I've always wanted to create at least a small working Java library that could be potentially useful to someone and put it into the Maven Central repository to learn the whole process. I've finally managed to do it in 2015 by creating the LambdaFromString[0] library that can convert a string with code to Java 8 lambda at runtime :-) Surely not a rocket science, but still makes me feel a little bit proud.
Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#22WhenToExchange - Know the right time to exchange your money.
I’ve been working on this for the past serveral months, an idea I came up with as I was trying to figure out my vacation schedule for the next year and plan a budget for the various countries I thought of visiting. It’s a website that calculates the best time to exchange one currency for another accounting for the various exchange rates involved.
LogCroc - Because Crocs like Logs
Analyzes server logs for events, exceptions and displays a realtime dashboard.
http://logcroc.com/?eat=demo https://github.com/mpolyak/logcroc
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#23I made Annex, my first iOS app. http://jathu.me/annex/
It made it on to the front page of Product Hunt and reached top 100 in productivity, so I'm pretty happy!
One thing I learned is that after the media hype dies down, visits/downloads drop A LOT! I knew this from articles I've read before, but seeing it happen is something else (and sucks).
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#24I created a opensource software with the name suosuoban. It is an illustrating tool, with ideas coming from this paper http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/papers/watanabe_uist.... It is in https://github.com/henryscala/suosuoban. It is implemented in QT, so it can be run in multiple OS.
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#25http://www.xmastimeapp.com An app that lets parents call their children posing as Santa Claus. I posted it on Show HN the other day[0] but didn't get any comments yet. I am not complaining though, considering the scope of this. I would be very happy if someone would give us their thoughts though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783251
Did you produce this video yourself or was it done by an outside firm? It looks really professional!
What is your backend/technology stack like for supporting the video chat?
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#26http://www.xmastimeapp.com An app that lets parents call their children posing as Santa Claus. I posted it on Show HN the other day[0] but didn't get any comments yet. I am not complaining though, considering the scope of this. I would be very happy if someone would give us their thoughts though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783251
Did you produce this video yourself or was it done by an outside firm? It looks really professional! What is your backend/technology stack like for supporting the video chat?
The video was produced by a an outside firm, yes. A professional video production company.
Regarding the technology stack, I'll start by saying that it is not SIP/RTP/ICE which may surprise some people. We had prior experience of that (previous consulting for a major telco), but choose to not go that route. Those protocols are seriously overcomplicated (design by committee...) and the only benefit it would give us is interoperability - which is often important, but not for this project.
So call control, media stream and NAT punch-through protocols are entirely custom. Might sound crazy, but if I tell you the server is less than 3k lines of code, and was written in two weeks, maybe not so much?
The call control server is done in Erlang - turned out well so far as we've live-upgraded the servers several times without interrupting any calls. We use iOS apns VOIP notifications for notifying the other peer of the incoming call.
The UDP media stream is peer to peer and carries H.264 for video and AAC-ELD for audio. Since the app is iOS only we could take advantage of the built in hardware video decoder and audio libraries for that. Not to mention the patent licenses for those technologies that come bundled with iOS. We had to develop a jitter-buffer and audio-video syncing solution on top of that of course - that's the most complicated part of the client side.
Edit: I should add that we do not support Symmetric/Carrier grade NAT traversal in this first version. Since it's not possible to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection under such conditions we'll need to add server side support for forwarding the media. That's going to be a major challenge for next year.
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#27http://www.xmastimeapp.com An app that lets parents call their children posing as Santa Claus. I posted it on Show HN the other day[0] but didn't get any comments yet. I am not complaining though, considering the scope of this. I would be very happy if someone would give us their thoughts though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10783251
That is really well done! Great video too. Congrats!
Thank you, I am glad you like it!
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#28No doubt that I am most proud of (cannot say I invented it, more correct would be that I stumbled upon) the agile and Maker centric TimeBlock method http://timeblock.com We started using the method Jan 5'th 2015 and now we have a SaaS app with paying earli bird users and more users of the method not using the app. Two of the companies using the method (besides us), attribute their growth directly to TimeBlock.
Cool project! How did you market it?
I do some content marketing, some SEO and linkbuilding but mostly I sell it old school.
Call all linked up with on linkedin, show them and convert some to the method, ask for referral, repeat.
The best source for lead has been posting articles and images from when I teach others the method on linkedin, this leads people to my homepage where they sign up with phonenumber - then I call them :)
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#29No doubt that I am most proud of (cannot say I invented it, more correct would be that I stumbled upon) the agile and Maker centric TimeBlock method http://timeblock.com We started using the method Jan 5'th 2015 and now we have a SaaS app with paying earli bird users and more users of the method not using the app. Two of the companies using the method (besides us), attribute their growth directly to TimeBlock.
Increase the font size for mobile (s4) of the "sleep better..." text block at the top...it's about a third the size of the other text
Thanks, looking into it!
Re: Ask HN: Things you created in 2015?
#30Merry Christmas Everyone!
I created HitByWords this year, an iOS app which helps people explore news with Google Trends.
This is totally a passion project since I got a day job and only can spend my spare time building it. Due to serious time and budget constrains, I am only able to develop this app piece by piece. Though I am very enjoy the process :)
The motivation to build this app is I read news everyday but sometimes I cannot relate some reports. But I feel if a report is published by a credible news source, the event or accident is supposed to be crucial for some people in the world and I should feel sympathy. Like today an astronaut phones wrong number from space and I found people in London, Birmingham and Manchester have high interest in "Tim Peake" through Google Trends, which makes me feel this is a real thing.
I still have a lot of ideas to implement and try to make this app a better tool to explore news.
Hope my explanation is clear enough since English is not my first language.
Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcomed.
[0] http://www.hitbywords.com/ [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hitbywords-browse-explore/id...