Innovative Ideas
What we're really trying to do at SimBloSys is find that one, amazing idea, that will make an impact on (at least a small part of) the world. We are constantly coming up with our own concepts, and we invite others who have an idea for a web service, but not the knowledge to implement it, to get in touch, as we might just be the enthusiastic young programmers who could make your idea a reality.
Beautiful Pics
The concept is simple - 30 disposable cameras at the Beautiful Days festival, Exeter, UK, left lying around or given to people. The cameras held instructions telling the finder to take a couple of photos and either pass it on to a stranger or leave it somewhere else. Once full, the cameras were returned to a collection point. At the end of the festival I collected the cameras, developed them and uploaded them to www.beautifulpics.co.uk
Beautiful Pics is literally bursting with user functionality. This was the facilitate a real online community, not just a simple gallery containing photos of the festival. Un-registered users can view all the photos, but Registered users can post comments, tag themselves in photos and request custom tags, which have to be approved by an administrator. Each user can specify a Myspace™, Facebook™ or Homepage URL, which will be displayed with any comment they make on a photo.
All of this functionality was written entirely from scratch, using PHP, Javascript, utilising the Script.aculo.us Framework as a starting point on which to build. The site is backed by a MySQL database, and there is an administration area where administrators can add news articles and manage custom tags.
It's an idea we're planning on spreading to other festivals in the future, slowly building up a network, and history of festival photography websites.
Task Diffusion System
Currently one of our most complex and well developed systems is a project management suite. Having worked as project managers for some years, and encountered a number of different bug/work management systems, we decided to write our own.
It provides the ability to manage "Projects" - which contain "Tasks" and "Bugs". You can also adjust their priority (high-low) and their status (Unconfirmed, Confirmed, Completed). These can be added to by users and marked at different states of completion. Files can be uploaded to projects, reminders set for users, and a reporting suite keeps track of work done, and pending. There is a system of roles which restrict Project and Task management to Managers, leaving programmers with the ability to create Bugs. If it is decided that a Bug is more of a feature, said bug can be converted to a Task by a manager. There is limited functionality available to Guest users, who can view but not edit or comment on Tasks and Bugs within the system.
TDS is writen in PHP, with a MySQL database. It is succinct, but functional, we stripped away so much of the hassle we found from other project management suites, keeping just the bare-bones information needed, considerably helping the ease of use. When adding data to the system, you don't have to set a thousand values, schedule start dates, durations or all the other pieces of information you might not have to hand.