Tag Archives: programming

LiveQuestions Open Source Application

Posted on by
Reply

Today I published a web application that I have worked on for a while and we have used LQHeaderImagethree or four times at Seacoast Church to take live questions during a message.  This allows the people attending the event to text in or use a web page to submit anonymous questions.

For more information see the Github page.

Features:

  •  Submit questions from a ebpage or over SMS (using Twilio)
  • Password protected pages for review, editing, approving, and displaying the submitted questions
  • Built on a Meteor.js providing real time updates to all of the pages viewing the questions
  • Responsive to desktop and mobile clients
  • Screen display is customizable using CSS and HTML

The application is built so that the attenders post questions and they show up on an incoming questions tab in the admin section.  You can have one or many editors monitoring this page, editing and approving questions.  Once a question is approved, it is then cued on a approvals page that can be monitored by the moderator on stage.  The moderator then just clicks on a question for it to be displayed on the screen.

All clients need web browsers and internet access including the device used to feed the screen. LiveQuestions can be easily deployed to Meteor’s free basic hosting for testing or even production for events.

 

The Programming Connection

Posted on by
Reply

I have been working in the area of audio/video production for the last nine years, but in the past my focus was on IT and programming. Over the past year or so I have been feeling the itch to do some development again and it is a great distraction from my day to day production work.

I have developed in many different languages and environments.C/C++, Visual Basic, C#/.Net, RPG, Perl, Python, PHP, Objective C, Javascript, and Ruby just to name a few. Recently I have had some ideas for a few new projects, some just to scratch an itch and others to solve work needs. I could just jump into the tools that I have used in the past. For example if I was going to work on a web project I would lean torwards Rails, or if I needed to do a small utility app Ruby or Python might get the call. These are the tools that were productive for me in the past.

Being that some time has passed and I’m really not under any deadlines, I thought it would be fun to check out new languages/frameworks. I have always loved developing my skills and maybe some of it is just to see what all the fuss is about. So I have looked at many new to me languages and frameworks, such as Go, Scala, Erlang, Angular, Rust, Swift, and Ember. All of them have some intereseting ideas and yes I know they all cover many different development needs, but I really haven’t connected with any of them in the way that I did with frameworks like Rails.

It is strange to say that you “connect” with a programming language, but you do. I guess it is like how I like to play Fender Jazz basses, but can’t seem to get comforable with a Fender P bass. Maybe a little closer to this topic Vim vs Emacs, but I don’t want to start a editor flame war. That connection seems to lead to you wanting to dig deaper and continue to build your skill.

Recently I have come across a few new framworks and languages that I have
started to “connect” with. I thought that I might do a few posts on them: and try to
explain what has caught my attention. The two that I’m going to start with are
Meteor.js and Elixir/Phoenix.