Greg Tracy

The personal and professional projects that keep me entertained and inspired

APOD Email Distribution

The APOD Email service provides a mechanism for individuals to receive the Astronomy Picture of the Day in an email each day.

The service was originally built in grad school as a favor for my dad. It has since blossomed with more than 600 recipients and has been migrated to Google App Engine. You can sign up here.

Frinook

Frinook is a site invented by my daughter. She wanted to create a service where her friends could build a virtual library to share their books online. Frinook provides a both to list the books you own as well as the tools to check out the books owned by others, with a few social features wrapped around it.

The book publishers don't care much for it, but the parents sure do!

Posterous Widgets

Using Sharendipity, I've built a number of web widget applications that take advantage of the Posterous API. This includes the following...

• Photo Stream - An embeddable widget the rotates through your photo media
• Posterous Feeder - An embeddable widget that provides a scrolling snapshop of your blog posts
• Memory Game - The classic memory card game that uses your photo media as the memory cards

Ringerous

Ringerous is a telephone application that lets you post to your Posterous blog by phone. Just dial 415.367.3142 and leave your message after the prompt. Your message will appear in a post with an embedded audio player.

Ringerous was initially created to help my kids, nephews, and nieces post to a family blog without email. But now there are a number of different uses for it. Built on App Engine, it combines the Posterous API with the ease of the Twilio API to create a whole new way of posting.

News and Notes

• Mashup of the Day at Programmable Web
• Five uses for Ringerous

Sharendipity

Sharendipity is a web platform that aims to enable everyone to create software. Regardless of their programming skills. Using our creation and distribution tools, anyone can create a broud range of web applications including casual games, Facebook applications, education tools, and web widgets.

I am the co-founder and President of the business.

News and Notes

• Sharendipity is a New Platform for Building Social Games - Inside Social Games
• Q&A: Sharendipity President Greg Tracy discusses casual gaming and competition with EA - The Industry Standard
• Madison startup Sharendipity allows anybody to be a game programmer - Isthmus

SMSMyBus

SMSMyBus is a mobile telephone application that lets you find real time bus arrivals for the Madison Metro. Just text your request to 608.467.1603 to receive real time arrival estimates.

SMSMyBus was originally created as an entrant in the Twilio Developer Contest when they released their SMS API. But it is proving to be an incredibly practical tool for Madison commuters getting stranded in the cold Wisconsin winters!

News and Notes

• Mashup of the Day at Programmable Web
• SMSMyBus feed data is used to drive an information display at local coffeehouse
• SMSMyBus opens its data and publishes a developer API that enables other developers to build Madison transit applications

A Project to be Named Later

I've started building a personal search engine that provides a lens for a individual's online footprint. More details to follow...