right now. While our initial use case was volunteer organizations communicating in New York City, we're hoping it can be a valuable tool for smaller groups as well.
I've also been working an a utility to locate repeated groups of data (particularly geared towards scanning for likely copy-and-pasted code), but that's been put on the back burner due to the above project and lack of free time.
I'm selling my iphone app on it, which was just approved yesterday. "Control Time": itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/control-time/id348796242?mt=8
"Planning a vacation is hard. You know where you want to go. But what should you see once you're there? Which monuments, parks, cathedrals and museums should you visit when you're there? How do you get around?
My website helps you plan your vacation by providing high quality itinerary suggestions, contributed by travelers like you."
I hope to do a private release at the end of this month.
I'm trying to present itineraries that have already selected interesting things to do. Essentially future travelers are going to benefit from past travelers.
What's often important is: How much can I fit in a day? How do I get around? What was my personal experience, and how can other travelers benefit from it?
In a near future, you'll be able to search on itinerary based on your travel profile (age group, kids/no kids, fast, lazy etc.)
Before I go on a trip, I'll plan out where I need to go and usually copy the addresses into notes on my iphone or into google todos. When it's time to go there, I'll copy the address into google maps and go from there.
Perhaps I'm just doing it the hard way, but something that streamlined the process would be great. I was thinking something like, Google Calendar API + Google Maps + Todo list + iPhone App/Web App.
Currently in the process of purchasing an art gallery space in Denver, which we will renovate, and hopefully open in the fall of 2010. (Would be sooner, but we are having a baby in the spring.)
I intend to have an exhibition every 3 months that will seek to blend technology with a physical installation of some kind. Details TBD, based on online collaboration -- The web site will spend the 2 months between exhibitions working towards collaborating on the next exhibit. Each collaborator will hopefully be able to visit in person, to create a true blending of online and physical life.
Our web site will also have an announcement -- it is currently just my wife's blog, but is connected to her etsy shop, so we do have a small following.
If there is interest, I can post on HN as well. I wasn't sure if the community here would have a strong interest in my project or not...
Finally, simply word of mouth - as my day job will pay the mortgage on the property, I don't actually need to profit, so I can just work with my friends on the first few shows, and get the world out gradually.
In terms of timing, I am hoping for August. Once we actually move in (hopefully on the 31st), we need to physically prepare the location (needs new floors, doors, drywall, lights, things like that). So there is quite a bit of work to do yet.
In my spare time, Hackety Hack is coming along, got a release out for Christmas, hoping for 1.0 early next month.
Then I have one more small project that's still secret.
Extractiv - web-listening and content-extraction that combines semantic analysis and web-scale reach for a complete picture of what information is on the web and what the web is discussing. The core technology is working, currently turning it into a real product.
Currently doing a UI refresh, planning a big marketing push including ads, contacting interested journalists, designing a web site / blog, planning the support workflow, and other fun stuff.
Things are going really well for us so far. Won a nice iPhone app competition, getting some pretty good buzz building, and looking to launch to a decent crowd of interested parties!
See: http://www.gridspy.co.nz/
We offer live data (updated every second while you watch) and multiple channels, all at a price that is cheap for a solution like ours.
We're launched, but we have a lot of work ahead of us. If anyone has any ideas/suggestions/criticisms please let me know.
I should have a private beta by the end of the month.
a) Speed The web front-end and the back-end processing engine have been written keeping in mind processing time, everything is optimised to get data quickly in front of the user.
b) Scripted Rule-based pricing A user can script the pricing engine by specifying rules written in a custom-DSL. My first attempt at doing a proper DSL.
Focusing 100% on Urban Airship ( http://urbanairship.com/ ) now, which is fantastic fun.
Which is also becoming an open source platform for development aid.
http://amid.st/ - social placemarking app
We're not quite ready for a "Rate my Statup" post, but you can be sure we'll have one. In fact, I've just been working on a milestone plan for 2010 and that's one of the milestones.
In my spare time, researching how to catalyze mass behavior change to improve society.
1. More rigorously define what "improve" means. Beliefs about what an ideal world would be varies drastically between people and cultures. To avoid the "colonize the savages / white man's burden" problem, we need a framework for discussing and evaluating goodness in a more rigorous way, especially one that is viewer independent, cultureless, and timeless. In the 14th century, people lit dogs and cats on fire for amusement. This sort of thing would be greeted with horror by many people today. I wonder what we're doing now that people from the future will view with similar disgust.
2. Identify the behaviors / beliefs / etc that prevent such a world from existing now. It seems likely to me that this will involve formulating a scientifically falsifiable model for how people adopt and change beliefs and behaviors. It's not clear how much precision will be attainable for a model this. It could be that we are only ever able to understand very generally which stimuli or environmental conditions will give a higher probability of shifting individuals towards certain behaviors and traits (eg, empowered analytical altruism). We can then identify the levers that cause this shift to occur, eg altering what children are taught at school.
In a nutshell:
1. [if possible] More rigorously define what good world(s) would look like.
2. [if possible] Figure out a model for belief and behavior selection that can be applied to causing / raising people to come to adopt behaviors and beliefs that bring about this better world.
I'm tired of my mom treating technology like it's a chore so I'm working on something that will introduce her to new tech that can really make a difference in her every day life. Like most of you, I'm immersed in the latest and greatest technology every day but she's too intimidated and too busy to discover it herself. I find that once I get her past those two bumps in the road, she actually enjoys the benefits of whatever it is I introduced her to.
Right now I'm compiling a list of awesome sites, services, gadgets, etc. that I think my mom would actually like and benefit from... if she only knew they existed.
Then I'll send her a weekly email with a 2-5 minute video showing basic use of a new piece of technology and explaining how it can benefit her.
My gift to my mom.
There's a bit more information and a long interrogation of the idea here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028673
Still looking for a co-founder, so contact me at chris.chen@flixa.tv if you're interested!
A simple blog project that has been going well is www.multiplayergames.com which is in need of some buddypress\wordpressMU and design help, but since it continues to perform well I am hesitant to change anything.
Outside of those a handful of other smaller projects:)
I love the community of Hacker News, and I'd like to create something similar but for a South African community: http://zacoders.net
I'm working on an open source eye tracker:
and a c++ toolkit for creative coding:
First stop: support my buddy Lars' map rendering to get this beautiful map http://toposm.com/ma/ to cover the entire United States. Anyone out there have some spare CPU cycles and/or memory to donate for the next couple weeks?
We have some more business related priorities (payed accounts and the like), but this is up there; I'd love to see those map tiles cover the entire US.
But I did start hacking on a fully email based todo/reminder system over the break that I hope to have functional in another week or so.
No, it's not supposed to be useful.
Hoping to open source this work later this year.
I tied up a number of loose ends with my own personal website, integrated the API from my decentralized content web application and my google books library.
My current project is to finish reading The Little Schemer and doing the exercises alongside it. I've been learning a lot and thoroughly enjoying it. My next programming project will probably be to move my decentralized content API from PHP+MySQL to an Erlang backed key-value store and a Scheme powered content API; I may still use PHP for the web interface.
Currently also interested in live video streaming (how will this space be impacted by the iSlate? Is there room to innovate beyond Justin?), mobile surveys, eBook readers (Kindle's way too expensive. I want a cheaper, more open product).
Will be @ CES, let's link up if you're around.
I'm also building in some cool functionality to bring widgets into the app, where you can build out your pages based on what widgets you are interested in, similar to widgets in wordpress admin or igoogle.
I'd certainly consider a low power rail-to-rail op-amp and dump the 9V batteries.
At $15/month for unlimited invoicing, it's currently one of the cheapest on the market.
The aim of the site is to provide tools and tips for communication and writing. She's a veteran in marketing and publishing and I've been in the software field for a couple of years now so we decided to collaborate. The site's pretty basic at the moment, a blog and a tool for templating short pieces of writing, but I am looking forward to upgrading to a VPS and possibly producing some more interactive features.
I'm working on a new eCommerce shopping cart - IONCart. Check everything out at GitHub - http://github.com/leftnode/ION-Cart or on my blog - http://leftnode.com/category/ioncart/
I want to release the minimum viable product as soon as possible, which will be open source, or you can pay for it and get all future commercial releases for free.
This year I plan to bootstrap 2 or 3 similarly-sized sites with my wife (including one brick-and-mortar business with a site most likely), and work on a largish project for the pharmaceutical industry in association with one of my customers.
An app that allows you to create join and manage social groups on the iPhone. Every group has a message board, live chat room, gps-enabled map and member directory.
Thus far we have over 70 groups and 300 users. Many thanks to members of HN that helped make it possible. You know who you are.
Url: www.groupie.mobi Video: www.groupie.mobi/whatisgroupie App Download: http://www.groupie.mobi/images/Apple_BTN.png
Back to the data warehousing day job tomorrow though, so lets hope that the development of Bliss doesn't slide another year...
Also, trying to get my head around the ycombinator concept, wondering if the recursive magic that i've seen might be useful for fast graph traversals.
http://BuyersVote.com StackOverflow for product reviews
http://FeedmailPro.com Email newsletters for your blog
And my personal blog, http://www.StartBreakingFree.com
Yes, I have too many projects :)
It automatically connects friends who are going to a concert, on vacation, or just out for a night of drinking over SMS and has a ton of cool functions to communicate during and share content after the event.
Launching soon at http://www.fastsociety.com/ (still waiting on carrier approval)
feel free to reach out to me to chat. lefstathiou@gmail.com
my app is called groupie. www.groupie.mobi
So why in the browser? Because that makes it instantly hackable! No more bad pathfinding or shitty interfaces to put up with!
Also working on my BreezyFAQ app for plugging in searchable Frequently Asked Questions to your site.
Site is not live but it works fairly well at http://www.snapproofing.com/faq
And on a server admin tool http://hg.errant.me.uk/eventscripts-xa
Cant find another "big" project to engage me :( Perhaps gonna have a go at reinvigorating my blogging platform project.
A simple illustration of a possible use for the service: http://www.modernballots.com
It is a place for me to play with python :).
In private beta now; looking to launch a public beta in the next few weeks. Some good feedback from beta testers so I'm excited :)
I'm trying to build a openly defined price index for residential sales across the city.
To separate this from my worklife no hacking is involved.
It's been a ton of fun. I do CMS development in my day job and it's nice to build a site that actually does something instead of corporate brochure-ware :)
Online payroll system for South Africa. It's my startup. Just launched a while ago. How's it going? Got a few trail users. Busy climbing the search engine rankings.
small web app we built over the last few days to generate nice invoices and track if they are overdue or paid.
(not finished yet, but open signup and core functionality working)
A "ask hn: rate my app" will be put up soon
We're building real-time data services. If you've got interesting data, we want to talk to you ASAP. andrew at timetric dot com.
We're based in Clerkenwell, London.
Building the world's coolest kitchen outfitter... Sign up here if you like: http://gastronautics.com
the funnest part is the deployment method with git and capistrano. so fun that now I have to create some deployment method for my real job. winscp'ing php and swf's onto a production server doesn't feel like the best way to go about things.
Looks like some great projects on this page.
And I'm always working on my secret toy programming language.
http://argumentclinic.net (see the about page)
We are a social media metrics company and we just entered public beta.
Have learned a lot about linkbuilding and SEO as well. It's interesting to play with different linkbuilding techniques and watch the results happen in just a few days because of how low the competition is in our niches. Am planning on developing a fully automated linkbuilding tool that will require me to wear my gray hat while I work ;-)
still in dev, but just for you: http://fridgereport.com (its hosted on a server in my closet... sorry if it is slow)
It is made with ASP.NET MVC Framework and C#
It is a site that covers hockey news using a simple layout a la the drudgereport and protoblogger. It is a startup I unveiled in late November and it is attracting more visitors almost every day!
