I've been working on side projects since I was a teenager, so far I can proudly say that none of my tech-oriented projects was ever a success, but I don't give up and keep track of each of them, hoping someday someone will ask about it so I can keep on giving at parties. I've solely listed the big projects I completed, no libraries or viable businesses are quoted.
Living for a while in Mexico, I realized small and mid-sized companies had a hard time monitoring and analyzing worker shifts, especially in physical offices and factories; the existing solutions are usually flaky like fingerprint passes to enter buildings.
I wrote an agnostic clock-in system based on QR Codes and geolocation while making sure the core would be robust enough to handle future use cases such as gym subscribers trends, supermarket customer sessions, and live-events success measurements, all that with check-in means flexibility (e.g. facial recognition). It has a strong analytics/metrics report system to help accountants/HR for my main use-case.
It is fully coded in Golang and React/TypeScript also using MaterialUI. The database layer is CockroachDB and the main communication layer is GraphQL.
Working several years in software engineering, I realized there was no stress test platform made for developers. At worst, you get some 20 years old sites asking to get an estimate on the phone. At best, you deal with YAML files and a heavy setup before testing anything. People generally end up coding their own homemade solution. That's a lot of engineering time wasted.
Bloodbath was thought differently. I've invested heavily into an enhanced developer experience by building multiple languages libraries — Python, Ruby & Node at first — and an easy setup. It also scales very well with the technologies I've picked. I decided to keep it agnostic, even if the primary market for me would be stress tests related.
The stack is complex as it has libraries in several languages (Python, NodeJS, Ruby) but it's basically a mix of Golang lambda, Elixir for the CRUD and PostgreSQL (RDS) as database layer. I also used Ionic for the UI.
In the middle of the COVID crisis, opportunities arised. BigSeat was a seat booking system that was targeted to small and mid-sized companies. The point was to have a better space allocation planning and insight in company office to save company money.
With a couple of friends from the USA, we decided we wanted to make a credit card of a new kind. We worked on a native iOS application coupled with a credit card API so that at each payment, Americans could fund their retirement through automatic investment mechanisms (e.g. SP500). The project was technically working but we could not secure seed funding so we decided to stop.
We used Django and GraphQL. And as usual, PostgreSQL as a database layer.
It's been years cool services pop up all over the place. You have Uber, AirBnB and what not. Surely everyone wants to be in the next craze, but people all look at the same direction, like food delivery or car sharing. There's one domain which hasn't been touched by a robust app though; conciergerie. After trying a few of them for my own needs, I realized how bad all that was orchestrated. That's how Alfred was born. I decided to write up a cool and very accessible app you can use H24 7/7 from any device, to rapidly ask for little tasks without second thought. Ask him something, and he will do it for you. You avoid burning your precious time, and the stress of sending a letter, translating something or call the plumber vanishes. Delegating tasks has never been this easy.
Alfred is by far the most complete app I had ever built so far. I took months designing the graphics through Sketch, writing up a realistic business model and plan, defining the MVP specs and pushing the marketing ideas upside down with Notion. I had given myself one year to make it work commercially. After a few days of marketing campaign, I got my first customer and realized I didn't want to get into the industry.
The communication layer is entirely GraphQL.
Ever heard of cryptocurrencies ? Well, me too. After investing my money in this emotional rollercoaster since early 2017, I realized no portfolio was ever matching my expectations, so I built one. Also crypto projects were being created all over the Internet, so why not make one too ? I tried to keep everything simple and minimalist. The killer feature is the weather which illustrates the current trend of the daily market or/and your portfolio via a secret algorithm anyone could guess, because it's on Github.
This is a full-on SPA working with a Rails API communicating through REST.
I've always wanted to build up a native app. While learning Swift and making a very bad Beeper MVP, I discovered MeteorJS, a very promising technology, you could build up an Android / iOS / MacOS app all at once through Cordova and much more. I decided to code this small product about geolocation. If you're ever looking for your friends, you can open up Geokaliz, show your location with a green icon and your friend will be able to catch up with you via this open stream. The whole app was composed as live location system and published to the App Store, Google Play and I also made a MacOS version based in Electron.
Ever been to a cool party ? Well, me neither, but for the ones who went, an important criteria to a good party is the sound system, and it often ends up with a computer plugged to a high-fi, sometimes a phone / tablet. The thing is, who wants to move around to change the music ? No one. And who wants to buy those expensive connected sound systems ? No one either.
I decided to create a synchronization app available from any computer or mobile device. In short, you open your browser / app and go to your channel as a speaker, then anyone can go to the same channel and switch musics, change the volume or add the next music to be played. The area you can connect to wasn’t limited like Bluetooth based systems.
The project had its market ; people were using it at different parties around my city but it was based on YouTube API which changed and became very restricted in term of auto play. I had to give it up, but plan on making a come back someday.
It is fully coded in NodeJS.
I've got many other past projects, but I didn't give myself time to write them up yet...