News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by sea6ear on Monday July 30, 2012 @03:50PM (#4314321)
I've been dabbling with the idea of taking Awk style patterns and translating them to JavaScript to run in Node.js (with the intent of allowing Awk style programs that also allow higher-order programming constructs). At this point I've got the translation working for some simple cases.

I've been pondering whether to trying to generalize the concept to work on http requests instead of just files, at which point I think a fairly elegant micro web framework could be made that applies Awk style pattern / action pairs to the incoming http requests.

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by dreadsword on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:45PM (#4299295)
http://linkthing.co

A delicious replacement that uses twitter syntax to organize stuff - i.e.: hashtags and @people. App integrates with twitter for both tweeting bookmarks that you add, and importing links you've tweeted previously as bookmarks.

Not at all complete (both features and fixes to be done), but solid enough that I use it every day for myself to organize links that I use for references, collect things that I'm researching, to create a "to-read" list, and so on.

It was learning foray into bootstrap and jquery, and has gone pretty well.

Right now, its sign in through Twitter only. I'll add native account creation at some point, but you're more than welcome to try it out in the meantime.

Edit: Screengrab of Linkthing in action http://imgur.com/Rrr0g

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by dreadsword on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:46PM (#4299303)
Oh yeah, if you do try it, there's a "Delete Account Data" option under the account name dropdown so you can clear your stuff if you decide not to stay.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by kkoppenhaver on Friday July 27, 2012 @03:54AM (#4300456)
Love the look and the concept. I'll have to check it out.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by dreadsword on Friday July 27, 2012 @11:21AM (#4301846)
Right on - thank-you! Be warned - its incomplete! You'll probably bump into what you consider to be missing key functionality, broken things, etc.

If you do go in and try it out, I would love to hear your feedback!

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by cjstewart88 on Thursday July 26, 2012 @10:55PM (#4299788)
I've been working on tubalr for 2 years this september. It's allows you to take advantage of all the great music content on YouTube.

I'm out of features for now, been improving on UI and design lately.

http://www.tubalr.com

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by tsm on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:47PM (#4299610)
Writing a program that analyzes traditional Scottish music and composes new tunes in the same style. Right now I'm in the careful planning phase--reading up on LSTM recurrent neural networks and such, but I should be able to start coding shortly (at the very least I can do all the software engineering parts while I figure out what the best algorithm to use is).

I'm not deluding myself about its long-term non-profitability...I'm just doing it because I find it fascinating. At least there's no hosting cost--I already have a laptop running SBCL and Emacs, which is all I need.

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by kkoppenhaver on Friday July 27, 2012 @03:55AM (#4300459)
As a former music composition major, I find this fascinating. Exploring where creation as humans ends and what can be composed using a set of rules is an interesting boundary to me. Best of luck to you!
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by rvid on Saturday July 28, 2012 @03:44AM (#4304998)
That's really interesting. Will you be open-sourcing this?
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by tsm on Saturday July 28, 2012 @06:11AM (#4305216)
Thanks. I am planning to open -source it once I start coding.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by georgemcbay on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:53PM (#4299318)
In my free time I'm writing an alternative firmware for chumby devices (and possibly similar devices, if I ever get my hands on a Raspberry Pi or alike) that focuses solely on streaming radio services (ones which have usable open APIs) with no dependence on the chumby backend servers.

All of the app layer is written in Go with a custom widget set and pure Go rendering right out to an mmaped /dev/fb (the rest of the firmware is a lightly customized openembedded build).

This won't make any money but it is teaching me a lot of Go.

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by spoonfoe on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:07PM (#4299192)
C# / Asp.net pays my bills, but I've been playing with node.js lately. Just to kind of see what the hubbub was.

I took Ryan Dahl's chat room demo and added a database for validating users & message logging. I've added a couple commands that allow users to change their nicknames on the fly and some other feeble functionality.

I think eventually i'd like for users to be able to run javascript across all sessions, which could be a complete mess or kind of cool.

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by kkoppenhaver on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:10PM (#4299199)
I've been looking into node myself and this seems like an interesting application. I'm hoping for the "kind of cool" option for you when it's all said and done!
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by callmeed on Thursday July 26, 2012 @08:44PM (#4299438)
A "daily photo challenge" iOS app. For those not in the know, it's sort of a sub-community of Instagram with over 1 million users (my wife is big on it). (see https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23photoadayjuly)

So, for kicks, I thought I'd try and build an Instagram-like app that is just for a daily photo challenge.

If anyone wants to be a tester, let me know.

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by godisdad on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:57PM (#4299327)
Been working on and off on http://mtransit.herokuapp.com/ -- a mobile optimized site for looking up transit schedules for the Minneapolis / St. Paul bus system. It's built with Flask and a sprinkling of JQuery. I am hoping to factor out some code into a standalone lib for others to build competitor apps with.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by kkoppenhaver on Friday July 27, 2012 @03:53AM (#4300454)
I've been looking to do something like this myself. I go to school in Bloomington, IL, and for the large amounts of students and their tech savvy, the bus system is still very low tech. Would love to hear how the development turns out.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by dreadsword on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:59PM (#4299331)
Hmm - the example "24 st" doesn't return anything.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by QuasiPreneur on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:39PM (#4299282)
http://VentingPost.com and http://Nurdology.com and http://QuasiPreneur.com

Gotta spend more time and energy into Nurdology.

And I have more but.. realizing.... stupid me.. I'm spreading myself too thin...quantity != quality! :(

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by frankphilips on Thursday July 26, 2012 @06:59PM (#4299165)
I'm building a platform where non-profits can host virtual garage sales, so their members can buy/sell stuff and donate a portion of the proceeds back to the NPO. Think of it as an Ebay for Charities. It's a side project as of now. Would love your feedback :) http://shruffle.com
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by kkoppenhaver on Thursday July 26, 2012 @07:05PM (#4299188)
Love the idea and the launch page/video. Your site is very well done. The concept is interesting to me too, as an Economics major. Any plans to monetize at this point or would it be entirely donation based? A non-profit of sorts in and of itself?
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by frankphilips on Thursday July 26, 2012 @08:23PM (#4299393)
Yes. Thinking of adopting a 6% transaction markup. So if someone lists a TV for $100, we list it for $106, and keep $6 as our fee.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by victorhn on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:22PM (#4299535)
Do you realize that all your "poor third world kids" are asian/brown/black and the donors/buyers are white? Maybe there is some correspondence with reality, but this just reinforces the streotype IMO.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by frankphilips on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:44PM (#4299604)
Being South Asian myself, I can strongly say that is purely a coincidence. Good observation though, I didn't catch that myself.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by AznHisoka on Friday July 27, 2012 @03:06PM (#4303068)
There is almost complete correspondence with reality...
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by nickbarnwell on Thursday July 26, 2012 @08:45PM (#4299444)
I'm working on http://callmemae.be - originally built it at an 8-hour Hackathon in SF and now working on turning it into something a bit more robust so it can be properly used for introductions and a demonstration of my technical abilities.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by hodgesmr on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:02PM (#4299493)
Before I log in, can you explain the service a bit more?
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by nickbarnwell on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:06PM (#4299503)
Improving the landing page is high on the list of priorities. Have an incredible designer onboard now, so look for improvements and a ShowHN soon :) Non-FB login will come at that time as well.

Essentially, It lets you share a virtual business card via email or SMS (see: http://callmemae.be/nb). Essentially it was created because I can never remember my cards when I go to events, but always have my phone.

Some of the features I'm in the process of writing are:

* Bump two phones together to exchange contact info (all JS/HTML5) * Share contact info with an entire group at once * Customize your card background and choose your own fields * Analytics surrounding sharing (who's opened your card, clicked the mailto:, etc...)

Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by philipDS on Saturday July 28, 2012 @01:31PM (#4305971)
Isn't this what Bump is doing too? Or am I wrong?
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by nickbarnwell on Saturday July 28, 2012 @01:48PM (#4306006)
bump requires a native app, we're all HTML5 - someone can navigate to our site and be sharing in two clicks, not 10
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by fjellfras on Friday July 27, 2012 @04:34AM (#4300534)
I am writing a search engine. The main purpose was to work on a large project to give myself exposure and polish as a programmer (sysadmin by trade). The crawling and indexing systems are done now. I am finding the ranking to be the most challenging part but it is quite fun overall.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by sanchitg94 on Saturday July 28, 2012 @05:03AM (#4305119)
http://secretify.herokuapp.com/ it's like the iPhone app Snapchat. It's used to send images in a more secured fashion. Working on making it more secure but it's fully functional as it is .
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by hodgesmr on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:00PM (#4299483)
http://deductivepolitics.com/ Not making any money off of it, just an experiment I'm doing. I try to predict who people will vote for in November based on Facebook likes.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by skram on Saturday July 28, 2012 @06:17PM (#4306699)
http://www.mappyhealth.com - tracking disease trends on Twitter (more data sources including CDC reports coming eventually) and trying to make sense of it all.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by adam-_- on Saturday July 28, 2012 @03:53AM (#4305012)
I'm currently at the validation stage of a social analytics and monitoring tool http://twitcherhq.com - undecided whether to take it further yet.
Re:Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? by byjess on Saturday July 28, 2012 @10:05AM (#4305530)
I'm working on the One Platform.

One platform to rule them all One platform to find them One platform to bring them all And in the darkness bind them.