3c Projects

we had a great meeting on Friday discussing several projects in the CTU Cloud Computing Center. The projects are ranging from Android to Internet SaaS application. Some of the projects are just before starting pilot testing other are still in a research phase.

Martin has presented his application developed with a portal nejremeslnici.cz. This portal helps their customers find mainly small craftsmen companies offering household fixes, but sometimes even a construction company for building full houses. Currently the craftsmen are job biding in the evening when they get to their computer. The new app will allow immediate reaction, sending an offer as soon as the customer requests a service. The application runs on Android and interacts with the portal using REST API. The messaging is based on C2DM Android protocol.

Tomas has explained his location verification application. He is developing a GSM finger prints technology to verify a GSM user’s location. In other words the user claims a location and the algorithm verifies it. Verification works without GPS, finger prints require only the GSM cell towers, therefore all works indoor as well as in cities within little streets and between tall buildings.

Vratislav originally started to develop a helpdesk application, but soon has found much more interesting app called MallMania. He is addressing teen aged girl fashion freaks and provides a simple platform letting them exchange pictures showing what they wear today. Currently, he has a working version using the Facebook to spread the information. The application is still very simple and will be used to verify the customer interest before he proceeds.

Martin worked during his studies in several professional companies as a freelance Java developer. He is using his experience designing a professional programming framework. As a sample application to test the technology he has again chosen a helpdesk. The whole application uses the server, fat client architecture. The server part is in Java running on GAE. It is designed around Spring framework with REST templates for API. The fat client leverages GWT. He has spent a long hours orchestrating all these technologies together. He had to go over many undocumented and always changing details and I am really interested to find out what are the advantages compared to old-fashioned but much simpler solutions based for example on Wordpress or other simple frameworks.

Tomas #2 and Tonda are for almost one year developing a simple application for mobile devices allowing users exchanging business cards. CloudCardz will allow fast exchange of the basic data residing on the Internet. The acquired contacts are listed and ordered alphabetically or in time. Important contacts can be moved to the Android contact list. Currently, graphics needs some improvements before starting to find the customers and their needs.

The purpose of our meeting was to put all the developers together and exchange the experience and help each other. We are accumulating lot of experience, we need to documented it and spread it to make the development of our future applications simpler and faster. I will soon announce next meeting. Come and join us in our effort.