A week ago, I created an web app designed to aid ICS students in choosing their WWW trips where their friends are going. Like the app I created a while ago with courses, this idea came up from the millions of “where are you guys going?” wall posts on Facebook – why not just create a central hub for people to see where people are (or in some cases, aren’t) going?

Development took a little bit over a full day and made me sleep at 5am – something that I would have definitely not done normally. Could have took much less time had I not played with the various Facebook APIs, jQuery effects and aesthetic elements, but you know, it was worth it. I mean, in the end I took this mini project as an experiment in itself, testing what works and what doesn’t, and improve on the later products.

And here is my report.

Stats

Launched on Sunday, 23rd January morning. Last activity on 25th. (Yes, it only survived for 2 days) 101 Users, 155 “clicks” or choices made.

You know, I was actually quite impressed myself. Although I expected more, but this was definitely enough to make myself proud.

What worked.

The emphasis on “Socialization”

Nowadays apps are all about your FRIENDS and no long about YOU. What other people are doing are becoming much more important. A huge part of the App was designed with that in mind.

The “picture wall” (suggested by Teddy) was one of such thing. Not only was it (surprisingly) extremely pretty, but also helpful. Not a lot of people realized it, but users may click on someone’s profile picture and it will show his/her selected trips. Had this feature not been implemented, I think the App would have lost a lot of interest form its users.

Facebook is DA BOSS.

Speaking of socializing… Facebook has shown superiority to almost every other product on the Internet. Heck, it even (almost) replaced email! Apps that go against it, like Wave, can’t even stand a chance even under Google. And therefore, there is absolutely no way not to tie this app to the trend.

Everybody had an Facebook account – I did not need to worry about not providing true identity, nor do I need to take care of security, cookies, sessions, blah blah blah. All I needed was one line of code checking if the user is logged in or not, that’s it. Saved me database spaces at the very least, not to mention time to debug security holes to authentication and what not.

And because everyone had a Facebook account, activity on this App can be easily by other people, thus helping the app spread faster. In theory, when people see that other people are making their WWW trips choices on this App, they’d be like “Oh hmm.” and click on the link. (I didn’t set up a referrer check to see how many clicks actually came from Facebook published stories, but I’d imagine there is at least 30%)

Ajax

Who wants to load a whole page just to see a tiny description box of a trip? No one. And that’s why I spent so much time on ajax-fying the site. There is only one page in the whole app, and every little thing is only updated when it had to. No extra bandwidth, no extra lag time, no extra nothing.

Name me one person that didn’t like the dynamic loading of contents and the stunning (come on, admit it ) effects on the page, I dare you.

What didn’t work

IE Compatibility

GARH! This was THE flaw of the app (or maybe the school). Because IE is the only browser installed on school computers, there were no way for students or teachers to check it out in school. By the time they got home, they probably have forgotten about it as well.

I tried figuring out but I couldn’t due to the lack of developer tools on IE. Okay fine, I was being a little bit lazy, but. I think we can all blame IE.

Timing / Marketing

It was all wrong. I should have started this way earlier, and not just 3 days before the decision deadline. Well, I didn’t know how I could have sped it up considering I only found out about WWW choices that day.

One thing I also could have done was inform the WWW Committee about it to have them include this in daily newsletters. But again, it had IE compatibility issues…

The Design

Nope. I didn’t like it. My original design intentions were to keep it simple, but now it looks (way) too messy with so much blue. Could have also tried some more icons, I guess.

Conclusion / What’s coming up

A course selection app! Something that I have been planning since last year, but never gotten around to it. It will definitely go the direction of “socializing” just like this app, but given much more time to prep and advertise so to bring its full potential.

What did YOU like and dislike about the app?

Click here to join in the App

There is a network setup on Facebook, but not very well known – only 81 people are on it. The rest are either in their previous school (I see a lot of AIS), Hong Kong, or are having trouble to join any networks. Follow this tutorial, and I’ll get you into the app shortly.

If you are not in the network, you’ll most likely see a message like this when you access to the app:

Some people might be able to resolve the issue through Network Settings in Facebook without any hassle, but others find it troublesome to change network. In that case, you’ll need to double-check the following settings:

Are you in any colleges/high schools currently?

1. Click on “Profile” on top right corner
   
2. Under “Education and Work”, click on “Edit”
   
3. Remove your colleges records
   
4. Update your highschool record to be “International Christian School (Kowloon City, Hong Kong)”, and set the year to be the year you’re graduating.  (For 09-10 school year, Seniors = 2010, Juniors = 2011, Sophomores = 2012, Freshmen = 2013)
   
5. Save your settings

Check your Birthday

This is quite important, as somebody over 18 obviously can’t be in a high school network. If you don’t have it set, or set as something over 18 years old, you’ll need to contact Facebook to change it for you. Or, if you really are over 18 and are still in this school, you’ll need to contact Facebook as well.

Join the Network again

After the steps above are done, try to edit your network settings again. You should be able to see International Christian School in the Edit Network Settings screen.

If you don’t see it, please contact Peter Zhang at p@peetahzee.com.

When I designed the app, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I can make use of the already-awesome Facebook systems. That way, I don’t have to spend a lot of time on programming a nice interface myself, nor do I have to worry about the right security stuff – Facebook can take care them for me!

Showcase with Pages

After thinking a while, here’s what I decided: Facebook Pages! Each Tribe has its own Facebook Page, and that is where the tribes”showcase” their class. Through them, tribes can easily upload pictures and tell everybody about it through the fans system. Pages are where tribes basically showcase their work, and most likely where all the tribal points will be coming from (posting good pics, reflective stories, etc.)

While that is solved, another issue popped up: I need to somehow connect the pages together. And this is where the Page Tabs come in. With the “ICS” Tabs on each page, you can access the information about a tribe quickly, such as points and members, as well as links to other tribes too.

“Internal Communication” via App

In addition, there is also a separate part from the pages system, and it is the app itself. If you launch the app from Facebook menus, you’ll be able to see something like an announcement system. Although the whole system is still in progress, the part with advisory announcements is done. Advisories and Mr. Chan can easily setup advisory meeting times. And yes, that means no more posting “any advisory tomorrow” messages on Facebook. =)

Always Looking for Suggestions

So now, please do me a favor and start using the Facebook App! We’ll be running a few contests soon, but it’s never too late to start. =D

I’m always looking for suggestions. If you have ideas (be reasonable, please) that you think can help the ICS App Experience, please do tell me! Either by Facebook wall post, or commenting on this post.

Anyway, I just thought showing off a little bit would be cool, so here we go. The site won’t be officially launched until another week, but yup.

Interface

This is the homepage. Nothing much is on there other than some quick links and tutorials, and we thought leaving it this way is sexy.

The “buy” page is really the “main” page of Vitaku – this is where you basically find stuff to buy. There is a huge “featured” box there that we promote whatever we feel like worth promoting (such as a really good seller). There’s also a list of categories at the bottom, so yup. If all else fails, try search for the stuff you want, and I’m sure you’ll find it.

The “sell” page is, obviously, where you sell your stuff. There are options to upload a picture, provide detailed descriptions (with images and stuff, just like you woudl on eBay), and of course, to set your price.

Last but not least, the “My Vitaku” page – it shows you your stats, current transactions (things that you pretty much want to deal with as soon as possible), and stuff that you sell. Later on, based on suggestions and what not, we’re going to add even more personalized stuff to it.

Transactions

The way that transactions work on Vitaku is actually pretty straight forward. When a buyer is interested in buying a thing that the seller has posted, he’ll click the “buy now” button, and be redirected to a page where he can suggest how the trade should be made.

The buyer and the seller can go back and forth on these details, and when both are happy with it (the person that didn’t make the last edit approves), they’ll trade, and come back to “complete” the transaction.

Then, each of them are going to have an option to rate the other person. This will help the other users of Vitaku a lot when the make decisions on who to buy from.

Last Words

I know you are just as excited as the team to use it. Be patient! When the site’s ready, we’ll be sure to let you know

Okay. I lied. For those of you who are still reading, comment what you think the story is and the first one who gets it correct gets a prize.

The first impression I had of ICS are the nice people around, be it teachers or students – at least, they remember my name! Like I pointed out in the last post, things are not only organized here, but also very neat and well-planned out. I really like the class environment here – funny, relaxed, but I can still learn things.

Luckily, I got well with some of the students here and joined the programming club. Somehow, they called me a “pro”, and wanted me to teach the rest about HTML/CSS/Websites design. Seriously…. what just happened?

Adding/Dropping

So, I mentioned that I signed up for honors Amer. / Brit. Lit. for my English course. After the introductory 20-minutes lesson, I find out that I am in the wrong class. Mrs. Stephen, the teacher of the course, is a nice lady, who reminded me that “other students have read 5 books in the summer and each wrote about 10 pages notes on each of them. You might want to start them now since we’ll have 6 other books to cover in this semester. Mmm, how about this, you won’t have to write notes, just read those books and come and talk to me about them.” Although the list of books she required included some books that we read in SMIC, like Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, etc., still, that means I’ll have to read 11 books in a short 4 months! Even more scarier, is that they are covering two entire books of “Literature” (the same book we use at SMIC) in one year! WOW.

But what can I do? That is like the only English course available in F block. The course I wanted to take, Advanced Composition, is available in G block, which I have Chinese during then. Then, after taking the introductory lesson, I made my decision: If I can drop Chinese, I will do everything to do so. The class is like the most boring class I have ever taken in my life.  (Or perhaps I am used to the relaxed style of Ms. Ma’s?)

So in the next day, I got a drop/add form, and started gathering signatures. Mrs. Stephen, the English teacher, signed right off the bat without even having to ask me for reasons. Wow, okay. Then, I went to my Chinese teacher,  but the reaction was the complete opposite. I asked her really politely, but she responded, “You won’t have the credits transferred from your old school! “ WHAT? HOW CAN IT NOT TRANSFER OVER? “Yeah, we had a senior that had to take both French and Chinese courses just so he can get 2 Language credits to graduate.” THAT CAN’T BE POSSIBLE! “Fine (it sounded like “You don’t believe me?”), go to the Dean and ask him.”

So I went to the Dean, and asked him about the credits. “They should transfer. Go talk to Ms. Farley the counselor.”

Fine. I had to then go to the counseling office to find Ms. Farley. I was originally asking her for suggestions for what to do, but she actually did the whole add/drop for me. Yes, without my Chinese teacher’s approval! Wow, that’s got to be the best day of my life – I don’t think I would want to go up to her and ask her to sign my form.

Let’s talk about my courses… in the order of my schedule.

Block A – Bible 11

Nothing special, I guess. Surprisingly, the class wasn’t just about memorizing Bible verses and all that, it is quite fun actually. I think. Our first project is “Search for God’s Hand in my life”. I have to give a presentation about… well, you can probably guess from the name of the project and write something for the teacher. Fun fun fun!

Block B – P.E.

I seriously don’t know why I signed up for P.E.. Again, nothing is special. We actually voted on the sports we want to play and we ended up with Volleyball, Bowling, Badminton and (argh, I forgot! I guess that’s a sport that doesn’t interest me). Yeah, you read that right, Bowling is in the list.

Block C – PreCalculus

Keywords: “I miss Ms. Han”

My teacher, Mr. Ward is a cool guy, but perhaps I am too used to Ms. Han’s style. For probably every new thing he teachers, he has a story to accompany it. Don’t get me wrong though, it is awesome, but the class moves a little too slow.

For example, today, we learned composition of function. You know f(g(h(x))) stuff. For Ms. Han, it probably takes an hour; for Mr. Ward, it took the whole class period – that is, 72 minutes. He even used graphs on computers to demonstrate! We would have to discuss with neighbors about the answer of f(g(x)) when x = 3, g(x) = x-1 and f(x) = 1/2x+2. And that took about 10 minutes. Man, I wish there is an honors class.

Oh speaking of honors, there isn’t a separate class, but we can get honors status if we finishes all questions in the test, teach a 72 minutes section and do a project for each unit.

But overall speaking, Pre-Calc here is still fun. I guess, not as stressed as Ms. Han’s.

Block D – Physics

Our first project in Physics is to design anything that can tell us how long 2 minutes is. I, along with two other people, designed a “sandglass” that didn’t work. On the day of testing, today, we simply didn’t follow the sandglass at all, but counted to 2 minutes ourselves, and it turned out we only missed it by 2 seconds! Wow, people here are awesome.

Block E – MicroEcon

This is probably my favorite class so far. The teacher taught this History course in a way that I don’t think it is about History at all. He uses really good examples and yet sticks to the right amount. (Again, I am not saying anything.) I am starting to see that Econ is not about money like I thought it was, at all, but a completely new subject… which I  now enjoy!

Block F – Intro Media Production

I chose this class after dropping honors Lit., and I think I made a good choice. The class takes place in the studio of the school, with like 7 of 24’’ Macs, really professional equipments and all. In the class, we learn about film and other media. In the one class that I was in yesterday, we learned about different type of angles and camera shots. While I feel I personally understand the concept already, as I look closer, I did realize I can learn so much about film that I can’t learn without a proper teacher.

Just why isn’t there such course in SMIC? This would be such a beneficial class to MVC and its members!

Oh, I forgot to mention one of the projects we have to do. We have to survive without internet for at most 4 days to experiment how important “Media” is in our lives. I haven’t planned when to do it yet… but I tell you, if it’s not for this project, I won’t even imagine how I can do this.

Block G – Advanced Composition

All I can say is, wow. This is an English class, but perhaps the most fun one of all classes (along with MicroEcon, I guess). The teacher, Ms. Manchester, is an Asian that speaks with slight British accent. She has stories along with probably every sentence she makes. For example, a simple attendance roll could take 10 minutes because she “made fun” with all the names. Hahaha…

Block H (the last block) – AP Comp Sci

You would think this is the easiest class for me, but actually not. My teacher looked through my transcript and found no prerequisite courses taken in SMIC. I had to prove to him that I am not a total noob in this area by taking a test on next Thursday. He gave me a 800 page book about Java and told me that I will be given a final from last year. Wow, good luck to me!

While I have to prepare for that test, I have a test coming on right tomorrow for the basics of computers. Good luck to me!

Block P – Choir

I guess most of you are most interested in learning what happened during Choir class. Nothing has happened so far, and I think I am going to take a test tomorrow regarding which voice I am. I chose to be Tenor, but I don’t fully know that I will sing Tenor yet until tomorrow.

I am kinda nervous.

Conclusion

Lots of stuff are still coming regarding my experience in ICS. So far nothing much has happened, but I will tell you guys when something has.

Anything you guys are deeply interested about?

August 10th, 2009, I had to wake up at 6 a.m. to prepare for my “first” day at ICS. I took a quick shower, changed into my uniforms and turned on the TV hoping there is a typhoon or something so that I don’t have to go to school. (Oh by the way, best wishes to all the Taiwanese involved in the recent typhoon, hope you guys are okay.)

Uniforms? Yes, you read that right. We DO have uniforms, and luckily it’s only a polo and a khaki short, nothing THAT rediculous:

But it turns out, there were no typhoons. Sighing, I left home at around 6:36 (I was actually planning to leave at 7, but my mom rushed me out of the house at 6:36). Then I went to a bakery downstairs to get some bread:

I got a “Cheese + Sausage Bun” or something like that. And for your information, it is much better than Mai Zi Shou Le at SMIC.

My school, located at the Sha Tin area (B), is quite far from where I live (A), Aberdeen, near Ocean Park. Google Maps estimate about a 25km trip. But I mean, since I am using public transport, it is much longer than that.

Here’s how I am going to the school: taking the 107 bus, then changed into MTR trains East Rail Line at Hong Hum, heading for Tai Wai, change at Ma On Shan Line, and finally get off at Shek Mun stop.

Really, I am amazed at how many people are there already at 6:40. Wow.

Okay. enough pictures. Time to tell what really happened at ICS. (Sorry, didn’t take pictures)

So I arrived at ICS at around 7:50 (and the orientation actually starts on 8:15), sat in the secondary school office for like 30 minutes. Met some friends too, like Isaac, a new senior who is also interested in filming. It finally started after a while of waiting. Mr. Buckner, director of Admissions and Student Services (I think that’s how he called himself) , opened up with a short speech and prayer, then handed the floor to Mr. Chan, Dean of Students. He introduced the “buddies” of ours. Honestly, I originally thought this idea was such a lame and overdone idea that is always boring and never works out. However, by talking to my “buddies” more, Tim Au being one of them, I did indeed find out a lot about the school and begin to think “you know, buddies might not be that bad”.

We then were given a tour of the school, looking at everything from the art studio, to the computer lab, chapel, then to the auditorium/theatre. To sum up the experience: everything is way better than SMIC’s.

In the computer lab, we get to login to our school organization website “eClass” – something that I wanted to setup for SMIC a LONG time ago. Sam, Stephany’s friend in Pleasanton, apparently didn’t receive anything – including logon credentials, student ID, schedule, etc. etc.

After then, we all had some really nice pizzas. I ate about 6 of ‘em. Yum. Played some dodge ball and basketball afterwards, and got kind of well with other students. During then, I went up to the Dean of Students to get my schedule set. It was more than complicated.

I wanted to do PreCalc, Physics, Advanced Composition (English), Micro + Macro Econ, Graphics Design, and of course, AP Comp Sci. However, when we sort out the schedule, in seems that the blocks I demanded are either full or unavailable to me. At last, I had to join honors American + British Literature (the “most demanding course with the most demanding teacher”, according to the Dean of Students) instead of Advanced Composition, and PE instead of Graphics Design (I am still trying to get Graphics Design, nevertheless). Oh and by the way, I am forced into “Choir”. Do NOT laugh.

School starts 7:40 on Monday, Thursday (“Advisory”, or homeroom, times) and Wednesday (Chapel time), and 8:50 on Tuesdays and Fridays. Ends at 3:15, but there are designated club times. In every way, ICS is much more organized than SMIC.

TO sum up, here are 5 great things about ICS:

• 5. Long + little classes (5 periods at approx. 1 hour each per day)
• 4. Awesome lunch
  
• 3. Can sleep in on Tuesday and Friday
• 2. Great organization with eClass and stuff
• 1. Awesome people! (Need I say more?)