software.dev

Introducing The Social Postal Service!
http://apps.facebook.com/socialpostal

The idea behind the Social Postal Service is simple - send free, physical cards to your friends for various holidays - starting with Valentines Day! Pick from 15 designs, type a message, an address, and you’re done. It’s that simple. Why poke friends on Facebook when you can ‘poke’ them in real-life with a real card?

Each card costs ‘Card Points’, a unit of virtual currency that users earn by completing surveys from our advertisers. These surveys help to pay the bill, as it were, and makes it possible to send a physical product to our users.

The Social Postal Service also gives users the ability to send virtual ‘Conversation Hearts’ to your friends. These are those popular, colorful sugar hearts that always come out around Valentines Day with little sayings on them. You can send virtual versions of these hearts to your friends, customized with your own message.

Give the Social Postal Service a try and let me know what you think!

http://apps.facebook.com/socialpostal

Another day, another app!

Where Should We Eat?
This one is called, ‘Where Should We Eat?’.  The basic premise is to address the problem of just that.  How many times have you gone out to eat with friends & family, and no one wanted to pick a place.  With the click of a button, you can easily find a random restaurant nearby.

I got to use the Yelp API and JSON for this, neither of which I’ve used before.  JSON was super easy to work with, thanks to PHP’s handy “json_decode()” function.

I doubt this app will get much adoption since you don’t need to add it like most apps, and it doesn’t have a viral component, but it was quick and easy to make, and actually pretty useful.  I’ve gotten positive feedback on it so far — give it a try!

Try the Mad-Libber on Facebook!

Been a LONG time since I wrote in this thing (nearly a year!) but I certainly haven’t been idle on the coding front.

Recently, I’ve been particularly interested building Facebook applications. It’s really an easy platform to develop for. Facebook provides great APIs and documentation, and you can bring pretty much whichever language you want to the table. The forums are also very active, with lots of helpful posters.

My first application, the Mad-Libber, is basically a Facebook version of the popular Mad-Libs game. For those of you who don’t know what that is, Mad-Libs are stories with blanks for certain words. The reader is given the type of word (noun, verb, adjective, etc… ) but not the context. The idea is that the reader supplies these words for the story and you read the result, obviously making no sense because the context isn’t known to the reader. That’s what makes it funny.

With my application, users can write these stories, complete stories their friends wrote, and share them with friends. I’m going to try and monetize this through ads, which is actually quite successful for many applications. Cubics, one of two ad networks I use (the other being Appsaholic) offers $0.50 per thousand impressions. If you could get 50,000 page views a day, that’d be about $25 /day or $750 a month. For an independent developer who does this as a hobby, that’s not too bad.

I’ve found that it can be really difficult to get traction for your application, however. A viral nature is a must. You look at the top apps for Facebook, like SuperPoke, Graffiti, etc… and all of them have a very viral component which makes them easy and fun for people to spread. Another thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t matter which application comes out first, or which one is ‘better’, but what matters is that yours catches on.

If you have some time, give my application a try at: http://apps.facebook.com/madlibber. If any of you are interested in developing Facebook applications, I’d be glad to share my experiences and provide some advice. Just post here or email directly at ejfarraro@ucdavis.edu.

Thanks and happy coding

*** Some people mentioned they were able to access the account over the phone with Dell without any other information, so I’ve removed all the numbers from the letter my coworker received.
* Short break from Software Dev posts — I wanted to get this out there.

I sure do. I remember there was once a time when the Dell name was associated with quality computers. Apparently, they’ve taken the wrong path somewhere down the line, and my experience with Dell has been less then stellar as of late. Case in point, I’d like to tell the story of what happened to my coworker.

My coworker recently had problems with his Dell laptop and sent it in. Not too surprising — laptops move around a lot, thinks might come loose, stuff stops working. It happens. I’ve worked with many laptops, and never had one not have some sort of problem after 2-3 years. Needless to say, it makes sense to buy a warranty for your laptop when you buy one because these things tend to break. My coworker is fully aware of this, and purchased some sort of extended warranty plan for his Dell laptop.

So after sending it in and waiting several weeks, he began to wonder when he was going to get his laptop back. He talked to Dell service representitives initially by phone, and though they weren’t able to provide him with any information, they assured him they would call him back when more details were available. Unfortunately, the call never came. My coworker decided to try the online chatroom help instead, since he didn’t seem to be getting the help he needed. The online service chats were no more useful.

At this point, over a month has passed since the laptop was mailed away, and he hasn’t been able to get any sort of straight answer. I observed him chatting with the service representatives online, and frankly, the level of service was ridiculous. My coworker asked when he would get his laptop — the representative responded with things like “You should have more information in 72 hours”. 72 hours just to get more information about the status of a laptop that was sent in weeks ago?! The representative also assured my coworker that if for some reason his laptop couldn’t be fixed, a new one would be sent to him.

Today, my coworker received his laptop back from Dell much to his suprise. Finally, the wait was over! Or was it? Inside there was a note, describing the repairs done. This is what it said:

Talk about a slap in the face. Not only does it still not work, the ‘Thanks!’ at the bottom is like a cruel taunt.

I’m writing this in hopes that someone at Dell sees it, and rectifies this example of poor customer service.

This links been going around a lot recently, but I wanted to throw it out there again: wiicade.com. Basically, the idea behind the site is that since the Nintendo Wii’s Opera Browser (which we’re STILL waiting for) can supposedly do Flash, it should be possible to make Flash-based games specifically for the Wii. How would these differ from other games? Considering the Wii’s controller, it would make sense to have ‘pointer’ style games, and not to use any keyboard inputs. Even though it won’t be possible to use the controller to its full capacity, I’m still very excited about the prospect of ‘Wii development’.

It’s made me wonder… why don’t any companies ever release even very basic tools that would allow developers to create content on the system? Can you imagine what creative developers might come up, given full access to the capabilities of the Wiimote? I suspect the reason it’s never been done is that if the free software is too good, no one will pay for the actual games; nevertheless, hopefully we’ll see a more open system in the future.

Meanwhile, I’ll be playing Twilight Princess while I wait for the Opera channel to come out and I can get to developing.

I forgot to post about the gadgets after the contest deadline was over!

I ended up submitting two gadgets — one I called ‘Hangman 2.0′, in two Web 2.0 spirit. The other I called ‘Flippr’; it’s a flash-card app that allows you to add / remove cards, and then test your knowledge. Saving is supported by exported XML.

Flippr

Hangman 2.0
You can give the Gadgets a try if you’d like with the links above.

Hangman 2.0: This was the first gadget I did. The idea was that I often find the online Hangman apps boring. Usually they use super intellectual words or categories I don’t care about. Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, if *I* could pick the category, and get a random word from it? And what better way to accomplish this then Google. I tried a few techniques for generating the word list, but I eventually settled on using Google to find the appropriate Wikipedia entry for a category, and scraping the entry for words. I sorted the words based on their frequency, and after removing a bunch of common words like ‘the’, ‘and’, etc… I randomly pick one of the top 30 or so. The result is pretty good; occasionally you’ll get a poor word, but most of the time it’s pretty fun. I also did some original pixel art to add a little flavor to the game, instead of the traditional hangman’s noose.

Flippr: I worked on this gadget second. I’ve never really had a chance to use flash cards for any class because in most engineering classes, flash cards wouldn’t help. However, I’m taking an econ class this quarter for GE credit, so I decided flash cards might help out. Flippr is pretty simple: basically you create a new ‘deck’, and then you can add, view, and remove cards from your deck. Once you’re finished with that, there is a ‘test’ option, where you can go through your deck, read each card and then FLIP (hence the name) to see if you know what the term or idea means. All in all, I’m happy with this turned out, though I wasn’t able to get the XML loading working in IE.

On a sad note, I got the Google rejection letter five days after I applied without a phone screen; if I wasn’t going to make it, I was hoping to get cut at AT LEAST the phone screen; but so much for that Then today I got another rejection, this time from Microsoft (I got cut after an on-campus interview). My GPA (3.4ish) isn’t horrible, but if I end up flipping burgers, I’ll have a long time to think about what happened.

Life is good!

Second gadget has been underway, and Google’s deadline extention is exactly what I needed for this busy week. Between midterms and GRE’s, I have my hands full.

While my first app is addictive my second one is useful. I’m really excited about Gadget #2. Not only is it useful in general, but it’s specifically useful for the college student, which is kind of the ‘theme’ of this contest. That being said, I could see it being useful to others as well. Overall though, I’m just really pumped up about this contest. I think I’d just about explode if I won any of the categories

Got a ton done on the Gadget today and I’m feeling like tonight is the night to submit it. I put a lot of finishing touches on a few minutes ago, and things I believe all the functionality is in place. I had a small hiccup with IE compatability issues, but I managed to take care of those fairly easily. I’m pretty impressed that I got this much done, this quickly. I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday — only working on it. That’s probably one of my best qualities, I think — persistence. I don’t give up easily when a deadline is approaching.  The end result is refreshing and VERY cool (I’m a bit biased)

So what does all this mean? Time to start on Gadget #2! I don’t know if I’ll have time with a midterm coming up, but I’m going to do my best. I’m not completely settled on a second idea at this point, but I’m kicking around an idea, trying to see if it’s viable. Time will tell what I come up with.

Looks like Flash is going on hold for the next week or so.  After attending the Google info night at school, I found out about the Google Awards competition.  First things first — the Google night is just another reminder of what you’re up against, if you want to work at Google.  My roomate and I got there an hour early and were among the first to arrive but by the time the thing started, there was standing room only.

And then it hit me.  Google Gadget Awards.  What better way to stand out from potential candidates then to play Google’s game.  Show them you have good ideas, and take a concept from just a thought to completion.  So with a week left, I began work on a Google Gadget for submission.  I don’t even know if there are prizes or anything, but what I’m really interested in is Google’s eye   When I’m applying for a job and whatnot and they inevitably google ‘Eric Farraro’, how cool would it be if it came up saying I had won one of their contests?  This particular contest is only open university students, so I figure if I did well, I could put UC Davis on the map too and bring in even more recruiters.

Totally energized coming out of the Google info night, I wrote down about ten to twenty ideas (which I can’t share yet, but I will!)  I settled on one that I’m currently working on.  The contest has been going on since August, but I’m going to have to compress those several months into one week.  Actually, I’m planning to submit TWO gadgets if time allows.  It’s definitely a learning process.  I’m decent with Javascript but no expert, and that’s primarily what you need to write the web gadgets.

The contest ends November 1st, so I’ll be busy working on this until then.  I’ll be sure to post the gadget here on this page once contest has over.  The funny thing is, I’ve known about gadgets for along time, but I’ve always been too lazy to work on one.  But throw the word ‘contest’ in there, and that really gets the blood going.  I love competing in events that I can do well in, and it’s a strong motivator.  The idea that I could get my name into the hands of the right people doing something I love doing drives me to get this done.
If anyone from Google reads this, talk to me!

Back to work!

Been awhile since I’ve written, but I have certainly not been idle! This past weekend I read up on ActionScript classes, and have sort of gotten the hang of how they work out. I made a Missile Command style game without using classes, where each object had its own ActionScript (without a specific .as file; it was written write into the object). While this was certainly easy, and apparently, some people work like this, I did not really like it at all. I think this approach might be more intuitive to someone with less of a programming background but for me, I much prefer to separate out the ActionScript from the Movie Clips.

There are two things I really like about Flash for game development. Firstly, it’s really easy to get into. There aren’t dozens of lines to get a blank window on the screen, I don’t need to write routines to load graphics, playing a sound is simple, etc… Basically, Flash abstracts all the boring stuff, and lets you get into the actual ‘game’ part very quickly. Secondly, it’s very easy to distribute your game. Getting people to download a .exe can be difficult; getting people to view your game on a popular Flash game site is really easy. Certainly, Flash is less appropriate for ‘epic’ games, but I think it’s superb for quick, fun games.

Right I’m currently working on what I call a ‘Swarm Game’. Think those games where you’re in the middle of the screen, and progressively powerful enemies continue to attack you in greater numbers until you’re swarmed to death. That’s basically what I’m making. You are controlling a turret in the middle of the screen and can swivel your gun to fire at incoming enemies. The game starts out pretty slow, and quickly picks up. Of course, I love power-ups, so there will be a multitude of power-ups (the usual suspects: rapid fire, score multipliers, limited invulnerability, etc …) as well as several different types of weapons. I hope to have a demo, at the very least, up in a week or so.

Until then..!