Day 3: Brainstorm
  1. Dynamic Minecraft servers
  2. Turf wars
  3. Awesome tracker
  4. GRT mobile schedule
  5. Local business and local ad company match up / “dating service”
  6. Google Docs for code
  7. Free food on campus push Notifier
  8. Better Digg for your friends’ news - super simple link sharing for news aggregation
  9. Quench - link sharing for friends.
* 10:33*am** | **November*22*2010 *


Day 2: The Last 2 Hours Well, we have around 1.5 hours until we “ship”. Here is a progress update!

The backend/server code has been done since lunch. The UI code has been broken all day. As soon as we fix one part, another part works. Scott is working on some uber flashy transitions between views.

We currently have 4 people working on the UI right now and 2 people working on ensuring the server is robust against crashes.

Here are some current photos. Note the looks of intensity as the deadline nears!

Also, where is dinner? We ordered those burgers and fries about an hour ago!





* 8:30*pm** | **November*21*2010 *


Day 1: The Genesis. Howdy lads and lasses, Skaught here!

Excited, nervous, stoked, sexy. These were just some of the words describing the team yesterday morning. We hit the Hub, only to find a mysterious gift for Facebook, one of our sponsors, but more on that later. After much cable plugging and wireless setups we were ready to roll! Except, we were 6 and needed to be 7. *

Jeff unfortunately slept through his alarm and was late. We were all sitting around discussing WWYDWJGH (What will you do when Jeff gets here). Upon arrival we descended upon Facebook’s gift. Could it be shirts? A ripstik? Headphones? We were all very, very wrong.

IT WAS SEVEN ICES.



Oh, and a loaf of old bread, because that makes any sense whatsoever. We really should have seen this coming, given the history of icing at Facebook. So after taking a knee and downing the fruity beverage, we started the day 2 hours late and slightly inebriated.

The App “QuickCite”

So there you are. It’s dark. It’s quiet. Alone, you brood in the library, staring at the mountains of books that surround you. Successfully, you have harvested their information for the greater good of your science paper. Alas! You require proper citations from all of them, or your prof will have your head. A dreadful situation, that 7cubed has a solution for!

Introducing QuickCite. Scan a book’s barcode with your iPhone or Android device, and QuickCite will generate the citation for you in whatever style you want. We’ll even send you an email with the citation for later use, because that’s how we roll. You’re welcome.

The Plan

The approach to QuickCite was three-pronged, much like a mighty trident of awesomeness: Android and iPhone apps with a Google AppEngine underneath.*

Team Android: Skaught and Gareth

Team iPhone: Jeff and Avi

Team AppEngine: Barbara, Ross, and Gilbert

If all goes according to plan, the mobile device will scan the barcode, extract the ISBN, and sends it to the backend for processing. Once there, we’ll pull the book’s data from the net, construct the citation, and send it back to the device and to the user’s e-mail. Badass.*



What Actually Happened

Team Android kicked ass early, completing the basic functionality in only 2 hours. Then we sat down to polish and realized that we both suck at Android UI. Then*Gareth*lost an hour trying to sync a Nexus One to his machine (he runs Ubuntu). Team iPhone, despite some initial setbacks, took advantage of our delays and caught up once they got the camera working.

EasyBib, our citation creation service, couldn’t get us an API key fast enough, so Gilbert wrote a replacement. Actually. Like, in an hour, he reimplemented EasyBib’s citation engine. +3 style points.

The backend team rocked out a feature-complete prototype lightning fast, like Chuck Norris fast. After that they started showing off. They added searching over multiple ISBN databases, and all 4 major citation styles. Classy.*

In the end, both Android and iPhone implementations came out pretty much how they were supposed to. We were even able to add in preferences saving on each platform, which is coolbeans.

The Result

BOOM, HEADSHOT.



Both Android and iPhone apps are complete and production-ready. We are waiting for the iPhone app to be approved, but you can satiate your citation hunger by heading over to quickcite.it, or grabbing it from the Android Marketplace.

The whole process was seamless and quite rewarding. We hope that you guys actually might enjoy citing your papers now:). Tell your friends!*



The Lessons

-*Jeff*needs a*better alarm clock

- Read*APIs*before just blindly jumping in and using stuff. *disappoint*eyes to*Avi*

- Don’t overload your graphic designer last minute. He will get snippy and threaten your life.

Shenagigans

- Jeff’s lunch was craftily stolen by our graphic designer. We all pitched in a bit of food so he didn’t starve.

- The Live stream was fun. You guys should really check it out. Apparently I have a some fans:).

- Popularity Contest! We checked our google analytics for each of our pages. Here are the results! Barbara won, easily. However Gilbert so far has had the most screen time by far. Hmm.

- Barbara got her first taste of Python. “It’s like english! ‘if not this, then that’”*

Stay tuned for tomorrow!*

Here’s a pic of Avi eating a carrot. Enjoy.

* 5:05*pm** | **November*21*2010 *




More...