Intohand

I went down last Friday to Exeter for openMIC#16 which this time took place in coordination with the South West regional competition of the Microsoft Imagine Cup . There were some interesting talks. I especially enjoyed Robert Lo Bue’s talk on the ideal team member archetypes based on the characters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! I gave a talk as well, something i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, namely Porting iOS apps to Android . Admittedly it was probably not the ideal topic for a Microsoft sponsored event, but it seemed to be well received all the same.

It was also interesting listening to Ben from Saberr . They’ve devised a way to ask 37 specific questions of potential hackathon team members, and based on the resulting profiles and the teams they’ve formed, can adequately predict the winners. They’d already guessed 2 other hackathons successfully, and their results this time were spot on as well! Very interesting stuff, and i wonder if the same techniques could be used in the other direction, namely to formulate the perfect teams for hackathon events beforehand? Ben and Chris both like the idea, so maybe we can put something like that together – stay tuned!

I also have to say that Exeter University looked absolutely stunning! And it gave me a chance to make use of Android Jelly Bean’s PhotoSphere camera feature on my Galaxy Nexus. Here’s the university’s Great Hall, Exterior and Interior

Great news! The Total Derivatives iOS application has now been approved by Apple and is now available as a free download from the app store. Users without a Total Derivatives subscription can have access to a limited number of articles from the Total Derivatives newswire, whilst those with an existing subscription receive access to a full catalogue
of real-time news and analysis, with a customisable home page to display only the feeds that they are specifically interested in.

The application also features fully customisable push notifications, so users can receive alerts related to swaps, options, inflation, MTNs, bonds, issuance, raw news and dealer rankings across a range of different currencies/markets.

Available to download here for iPhone/iPod, iOS 6 and above.

Over the weekend, Matt and Elliot attended the GDG DevFest at the Google Campus in London. An informative day of talks on the Friday preceded a day of hacks on the Saturday. Together with friend Paolo we formed team Laser Explosion and hacked together a game tentatively called “ShakeWars”.

Most computer-based games out there are typically played as you vs. the computer, or you vs. other online players, but there seem precious few that are actually intended to involve multiple players in the same room. We aimed to create a game that could be played with multiple handsets, and a single large screen android device to show the current leaderboard so that spectators can keep up with who’s winning. We used a Nexus 7 for this, but ideally this would be a Google TV.

Each player has their own Android device, and after authenticating with Facebook, are able to join a game mediated by the tablet. The object of the game is to keep your device in a certain orientation (picture a waiter holding a tray of food and you get the idea) and move as little as possible, while simultaneously attempting to get your opponents to move their devices in whatever way you can. Your own “health” is indicated by an EKG-style heart-rate “beep”. The faster it’s beeping, the more you’re moving. If you slow down, the heart rate will go down with time and your score will improve. If you move too much, you flatline and you’re out of the game. At the end of a set amount of time, whoever has the highest score (by moving the least) and has not flatlined is declared the winner.

It turned out to be quite fun to play! And the judges seemed to like it as well, as we were selected as one of the three winning teams, and were each awarded with a ChromeBox – pretty cool! We hope to release the app on Google Play once we’ve managed to hone the game play a bit – and perhaps come up with a better name (suggestions welcome)! When we do we’ll post the info here, so stay tuned…

Congratulations to all our good friends at Bardowl, not only for being shortlisted for the 2012 Meffy Innovation Award for App – but for walking away as the winners of the CEO Summit Award for Innovation.

We’re absolutely delighted for Chris, Neil, Laura and everybody at Bardowl – and of course very proud to have been contributors to the technology they have pioneered. Onwards and upwards for Bardowl, that award looks great – and very well done from everybody in Intohand!