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Developer Challenge – rounding up the submissions

Published by Siim Teller // February 14, 2012 // Developers // 6 Comments

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Sunday midnight saw the deadline of our Developer Challenge. After gazing into the middle distance for about 30 seconds we decided to change the rules just a tiny bit and give all the teams an extra week to improve, polish, fix their products. Get user feedback, or approval by Apple to actually be downloadable from the App Store. Here’s your chance to check them out and show them our support or take them apart by constructive criticism (and help create a better solution as a result). Here we go… 1. Improvements to Chrome extension by Eric K - Eric took our original extension and made it better. The new extension started to "sniff" all sites and pages that you visit, looking for Flattr button on them. It was such a good improvement that we actually rolled it into the official Flattr Chrome extension so all Chrome extension users already benefit from Eric’s work. 2. aFlattr has been around for some time and it puts an interesting twist on Flattr users buying goods from stores like Amazon, Endless.com, Javiari and a few others. When you have aFlattr browser extension active it adds an affiliate tag into the link earning aFlattr a comission of 4-10% depending on the product. That money is then transferred back to you so you can flattr more, for example. More info in their FAQ. 3. Flattr plugin for Plone content management system. According to Wikipedia high-profile public sector users include organizations like the FBI, Brazilian government, United Nations, City of Bern, New South Wales government, European Environment Agency. We’re not sure if they’ll ever start using the Flattr integration but hopefully millions of other Plone users will find it useful. Created by Christoph Glaubitz. 4. "Games und so" podcast iOS app - Timo Hetzel who’s one of the guys behind the German podcast "Games und so" decided to put Flattr right inside their podcast app. Although my German skills are somewhat faded flattring a podcast was dead simple. No need to download the app, you can check out a demo video or screenshots. 5. Flattr Video Browser which according to Christopher Käck "allows you to browse through trending videos on Flattr and watch them directly on the site". It’s a great way for killing some time, leaving it up to chance and fellow flattr users to surprise you with fascinating clips. [caption id="attachment_6233" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] 6. Flattrama is a Flattr client for Windows Phone 7. It’s currently available for the Windows marketplace beta users but you’ll get a sense of it just by looking at the screenshots Pixel Valley guys posted in their blog and this demo video. 7. Flattr integration in Instacast and Instacast HD (by Vemedio) brings flattrability into the first popular podcatcher application. It does require the podcast publisher to add payment link tags into their podcast feeds (alternatively they can add a simple Flattr button into show notes) but once that’s done it’s a matter of couple of screen taps for the listeners to flattr them. The app is not free and it’s available on iPhone and iPad so Vemedia put up some screenshots as demo. 8. Interesting Things is a simple data spinning by Tom Hukins that pulls the most popular Flattr Things and tags to make it easier to discover the very-very popular stuff. Not much else to say about this one. 9. Perl interface to the Flattr API. This one’s also by Tom and does what it says on the tin. 10. flattr4j - another useful tool comes from Shred and is a Java library that supports almost all of the new Flattr API features. It primarily targets business grade integration e.g. on servers, websites and full-featured desktop applications. It can also be used to build integration into Android devices. 11. Continuing with tools - JavaScript client for Flattr API from Simon Ljungberg. Comes with helpers for authentication and functions for every API resource. Simon says that the goal is to make it work in both the browser and in a NodeJS environment. 12. FlattrPod is an iPhone app for flattring podcasts playing in the default Music.app. You can check out the interaction and screenshots at Boris Buegling’s site. [caption id="attachment_6235" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption=" "][/caption] 13. MntFlattrest - another iOS app from Simon Ljungberg that makes it easy to browse the trending Things on Flattr by category, check them out and open them in mobile browser. You can connect your account and flattr things in-app. So far all we have is a short demo video, hopefully Simon gets the app out by Monday morning when judging starts. 14. Open Aid Charity mashes up live mapping interface that highlights real-time events being broadcasted by civilian reporters, points out the humanitarian organizations in those regions and let’s you flattr them to support them in solving those crisis. It’s created by Petter Samuelsen and Pierre Gomez. [caption id="attachment_6236" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] 15. FlatDrop implements Flattr as a soft paywall on Soundcloud meaning that you can listen to the tracks as normal but to download you have to Flattr it. The author Johan says that it needs quite a bit of polish, let’s hope he uses the extra week for that :) You can check how it looks like from the end user point of view on his own track. 16. Fundd.de is a mashup of Quora/Stack Exchange-like knowledge platform where in addition to the usual upvoting there’s an additional motivation of earning flattrs for intriguing and intelligent questions and expert answers. The big question of course is "How does Fundd differ from Quora?". Created by Ahmet Topal. fundd.de - Fund 'N Discover Creativity. from Ahmet Topal on Vimeo. 17. Phlattr is "a proof of concept for integrating text messaging for flattring individual via their phone numbers". Connect your Flattr, add some phones, send some love. Texting gratitude, we like that :) Made by Benjamin Young. Update: Unfortunately Benjamin couldn’t get the SMS part working with Tropo so he dropped out of the competition. However, we’ll leave this up here, maybe someone will get inspired by the idea. Who’s your favorite so far? What’s the biggest idea? Best implementation? Potentially the one that gets the most traction and users?

6 days left in our Dev Challenge!

Published by Siim Teller // February 6, 2012 // Developers // No comments :(

When we announced the Developer Challenge a month ago we weren’t sure how much and what type of entries we would get. So happy to see that so far quite a few individual developers and teams have sent in their … Continue reading →

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Flattr ❤ Hubot

Published by Simon Gate // January 17, 2012 // Developers // 2 Comments

Here at Flattr we spend much time on IRC and lately we have a new friend, Hubot. Hubot is a chat bot built by GitHub that helps us out with tasks ( for example pulling funny images from internet ) … Continue reading →

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Developer Challenge, January edition – it’s a GO!

Published by Siim Teller // January 11, 2012 // Developers // 31 Comments

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What better way to kick off 2012 than with a proper developer challenge? We’re inviting all software developers, hackers, code slingers to get their API hats on and mash up Flattr in a new and incredible way. [caption id="attachment_5799" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="This iPad 2 could be yours. Keep reading!"][/caption] Back in November we released a new and improved Flattr API v2. We’ve now rooted out the bugs, written a proper documentation so here’s the challenge: Build something using the new Flattr API, impress us with your idea and execution and take home a top of the line iPad 2. It’s not about just great code, we’re searching for solutions that mash up the mobile/web and Flattr in new ways, in ways that our own development team hasn’t even thought of. Capiche? Put Flattr into World of Warcraft so we can flattr those who help us with that can’t-do-it-on-my-own quest. Whip up a face recognition software that looks for matches between Facebook accounts and Flattr users. Sky’s the limit. You could take it easy and integrate Flattr into your web/mobile/cloud software, but who wants to play it safe? A few simple rules * Competition ends on 12 February, 2012 (midnight, GMT). * You must use the new Flattr API (v2) in your project. * To enter leave a comment to this blog post with a link to where we can find your solution and who’s the person or persons behind the project. Simple. * It’s OK to submit both brand new and existing things. * We at Flattr love and encourage open source but your project doesn’t have to be open source for this competition. * Team submissions are encouraged but it’s up to the team how they split the prize. * All questions regarding technical aspects of our API to be submitted via Stack Overflow. * API and related documentation is up on developers.flattr.net/api/ The prizes 1st place - one top of the line 64GB iPad 2 if it’s a solo project. Two base line 16 GB iPad 2s if it’s a team effort. Not an Apple fans? Winner can switch prize for a comparable Android tablet of their choice. 2 runner ups - Flattr tshirts and stickers Judging During the week after competition ends (13-19 February) our team + a few top Flattr users (Kai "SkaveRat" de Haan, Evan Schoepke, Tim Pritlove, Jürgen Geuter) will try out the solutions that have been submitted and pick the winner. What are the judging criteria? Idea, execution, impact (what is the potential market for your solution, how disruptive it is) - but as we said before - a totally revolutionary idea might balance out mediocre technical solution, just like a solution with a huge impact could trump the fact that the idea in the first place was a very simple improvement. We will announce the winning project and runners ups in our blog. Launch that favorite editor and get cracking!

URL Auto Submit Documentation

Published by Linus Olsson // November 14, 2011 // Developers // 1 Comment

If you can’t use JavaScript on your site (or don’t want to) we also have a way of submitting things via URL’s. Here is the documentation for how to use the URL submit. Please bear in mind that the button … Continue reading →

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Activity Streams in Flattr API v2

Published by Siim Teller // October 31, 2011 // Developers // 1 Comment

Pelle Wessman, one of our devs, just posted a good summary of some of the additions to our API to his personal blog. A few key quotes: Our last API became a dead end so we decided to rebuild it … Continue reading →

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API v2 beta out – what’s changed?

Published by Simon Gate // October 27, 2011 // Developers // 5 Comments

We have been working hard to deliver a great experience for developers and tried to build a good foundation for easily adding new features. Use our API to integrate Flattr into your mobile apps, make it easy for your website … Continue reading →

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Flattr Rest API, finally public!

Published by Linus Olsson // January 28, 2011 // Developers // 9 Comments

So this one is long overdue, at least if you listen to our developers, so here it is; The Flattr REST API You can find all the info you need on our API page, the Rest API docs can be … Continue reading →

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Come work with Flattr!

Published by Linus Olsson // January 24, 2011 // Developers // 8 Comments

This is about working at Flattr, and as we want Swedish speaking people in Sweden, it’s in Swedish =) Vi söker en bunte med folk för att göra Flattr fantastiskt. Placering för alla tjänster är Malmö tillsammans med oss i … Continue reading →

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This is about working at Flattr, and as we want Swedish speaking people in Sweden, it's in Swedish =) Vi söker en bunte med folk för att göra Flattr fantastiskt. Placering för alla tjänster är Malmö tillsammans med oss i vårt vindskontor och våra gröna och oranga fatboys. Vi vill anställa så fort som möjligt så skicka in din omg-såbra-ansökan till jobs (a) flattr punkt com ------------- Back-end developer Du älskar flattr som ide och vill att det ska lyckas även om du inte skulle jobba här Du har mångårig erfarenhet utav att skriva objekt orienterad PHP. Du har mångårig erfarenhet utav mysql Du är van vid att arbeta med versionshantering (exempelvis git eller svn) Du är bekväm i att använda commandline linux/unix/osx. Du kan kompilera, konfigurera och administrera en LAMP setup. Vana vid att arbeta med Twitter, Facebook, Google APIer är meriterande. Du får gärna ha erfarenhet utav något MVC ramverk, men du är inte beroende utav dem! Erfarenhet i Lighttpd, Sphinx, memcache är meriterande. Aktivt deltagande i något open source projekt är meriterande. Du är antagligen en flitig användare av sociala medier: Twitter, Reddit etc Du är van vid att arbeta i en mindre grupp där det är viktigt att man tar ansvar för sitt arbete. Du är bra på att kommunicera/framföra dina tankar och idéer. Du idlar mycket på IRC Kodexempel för Back-end Developer: Som exempel på PHPkod vill vi ha något som visar att du kan objekt orienterad PHP, i form av något mer avancerat än en wordpress plugin, exempelvis ett mindre MVC ramverk, eller något liknande där du använder lite olika patterns. Koden ska vara gjord i objekt orienterad PHP 5.3 och vara kommenterad. Filerna ska inte skickas utan läggas upp på GitHub men även med hänvisning på vart det går att se den färdiga produkten på nätet. Akademiska meriter är inte så intressant, vi lägger större tyngd på dina egna utvecklingsprojekt och ett brinnande engagemang. Skicka din CV och kodexempel på vad du gjort som du anser visar vad du går för inom ovan områden till jobs (a) flattr punkt com ------------- Front-end developer Vi söker dig med erfarenhet av att arbeta med webbutveckling. Du älskar flattr som ide och vill att det ska lyckas även om du inte skulle jobba här Du är grym på: HTML, JavaScript, CSS Du bygger fantastiska GUI för web som är både enkla och snygga att använda. Du har erfarenhet utav jQuery eller andra JS ramverk. Förståelse för säkerhetsaspekter så som XSS mm. Du har kunskaper i PHP och kan skriva enklare skript. Har ett öga för rena, vackra och enkla grafiska gränssnitt Har en portfolio att visa upp. Du följer utvecklingen av HTML5 Du är antagligen en flitig användare av sociala medier: Twitter, Reddit etc Erfarenhet inom UX är meriterande Kodexempel för Front-end Developer: Som exempel vill vi ha någon web du skapat som är snyggt, användbar och använder dagens standarder. HTML5 och CSS3 med jQuery är givetvis målet. Samtliga delar ska vara gjorda av dig och visa på spetskunskap inom området. Koden ska vara strukturerad och kommenterad. Grafiken ska vara snygg ren och användarvänlig. Skicka filerna eller lägg dom på gitHub, men även hänvisning på vart det går att se på nätet. Akademiska meriter är inte så intressant, vi lägger större tyngd på dina egna utvecklingsprojekt och ett brinnande engagemang. Skicka din CV och exempel på vad du gjort som du anser visar vad du går för till jobs (a) flattr punkt com ------------- Support / Community - manager Du älskar flattr som ide och vill att det ska lyckas även om du inte skulle jobba här. Du kan tala/skriva engelska och svenska flytande, ha ett bra språk som engagerar och intresserar. Du kan tala / skriva ett tredje (gärna fler) språk Du är en flitig användare av sociala medier: Twitter, Facebok, digg, Reddit etc och vet hur man bemöter och engagerar människor via det Du skulle känna dig naken utan din RSS läsare Du brinner för att engagera människor i din sak Kunskaper inom php/html/wordpress/drupal/jomla/etc/etc är meriterande då du kan hjälpa våra användare bättre. Eftersom du kommer ha kontakt med våra användare genom skrivet ord vill vi ha exempel på text du skrivit på internet som är relevanta för jobbet. Samtliga delar ska vara först och främst på engelska, men givetvis även på andra språk om det finns att tillgå. De ska visa på ett engagerande skriv/kommunikationssätt med andra människor. Samt givetvis ett bra språk och vänlig ton. Om du kan visa på en stor närvaro på nätet är det ett mycket stort plus. Tex: Din blogg Din twitter feed Reddit Quora/Stackoverflow Forumposter Annat publikt du skrivit på nätet. Skicka CV och så till jobs (a) flattr punkt com ------------- EOF

Claiming content

Published by Pelle Wessman // December 9, 2010 // Developers // 7 Comments

We love our Flattr button, but we also know the button itself is one of our biggest problems, because you need to add it in some way. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Flattr could figure out that you own a … Continue reading →

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We love our Flattr button, but we also know the button itself is one of our biggest problems, because you need to add it in some way. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Flattr could figure out that you own a piece of content and automatically let others flattr it, without you doing anything? Yes, awesome, but how to do it? We have banged our heads around this and here is the first part of our proposal. While we could do our own solution that works for us and none else such a solution wouldn't scale (and we hate closed things). All services needing to identify ownership of a webpage should be able to work on the same data - but which data should that be? There has been a lot of work done in the discovery area, spearheaded by Yahoo's Eran Hammer-Lahav, resulting in a mechanism based on links and relations on top of the Web Linking specification. In its registry we can find an "author" relation defined by HTML5 which "refers to the context's author". Assuming that authors are also owners we can resolve any such link from a webpage to find which Flattr user to assign a thing to. How to add such a link? Not through HTML anchor-tags - those doesn't represent the page in itself. Links would preferably be added as part of a site's host-meta file, specified in another of the discovery specifications - Web Host Metadata. If the site can't add a host-meta file then links could instead be added as HTTP headers or HTML link-tags in a webpage's HTML head section. What should a author link point to? Something that "refers to the context's author" and which Flattr can confirm belongs to a Flattr user. It could be something we know, like the URI to a Flattr profile or the e-mail used to register a Flattr account, or to a webpage which has a confirmed path of XFN me-relations between it and a Flattr profile. The latter is something that eg. Google indexes and exposes in their Social Graph API and which they also have tools to inspect. Since it's probably not always the authors who should receive the money from flatters this single relation doesn't completely solve the claiming of content. The owner of a web page should be able to say that someone else but the author should receive money. For this some new relation types would need to be defined as a next step. We haven't yet implemented any of this - not even the me-relations. This is just a proposal on which we want feedback. We think it's important to be open and especially so when trying to work with open standards which are pointless if noone else agrees on them. So - what do you think? Is this how content should be claimed?