#iSoc12 Firstsight progress, bikeshedding & pizza’s!

Howdy dear bloggers,

My name is Laurens and I’m a developer for Firstsight working at iSoc12.
So far the first one week and a half we (François & me) worked on the mobile website for Firstsight.
Currently the authentication system is done and now we are working on the flashes & matching’s algorithm (check out François’ article to understand what a flash and a match is).
Also, almost the whole backend is ready (DB, web-services, etc)!

Enough with the nerd talk, what did we learn?

We learned a new word: bikeshedding!
What does it mean: bikeshedding is constantly talking about small non-important stuff,
and continue to discuss about it. So we of course try to avoid bike-shedding as much as possible.
[Source]

Anecdote of the week:
Pizza’s!
What pizza’s?!
Yes, Pizza’s. We ordered pizza’s for the team but Jumping Castle instead of ordering them all at once, we decided to order them team by team, to get multiple reductions instead of one reduction on the whole order. (When you have an order above 20€ you can get a reduction of €6, so we all made orders of €20 or more 🙂 )
It did cause some confusion with the delivery when they delivered a lot of pizza’s for everyone separately 😉
But the pizza’s were very good and we had a lot of fun 😉

All in all iSoc12 is a very fun working place, and I’m already looking forward to the next week!

12. July 2012 by Laurens Van de Perre
Categories: Firstsight, Summer of code | 2 comments

#iSoc12 Progression #code9000

Since last Thursday, we’ve learned that the project we’ll be working on will be ‘Take A Look Inside’, as you can read in our previous blogpost.

We’ve started to talk to different people who support the project and help us with it, like Peter De Bock. Peter is the person that inspired us with this idea and he is willing to shoot the videos at the different locations to use in our application. He’s working on getting some videos ready by the end of these 3 weeks, when our project should go into the testing phase in order to be able to successfully use our application.

We’ve also discussed different topics about the communication strategy with some other people, it is important that we know how it will be communicated when it goes live.

With that in mind, the first wireframes were being developed. We made several designs and after the necessary discussions we finally came to a consensus about what it should look like. So we created the temporary final version of what our screens should look like, how people can navigate through them and the differences between the native application and the web-app. Of course this could be subject to change in the different stages of the further development.

After some discussion we also have a final version of our logo. Now that we have this we can start to design the look & feel of our application based on the logo and the different colors that were used.

For the back-end of our application we started with researching which technologies we are going to use and what the possibilities are today. Starting from that, we wrote a small webservice in php to get the needed information from the database. We also implemented a part of the map. It is already possible to view the different locations on the map and get a travelling plan to your selected destination (a building).

Underneath you can can see a small screenshot of what our map looks like on an iPhone:

This post was also published on Apps For Ghent.

11. July 2012 by Lieven Benoot
Categories: Code9000, Summer of code | Leave a comment

#iSoc12 Photographic impressions & some tweets

At iSoc, we work hard, but we also have fun. You can see both in these pictures and tweets.

 

The Mobile Vikings team: Jens, Lennart, Hannes, Koen.

 

Michael and Thomas consult with Bart Rosseau of Stad Gent about Kot@Gent.

 

 

Miet helps Jeppe with his flowchart.

 

 

 

Yeri and Pieter work alongside the FlatTurtle team.

 

 

Peter De Bock advises the Code9000 team on their app.

 

11. July 2012 by Greet Derudder
Categories: Summer of code | 1 comment

#iSoc12 Busy busy bee days

When you get to work in an environment like iSoc, you meet all kinds of interesting people. Everybody has some kind of awesome talent, but most of all they are terribly motivated. It’s Jumping Castle impossible not to get infected with their positive mindset! When I go home after a day at iSoc, it feels like I’ve learned a thousand things and my brain is going to explode!

a dent in the world

My name is Miet, and my job is to keep your brain happy. You are supposed to feel good when interacting with the things that have been made here. I do this by helping other students with interface, experience and design. When it’s fun to use an application, your brain will smile and your face won’t frown. A good user experience is really important if you want people to keep using the things you make. This can be accomplished by picking the right colors, keeping elements in balance and making letters easy to read. By keeping interactions logical and clutter-free. But also, using your application has to be effortless. You should not have to think about it. In the end, a dash of humor can take you a long way. A product has to put a smile on your face, make life easier and better. If it does not add anything to your life, why would you use it?

It’s important to get the right feeling when you interact Bouncy Castle with the things that sprout from this creative hub. Everybody puts a lot of effort and time in it, trying to make a dent in the universe. This may sound a bit corny, but generally people here try to make the world a little better and fun with the things these busy bees build!

It’s great to work here and to get all the experience. But most of all, when I get home after a long day, I feel like we’ve made a little dent.

 

 

10. July 2012 by Miet Claes
Categories: Summer of code | Leave a comment

#iSoc12 The Missing H Story

Hi there,
I’m Michael and I’m part of the Missing H team together with Thomas. Originally we were going to finish the Circadia app, the idea with which we won Apps for Ghent 2012. Originally I said … Let’s back up from the beginning to see were it went terribly wrong with your favourite team’s favourite team. “Will our heroes survive?” I hear you say, “Will they still make an awesome app?”. Just read the story bro, stop asking questions. 😉

Wednesday July 4th
“Let’s make the Circadia app they said, it’ll be fun they said.”

That day, our two superheroes, Michael and Thomas, are present early in the headquarters of #iSoc12. Why so early you ask? Because we have to. Blame iRail.
And so, kids, began the brainstorming on the Circadia app by these two masterminds that fateful Wednesday morning. They looked over the original idea and they began to realize it was quite a nice idea in theory. Okay. Word-game, let’s take the two most important words of that phrase: in theory.
Step by step, we began to gather that the idea was less and less good and that it needed some new thinking.

And so the problem began. Our two masterminds struggled trough a whole day of brainstorming, ending up with the conclusion they feared at the beginning of the day: the Circadia app was a nice  idea in theory, but a struggle to make because of lack of the data they needed and a struggle because they couldn’t find the purpose why users would use this app instead of Foursquare etc, …

And so team The Missing H was kicked out of #iSoc12.
Or not?! Will they get a new app to work on and can they stay in the #iSoc12 team?!
(*2 minutes of dramatic music*)

Thursday July 5th
“Spoiler: They get a new app to work on and they can stay in the #iSoc12 team”

Thomas, on of the two Missing H team members in #iSoc12, couldn’t handle the pressure anymore. So he took the first plane to Egypt and so he flew away. Rumors have  the young Thomas will return in the last week of #iSoc12. But rumors are just rumors people. “What will happen with the weaker one of the two heroes? ” I hear you say. Don’t worry, this won’t be my only blogpost!
(*people cheering and aplauding*)

And so we’ve arrived at the  quest of Michael to look for a brand new app idea. Armed with just a notebook, a pen and his bare hands, he began his quest with a trip to the headquarters of the #Code9000 team! Luckily for him, since he is a programmer and therefore lazy, their headquarters were in the same building. Even on the same floor. And even better, in the same room! So we can conclude that they’re actually a part of #iSoc12 as well. But never just take that for granted kids!

To make a long story short (if that’s still even remotely possible), after a long quest of thinking and rethinking about ideas, meetings and the final pitch of the #code9000 team, we got an app!
Mothers, lock op your daughters, because we will make the app for Kot@Gent!!
For those who don’t know, Kot@Gent is a website to search for student housing in the city of Ghent.

And so Young Michael and — who knows if he might return or not — Young Thomas are ready to start to work on their app and finally make themselves useful at #iSoc12. (I heard only the strongest survive in this wilderness …). (*dramatic music*).

Stay tuned people.

Michael

09. July 2012 by Michael Vanderpoorten
Categories: Kot@Gent, Summer of code | Leave a comment

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