We build the most useless app in 1 day

22 Jan 2010
2 comments

How do you keep your work challenging and fun? We believe that these are two key factors of our company. To challenge ourselves we decided to build the most useless (and annoying) application in the existence of mankind in only 1 day. We can tell you that we did it and we are proud to present to you: "Pomperlist". For those of you who are not familiar with the term, pomper: n.- A sharp blow with the fist in the face of a person who deserves it.

The idea

The idea came thanks to our annoying collegue Petar. We used to have a virtual list were we tracked the times Petar deserved a "pomper" for pulling another practical joke. At first the idea was that we build this in 1 hour when Petar was not around and then send him a pomper through the app. Eventually we needed him to put the site on our servers, but it was still him who got the first pomper From now on we can send him a digital pomper with "Pomperlist".

The execution

The app looks very simple but still required some effort. The biggest challenge was to connect the app with facebook. What actually happens behind the scenes is that a user logs in with facebook and we automatically create a profile at our app. Once logged in you can view all of your facebook friends and start giving pompers. The hardest thing, but a must have, is publishing this on your facebook wall so everyone knows about it. This was accomplished throug a few Javascript call to the facebook api.

The first pomper wave

At launch we all send some pompers to our friends. Right away it spread

"Great app! This is madness!"

exponentially over facebook (till our server crashed!). One of the first reactions was: "Geweldige app.! Wat een waanzin!" - Joost Visser. This can be translated to: "Great app! This is madness!". At this moment we have 93 pompers and counting. Who will be next?

If you have someone who you think deserves a pomper please feel free to use our Pomperlist. Our goal is not to create aggression but to relieve it. The world will look much better when everyone uses digital pompers. We hope you enjoy our app and for us it's up to the next challenge!

Tags: Apps, Coding