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Ask HN: What are you working on right now?

78 points by andrewtbham ↗ HN
What are you working on right now?

I'll start... I am working for as a contractor for a company that sends messages (phone calls, text messages, and emails) for schools and businesses. Currently I'm working on an android app that is a front end for they system.

in my spare time i work on a side project... search engine with integrated social bookmarking http://www.searchstream.co

202 comments

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RDDavies
I work for a telecom company as a web developer during the day. (PHP/MySQL/Joomla/XHTML/CSS/JS/jQuery).

Finishing up some work for a side job now. If any of you guys need some reasonably inexpensive web dev work, let me know, side work is my way of drumming up $ to launch a side project and provides my traveling/leisure budget as well :).

andrewtbham
can u give an idea what reasonably inexpensive means?
RDDavies
Send an email to ryandavies@gmail.com and I'd be happy to talk with you.
RDDavies
Any reason this was downvoted? Typically in the 40-60/per hour range depending upon the work, if your objection was to me not posting this.
aberkowitz
It was probably downvoted because people like numbers and formulas upfront versus having to email you.
csomar
may be he's not looking for freelancers but just wandering what's your rate.
ptn
Job: SugarCRM customization for a client. Own: building a website for file administration and sharing, to learn Rails 3
Shamiq
Day job here is making Dynamics CRM awesome...have you tried Dynamics?
ptn
Nope, sorry.
clemesha
Improvements to my app http://TheWikiGame.com, making more "game types" like "Speed Race", "Least Clicks", "5 Clicks to Jesus", etc. After that, iPhone/Android apps for the game.
hyperbovine
This is so great! My siblings and I invented "5 Clicks to Jesus" (as I'm sure many have) during some drunken family gatherings over the past two years. I had been vowing to sit down and code it when I got some free time, but you just saved me the trouble. Hats off!

PS Have you ever thought about analyzing the wikipedia graph to make the game more interactive? (I study combinatorics.) I thought it would be fun to have the game give you feedback ("Warmer! Colder!") as you muddle through.

clemesha
Awesome, thanks! I love hearing about people who invented the game - people tell me all the time, "hey, I invented that!" :-) I certainly did not invent the game, but I'm determined to make something awesome out of it.
andrewtbham
that game is cool... i think you might could clean up the front page a little... to make it more obvious... but the idea for the game is great! did you make it yourself? do you make lots of games? do you do this full time?
clemesha
Thanks. Yeah, the front page is pretty messy/busy - any simple ideas to make it cleaner?

It's just me working on the game, part time right now, and it's the first game I've made.

andrewtbham
here are some ideas: 1) integrate the "Play the game now" box with the "How to play The Wiki Game" box.

So be one box that has: " click as few links as possible to get from "Banana" to "Britney Spears", as fast as you can!"

where Banana and Britney Spears are replaced with your actual words.

2) have a very clear "start" button. It's not clear without spending a few moments to understand to click the first term to start the game.

good luck. it's a cool game... another thing might be to show an example or some strategy tips. that might not should be on the first page though...

dpcan
Working on my next Android game, hopefully it will come out this week - maybe Thursday ;)

Then going back to do some updates to my other games.

In my personal experiences in the Android market, the more polish I put on my games, the more they sell. Hoping to keep the ball rolling.

andrewtbham
I like the personal experience tip... i should have added that to the question.. what are you working on and share an insight from it.
GVRV
Awesome, could share your experiences regarding selling Android apps (Hours put in to sales made)?
mattiask
A WPF application desktop search engine/launcher. A little like Quicksilver/Ubiquity but with a new kind of interface and scope.
ashscott
Working on startup http://www.estate3d.com, a place where anyone can have their physical building/premises created in 3D for the Google Earth 3D buildings layer and/or embedded on their site.
flyosity
I'm working on a series of tutorials that teach web designers how to take their skills to the iPhone and iPad and start building native iOS apps. Each tutorial will go through the full process of designing one screen of a fictional app in Photoshop and then taking that mockup and building the interface using UIKit. Both the PSD and Xcode projects will be included and each tutorial will cost less than most computer books.
jhen095
Job: C++ and Java developer working on development tools in the data warehouse and BI space.

Extra curricular: An AJAX site on a LAMPP stack for aiding in teaching Computer Science. Students can create exercises and answer other students exercises. Academic purposes only.

Also working on a start-up in the Rural/farming sector to help with the sharing, transparency and analysis of information.

And planning out my next venture.. something to do with a service providing templates, distribution and collection of vouchers/coupons for small and medium businesses

Groxx
Building / re-building in-house pages for a company, for which I'm making a lot of entertaining utility code with APIs as simple as I can manage, which I'm finding is woefully scarce in the .NET world. Studying AI for my capstone essay. Learning on the side. Trying to figure out where the f&#@^ money goes.
dmpayton
I'm trying to get my side project launched for the November Startup Sprint thing. I'm building an app to help make life easier for people with Diabetes (my wife is a Type I): http://diabeti.ca
gscott
contact.ly which will use twillio, dropbox, and other services to build a more modern contact, calendar, file storage system (and for marketing to ride on the hype of other companies).
andrewtbham
what makes it more modern?
gscott
Importing a csv list of contacts defines the contact mangers intial setup. You can then setup additional fields and group fields together into "sections" from an administrative interface. Each field can be further defined by purpose (email, text, phone number) so can group email's together by contact and soon you could do other things based upon type of field, you can also have sub-contacts and then the sub-contacts are further defined by contact types so you can group together emails of all contacts by a certain type.

It took me longer then expected to make (about a month) but now I have a totally customizable contact manger that is more like a database in itself, it is searchable and very flexible (no predefined fields).

On the contact list display where you see few fields from each contact you can define what fields are displayed on that list and each user can change that to there own preference. This way the data is out front and may save users an extra click to go see some piece of contact data they use the most.

I am working on building a billing system for the twillio api, keeping track of all of the sms messages sent, phone calls made, etc. Once I am done with that then I can add to the contact manager functionality, let's say you have a non-profit and you have 500 contacts that are going to be doing your charity "fun run" you can send them out a reminder via a phone call and sms to remember to show up, etc. Once you have your contact in the system, you can make "lists" and so your contacts here would be on the "fun run 2010" list for example. Then next year you can send them an email inviting them to do the 2011 fun run...

I feel this is more modern at least in what I am doing as this can be as big as or small as a person needs. If a company has 100 fields (like the cw tv network does they easily have 100 fields which is who I designed this for) then it will work for that and if a company only has a few fields they can grow out to the number of fields they need but without having that overhead right away.

mtinkerhess
I went back to grad school this fall, so I'm working on programming assignments, getting ready for midterms coming up, and making progress on an Eclipse plugin for my lab. It's a great mix of work in C++, Lisp, Java, Soar, and soon Prolog, but it's keeping me busy enough that I've put off side projects for now.
wushupork
Working on ShelfLuv - adding some features that were requested from the HN crowd
shib71
Job: Improvements to the ORM in our framework.

Own: Crossword generator for latin words.

zck
My employment isn't worth mentioning.

A minesweeper implementation for Emacs: https://bitbucket.org/zck/minesweeper.el . If anyone tries it, please let me know what you think.

Also, I'm working on learning unicycling, juggling, becoming ambidextrous, and finding a project to hack on next.

happybuy
Primarily awareness building and PR for my recently launched startup - http://www.happybuy.com/

One good lesson thats recently been reinforced as part of this is that launching is really only the start of the journey. Gaining traction and building a business once the product is available takes as much if not more work.

andrewtbham
the site looks good very well laid out. i did a search for ipod and mac book pro and didn't get relevant results.
happybuy
Thanks for the feedback. I'll need to look into improving the search relevancy. Sometimes if you filter to a specific store or department you'll get more relevant results - but I understand this isn't completely obvious at the moment.
prawn
Looks good. Best of luck with the venture!
jdee
the http://www.fortiguard.com/ network protection we have here in work has flagged your site as porn wont let me in. just FYI.
happybuy
Thank you for letting me know. I have requested that fortiguard correctly reclassify my site.
hendler
Tonight: Upgrading MySQL server on AWS.
[dead] cellurl
Combining 2 Android apps, "Speeding Ticket" and "Speed Limit"
kingkilr
Literally right now? I'm coaching a friend of mine (high school sophomore) in assisting another friend (college freshman) in his CS homework. I'm a college junior, never written Java before this :)
Sukotto
I'm selling the majority of my stuff and prepping my condo for sale. I expect my employer to go out of business soon and I have to leave the USA once that happens (my work permit is non-transferable and the green card application didn't work out).
simonista
Wow, that sounds like a bummer. I'm really sorry to hear that. May the future hold better luck for you.
Sukotto
Well, it would totally suck if we were carrying any unsecured debt. Luckily we live below our means so we have (some) money banked.

So I'm considering taking the family for a 6 month world tour (while I'm still young enough to handle it)... if we're frugal we might be able to stretch it out to a full year.

Guess I better put "get homeschool materials" on my todo list eh?

prawn
Do it. My parents took me (and my siblings) out of school at age 14 for four months in Asia (three months in China, rest of the time in Thailand, Malaysia, HK) and it was a great experience. Already had an appreciation of it but grew up with a massive appreciation of travelling to new places and seeing different parts of our planet. Will always be thankful for my parents having done that for us.

Have been back to China twice since, Thailand a few more times, etc.

rick_2047
My parents are totally opposite, I have only visited two states of my country (excluding the state where I live i.e. the awesomest gujarat). So now I totally lack any enthusiasm for traveling.

But I hadn't realized it till you pointed your enthusiasm out. Umm... don't know whether to thank you or hate you from my guts.

danilocampos
You are awesome.

Truly and emphatically awesome. What a great way to make the most of a bad situation. I think it'll be great for your kids – they'll learn so much in the process.

I really wish you the best of luck.

Natsu
The same thing, basically, happened to a guy I know from the UK. He had lived here for years and was working on an application for permanent residency, but now he's no longer in the USA because of issues with his employer and visa.
ojbyrne
Curious to know (and for entirely selfish reasons) what classification of work permit is non-transferable?
Sukotto
I had a H1b but just about maxed it out so now I hold a TN1 (I'm Canadian).

The upside of the TN is that I can (in theory) get an unlimited number of them and there is no cap on how many can be issued in a year.

The downside is that if I step off of US soil I immediately lose it and have to apply for a new one at the border when I attempt to re-enter. Should the INS agent dislike me for any reason (or for no reason), s/he can deny my application and deny me entry to the US. I would have no recourse if that happened... which makes crossing the border kind of stressfull (so I don't do it anymore).

ojbyrne
I'm on a TN too. It's transferrable as far as I know because I've just done it (well I guess they just issue you a new one). I know the nightmare at the border fairly intimately. I always get secondary inspections. The second last time I got this whole giant grilling, with the officer threatening to not let me in. The last time the office said "I don't know why you're in here (secondary inspection), is there something you want from us?"
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