smurch — now on Google Play

A year ago my brother texted me his buzzer number.  To this day, every single time I visit him, I text him to ask what it is.

That's just dumb,  I should write it down somewhere. But then it's already written down.  The real problem is that scrolling through your SMS history is a pain.

Introducing smurch, now available free on Google Play.

With smurch you can search through any SMS / MMS conversation.  You never have to worry about pestering your brother for his buzzer code again.  Acquaintances will be in equal parts pleased and creeped out that you remember where they live.

Smurch leverages texport's codebase, but instead of saving your conversation to a file (which you can then open in a web browser), it dumps the generated HTML to a webview, allowing you to easily search for any string occurrences.

Get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gigglingcorpse.smurch

texport — now on Google Play

A while ago a friend was updating his phone, and in the process somehow killed it. He lost everything.

It got me thinking of the all things I have on my phone that I don’t want to lose.

And what it came down to was conversations. Not so much photos. If a photo is good, chances are I've texted it to someone — and if not, it’s sitting there, nestled somewhere amongst the millions of shots in the DCIM directory, mostly of fingertips and unrecognizable blurs. I don't need those.

So I started looking for an app that would backup my conversations.

I wasn't satisfied with what I found. Nothing quite performed the way I wanted, which was no doubt due to the particularity of what I had in mind.

• I wanted images included in the backup, but didn't want to deal with a bunch of separate files. 
• I wanted something better formatted than a delimited text file. 
• I didn't want the conversation sent anywhere or uploaded, just saved as a file on my phone that I could do with as I wished. 

I didn't find anything like that, so I decided to make it.

Introducing texport, now available on Google Play.
Feature requests welcome.


With texport you can easily export 1-to-1 SMS / MMS conversations to HTML or JSON. Including images.

Without ever leaving your phone, you can backup a conversation, zip it, and attach it to an email.





Things you can do with texport:

• Save all the MMS images in a conversation. 
• Create a single, easily-transferable (one way) backup of your conversation. 
• Create an HTML file which you can open on your computer and search through with the browser’s find function. 

What you can’t do with texport:

• Export Google Hangouts messages. In most cases these are already logged to Gmail. 
• Export conversations with multiple recipients/senders. (I haven’t actually tested this, I just assume it won’t work properly, as is.) 
• Import SMS/MMS messages from a texport file back into your phone 

Example output

Get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gigglingcorpse.texport

Dr. Stephanie Tsang Logo

Oh man, so many business card designs lately!  Speaking of business cards, here's the new logo for Dr. Stephanie Tsang.

In case you missed it, the logo features a tooth and a smile, just like many happy people (those with one or more teeth).

Cedar Park Dental Group

A while back, we started working on a logo for Cedar Park Dental Group. We put together a few concepts, and this is what they went with!

The end?  As it turns out, maybe not!  We've currently got some Cedar Park Dental Group business card designs out for review.

PRTS website

Not too long ago, I put together a logo for PRTS.  Maybe you remember it?  Since then, we discussed a brochure as well as a website - I wanted to try something a little different and combined the two!

The result was a single page website displaying all the important information.

It's a little wider than normal, because, really, who doesn't have a widescreen monitor these days?   (I hope the answer isn't you!)  It easily fits within 1080px, and on those smaller monitors (with aspect ratios that are difficult to even find these days) it'll still be clear that there's a third column.

I also rewrote our formmail script to work via ajax, so the visitors truly never have to leave that one page - even when submitting the contact form!

(BTW, the PRTS website is now live!)

Your friend,
Brad

PRTS logo

Here at Altered Effect, we (well, I, in this case) have been working on a logo for Pacific Rim Teleradiology Services - a company focused on, I am willing to guess, teleradiology as a service! (It's more than a guess; I have it on reasonably good authority).

There were some things PRTS were interested in seeing (a seagull, a globe, the letters PRTS, a setting sun, ocean waves, and a coastline with trees), many of which you may notice in the alternate concepts.

With the logo now finalized, we've set up a placeholder website for them at www.prtelerad.com (and www.pacificrimteleradiology.com).

BC Strawberries - socialized

The Fraser Valley Strawberry Growers Association had some very specific changes in mind, with regard to their website.  Just some of these changes were the additions of a Twitter and Blog feed to their BC Strawberries home page.

The great thing about Twitter, and Blogger (really the great part about developing now) is that they both offer their feeds as JSON.  JSON can be a pleasure to work with, especially when using PHP or Javascript.  I tend to make heavy use of both, so learning this - well, it felt a little like my birthday.

Twitter, you may not know, imposes a limit on its feed requests.  It's something rather small — 150 requests per hour or so.  Probably you did know this, and you're wondering why I brought it up.

As you can guess, this limit became a problem during testing (during the modify, save, refresh cycle).  Foreseeabley (who knows if that's a word?), it could become a problem during production as well.

An obvious solution is caching the response.  When a solution is obvious, there's often no real reason to look further.  I wrote a Twitter class which did the following:

First, it checked the users session for a response.  If one was stored, that was used.  If not, it requested the feed from Twitter.  There were two usual outcomes here.  The first is that Twitter returned an error message.  Should that be the case, a stored response was retrieved from the database.
If Twitter returned a valid feed, it was then stored in the database and in the user's session, and that response was used.

It seemed to work fairly well.  I did the same for Blogger - though I have encountered no such request limit. (There may well be one. Who knows?)  If there is, this should prevent ugly errors from distracting from the home page's content.

I set up their Blogger account, and skinned it so as to match their website.  When put into production, I removed the session caching as it seemed unnecessary.

But there was one more thing that needed doing, and it was neat.  The FVSGA requested the addition of a video gallery, but only required the inclusion of a very limited number of videos which I'm told wouldn't often change.
Something easy to manage, but which didn't require elaborate back-end integration into their CMS (to keep costs down and save them money) was the goal.  What I did was write some code to convert a list of Youtube links into a video gallery, which you can learn more about here: http://www.gigglingcorpse.com/2011/06/29/youtube-powered-video-gallery-and-isometry/.

The idea is that when managing the content, they need only update a list of links and everything else will happen automatically.  Or as we so often say on the internet, automagically.

Your friend,
Brad

BCRaspberries.com launched!

The Raspberry Industry Development Council has a new website!  If you're stuck in the old have-raspberries-but-want-to-delay-eating-them situation, it provides a number of solutions in the form of recipes.
If you're not quite there yet, it'll help you find raspberries in British Columbia.

It presents all sorts of information about the council and their projects, and if you're a grower there's an extensive growers-only section to give you with in-depth grower-specific information.  Just request a log in via the contact us page.

But best of all, it features a moving slideshow (with a berry overlay) that we put together just for them.

Oh look, there it is!

You can find the new BC Raspberries website at www.bcraspberries.com.

We finally have a website!

It's been over two years, but Altered Effect finally has a website of its very own.  It's really only two pages, but better than nothing!

It has an excerpt from this very blog, and some expanding content areas:

The contact form slides down when you click the contact link:

 The portfolio page is full of thumbnails which provide more information on mouse over:

Hopefully people like it!  At the very least, it will give our clients something to see.

Some flash games

Here are a few example games we've done.

Chromatic Resitiution - a simple game of skill

We were going for a very specific visual style with this game, and I think we achieved it!

Complete the circuit as quickly as you can.  (This one requires a pretty fast computer)

Want to fly a little blue spaceship around?

The classic you as a ravenous snake against an unending supply of apples.

The Family Wishlist

The Family Wishlist is another site we made to solve a very specific problem:  sharing wishlists, and preventing organizing buying to prevent duplicate purchases.  Recently, we added a Secret Santa feature.

Bradicon!

Bradicon converts images into .ICO files, and was designed and programmed right here at Altered Effect.  You don't have to download any software, or sign up, and it's completely free to use.

You can find out more about the mysterious Bradicon here: http://ico.bradleygill.com/bradicon.php

Codepaste

Codepaste allows visitors to share their code, without losing its format.  You can paste files, or upload them.  Some of its features include ownership, revisions, and branching.  And all this, without ever having to sign up or sign in. (In fact, there is intentionally no way to sign in.)

Any code you add, be it by pasting, uploading or branching is owned by you. You can edit it, and save new revisions. Every file has a public key: a string of characters you can give to your friends, or anyone you want to be able to revise your files – ideal for situations where you’ve grown too accustomed to some code, and need fresh eyes to spot and correct an error.

Codepaste will email a link to the code to a friend, or you can download the code for use.

Ardcorp

Ardcorp came to us looking for a website on which they could share information about their many projects and initiatives.

Aquaflora Nurseries

Aquaflora Nurseries produces underwater plants, and needed a logo.  We produced a number of concepts for them, this is the one they chose.

We also made a custom inventory and content management system for to suit their business.  It keeps track of where plants are, and when they needed to be re-potted.  It also manages their orders and sales to dealers, and has so many other features.

Maan Farms

Maan Farms came to us looking for a website that was rustic, and old-timey, but very kid-friendly.

WinMar Fraser Valley

WinMar Fraser Valley came to us looking for a website that focused on the renovation, restoration, and esporta cleaning aspects of their business respectively.  They wanted something upscale, classy and professional.

Wildflower Birth Services

Wildflower Birth Services needed a logo and a website, and we came through with both!

Vancouver Island Head Injury Society

VIHIS came to us for a logo.  Oh, man do we have sheets and sheets of logo concepts we produced for them.  Here are two!

(They wanted it to include a lightbulb, and maybe a tree, some hills, and water.)

Tsang Dentistry

Tsang Dentistry is a local dental office who came to us in search of a logo.  We produced a few concepts for them.

We also put together a website design for them.

But what's really neat is that we had the opportunity to create a poster for them (it was for display at a Judo tournament).

Oh, and there were various newspaper ads that we designed.