
What is your current side project? - christopherDam
Hi All HN,<p>1) What is your Current Side Project?<p>2) How you got the idea?<p>3) What you want to achieve with your current project? (Learn something new&#x2F; Want to do earn &#x2F; just for fun)<p>I think it is very inspirational and motivational for others if you share your experience.<p>Thanks
======
jathu
1\. Annex: [http://jathu.me/annex](http://jathu.me/annex)

2\. Being tired of how unproductive I was. My friend sending a spreadsheet of
him tracking his time and finally watching this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexvTZ1sV8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexvTZ1sV8U)

3\. I just want to help myself in becoming productive and in the process help
others. So far the app has helped me become more productive and I have
received many emails/DMs thanking me for helping others achieve this too. The
most important thing I want to learn is how to launch a product and keep
updating it with the user's feedback. I received a negative feedback from a
bug on my initial app, then I fixed it with an update (and added more
features) and the user then changed his negative review to a 5-star positive
reivew on the app store and was very happy. This alone sold me on the
importance of listening to your customers. This is one of my first iOS apps,
so I'm learning about iOS development and launching a product at the same
time.

~~~
christopherDam
I really appreciate your work and this app is really cool and great. I am
really inspired with your work. Thanks a lot for answering. I just curious are
you app(iOS) developer or what's your full time job(Just want to know). What
is your monthly revenue of this(Nothing special just want to know if you can
earn some money from an app). BTW thanks a lot for posting this. It really
inspired me lot and very cool app. I may buy this.

~~~
jathu
Thanks for the kind words!

I wouldn't call my self a "real" app developer just yet as I'm still learning
app development (i.e. still don't know how to sync core data with iCloud). I
used to focus mostly on web, but recently started iOS. I'm not working yet,
I'm still in University studying CS.

I usually don't like to discuss the exact amount I'm making from my app,
however I would say I'm "ramen profitable" for a student.

------
sheraz
1\. HelloAviva
([http://helloaviva.com/?ref=hn](http://helloaviva.com/?ref=hn)) - Niche app
for new parents that helps them feel less isolated in their new context. Shows
them the places they can go in town with stroller / small baby.

2\. Had a kid and discovered how hard it is to take a baby outside the home.
We didn't know where to go or how to easily solve small problems like diaper
changes.

3\. GF and I are doing this learn the whole lean startup / app / growth thing.

Currently in the Apple app store with an MVP and see a lot of room for growth
and improvements. We've been live since the summer and have managed to get
into Product Hunt as well as the newsletter for the editor of a major news
publication in Sweden.

~~~
swcoders
Great!! Looks you need to do lot of things to get these data. How big is your
team?? How do you collecting this data (I assume you are not going single
places). It's really great.

~~~
sheraz
Thanks!

Just two of us. I'm the only technical one. We do a lot of scraping and
automation where possible which is how we scale the data side of things.
However we are still doing things that don't scale. One of those things is
still manually entering good spots as we find them. Feel free to reach out
with feedback and suggestions.

GF is in New York this week taking meetings and showing the app to mama
groups. Any intros are appreciated

------
stevekemp
A system which integrates git-hosting with Amazon's Route53 DNS
infrastructure.

I've not touched it for a while, but it managed to handle around 20 million
queries last month, and at least one DNS-update a day on average.

I need a prettier website, but the technology pretty much just works and
hasn't been updated in a long time. I keep meaning to delegate the website-
redsigne to my partner.

[https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/)

In open-source work I've spent the past few weeks restarting my console-mail
client, with integrated Lua scripting. The rewrite gives a much more unified
API, and a lot better implementation.

Delegating more work to the Lua side of the application makes it more
flexible, more customizable, and more interesting to develop for:

[https://github.com/lumail/lumail2](https://github.com/lumail/lumail2)

Still early work - since you can neither compose a new email, or reply to
existing ones, but the core is good for viewing things. (It is a modal email
client, with a user-interface that is somewhat like mutt.)

------
thecodemonkey
1) My side project is [http://geocod.io](http://geocod.io)

2) It started out because I needed to geocode a large set of addresses for
another side project. Ended up building a geocoder and realized that others
might find it useful too

3) Making geocoding affordable to the masses and having built something to be
proud of. Continuously learning new things because of it too.

~~~
gonyea
That's a really good idea! I've had to deal with API limits countless times
and it sucks.

For some projects I had to geocode with multiple providers. Bing seems to be
better than Google at geocoding in some parts of the county. I esp. noticed it
in the Midwest / Illinois.

------
chad_strategic
1\. [http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/](http://www.strategic-
options.com/trade/)

2\. I had no choice, traditional financial evaluation failed after the great
recession (08). Federal Reserve interference in the market, prevented
traditional stock analysis. I couldn't get a job in 09-10, even with an MBA.
Taught myself how to code and write stock algorithms. Very dark days, I had to
teach myself coding, or otherwise I was going to have to go back to the Marine
Corps. (I loved Marines, going to back to the Marine Corps, would have been
fun and paid the bills, but not a good career move, long term.)

It paid off in the end, I'm a programmer now and I don't seem to have a
problem getting work now. However the bad news is that people keep playing me
program there lame ideas and my bank account keeps getting bigger. But at the
end of the day I want my side project to be only project.

Ugh..... Money doesn't solve everything.

3\. I want my side project to become my employment.

(P.S. Looking for some kind of marketing help.)

~~~
jyu
Monthly subscription to "stock tips" scream all sorts of shadiness. That and
stating that there's the potential to make "103%" return when you're just
cherry picking back tested data. There's a lot that could be improved, but if
you really think you found a secret algo that works, I'd focus all my energy
on gathering the evidence to convince others that it definitively works. From
the information on the website, there seems to be no indication of live
trading with this strategy. You may want to add details in how you have tested
the different ways you can trick yourself, paper testing results, and at some
point trying the ultimate test of live trading.

Good luck!

~~~
chad_strategic
Some of your points are valid, others not so much.

First off I don't "cherry pick" data. Stock recommendations are made on a
daily basis via an algorithm (crontab / php) while I'm at my day job. Right
now the algo tracks 500 stocks, so I don't have time to cherry pick data for
those each flavor of the week stock. So on 1/28/15 I got a signal to buy
Amazon, that signal hasn't changed so it is possible to gain 100% return. It's
also doing wonders for [http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/stock/chipotle-
mexica...](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/stock/chipotle-mexican-
grill-inc)

Where I do see your valid point, this could be perceived as a scam. Which
ultimately becomes a marketing issue. I'm not really doing a good job of
convincing an audience of the potential. I'm to much of programmer/data
analysis, that I forget to market it to a general public. Jim Crammer on CNBC
is a great marketer, but he is a pretty poor stock picker.

My newer strategy has been [http://www.strategic-
options.com/trade/alerts](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/alerts) at
$9.99, seems like it's pretty difficult to scam someone at that low price
point.

The end result is I'm in need of internet marketer / growth hacker / seo
guru...

------
sideproject
My current project is HelloBox - it's something I've been doing for awhile,
but there's a plenty more to do.

[http://hellobox.co](http://hellobox.co)

I started it out as a "create your own hackernews clone" idea, but it's now
evolved into a more of community management tool. I'm hoping that it'll soon
be able to charge people for the service it's providing. Would love to hear
your feedback!

~~~
swcoders
I like the idea. Really great and neat. What is your business model?

~~~
sideproject
Thanks. The business model is rather simple. I'll be charging a monthly fee
for the service. Not sure exactly how much though.

------
drakonka
1\. My side project is a browser based snail simulation:
[http://liza.io/category/snails/](http://liza.io/category/snails/)

2\. I think my fondness for snails was originally sparked by a game I made up
at my grandparents' summerhouse in Ukraine when I was little - I collected a
bunch of snails and taught them to race against each other. I got the idea for
the project itself over 10 years ago during a move from the US to Australia
with my family. It was summer and I was bored, so I had this idea for a snail
racing game. At the time it was meant to be a game, but as the idea stayed in
my head over the years it evolved into focusing on realism as much as possible
and dropping "fun" from its main focus. I did not have the technical ability
to build this at first in its full scope and it has gone through quite a few
iterations over the years.

3\. Learn something new, have my snails surprise me.

------
nstart
My side project is
[http://replylater.adnanissadeen.com](http://replylater.adnanissadeen.com) .
I'm building it as a way to beat myself when it comes to procrastination. I
got the idea when using buffer and I wanted to buffer a reply on twitter so
that I could check up on a friend later. Buffer doesn't have support yet for
replying tweets such that the conversation thread is maintained on Twitter.
There were a bunch of customers who wanted that, so I'm working on it now.

This project also taught me plenty about scheduling. I'll be adding in support
for scheduling using a more stable tool later. For now it's using cron :D.

Oh. Source code is here [https://github.com/kiriappeee/reply-
later](https://github.com/kiriappeee/reply-later)

------
cdvonstinkpot
I have a very low-traffic blog that I'd like to see more visits to. If I can
get enough traffic, I'd like to monetize it via affiliate ads- but at this
point that's a long shot, due to it's apparent invisibility. Today I published
its best content yet, written by an expert in his field. I hope to be able to
publish high quality content such as this more often, but I don't know yet how
I'll source exceptional writing.

Shameless plug:

The new article is here, for anyone interested:
[https://christopherbartels.com/2015/11/02/navigating-the-
col...](https://christopherbartels.com/2015/11/02/navigating-the-college-
admissions-process-and-keeping-your-sanity-by-bill-indek/)

------
tixocloud
1\. Insightico: Helping Canadians find homes through neighbourhood insights
([http://getinsightico.com](http://getinsightico.com) \- we're pivoting away
from location analysis for retailers)

2\. Had a terrible experience - rented a place only to find out that the
neighbourhood isn't right for me. Thank goodness that I only had to endure for
a year before finding another place that suits me better.

3\. Hoping to build an online residential real estate database for Canada so
people can search for homes that fit their lifestyle. Hoping that people can
search based on different lifestyle parameters (i.e. good schools, commuting
time, neighbourhood amenities, favourite brands/restaurants, investment
potential etc.)

------
iqonik
Mine is:

propertywizard.io

It's a tool that plugs into the leading UK property website and allows Estate
Agents to share their properties, news and status updates automatically (or
scheduled) to social media.

Currently making around £1000 per month, if anyone has any questions i'll be
happy to answer :)

~~~
tixocloud
I really like your idea and had wanted to do something similar in Canada.
Would love to have a chat with you more about how you got started working with
real estate agents :)

~~~
iqonik
Feel free to drop me an email (in my profile). I'm happy to share how I got
started and offer any advice I can.

------
bewe42
My side project is [http://codingbrain.com](http://codingbrain.com). I want to
make learning & coding more efficient. It's desktop app that integrates with
existing markdown editor and browser and serves as a central hub that records
what you do, helps to generate new content, enables to search/remember and
tries to automate as much as possible to increase productivity.

------
kkoppenhaver
Just finished writing up my weekend project from a couple weeks back.

Thinking about potentially turning it into a plugin that would allow blog
owners to build email newsletters that can more easily include their Wordpress
posts.

[https://medium.com/@kkoppenhaver/a-digital-newspaper-with-
gr...](https://medium.com/@kkoppenhaver/a-digital-newspaper-with-gridster-js-
and-wp-api-2fea69807095)

------
haidrali
My side project is [http://beta.pollpk.com/](http://beta.pollpk.com/) its in
beta, Idea is to poll on different social, political and almost any type of
issues I got the idea even before Twitter polls but due to some reason
couldn't launch it. Now after watching twitter poll failure I think this might
be a failure as well so planning to stop working on it

------
Killswitch
I'm working on a method to containerize standard shared hosting.

I got the idea because a bunch of my previous clients / colleagues from when I
worked in the adult industry are still stuck on shared hosting environments
because of cPanel and the like.

I want to achieve the simplicity of shared hosting, with the awesomeness of
being able to deploy it anywhere and the beauty of Docker.

------
codeloop
My side project is 1\.
[http://www.dealsmanager.net](http://www.dealsmanager.net) 2\. I got this idea
when i am searching for good crm for lead management but i think why not
create my own as my reuirement. 3.just started it hoping good success in
future from it because going to make it huge crm for manage leads.

~~~
Avalaxy
I would recommend you to improve your English and have someone proof-read the
texts you write. The grammar in your post as well as on your website is very
bad and full or errors. It makes the product look very unprofessional (even
though the product itself looks great!).

~~~
codeloop
Thanks for your suggestion,i will take care about it.

------
girishso
1\. Autosleep: Autosleep inactive Docker Containers -
[https://github.com/girishso/autosleep](https://github.com/girishso/autosleep)

2\. I wanted to implement the free tier Heroku feature, sleeping off the
inactive apps and activate them whenever someone accesses them.

3\. Learn about Docker, Go and use it on my Raspberry Pi!

------
gesman
[http://www.bitcoinway.com/](http://www.bitcoinway.com/) \- free wordpress
plugin allowing anyone to build online store to sell anything and can accept
payment in bitcoins without middleman and without risk of being hacked.

I.e. ZERO risk of losing bitcoins while having fully automated online store.

------
husseiny
Nice question. This is bound to get you good Karma on HN :) Anyways:

[http://homebuyinglist.com](http://homebuyinglist.com)

I just closed on a house and the process was really painful. So I decided to
put a list of resources together in the hopes that they will have an easier
time on what should be a joyful experience.

------
alashley
1) A dating app:
[http://coffeefortwo.github.io/coffeefortwoapp/index.html](http://coffeefortwo.github.io/coffeefortwoapp/index.html)

2) Got the idea from wanting to create something more niche than current
dating apps.

3) I'd like to get some side income from it at some point.

------
heatherb
1 - Building a Raspberry Pi powered Smart Table 2 - Too much time on my hands
3 - Just for fun. It will basically be a coffee table that tells me the
weather for the day, lets me read the news as I eat breakfast, and integrates
with my Android phone so that I can reply to text messages.

------
swcoders
I am working on machine learning project

------
eip
Making a Scala project to continue the work of Carl Munck. Writing tools to
automate his process of mathematical 'probing'. Creating new UI tools for
visualizing his work.

Also doing some data mining on a roughly 2TB collection of esoteric texts.

