MeFi Projects

Domains can be more than just letters and numbers. Most people have no idea they can just type a bunch of hearts in their address bar and go to a domain... and yet, it works!
posted by ph00dz on Dec 8, 2016 - 2 comments

MusicMessages! is a collaborative step sequencer for the iMessage App Store (iPhone, iPad). Using the simple and (hopefully) intuitive interface, you can punch in a few chords or a percussion line and send the message off to your friends, who can then make their own changes and send it back. Five instrument layers and over 40 MIDI instruments are available to use. Bonus: if you have an iPhone 7, the note buttons respond to pressure and "pop" like bubble wrap with the help of the Taptic engine!
posted by archagon on Nov 30, 2016 - 1 comment

I've spent the past 18 months or so slogging away at apprecs.com, an app search engine that can detect review manipulation. You can see the worst offenders here. I posted this back when this was iOS-only, and I'd like to share some major new features I've added. [more inside]
posted by hodgebodge on Oct 20, 2016 - 2 comments

While developing mobile apps, I realized how rife the App Store is with rating/review manipulation. So, I created apprecs.com, a facade for the store that allows you to filter out many of the fake, coerced, or otherwise manipulated reviews. You can also filter by other criteria such as how recently the app was last updated and age/gender of the typical user. What do you think? I'm getting started on adding Android (Google Play) support today. [more inside]
posted by hodgebodge on Apr 19, 2016 - 9 comments

Composer's Sketchpad is an iPad sequencer-ish app for quickly jotting down musical ideas. In brief, the app presents you with a giant pannable and zoomable canvas that you can draw musical notes on. I wanted to create a modern take on sheet music, but without any of the legacy limitations; as a result, you can start each note at any time and bend it to any pitch, giving you the ability sketch out expressive solos and complex rhythms with no extra effort. (You can also turn on time or pitch snapping if you like.) Navigation, editing, and playback are carefully designed to be as frictionless as possible, and over 100 different instruments (as well as a percussion set) are available. Your music is saved automatically without any limit on the total number of sketches. Apple Pencil supported! [more inside]
posted by archagon on Jan 11, 2016 - 5 comments

Approximal is an iOS app that uses Bluetooth to discover people nearby. It can match you using social networks (18 supported so far, including the usual suspects), or any adhoc personal networks you and other people create. [more inside]
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse on Aug 21, 2015 - 1 comment

Kids can spin the wheel to hear words and songs across 11 different themes. It's aimed at pre-school kids as a fun way to learn new words in English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. [more inside]
posted by Gomez_in_the_South on Jul 21, 2015 - 2 comments

Make large triangles out of four smaller ones. It's a simple concept, but you score more points and earn more time by extending your triangle combos into more complex shapes. A completed combo returns a newly upgraded tile, and you match those up the same way. There's a timer, and you push it back by gathering initial tiles. By making different shapes, you can unlock symmetry, mirror and kaleidoscopic bonuses and even capture other tiles to raise your score multiplier up to 20x or more. Most games take about 5-10 minutes to complete. There are 30+ achievements and 3 leaderboards to measure your skill; Game Center supported on iOS and OSX. [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett on Jul 12, 2013 - 1 comment

JailbreakQA is a question-and-answer forum for people interested in iOS jailbreaking (applying exploits to remove restrictions on iOS devices in order to be able to install a wider variety of software). It provides reliable answers for almost any question people can think up about this stuff, and part of its goal is to provide a safety net of helpful problem-solvers for anyone who runs into a problem with a jailbroken device. I'm the head moderator (and FAQ writer) for this forum, part of my work on coordinating ways to make jailbreaking more accessible and friendly instead of seeming confusing and sketchy. Along with value-based reasons for why people care about jailbreaking, it's also a neat opportunity to tinker with making a well-loved device even better through the interface tweaks and customizations developed by the jailbreaking community, and I'm lucky to professionally work on something I care about like this.
posted by dreamyshade on Feb 1, 2013 - 0 comments

Nametrix is an iOS app I created initially for baby naming, but it ended up being way cooler than that. It uses public data on millions of people (US census, US campaign contributions, Wikipedia) to determine what professions, political parties, and other affiliations each name tends toward. For example, Ellen is a disproportionately common name for 1) psychotherapists, 2) librarians, and 3) activists. Ellens also overwhelmingly lean toward the Democrat party and have tended to be most popular in the northeastern part of the US. As far as I know, nobody else has made anything remotely like this... Pretty fascinating stuff, right? What other kinds of metrics would you like to see?
posted by hodgebodge on Jan 24, 2013 - 23 comments

Here's the trailer! [more inside]
posted by luvcraft on Dec 20, 2012 - 9 comments

I decided to quit my programming job at Google, start a small company, and write an app with my best friend Graham Bartram. As he's a top flag expert these days, the result was FlagWaver. Watch his beautiful high quality flag artwork ripple in a virtual breeze as you spin and zoom them, even drag the simulated fabric with your finger. [more inside]
posted by w0mbat on Sep 19, 2012 - 1 comment

I've published my first iOS app! Cell Blast (iPad only, I'm afraid) allows you to simulate John Conway's Game of Life, the classic cellular automaton. You can also create your own (much more complex) automata rules and play them out on a 100x100 - 400x400 grid. [more inside]
posted by hiteleven on Feb 24, 2012 - 0 comments

OpenEars is an open-source iOS library for implementing round-trip English language speech recognition and text-to-speech on the iPhone and iPad, which uses the CMU Pocketsphinx and CMU Flite libraries. [more inside]
posted by Halle on Jan 31, 2011 - 4 comments

I have recently written a MIDI control surface app for the iPad. It currently has six layouts, consisting of combinations of piano keyboards (with pitch bender), and ribbons and XY pads, which can be configured to send different MIDI control events. It works over WiFi, talking to the open-source DSMIDIWiFi client. [more inside]
posted by acb on Nov 4, 2010 - 5 comments