Web Niraj

The Pundit was a Twitter-like application build in Facebook for Vodafone. The application allowed users to post 140-character comments on Football, whether is commenting on transfers, match results, or upcoming matches. A ‘celebrity pundit’ (a football player) would also use the application to interact with the Facebook users.

The application worked much like twitter and a microsite was also built integrating Facebook Connect. Users could login using either the microsite or facebook application. Users were able to vote on comments, awarding ‘goals’ or ‘red cards’. Users could also reply to comments and follow users they find interesting.

The winner for the competition would be someone with many ‘goals’, a low number of ‘red cards’, and someone with lots of followers. Unfortunately, the application never launched due to the client pulling out due to UEFA regulations.

Bandwars was a Facebook Application developed for Babelgum to celebrate the Babelgum Music Festival. The application allows users to form a band with five members, assign instruments, dress the members in clothes and challenge other bands. Challenging bands and winning would earn the band money, which can be used to purchase better costumes and instruments.

Bands were rated in five areas, which was used to determine which of the two bands win in challenges. These were:

• Rock
• Rhythm
• Cool
• Romance
• Sex Appeal

Winning challenges also allowed the winner to swap gear with one member from the losing band. The animations and shop were implemented in flash. The remainder of the application was built in PHP. A complex algorithm was written using PHP and MySQL to determine the winner of a challenge.

PHP was also used to communicate with the flash widget, acting as a intermediate layer between the interface and the database.

The application is now running unsupported since the original campaign began. You can access it here.

The Trade A Favor application was build for a start-up company in 2008. The application allows users to trade ‘favors’ on Facebook, be it services or physical products. Users simply follow four simple steps to use the applications:

1. List it – list a favor on the application
2. Find it – find a favor you want to trade for
3. Match it – match your favor to one you want to receive
4. Trade it – agree with the other user when to trade and accept it

The application used a feedback system so users could identify trustworthy traders. Statistics for each trade and each trade are also displayed to all users. A chat system was also integrated so traders could communicate when trading to easily agree favors, time and location.

The application was coded in PHP using a MySQL backend. The application can be found here.

The Nokia Tube Dance Facebook Application was a campaign to promote the Nokia 5800 Mobile Phone. The application allowed university students to upload videos of themselves dancing to a song provided my Nokia. The application accepted a variety of encoding formats (including mobile video formats) including flv, mp4, avi, mpeg, wmv, mov, mkv and m4v.

I coded the application in PHP and also wrote a shell script to convert the uploaded video on server side to flv format (flash video). The shell script ran on a cronjob to convert any newly uploaded videos and also generate thumbnails for use in the application. FFMPEG was used to convert the videos and generate thumbnails.

The application was developed in a LAMP environment. A MySQL database was used store video information, number of views, video ratings and comments.

The application was taken offline after the campaign.

The Video Aplication was built to promote Showtime’s new TV series: United States of Tara, which debuted in late January 2009. The application used a XML file to pull in the video information used in the application, including video file, video name, and description.

I coded the XML parser and entire application using PHP. Data was cached in a MySQL database and updated using a server-side cronjob. The application can be viewed on the United States of Tara Fanpage.

Skype Video Cards was a microsite and facebook application which allowed users to record personal video and send to friends and family. It was originally launched to send Christmas Video Cards in December 2008. It was later relaunched in February 2009 as a Valentine’s Day Video Card application.

The site was taken offline later in 2009 after the campaign was complete. During the Valentine’s campaign, over 54,000 cards were recorded, of which over 34,000 were sent.

For the Christmas campaign, over 24,500 videos were recorded, which were sent to over 35,500 recipients.

Thanks for visiting. Please take a look at my portfolio to get an idea of that kind of projects I’ve worked on in the past. Most of the Facebook applications I’ve developed are still available on Facebook today. If you want to find out more about me or simply want to leave a comment, you can contact me here.