Hacks Projects, products, or anything else powered by code
Namesies - Because Naming is Hard
Coming up with a good name for your projects can be pretty hard. It is even harder to come up with a name with an available domain and Twitter account.
Tony Dewan whipped up a
handy Ruby script that, given the name you want, will check if the domain, Twitter account, and US Trademark is available.
Zero Inbox - Distraction Free Email
Local iOS whiz
Josh Brown has released a simple app that solves a problem: sending an email requires you to see the unread messages in your inbox. Sometimes you just need to fire off an email and not deal with the 814 unread items looming in your inbox. Josh realized it was sometimes taking him 30 total minutes just to send a 2 minute email because he would get sucked into reading and responding to other messages. But no longer!
Check it Zero Inbox in the
App Store!
t and
timetrack, two tools to track time
After to-do lists and blog engines, I think every programmer's favorite project to write is a time tracker.
With his new project - concisely named
t -
Matt Burke wanted to focus on a CLI tracker to help record how much you've worked on just one thing.
Jason Butz took a different approach with his app
timetrack. Jason wrote a very simple one-user web app to track your work hours that you can deploy to Heroku in minutes.
Happenings Special events or new meetups
Indianapolis Python Workshop
In the same vein as this summer's RailsBridge workshops, there will be a free, hands-on introduction to programming with Python on September 27-28. The event is geared for beginners and is targeted to women of all ages and backgrounds (and their friends!). You can sign up
here. Props to the
IndyPy group for organizing this event!
Open Source Comes To Campus: Bloomington
If you are a student looking to get involved with open source (coding, testing, documentation, design, graphics) you should checkout this event put on by
OpenHatch and the
IU CS Club. It's a full day event taking place on Saturday, September 21 at IU Bloomington. You will learn about open source licences, tools, and communities in the morning and start making your first contributions in the afternoon. Space is limited so sign up
here (this event is primarily for IU students, but there may be some spots available for the general public).
TEDx Indianapolis
The second annual independently organized TED event in Indianapolis is happening on
Tuesday, October 22. The theme for this year is "Mix It Up".
Tickets are still available but going fast.
The Hacks && Happenings newsletter is a monthly round-up of interesting projects, special events, and other newsworthy tidbits about the software development community in central Indiana. Tell your friends!
Did we miss something cool? Do you want more of X or less of Y? Just want someone to yell at? Email us at newsletter@indyhackers.org anytime.
Thanks for reading and stay awesome Indy!
Your friends,
MilesZS and Matt Swanson