Let us know about your awesome side projects and weekend hacks. What are the cool things you have made or what you are currently working on or plan to work in near future?
Since I was a little kid I've played on text based "mafia" games, where the idea was like any other game, to be the highest rank, the richest, the one with the most "kills" or in the best "crew", etc.<p>I started learning to code because of these games in all honesty, over the last couple of weeks I've been working on an open source mafia game (with an installer and configuration page, control panel for moderators, etc) to allow inexperienced people to release their own version of the game (or to give experienced programmers a solid base to work from.)<p>At this stage I'm getting in the content, the gambling aspects of it, etc. and I am reaching the point where I will consider releasing it. About 90 hours have gone in to it so far at about 6 hours per day (I also have a 40 hour/week full time job with a 2 hour each way bus commute.)<p>I've come up against and defeated a lot of challenges, and the codebase is very clean and MVC based (I use php5, CodeIgniter and MySQL) so I'm genuinely proud that this revisit to my more youthful days has been a fruitful one. I plan to go live with a demo and release the source on github and via my personal website in about a week or two, depending on how I fare against what I have left to code.
I have a terrible memory, and want to remember more about the little things that happen in my life, and remember the facts I come across that I find interesting. Spaced Repetition Learning is a proven tool for improving memory, but still isn't available in a well designed simple app. (I've tried them all!). I am busy building this app as a side project. I was excited when <a href="http://memstash.co/" rel="nofollow">http://memstash.co/</a> launched but it doesn’t use spaced repetition, the key aspect of improving memory. There are so many fascinating things around me, and with this app I will remember everything I want to.
My side project is <a href="http://www.imobee.com.br" rel="nofollow">http://www.imobee.com.br</a>, it's a real estate search engine for Brazil...<p>We are trying to build something close to Trulia because our real estate sites suck bad.<p>We are still on alpha and only the main interface is working, but we will add a lot of statistics and analysis to it so it can become useful.<p>Coding on my free time with a friend and trying to find some money to work full time on it, but it's very very very hard to do that here in Brazil.<p>Opnions are welcome.
Still hacking away on <a href="http://www.thetaboard.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.thetaboard.com</a> on nights and weekends. Getting a good flow of signups. Trying to decide whether to charge for it (and if so, how to market it) or possibly just leaving it free (it isn't costing much to run).<p>As always would love to have some feedback.
I made my first ever Android app in march:
<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=kiteflyingmonkey" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=kiteflyingmo...</a>
It's a dice rolling app called 'Time to Die', I did it in about 2 months of evenings. I had never programmed in Java before.<p>I started making a website:
<a href="http://www.talesfromthemoshpit.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.talesfromthemoshpit.com/</a> What I've done there isn't really functional yet. It's taken about a month of evenings. I had never used HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL or JavaScript before.<p>I kind of lost interest in my website when my Raspberry Pi arrived, and since I have been working on a home media centre. It's going quite well so far, I'm doing it in Perl, which seems to be quite a fun language.
I put <a href="http://www.foundcamera.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.foundcamera.com</a> together as a quick 1 day project a few months ago. I wanted to put an interactive map at the centre of it all.<p>It really is an MVP of a project currently and I would like to expand on it as I'm getting a backlog of cameras to list on the site even without any promotion - just good search engine rankings for popular phrases.<p>Lots of people are offering rewards in their posts too, a few people have said if I promoted the posts with rewards this would entice more people to help out but I don't think this is right.<p>I'd also like to monetize it in an unobtrusive way, just to cover its own running costs, as there's only so many projects that you can keep paying for.<p>I'd really appreciate feedback/suggestions.
I'm still slowly working on Hackerbuddy: <a href="http://hackerbuddy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hackerbuddy.com/</a> - fun fact, the user base is now at a level where I can find people on Hackerbuddy to help improve Hackerbuddy. Is there a name for apps that recursively improve themselves?
I've been working on <a href="http://www.hupland.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.hupland.com</a> for almost a year. The idea is to help you to improve your Heads Up NL skill by playing, studying your games, and monitoring your ELO rating. I had this problem myself few years back when I was a graduate student struggling with financial issues. I was trying to earn some money on online poker sites but I couldn't afford learning by losing first. I'm pretty close to the MVP-version launch (only 1 feature: play with friend).<p>One thing I've learnt was that it is really easy to get distracted due to all context switches and conflict responsibilities. So I try my best to touch the code every day (even 1 line CSS change is good enough).
I created a disposable email service - <a href="http://dudmail.com" rel="nofollow">http://dudmail.com</a> - this was a interesting exercise to attempt as I didn't have any experience dealing with mail servers before this.<p>It's been moderately successful (as far as disposable email sites go) - there's about 5000 registered users, a few hundred active users, and after a year or so am on the 1st page google results for "disposable email". (I'm number 7 on the page, but at least it's the front page =)
Currently working on a little app that sends email reminders for movies you want to see in theaters. It happens far too often that I see a trailer somewhere, think "woah I want to see that movie" then just forget about it, only to remember when it's no longer playing in local theaters.<p>Just finishing up the frontend, should be able to release this soon... if I find a good name, at least. Current working title is Filmnudger which I think is pretty damn bad, haha!
New Orleans Music & Event Calendar:
<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wheredatwhendat" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wheredatwh...</a> and soon at <a href="http://nolamusiccalendar.com" rel="nofollow">http://nolamusiccalendar.com</a><p><a href="http://isshort.com" rel="nofollow">http://isshort.com</a> - URL Shortener that uses publisher-provided short URLs (flic.kr, n.pr, wp.me, etc)
Started working on a SAAS concept recently, nothing solid to show right now.<p>My list of side projects from 2010,
Android:
Personal Finance Calculator (<a href="http://bit.ly/STAJ8n" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/STAJ8n</a>) helps you to calculate Loan Interest rate.<p>Baby Names (<a href="http://bit.ly/STAJ8n)Provides" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/STAJ8n)Provides</a> List of Baby names and their meaning<p>Mobile Number Tracker(<a href="http://bit.ly/STAIkI" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/STAIkI</a>) provides caller info based on the mobile number (Only India).<p>Mobile Number Tracker US (<a href="http://bit.ly/PGakKz" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/PGakKz</a>)<p>iOS Game:
Juicy Fun (<a href="http://bit.ly/Ub7IRv" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/Ub7IRv</a>) physics game
Atom Ace (<a href="http://bit.ly/UxZ6F9" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/UxZ6F9</a>) a different kind of puzzle.<p>iOS App:
London Tube Map (<a href="http://bit.ly/QqAXo7" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/QqAXo7</a>) shows london tube statues.<p>Movie Theaters (<a href="http://bit.ly/SwedyD" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/SwedyD</a> ) shows info about latest movies and movie theaters which plays them.
1) <a href="http://my.sket.sh/" rel="nofollow">http://my.sket.sh/</a> Paste screengrabs, sketch & add notes, share link with friends (can share read-only version or collaborative version where you can sketch together in realtime)<p>2) <a href="http://my.groceries.io/" rel="nofollow">http://my.groceries.io/</a> Input your grocery stores, then aisles in the order you travel through them. Then make your grocery list and eventually through use remembers which aisles to find your items<p>3) <a href="http://www.gifttracker.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gifttracker.net/</a> Family members each have an account, enter gifts they want, and reserve gifts to avoid duplicates. NB doesn't run under https, been meaning to take care of this. If you want to try it out keep that in mind, pick a test password.
I'm working on FreedomSponsors (<a href="http://www.freedomsponsors.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.freedomsponsors.org</a>) - a micro-crowdfunding platform for open source projects.
People can place money bounties related to the projects' issues, and pay after they're resolved.<p>Currently, payments are handled by Paypal.
Right now I'm looking into Bitcoin and bit-pay to enable bitcoin payments into FS.
There are a few user experience challenges that I have to work out first though (see <a href="https://github.com/freedomsponsors/www.freedomsponsors.org/issues/78" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/freedomsponsors/www.freedomsponsors.org/i...</a>)<p>FS is open source on Github.
Any kind of collaboration and feedback is very welcome :-)
I will start with myself. I recently introduced the first version of my wordpress theme "strapfolio" on HN [1]. Got lots of visitors, not so many sales and some valuable insights through comments and analytics. I will be utilizing my coming weekends to improve it.<p>I am also looking for ideas for my next side project that I will use as an opportunity to get a better understanding of Flask & Angular.js. So, if you aren't able to work on it yourself, let me know if you would like to get some web app that you wish existed.<p>[1] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753200" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753200</a>
Working on my video game. It's a 2d platformer / adventure game, based on the show Community. It's open source if anyone is interested in writing Lua.<p><a href="http://projecthawkthorne.com" rel="nofollow">http://projecthawkthorne.com</a>
My today's 3 hours project is: <a href="https://ptweetcom.appspot.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ptweetcom.appspot.com/</a>. It is thought to be a "How to" example project for Google App Engine. In general it is a micro service that gives twitter users ability to post private messages to anyone (not only for followers). You enter your secret message and addressee (@person) and get a link in response which you add to your tweet. Only addressee can follow the link and see your private message.<p>Next evening (now it's evening in Russia :) ) I replace this service to ptweet.com, make it more sexy and write "How to" for my blog (I guess).
I just released Device Debug to Android <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.korri.android.devicedebug" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.korri.andr...</a> It reads Android device specs and device log and shows them to the user. It also allows the user to share this info through email or by writing it to a file.<p>The main reason for making it was to have a way to get information from devices you don't have access to. For example if your client complains that your app doesn't work with her device, you just instruct her to install Device Debug and email the info to you.
Yesterday I launched my iOS receipt management app, Simple Receipts. My goal was to make the absolute simplest app possible, as all of the (many) existing ones were complex.<p>By default it simply saves your receipt images to your camera roll. If you link with Dropbox, it will upload them there.<p>As of today it's $0.99 in the App Store. You can find it here:<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simple-receipts/id509966025?ls=1&mt=8" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simple-receipts/id509966025?...</a>
I want to work on something where people can leave comments/reviews about rented property they have lived in. Whenever I move to a new place I always find myself wanting to ask the last person why they left, so I can be aware beforehand if the shower leaks, or the rooms are damp or the landlord is useless. I've found sites that have reviews of landlords or letting agents, but not of the actual properties themselves.<p>I'd love to know if anyone else thinks this is feasible/useful.
I created a service called <a href="https://www.cyphrd.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.cyphrd.com</a> - previously called passwords.cc - which is a secured personal information service, let's you store passwords, notes, bank information, ssh logins, files/documents, and whatever else you'd like - securely, encrypted with an AES256 encryption client-side. The encryption library I've created is open source and the service is in a private beta stage.
I built <a href="http://thepaperboard.com/" rel="nofollow">http://thepaperboard.com/</a> with my wife over the weekend. It's a gallery of drawings people made with the Paper iPad app and shared on Twitter. We released an iPhone app based on it the next few days.<p>Wrote about it at <a href="http://hboon.com/how-a-developer-spent-a-weekend-with-his-developer-wife/" rel="nofollow">http://hboon.com/how-a-developer-spent-a-weekend-with-his-de...</a>.
I came up with a way to automatically modify your websites outgoing links with an affiliate code, useful for busy forums. Kind of like a lightweight, self run Skimlinks.<p><a href="http://www.affililink.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.affililink.com</a><p><a href="https://github.com/deanbarrow/Affililink" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/deanbarrow/Affililink</a><p>Edit: When I find some time, I'd really like to improve upon this and document it.
I've been working on <a href="http://www.weartolook.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.weartolook.com</a> for a while now, we're a fashion shopping mall with 250 of the best high street, luxury and department stores here in the UK, we <i>just</i> crossed 2m products and are gearing up for a proper launch over the next few weeks. Interested in any feedback.<p>(For you US guys, we're just about to add a wave of ~100 US stores)<p>edit: clickable
I am working on todo service and apps (yes, I know, yet another one world doesn't need, but I really enjoy it) where lists of tasks can be shared between devices and people. Starting point here: <a href="http://todoteria.com" rel="nofollow">http://todoteria.com</a><p>I have written apps for Symbian, MeeGo and J2ME (not happy with the last one). As well I have BlackBerry PlayBook version ready for upload to App World.
I bought <a href="http://livelystocks.com" rel="nofollow">http://livelystocks.com</a> and I'm rebuilding it. It's a live streaming news service for stocks and shares. If you want to know why Apple shares have tanked, you go to livelystocks and check the live news as well as the latest headlines.<p>It's a little like stocktwits but many more sources and much more focused on just news, as fast as it happens.
I've got
<a href="http://placeguitar.com" rel="nofollow">http://placeguitar.com</a> - Guitar Image Placeholder written in python on google app engine<p><a href="http://themepiggy.com" rel="nofollow">http://themepiggy.com</a> - Open source themes based on bootstrap - written in padrino - still a work in progress - I really need to get more themes up there as well and finish off some of the code
I've been working on <a href="http://experimatch.com" rel="nofollow">http://experimatch.com</a> - a site for matching academic researchers with potential test subjects.
Most researchers resort to posting flyers around campus, thus missing on a lot of people who are willing to participate for compensation (that is offered anyway). Already being used around London, and slowly growing.
I am working on <a href="http://getprivatizer.com" rel="nofollow">http://getprivatizer.com</a> , an open source chrome plugin, that allows you to encrypt everything you send to facebook and decrypt everything your friends want to share with you. The server and the plugin are here: <a href="https://github.com/wolfv/privatizer" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/wolfv/privatizer</a>
Going slow on <a href="http://www.migrainevibe.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.migrainevibe.com</a> (a migraine journal) on weekends mostly.
I've been on HN a while now (just reading, no comments), and I have to say that it really is worth going after your dreams one line of code at a time.<p>Thanks for the thread, I would never have the guts do a "Show HN" post with my project.
It's not much, but I've been working on <a href="http://nflscorebot.github.com" rel="nofollow">http://nflscorebot.github.com</a> for a while now. I built it mainly for myself; I always have a Twitter client open and wanted an easier way to get football scores. I've since built versions for hockey and college football, as well as French versions.
I've written a greasemonkey script for reddit that pulls directly linked images, resizes them and displays them inline.
I recently updated it to include flickr links as well.<p><a href="https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/124010" rel="nofollow">https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/124010</a>
I'm trying to finish up a logger app for iPad. Based on NSLogger (<a href="https://github.com/fpillet/NSLogger" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fpillet/NSLogger</a>), my goal is to build an app that could be useful out in the field when you're to debug or monitor how your app is behaving.
My two side projects:<p><a href="http://www.sizeall.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.sizeall.com</a> site for comparing things by real size on screen<p><a href="http://www.newswebreader.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.newswebreader.com</a> web Usenet client (three pane, like Thunderbird)
I've been working on <a href="http://www.thenpsx.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thenpsx.com/</a>. It's a prediction market for consumer products. I'm slowly growing the number of products represented and getting a bit of market activity. Though it's pretty thin at the moment.
I'm writing a book on how to get seed funding with a team and an idea _for no equity_ in exchange (up to 120000 eur). There are three methods, all EU based, but you can apply no matter what nationality you have. I'm preparing a launch page now.
I'm a newbie to Rails, yet every free time I can get around to I try to build a Kickstarter for charity in Vietnam. Still in development (<a href="http://charitymap.herokuapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://charitymap.herokuapp.com</a>)
Nothing mind blowing.<p>GameBalls.info
Keeps track of viewer counts of video game streams.<p>ExtempEngine (.com)
A mobile and chrome news database app for a very specific niche - high school extemporaneous speech students
Working on a cross-platform Java-based command line shell that aims to be better than the powershell's available and bring the goodness of user prompts to commands.
nvPY is my ugly but cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac) and open-source (new BSD) simplenote-syncing keyboard-friendly realtime-searching note-taking tool! <a href="https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy</a>
wrote my own scraper for stock prices, now im writing my own chart analysis app in ROR and jqPlot<p>also going to pull Twitter and FB updates to see if i can determine the influence social media has on stock price movements
I'm not sure what the point of this question is? Usually, if HNers have a project that they want to show to the world, they submit it as "Show HN"... But seeing as you're here for almost two years, I guess you already know that.