I just love hackathons. For those who doesn’t know what a hackathons is, in short; Hackathon is usually a software developers gathering where teams and individuals create something from scratch before the hackathon ends. It usually lasts 12 to 24 hours. And why I love it so much? I learn something new each time I attend a hackathon; I set a goal to complete the project on time; and all that by hanging out with the like-minded people. Love it!

A month ago, WhoHack (WhoAPI startup) team went to Osijek to OSChackathon #2. We have built something amazing and even too ambitious. We created a car racing game built on these technologies: Objective C (iOS App), node.js/socket.io (for multiplayer), HTML5 (front-end game engine). Too bad I can’t show you, haven’t record it yet. It requires few people to demonstrate :) But.. you can watch us presenting it, without a sound and not the best picture quality but hey, at least something: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjGisKZE1DY#t=3124s

My latest adventure was at the local’s 10 people (friends) hackathon, officially called HackWorks. Our lead hacker, Damir Sarcevic, had the best project, prepared the grill and fed us all :). I was working on a remake of the game my old game development team and I made, long ago. The game is CaveShip.

You can check the PC original here:
http://generationstars.com/?game=4

Hackathon mobile version, here:
http://budimilic.com/games/caveship/

Open it on you phone in landscape mode and touch the screen to keep the ship up from the gravity pull. If you still want it to try on your PC, press the UP key for the same effect. Game still doesn’t have any game rules like ship energy, level selection, a menu, etc.. I’m happy with the work done.

Check the photo gallery Kornelije Sajler took while working on his project:
http://flickr.com/photos/23706006@N03/sets/72157633879185633/

Next time I’ll try something bit harder. I’ll try to create a remake of Speedy Lander, using Corona engine writing code in Lua. Wish me luck!

We at WhoAPI are almost done with the MVP version of the service. The API works but the website with client administration is still due.

I was thinking about creating something completely new for users to log in to the service. A passwordless login!

Let me explain: 

Facebook & Google use dual authorization for maximum security (opt-in feature). For example, you open the facebook on your new computer, click log in and wait for the SMS with temporary password to arrive, you enter the pwd and you’re in for good on that particular computer/browser.

What if all websites work like this but only with the temporary password for one time log in. So imagine, you come to our service like whoapi.com, you enter the email and click the log in button; password comes to your email/sms (depends how you setup your account), you enter the password and voila, it works, without a password to remember. Every time you come back, session stays alive. If you’re on a computer you don’t own, just Log out and the authorization for that computer/browser gets deleted.

Why do we trouble our self with remembering long, strange passwords we are forced to create? For example, password must include: at least one big letter, at least one number and be 8 to X characters long. Come on, that sucks! I developed a technique of my own to have different passwords on all the websites but in a way to remember it easily. That’s good but that one more website that forces me to enter a non-alphanumeric sign changes everything, again! I know, you can use Roboform, 1Password or similar tools, but I don’t want to use any tools on any device!

Breakthrough for security when passwords leak! I was just reading how EA Origin Accounts got Hacked, and they now advice all the users to change their passwords. This is bad! If they had a system like this one, they (EA in this example) would just deauthorize all computers without bothering their users about it.

As the subject says, what do you think about logging in to websites without a password at all?

P.S. password can be an optional “thing” :)

I’m a Bitbucket.org user and please don’t judge me for that. There are a lot of different opinions about Bitbucket vs. GitHub, but mine is the only one that matters to me since I’m extremely satisfied with the features and the use of Bitbucket. Why would I switch to any other source control service? Now that we cleared that out, let’s talk about this post’s subject. :)

The problem:

Actualy two of them. I have a hosting account in Slovenia, they block all foreign IP’s to connect to FTP, so It’s pain in the but to make some changes on the script there. My other problem (while working on WhoAPI); if you have let’s say 20 hosting accounts all over the world and you need to update the same script that’s on all of them, how would you do it? (no control of the server modules, so no automatic deployment)

 
The research:

I found no scripts that can solve these problems. I’m sure that they exists, but I lost two (if not more) hours trying to find a finished and a working one.

 
The solution:

I made a script (one file) that you upload to your server, change two lines of code, set the Bitbucket settings to ping the script as soon as you make the change to your files on your repository (30sec. job) and you’re done! What this script does is it download’s your script from the Bitbucket repository and extracts it, so you have the latest version of your script always live.

No FTP, no drag&dropping files or scp-ing to the server directly. Out of the box solution for easy automatic script deployment. And yes, It’s in PHP :/ I would like to write the same thing in Python, and Node.js version would be cool as well.

Check it out here: https://bitbucket.org/edifreak/autopullrepo
 

Yep, after long wait we’re finally doing it. Here’s the story. We loved what we saw when iPhone was first introduced and the potential after Android showed what can be done with the apps (before the iPhone introduced the AppStore). We’ve been eager to get involved in all the hype these platforms created. So after three long years we bought a Mac Mini and started developing our first app. I must not forget to mention my brother Dino Budimilic who had the time to learn how to use the Mac, Xcode and all what comes with it :) He helped us create the app.

The app we’re making is all about our existing web service on http://crodns.com. It’s a domain availability checker with whois information on demand. We’ve already created the WebApp that works on all smartphones (at least we like to think so) which you can try here: http://m.crodns.com

Here are some screenshots of the icons we made. You may notice which icon we decided to go with on the Loading screen:

In-app screenshots and videos are coming after the release. My estimate is we’ll submit the app to the AppStore before this month ends. I don’t expect any problems with Apple’s approval :)

This version is intentionally made for regional market, that means it’s localized. But we didn’t forget the Global market, no! We’re planning to release the English version right after this one, as a separate project. We haven’t yet decided which domain to use for it, but we’re sure to find out using our first app ;)

There are many methods to make Ajax operations crawable by Google and other search engines. Many are still saying it’s not the right time yet to use Ajax for all dynamic content. I disagree! Google already introduced their method to make this work but it’s too complicated and needs a lot of additional programming time to make it work properly.

I on the other hand have a great idea that’s stupid simple, works for Googlebot and browsers with disabled Javascript. Isn’t that great!? :)
Even dough I came up with this idea myself, someone elase in the world had the same idea before me and it’s called Hijax. So what is Hijax in definition?

Hijax is combination of words Ajax and Hijack and that’s it’s core functionality. Hijax uses both Ajax and Javascript when available (to create those magical effects that Desktop apps had for decades). Hijax is using Javascript when available to hijack HTTP request (when website visitor makes a click on a link to another page) and enables Ajax magic to happen. But, when you open the page in a browser that doesn’t have Javascript enabled, the website functions as it should (without fancy effects that Ajax can provide), it opens the page with preloaded content. Hijax method is a great time and bandwidth saviour.

And finally the interesting part.
The example, dead simple:

<a href="page-2.html" onclick="AjaxCall('page-2'); return false;">

* Use this method on all links intended to work with Ajax calls.

That’s it! So simple! We are already using this method on our new company website that’s currently in development.

Yes, I’m calling this post a package full of updates. Last few weeks I’ve taken more time to work on our own (GEM Studio) projects so here are few of those updates if you’re interested ;)

Sveznar.com
(Croatian only service for dream definitions, meaning of karma, lucid dreaming, lucky numbers etc.)
– additional SEO was done
– new content on Karma
– mobile version for dream definitions (iPhone, Android and others supported), just jump to the site with your mobile phone and you’ll be redirected to http://m.sveznar.com. Shown as cool iPhone w/ Android image below the menu on desktop version of the website.

CroDNS.com
(Croatian only service for checking domain availability in a smart way)
– footer iPhone image to tell the new visitors there’s a mobile version (m.crodns.com)
– ping has been fixed
– some security improvements

SuperCentar.com
This is our new service for banner advertising on our own network of websites with over one million pageviews a month and growing. The service was just released few days ago and it’s currently operating for Croatian market only.

This is it for now but many more updates will come soon. We plan to finish all started projects dedicated to Croatian market but right after that we’re starting with realization on international projects, not only on the web but the iPhone and Android apps too. Can’t wait! :)

Hi folks. Titlovi.hr is on it’s way to finished within a month. Main idea is to build the best website for searching movie subtitles for domestic territories. But not just “best” like they all say :) best as usable, without ads and unnecessary content and of course, maximum use of Ajax technologies.

Here’s a screenshot of the latest template:
http://izrada.gemstudio.hr/titlovi.hr/

Finally, everyone wanted it but no-one made it .. until now! I didn’t like launching Safari, then going to Gmail and surf through it within limited space of the browser. And so I’ve made a full screen App without browser features.

I made it possible with a little cool browser meta feature “apple-mobile-web-app-capable”. To test it yourself go to http://gemstudio.hr/gmail/ and add this bookmark to Home Screen, there’s your Gmail App!

Download full source : gmail-web-app.rar (html, css, psd app icon)

Gmail for Safari - before

Gmail App for iPhone

Hi folks, new updates on CroDNS domain search service:
– ajax loading animated icon while waiting for whois details on domain
– new page: proxy surfing

You can test the latest updates here: http://www.crodns.com/beta

It’s here, in my hands, after so much waiting and waiting, even on D day I was waiting for half an hour in the line and 4 hours inside – waiting for paperwork to be done with some computer glitches on the way. That was 6 days ago and I still need to charge the battery almost twice a day. Already on the second day I got it jailbroken and filled with numerous apps, I’m starting to scale this apps to leave only the ones I will actually use. I’m still in need for few apps like GPS Google Maps where I can track a signal of my selected friends and myself at the same time – count distances and similar.

In overall, I’m very satisfied with the iPhone3G!
I will write about most useful apps now and then.