Bleak Dev

One quick-and-dirty way to build a GRM (Gamer Relationship...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:56:48 -0500

One quick-and-dirty way to build a GRM (Gamer Relationship Manager) is by connecting Gmail to spreadsheet and vice-versa via a Google App Script. The idea here is that simple tools like Gmail filters and Google spreadsheet formulas become your automation tools. Of course, though, you’ll be limited to routing everything through you Gmail, which may add time to automated pushing, calling, and tracking data.

Apps and Haps

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:57:40 -0500

About time for an update!

With the new year we have new things to do, and have taken care of the previous year’s list (YAY!)

My collaborator and I have applied to 6 different incubators/accelerators (y-combinator, TechStars Boston, TechStars San Antonio, Betaspring, AngelPad, and Matter.vc) and have trudged, learned, and grown through each application process.

In the end, I’m proud that we pushed the idea out there to so many difficult programs.

We have one more “feedback round” pending with Matter.vc in February and afterwards we’ll figure out what to do next.

We already got some feedback from another program’s interviewer that had to do with project up into digestible bits. I’m in agreement. To some extent, we all have to break up a big project into workable chunks we can get done in, say, a week or so. In fact, this application round has kind of trained me to do just that.

Lots of developments, and a new to do list for the rest of the year! Apply to six five places by the...

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:15:00 -0400

Lots of developments, and a new to do list for the rest of the year!

Apply to ~~six~~ five places by the end of the year, including but not limited to: ~~TechStars~~(done!), Y-C, fi.co, 500.co, AngelPad.org, Steam/Valve
Write fiction for NaNoWriMo
Finish a site redesign side project
Get started on responsive design project for my full-time, grown-up job

Relational to NoSQL: the DB quandary

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:22:12 -0400

Just 3 years ago, if you were going to build a complex site from scatch, the answer to the question “What kind of database am I going to use?” was obvious: a table-based relational database, most likely MySQL.

This decision was so obvious, in fact, that it didn’t even occur to most web developers as an option, and they chose instead to squabble over what kind of middleware to use (with PHP winning out for most projects).

Ruby and Python were mostly thought of as powerful little tools, more like Swiss Army knives for creating quick (soon to be termed “agile”) development solutions.

Nowadays we have the NoSQL solutions of MongoDB and Couchbase as well as robust “cloud” app-hosting solutions such as Google App Engine and Heroku, all of which support object-oriented requests in the form of JSON, Ruby, Python, et. al.

This rapid sea change over the years has caused me to rethink how I plan to build my own projects from scratch, paralyzing me with its impressive array of options to the point that I get giddy thinking of the different ways a project can go (Yes, I know it’s sad.)

My job is to take on all of the buzzwords that are out there and distill them down to what I and the team really want the project to do.

As product and web developers, we often let tools bog us down, not because we like to be frustrated by changing tides but because it’s so much fun for us to consider all the possibilities.

When it comes to actually making stuff that works, though, we have to put the toys aside *sigh* and just build a working model of what we wish existed.

I wanted to have a full Agents App wire-frame up by now, but...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:30:00 -0400

I wanted to have a full Agents App wire-frame up by now, but I’ll have to settle for showing an editted-down prototype of a previous version of the project.

To create this self-updating list, I used XSLT to query the user’s personal account XML feed, which was added to from a custom PHP form and the foursquare oAuth.

Now that I focus on it more, I want more versatility with this app as well as a simpler way to manage puzzles than this original set-up provides. Thus, I’m moving the prototype to javascript/JSON-managed Google spreadsheets that will act like a database that seamlessly hooks into and queries Gmail’s labels and email threads.

As for the design, I still plan on including some kind of visual cue of progression (such as percentages or the progress bar I mentioned earlier).

Next up: I’ll get into some hardcore information architecture (IA) to show how the Agents App will receive, respond to and track puzzle solutions.

Learning milestone: Not getting into Round 1

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:06:34 -0400

Thank you everyone for supporting Meagan’s and my project proposal for the Knight Foundation’s NewsChallenge this past month.

The organization passed on our project, but we learned so much from the experience. Most importantly, we have been reaffirmed in our belief that a hardcore audience exists for such a project.

I can relate our goal more clearly now than ever before:

We want to create a platform for diehard fandoms and “cultural extremists” to read about people like themselves, play alternate-reality games, and build conversations/worlds around their obsessions.

In crafting the proposal, we forced ourselves to narrow our vision considerably from its original incarnation as a 108-page print mag with a website, social media site and ARG.

It was tough saying goodbye to a nicely designed print mag product, but the reality is no print magazine has raised money and lasted long enough to make money since before 2009. It may also be true that a sense of doom surrounds any project that calls itself a “magazine” or “publication,” even if it has the word “digital” or “web” in front of it.

Perhaps the terms “SaaS,” “crowdsourcing” and “cloud computing” could have been injected into our proposal to make it sexier, since our content and game engine would encompass some elements from each of these concepts.

However, I don’t think we have solidified the engine or the content production cycle for the project enough, and it seems wrong to slap on labels and throw around terms simply because they could have drawn more attention from the judges.

What we have wrought from this experience is a rubric that allows us to move away from limiting concepts such “magazine” and “publication” while retaining what we love most about those platforms.

And in doing so, I think we’re on the right track.

Knight News Challenge: Handshake: A Web Magazine and Gaming Experience

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:54:58 -0400

Knight News Challenge: Handshake: A Web Magazine and Gaming Experience:

Woo, just posted to Knight Foundation News Challenge!

newschallenge:

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

We will fuse together social-network gaming, thought-provoking editorial content, and advertising into a seamless web magazine and alternate-reality game experience.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30…

The first story in this latest podcast from BBC’s...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:17:00 -0400

The first story in this latest podcast from BBC’s Outriders chronicles the innovative, AI-based way developer Michael Cook is developing games using his software ANGELINA.

Building Progressive Templates

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:52:06 -0500

Building Progressive Templates:

Always think about how to automate every part of UI and functionality. Responsive Web Design helps you pare down a web or site to its most basic function and create the most versatile minimalist designs around those functions from scratch. Good read.

Inspiration: Progress Bars

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:44:03 -0500

A simple way to help people track their status/progress in a mission is with a progress bar. For example, the user has completed 2 out of 3 steps in a mission. In the report about that mission, we could quantify their progress as I did above, with percentages (i.e. 66.66666…%) or with a simpler graphic like this one:

I will prototype this inspiration in more detail later after I work on the account creation and puzzle-submission mechanism.

Project status: Agents App

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:05:00 -0500

I’m in the beginning stages of a pet project I’m dubbing the Agents App. This web-based app would be a service that 1) receives solutions to puzzles—via email, text, mobile, and a local form—2) immediately responds with a prompt to the next step of the puzzle and/or a reward based on a points system, and 3) sends out and provides that user’s unique score and status based on the responses in different formats (texts, email, HTML, etc.)

The ARG aspect and the gaming mechanics described above are similar to Foursquare, except that it attempts to match key terms for points rather than only geodata.

My current tools:

Chromebook
Thinkpad w/ Windows 7
Zoho Creator
Kodingen and ShiftEdit for Cloud-based IDEs
Dreamweaver as a quick code editor
Crossrider
Aviary Vector and Adobe Illustrator for vector image editing
Wunderlist and Asana for milestone and task detailing

If anyone knows of a tool or system already like the one above, please let me know.

To come: Inspiration and prototype screenshots

Photo

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:14:00 -0500

Breaking the warranty seal

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:55:00 -0500

Hey everybody! I’m starting this Tumblr to keep up with my projects and discuss all things dev. I’ll catch everybody up on my latest project to create a web app-based alternate reality game (ARG) with a simple Posterious-like sign-up. The idea there is to allow for several points of entry into this spy world-type game. Stay Tuned!