大象传媒

Our goal at Hack Day was to build an application that creates a seamless transition between your computer and mobile experience. We both work in the Research and Development group at The New York Times Company and spend a lot of time thinking about the changes in the way people use and consume media, particularly around mobile devices. Over the past few months, our group has been exploring a variety of emerging technologies, some of which helped seed the idea behind our hack.

Currently, your desktop, mobile, television and gaming experiences are, for the most part, separated. One of the problems we both encounter on a daily basis is trying to shift between a web and mobile environment, having to worry about loading content on a slow mobile phone, what it will look like, or if it will even be legible. Then, when you get back to your computer from being out and about on your mobile phone, having to filter through what you have and haven't read. We wanted to start looking at how to seamlessly shift between these platforms and how to appropriately deliver content for each different device and screen size.

When we sat down to decide what we would like to work on for Hack Day, we wanted to showcase a variety of technologies and skills including hacking hardware, mobile, web, user interface design and a little duct tape! We both very work well together as a small team. Nick covering the front end type work, including User Interface Design, CSS, mobile etc., and Michael doing all the AJAX and back-end coding (working in PHP, MySQL, Java, etc.)

Our Hack Day Experience

Although we came up with our idea for Hack Day a day or so beforehand, we had no idea what it was called and the real logistics of how it would work. We arrived at 鈥淎lly Pally鈥� around 10 a.m. on the Saturday and immediately set out to work. At around 5 p.m. on Saturday, Matt Cashmore from the 大象传媒 stood up and announced that everyone would need to 'submit a hack name and URL's by 1 p.m. the following day', so we frantically started searching the web for a domain name, the closest thing we could come up with to explain shifting, or transitioning, from place to place was shifd.com.

As Nick set out to figure out and design a simple, clean and self-explanatory user interface, Michael started working with the RFID reader and tags, and began building the database and API integration. Then the real coding began. Michael a 'Black Belt' in PHP and Java, and Nick a 'CSS Ninja' worked through the night creating all the different pieces that would become shifd.com. We went back to our hotel later in the evening to get a couple of hours sleep and then came back first thing in the morning to try to pull all the pieces together, fix the final bugs and 'hack together' the mobile site. We ran into some hardware problems, including trying to figure out where to put the RFID chip in the phone and also which RFID chips worked with our reader. (Some required a special touch, specific distances or ran into interference.) 2 p.m. rolled around, we were frantically trying to wrap things up鈥攆ixing bugs, setting up the mobile site, working with the API's, and, trying to find tape!鈥攚hen we were told to submit our hack and receive a slot and time to present. Then, as Nick went to sign up for our presentation slot, something in the AJAX went wrong and we couldn鈥檛 find the fix. Lack of sleep can be a killer when you鈥檙e trying to fix bugs! As time drew on, Michael was frantically trying to fix the code and we were told to make our way up to the stage to present to the judges. Luckily, there was a long line of people also waiting and we managed to somehow fix the glitches and go through a dry run whilst sitting on the floor in front of the stage. We didn't actually fix the final RFID bug until we were walking onto the stage! Talk about a close call.

The atmosphere at Hack Day was truly amazing. It was incredible to see so many people working on so many interesting projects in one place. We had to stop many times throughout the two days to walk around, take pictures and take in all of the creativity around us. Both Yahoo! and 大象传媒 were amazing hosts 鈥� taking care of all of us with food, drink and plenty of great APIs and content to play with. It was also fantastic that a lot of the folks that created the Yahoo! and 大象传媒 tools and APIs were on hand to help out the hackers! I couldn鈥檛 believe to hear that Rasmus Lerdorf was actually helping folks out with PHP during the night! Unreal.

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