CASE STUDIES
PROFESSOR S
AN INTERACTIVE TIME TRAVEL HISTORY WITH IOT
Professor S. is LudInc's first interactive learning game for fourth grade students. It links the fictitious world of history with the everyday world of the pupils. The students are part of an adventure led by the teacher. In the complete digital rebuild of Ludincs' Professor S, we took on the role of lead development and coaching, together with our partner UpStream.
To match the complex needs of the software, which will be used by pupils, teachers and parents we developed a strongly distributed service-oriented architecture (communication via REST-/JSON APIs).
This architecture made use of a range of technologies including Angular.js with jasmine unit tests in the front-end, several Rails 4.x back-ends (with PostgreSQL db), a custom live messaging architecture using MongoDB, and the pub-sub library Faye which allows users to upload, share and play images, sound and video messages across different clients of the platform.
CHALLENGES
- Defining standards and implementing a strict work-flow of automated testing (in both front-end and back-end)
- Peer reviews (using github pull requests)- Meet the high security standards in school related applications
- An agile project management flow based on Kanban involving a 10 headed team (designers, hardware engineers, product managers and developers)SOLUTION
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
JSON API, Angular.js, Rails, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, websockets, JWT, Kanban
SERVICES
Lead development, architecture, infrastructure, IoT
BLIPCARD
POSTCARDS NEVER WERE MORE FUN
Blipcard sends beautiful postcards to your friends and family, by turning your pictures into a real printed postcards. With the powerful editor you can build fun collages and customize them with stickers.
The iOS and Android Mobile Applications allow users to send physical postcards created directly from their phone. Our Job was the development and ongoing support for the Backend / JSON-Api (built on Rails 4) consumed by the MobileApp.
To analyze the use of the Blipcard app, we also built Blipcard Dashboard, a close-to real time Statistics interface with intelligent aggregation in MongoDB, asynchronously loading widgets and charts built with Angular.js and Chart.js
CHALLENGES
- Setting up performance monitoring
- Implementation of different payment methods
- Moving heavy tasks like PDF generation in the background using Resque and Redis
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
RoR, JSON.Api, Angular.js, Chart.js, MongoDB
SERVICES
Mobile application, Mobile API
FRAUNHOFER FOKUS
50 CONTENT EDITORS ENJOYING THEIR WORK
Fraunhofer Fokus acts as a supplier and technology independent agent between industry, science and the public administration, that can combine long standing scientific expertise and experience from various branches to optimal solutions, concentrating not only on the technical infrastructure, but furthermore develop practical concepts, prototypes and applications.
For the relaunch of their corporate website and in order to benefit from the customization features of the CMS Scrivito (from Infopark), the web-team of Fraunhofer Fokus needed an introduction to Ruby on Rails. We spent several days with their team, Pair-programming together enabling their independence from working without us on their future's challenges.
Following our 'learning by doing' philosophy, we settled up together the following features and enhancements:
- Subdivision of the website in 11 Competence Centers with their own layout and content
- Events can be promoted via teasers or specific and independent sub-domains
- Every page can easily be translated in any language, and accessed via button or URL
- Contact form integration on any page, with an easy-to-use interface to define the fields of the form
- Search Engine and filters for the articles of the website (Projects,News, Events etc.)
Thanks to Rails Connector and to a rails app we built ourselves, we also imported most of the data from the previous website in a short time
CHALLENGES
- Training the team
- Develop fine grained authorization system
- Import existing data from previous website
SOLUTIONS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
RoR, Scrivito CMS, Raisl Connector,
SERVICES Content Management, Lead Development
ASUS DJ CHALLENGE
SOCIAL MUSIC CONTEST FOR ASUS AND INTEL
The DJ Challenge, powered by Intel, is a joint social media and online campaign of the manufacturers ASUS and Intel, with the goal of locating Germany's most ambitious DJs
We have created a Facebook app for Asus and Intel, which allowed its users to upload music to Soundcloud. The contributions could be rated by other users and one winner was drawn from the lot.
CHALLENGES
- Handling of large files
- Performance optimization
- Integration of souncloud API
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Ruby on Rails, SaaS
SERVICES
Social media application
http://djchallenge.de
TEXT PROVIDER
HIGH-END TEXT EDITOR
For text provider we developed an electronic editor which gives the authors live quality feedbacks in terms of syntax and semantic style requirements
e.g. identification and marker for modal verbs, clauses, anglicisms and
statistic data.
We developed a parser for natural languages and used the python framework NLTK.
UI made in Javascript using WYSIWYG editor like TinyMCE & Mercury
CHALLENGES
- Training the team
- Develop fine grained authorization system
- Import existing data from previous website
SOLUTIONS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Python, Javascript
SERVICES
Backend, Frontend
https://www.textprovider.de
MOVIEPILOT
A NEW GENERATION OF FANS
If we are lucky, a film takes us to another world, intoxicated, confused, or inspired. After this feeling, we are addicted to moviepilots!
MoviPilot's mission is to invite fans into the process of talking about what they love and value in a passionate and knowledgeable way, ultimately building the most unique entertainment destination on the world wide web. Created by fans, for fans.
For MoviePilot we developed a stand-alone editorial system, strictly displaying the internal workflow, from researching ideas for articles, over review by chief editors, up to social media propagation (Facebook API) after the article was published.
The system is based on Ruby onRails, using RabbitMQ to communicate with the Movie Pilot backend, providing a customized markdown editor with live preview, auto-save and many more useful features.
CHALLENGES
- Integration with existing APIs via Rabbit MQ
- Implement the very own workflow of the team
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
RoR, RabbitMQ
SERVICES
Business Application
https://moviepilot.com
JUST PLAN
SOCIAL NETWORK FOR FUTURE PLANS
Justplan allows users, to share their future plans. To support each other, they can connect with the plans of others and form teams.
We bootstrapped justplan from scratch in an iterative, lean process. Based on Ruby on Rails with an AngularJS frontend we have developed a complex social network application including all features expected.
The core of justplan is a calendar, that allows querying for overlapping events.
In a later stage we have added mobile application support via a backend API
CHALLENGES
- Time-based Database
- Lean product design
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Ruby on Rails, Angular JS
SERVICES
Backend, Frontend
www.justplan.com
GOOGLE COLLABORATORY
GOOGLE CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Collaboratory is a political discourse platform for IP right by Google in Berlin
We have developed a high-performance content management system for Google Collaboratory based on various Google APIs like Spreadsheets, Disqus and Calendar.
For the Google initiated association Internet & Gesellschaft Co:llaboratory we've created an election app for the parliamentary elections in 2013 called the Co:Lab Netz-Radar, a guide for citizens of the election program in terms of net politics. This app is published under an open source license available on github
CHALLENGES
- Integration of several Google APIs
- Development of a custom Content Management on top
- High performance cache layer
- Cloud Hosting
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY Ruby / Sinatra, Google Spreadsheets, Google Sites, Google Disquus
SERVICES Backend, Frontend
www.collaboratory.de
WHITEBOX
PREMIUM FINANCIAL SERVICES FOR EVERYBODY
Whitebox provides financial services for everybody, that normally only premium clients have access to.
We supported whitebox from a pre-launch stage with a multiple developer team to speed up their development process. The platform includes banking gateways and complex algorithms to optimize their users portfolios.
We have worked amongst other features on the reporting.
CHALLENGES
- Large application
- International team
- FinTech - requirements
- Reporting
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Ruby On Rails
SERVICES
Backend, Frontend
CLIENT LINK
UNICEF
SOCIAL IMPACT, SOCIAL NETWORK
Social networks for several Unicef campaigns
For unicef we have been working on the development team of the open source social networkf platform crabgrass. Originally developed by a small group of social impact activists we have helped to adapt Crabgrass for the campaigns UNICEF was running mainly in African countries.
It was a constant challenge to combine the high democratic approach of the social network with the requirements of the UNICEF project teams
CHALLENGES
- Complex groups and control management
- Open Source platform
- Large international distributed team
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Ruby On Rails
SERVICES
Backend, Frontend
www.unicef.org
SENNHEISER
ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Sennheiser is an internationally recognized manufacturer for audio equipment.
We have supported their team building their website based on Ruby on Rails
We have been working integrated into a team of external supporters and developing features planned by the marketing departement of Sennheiser. The biggest challenges is the heavy internationalization and localization with different products and prices in different countries and languages per country.
CHALLENGES
- Internationalization and localization
- Content Management
- Advanced PostgreSQL
DETAILS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Ruby On Rails
SERVICES
Content Management
www.sennheiser.com
KWEEKWEEK
Discover, host, enjoy the best things to do around you
With its multiple features KweekWeek is the best place to book and sell tickets, or promote the best music festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, comedy shows, dating events and much more. For attendees and hosters.
Together with our partner live-line we build a social event calendar, including a native iPhone app based on PhoneGap and Backbone.js for KweekWeek, a new app for discovering local activities and events suggested in real-time.
CHALLENGES
- Cross platform mobile application with javascript
SOLUTIONS
SOFTWARE / TECHNOLOGY
Phonegap, BackboneJS
SERVICES
Mobile Application
CLIENT LINK
EXTRATAPETE
For the Wallpapers' designer Extratapete, we developed a Ruby on Rails Online-shop based on Spreecommerce, in which we implemented the unique design of the Berlin Agency BANK.
To emphasize the visuals of the products, we built a custom full-screen image slider: visitors can choose to display a product as the background of the page, and use the arrows on the left and right sides of the screen to navigate between products.
CHALLENGES
- The Paypal Payment feature
- The possibility to switch from German to English version
- Product suggestions based on visitor's path on the website
- The Possibility to display different variations of the same product (colors and shapes)
QUABB
MAIL-OPTIMIZER
Quabb has a unique solution to send physical letters over Internet, innovating through a sponsoring system which allows saving money on the price of the expeditions.
Backend was developed with Ruby on Rails, but we also worked with Javascript UI widgets and twitter Bootstrap as a CSS framework.
Moreover, we included a PDF generator, a text-recognition system and the address labels. All of these features are running in the background via Resque Jobs to improve performance and thus the user experience.
We also solved the problem of running bulk text recognition with a distributed system.
https://app.quabb.com/