The Registree is a gift registry web site where friends and family can easily view, reserve, and buy items for each other. It's also a great place to find obscure and unique gifts for yourself and your friends and family—often items you've never even seen before!

Key Features

• A custom social-networking gift registry site
• Unique search engine finds gift ideas for you
• iPhone application integration
• Facebook application integration

How We Approached the Project

We think it's important to put our own code to the test, so we built Registree for ourselves. It was borne from the desires of our own families to manage holiday gift giving a bit better than swapping Christmas lists each year. We also wanted a sandbox project where we could test and deploy new ideas and framework optimizations, and launch a useful web application at the same time.

The Registree has a lot of integration points. We have an iPhone application underway for connecting to your friends and family's list, as well as your own, including taking pictures with the iPhone camera and uploading them to your own list. We are also integrating the site with Facebook, making it easy for your Facebook contacts to see items you've added as well as request to view your list. Lastly, we are developing RegiSearch, a search engine to find unusual and interesting gift ideas from all over the Internet.

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WePak4U was created to meet the demands of new legislation signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger regarding the shipment of retail items to incarcerated individuals in California. Very specific legal requirements were necessary, along with exceptional hardware, software, and network security in order to be accepted as a licensed retail vendor for the California Department of Corrections.

Key Features

• Extremely fine-grained e-commerce requirements
• Integration of online catalog of items with a printed catalog
• Two-factor authentication using the CRYPTOCard system
• Incorporated wireless Bluetooth barcode scanners into the fulfillment workflow
• Realtime automatic picklist printing when new orders are placed

How We Approached the Project

When WePak4U approached us to build out an e-commerce system for them, we didn't realize we would be setting the bar for online retail for licensed correctional facilities. The legislative requirements we had to meet were very stringent, including unique quantity limitations on every product for multiple inmate groups for every correctional facility in California—over 200 of them.

We also assisted WePak4U in automating almost every aspect of the supply-chain, from order to delivery. We developed an automation script that would print a picklist on their warehouse printer the moment an order was made online. We also integrated wireless Bluetooth barcode scanners so that items were scanned before boxing, as an added quality-of-service requirement. Lastly, we deployed a highly-secure two-factor authentication system for the administration section of the site. We chose the same technology that Los Alamos National Laboratory uses for their authentication.

The level at which we were able to deliver this highly-custom e-commerce site, complete with additional security and quality-of-service checks was so well-received, that the California Department of Corrections used WePak4U as the standard by which all other vendors were measured in the subsequent approval process.

The Nevada Museum of Art's web site had been going strong for nearly 9 years when we approached them for a rebuild. We're big fans of the museum and we believe in what they're trying to accomplish, so it was an easy fit.

Key Features

• Entire site was redesigned and built on our Protean framework.
• Custom CMS allows museum employees to update portions of the site easily and securely.
• Holistic approach to various e-commerce transactions. Event tickets, membership, class fees, and merchandise can all be handled through a single shopping cart.
• Unique logo and theme that changes colors depending on current weather in Reno, Nevada. Though somewhat simple and novel, this functionality ties in well with the museum's focus of tying together art and the environment.

How We Approached the Project

When we began the review of the current museum site, we realized just how much work it takes to run a large non-profit. Over the years, they had implemented third-party event ticketing systems, third-party membership database systems, and various blogs and social networking pages. All of these systems were disconnected and were duplicating data. This does not scale well and can turn into a nightmare of oversells and miscommunications.

So we decided to approach this project with a larger picture in mind–how can we best consolidate the various aspects of their day-to-day operations into a simple cohesive site? We ended up using nearly all of our custom-built Protean modules for this site, including calendaring, content-management, user management, e-commerce, and themed templates.

Future phases of this project will be to further unify the various tasks that both museum members and site patrons use to interact together.

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Community Council on Youth is a non-profit organization focused on helping at-risk youth avoid problem behavior and substance abuse. They needed an easy-to-use content-management system (CMS) to update their site content without constant contact with a web designer.

Key Features

• Multi-themed site based on the particular audience viewing the section
• Fluid content-management with easy one-click editing
• Support for WYSIWYG editing in the administration section

How We Approached the Project

Community Council on Youth not only needed a professionally-designed web presence, but also a very easy way of updating content. Since most of their site updating would be done by volunteers, complex content-management systems were not going to cut it. We needed easy—like word-processing easy.

So we set out to handle usability a little differently than in the past. We thought a lot about how we could make editing a web site so simple that it wouldn't require any training. What we came up with was integrating a feature called edit-in-place throughout the site.

What this is, essentially, can best be described by the following: If you are a typical visitor, you view the site by clicking on links—nothing new there. But, if you are logged in as an administrative user, you still navigate the site like an end-user. Except this time any text that is editable is outlined in a thin red border. To edit it, you simply click on the text, which then immediately becomes editable with a cursor blinking at the end; now edit it, and click the save button. Done. Instantly updated, anywhere, on any page.

We're really proud of this feature and are starting to integrate it into our other projects.

The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Madonna, The Black-Eyed Peas, Pearl Jam, Aerosmith, Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., John Mayer, and the Carolina Panthers. These are just a few of the customers Cube Passes services for credential requirements. Working closely with their primary design agency, Cube Passes came to us with a request for a better way to handle the online registration of major events.

Key Features

• Custom registration system based on users, groups, and roles
• Easy on-demand export of registration data to Excel
• An integrated approval process for each registration request
• Automatic start and end dates for registrations

How We Approached the Project

Cube Passes had been a long-time client of ours when the registration frustration was described to us. A very large customer of theirs was handling the registration for one of their major televised events using archaic methods. Without going into too much detail or naming any names, it entailed spreadsheets e-mailed back and forth, sporadic phone calls, and lots of duplicate or missing data—not good at all.

Instead, we developed an online registration tool that allowed Cube's client to define the roles, the quanities for each role, and start and end times for open registration. Furthermore, we made it so supervisors within Cube's client company could approve or decline every registration request. Once the registration was complete, they click on an export link and download the entire dataset directly into Excel. The dataset was also delivered to Cube who then used it for the printing of the credential passes for the event.

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Seismo-Watch is an earthquake news and reporting web site. They contacted us to build a real-time, worldwide earthquake reporting system delivered via multiple delivery methods.

Key Features

• Real-time, worldwide earthquake reporting
• Multiple delivery methods including e-mail, fax, text-message, and pager
• User accounts support thresholds for magnitude and location

How We Approached the Project

Seismo-Watch was one of our first clients. When they contacted us about the viability of developing a real-time earthquake reporting system, we jumped at the chance. We worked with the chief geologist at Seismo-Watch to determine the United States Geological Survey (USGS) global data feeds necessary to monitor all earthquakes worldwide. We then developed a user account system that allowed each user of the service to choose any number of locations to monitor, set the number of miles to monitor from each location, and a magnitude threshold to trigger an alert.

After we deployed the system, we were finding that our system was exceeding the USGS's system in the speed in which the reports were sent. One thing we didn't expect to happen was to beat the pros at their own game! Newspapers nationwide subscribe to the service for up-to-the-minute earthquake alerts.

Though we can't mention the name, we're so excited about this project that we want to mention it anyway. For now, we'll call it "Project X".

Project X is an online clothing retailer who has developed a patented matching algorithm that pairs clothing with particular body shapes and sizes. Loopshot was contracted to develop this custom algorithm.

Key Features

• Algorithm developed using documents from patent filing
• Supports extremely large sets of member and clothing data
• Scalable to multiple servers

How We Approached the Project

When we first learned of Project X and were contacted to develop the proof-of-concept implementation of their patented algorithm, we thought they were just another online retailer. We were so very wrong.

Project X has such a deep and far-reaching technology that we now like to think of Project X as a technology company who happens to sell garments online. Their algorithm is a very complex matching engine that determines what styles and sizes of clothing will fit you. Simply create an account on their site and the rest is done for you. Imagine adding items to your online shopping cart without ever choosing a size. That's how groundbreaking it is.

The best way to describe the algorithm is that it's part expert-system, part set-based matching, and part machine-learning. It spans into several very interesting and challenging fields of Computer Science, and we are privileged to have been chosen to be the implementors of the core technology of this exciting new company.