Hung Truong

What: A simple frontend for my already existing webapp. The native iPhone app loads the content quickly and allows users to browse the newest posts and view post content within the app.

Why: I wanted to go through the entire process of writing and submitting an app to approval. My previous prototype pizza app never made it into the app store, so I wanted to quickly produce a simple app that just worked.

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What: dScribe is a student-powered method of publishing course content for OER (Open Educational Resources). I became invovled with the dScribe project early on and assisted in the clearing of copyright and publishing of three courses in all:

• Networks: Theory and Application
• Corporate Finance for Health Care Administrators
• Measuring Health Disparities

Why: dScribe is an interesting model for OER and I was interested in providing feedback and actively participating in it. dScribe also provided lots of free food. Always a great incentive.

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Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteenmilesofstring/ / CC BY 2.0

What: A prototype application for iPhone, Let's Pizza! uses Core Location to locate the user, then uses the Yelp.com API to find pizza places near the user. From within the application the user can call the pizza place for delivery, get directions from Google Maps and send information about the restaurant to a friend via email.

Why: Let's Pizza! was developed as an initial prototype and tech demo by the Troubadour Mobile team. The team learned a lot through the process of interviewing customers, designing the application, developing the application and testing it with users.

How: Let's Pizza! was built using the Apple iPhone SDK.

Teammates: Gaurav Bhatnagar and Adam Torres.

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What: A simple Facebook application for listing which instruments one plays and seeing which instruments one's friends plays.

Why: As a musician, I was looking for a way to show which instruments I play. Music is a very social endeavor, so it made sense to make a Facebook application that allowed musicians to show off their talents.

How: Musical Instruments uses the Facebook PHP Client Library.

See Also: Sociability of Musical Instruments, research done on the data collected from Musical Instruments.

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What: An updated version of Notecentric for the newly released Facebook Developer Platfom.

Why: I had originally developed Notecentric because Facebook didn't incorporate class note-taking functionality. I decided to try adapting Notecentric for the Facebook platform in order to leverage the large user base of that social network.

How: Notecentric for Facebook uses the RFacebook client and Ruby on Rails.

See Also: Network Structure, Diffusion and Growth Over Time in a Facebook Application, research done on the data collected from Notecentric.

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What: An apartment-finding mashup using craigslist and Google Maps API.

Why: I needed to find an apartment in Ann Arbor fast, and HousingMaps didn't show Ann Arbor listings. I also wanted to gain some javascript and Google Maps API experience, so I killed two birds with one stone, metaphorically.

How: I documented each step of the MapsKrieg's development on my blog. See the related entries here. Mapskrieg uses the PHP framework CakePHP.

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What: A community based social translation website. Designed to facilitate cheap (or free), timely, and accurate automated translations.

Why: One of my interests is computer-aided language translation. Statistical translation is cool, but it needs lots of data to be accurate. Translatious aims to provide human-created transltions in addition to language sentence pairs that can be used in statistical machine translation.

How: Translatious was a group project for a senior software engineering course. I had the responsibility of acting as project lead, working with three other students to design and implement the project throughout the semester.

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What: A social note-taking website. Designed for university students to write and share their notes with classmates.

Why: I found it inconvenient to share notes with classmates by sending emails. There was no website at the time that supported note sharing for courses, so I decided to create one during the Summer break.

How: I built Notecentric on the Ruby on Rails web framework. It utilizes an open source WYSIWYG editor for notetaking.

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What: An anime blog RSS feed aggregator and community website.

Why: Mostly created as an exercise to learn the Ruby on Rails web development framework. Anime Nano ended up filling a niche in the online anime blog community as well.

How: Developed during the Summer of 2006 on the Ruby on Rails framework.

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What: A one-player role playing game based on school life at UNM.

Why: The class project of a video game design course at the University of New Mexico.

How: Created using RPG Maker XP.

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