Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

All Blog Posts (786)

Matt's "Magic: The Gathering" Card Database and Price Guide

I recently got back into a fantasy trading card game that I dropped when I was in college called "Magic: The Gathering". A lot has changed since I was an undergrad. Back then, the primary place for trading cards was the card shop. Nowadays, there are numerous online vendors and many card stores regularly accept online orders, mailing cards to distant locales. However, the navigation method for many of these sites is clunky, and browsing through all the cards that meet a qualification set like:… Continue

Added by Matthew Buscemi on February 18, 2010 at 10:00am — 4 Comments

HEA++, an enhanced Honolulu Estimated Arrival (HEA) system

Aloha Techhui, I just finished rebuilding the HEA system from TheBus with some enhancements, and would love feedback! It's certainly an alpha, but it's usable and (at least in my opinion) already offers a handful of improvements over the current HEA system. You can check it out here - http://thebus.ws. If you're interested in learning more, read on!…

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Added by Michael Whalen on February 16, 2010 at 3:30am — 8 Comments

Why Hawaii is an Ideal Choice for Google's Gigabit Network

Hawaii, home to nearly 1.3 million people, is the most isolated island chain on earth. Our state's unique geographic isolation presents special challenges in keeping our families, communities and businesses connected across our islands and to the outside world. The speed and quality of our connection to the net directly impacts our ability to communicate, educate, learn and conduct business. Despite the… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on February 15, 2010 at 8:30am — 44 Comments

Hawaii Needs a Cabinet Level CTO & Google Apps

In late 2008 Google posted the results of a comprehensive study by the Radicati Group regarding the reliability of Exchange, Lotus Notes, GroupWise and Gmail. They found that while Gmail averaged less than 15 minutes of downtime per month (almost all of which came from one outage in August of… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on February 11, 2010 at 3:00pm — 40 Comments

Brief thoughts on Google Buzz

I was excited to hear about Buzz. I don't like having lots of sites to check. That's a big part of why I'm not active on Twitter and Facebook.

But in the few hours since it's been active, I've gotten really sick of the bolded "Buzz (10)" notification in my email client. It's a constant distraction, which is really irritating, because Gmail is the center of my workflow.

I've come to the conclusion that I dislike it. What do you think?

Added by Shawn Drost on February 10, 2010 at 11:43am — 2 Comments

Featured Techie: Keiki-Pua Dancil, CEO of HiSciTech, the State's Largest Tech Advocacy Organization

Our Featured Techie post is usually a love fest, a testament to amazing things that some geek in Honolulu has accomplished, often against serious odds. This month's  belated Featured Techie is different. This is not to say that Keiki-Pua Dancil  doesn't have technology chops. Coming off a gig at one of a handful of biotech  startups in Hawai`i , Keiki-Pua (she prefers to be called that) is a rare combo  of bio smarts and business savvy. She sports a Harvard MBA and PhD in… Continue

Added by Alex Salkever on February 6, 2010 at 6:01pm — 8 Comments

Maui WiFi Network Breakdown

GPS+ WiFi + Maui = Painfully Insecure

I thought…

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Added by Josh Sommers on February 4, 2010 at 3:30pm — 2 Comments

Project Management and Documentation Tools

The tools we use for managing software and design projects have evolved over the years. Last year

Scott added

Basecamp to our toolset. We've found its email based workflow easy to use, especially for customers. For small projects Basecamp is often all we need,… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on January 31, 2010 at 7:00am — 5 Comments

Haiti Relief - 4X Your Donation

Posted on behalf of Leigh-Ann Miyasato of Entrepreneurs Foundation of Hawai`i:

As you know, the devastation from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti and multiple aftershocks of up to 6.0 in magnitude have left an already impoverished country reeling and in chaos.

Last week, the Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation launched a $600,000 Haiti Relief Fund to match donations from the EF network worldwide. Hawai`i… Continue

Added by Mika Leuck on January 23, 2010 at 9:30pm — 2 Comments

AppEngine Datastore Overview (based on Java SDK)

In this post, I'd like to share some of my development experience with AppEngine's data storage facility called BigTable. As you might already know, BigTable is different from a widely known relational persistence (RDBMS) in a way that it deals with Entities and Keys as opposed to tables and rows. It might not seem too obvious at first, but object-oriented persistence is radically different from its… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on January 17, 2010 at 5:30am — 1 Comment

"Revolutionizing" Accessibility to State Archived Documents

I don't suppose a lot of people in the tech industry actually go to the state archives, but this entry may be of interest to many of you nonetheless.

I have absolutely no idea how many other states have archives that includes its own pre-statehood period, but our Hawai'i State Archives has archived documents that pre-dates its own statehood by more than 100 years.

Have you, or someone you know, tried to go to our… Continue

Added by Derek on January 14, 2010 at 10:30am — 13 Comments

Hybrid Native / Web Apps

We just finished a very interesting hybrid application called Ilio Fun Facts for the Army Corps of Engineers (mahalo to Native Hawaiian Veterans for pulling us in on the project.) The project provides free MacBooks to a group of public grade schools in Waianae. The MacBooks have special logins and screensavers that help educate kids about unexploded ordnance. In addition to being technically interesting it was one of those projects that makes you feel good because it helps the community.… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on January 12, 2010 at 7:30pm — 6 Comments

Pono Media partners with MotherApp to buiild mobile applications

Industry-leading provider of cross platform mobile applications, Motherapp Limited has partnered with local media marketing startup, Pono Media to develop and market mobile applications in Hawaii, Guam, and throughout Polynesia. Founded in Hong Kong in 2005 by former original Google team member, Ken Law and serial entrepreneur, Leo Chan; Motherapp focuses on creating mobile apps using their patent-pending technology, which allows them to create applications quickly and easily for all major… Continue

Added by L.P. "NEENZ" FALEAFINE on January 12, 2010 at 8:18am — No Comments

Time Management - tips for success

Open Training in English - MFF - Time Management by george alex

Get your own Virtual…

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Added by Mark Cruthers on January 8, 2010 at 2:06pm — No Comments

Meta-Contest

Create contests for the following at the

TechHui location at the University of Hawaii sim in Second Life:

(Hold receptions at the end of each contest, where people can donate SL dollars)

1. Have a "Best Sign-up Board" contest (leave the winning board in place to sign people up to TechHui)

2. Create a "TechHui Donation Jar" contest (winning jar stays in place and collects donations for TechHui)

3. Have a variety of art contests and reception (e.g., photo,… Continue

Added by Rik Jadrnicek on December 31, 2009 at 11:18pm — No Comments

What Was Your Favorite Project?

About 15 years ago (I'm terrible with dates) I was working with my old friend

Brent Ridenour on a software project in the Bay Area. During that time Brent lent me a book on

knot theory that reinvented my view of mathematics. I found the whole concept of… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on December 31, 2009 at 2:00pm — 5 Comments

Mobile apps, "Gov 2.0?"

In the summer of 2009, while I was working on the Nathaniel Kinney campaign, one of our goals was to help raise the level of transparency and efficiency of our city government through the use of the internet and mobile apps. This was articulated in a posting by Nathaniel Kinney (CLICK HERE to read that posting). An… Continue

Added by Derek on December 28, 2009 at 5:21am — 1 Comment

Featured Techie: Haralds Jass, Founder and CEO of Superb Internet, Hawaii's Largest Web Hosting Company

In January 2009, Superb Internet Corp. relocated to Honolulu from Vancouver, Canada lock, stock and barrel. The Internet hosing and technology services company had decided to leave Canada for a number of reasons bu the move was a surprise to many in Hawaii. The traditional pattern for technology companies in the islands is launch small, grow to a larger size then leave. And the traditional reasons cited for leaving are usually cost of operating a business in Hawaii, lack of qualified… Continue

Added by Alex Salkever on December 27, 2009 at 1:30pm — 15 Comments

Wondering where my Wozniak is...

Since posting my iPhone developer talk on the Mathogen website I've been getting tons of requests to assist in iPhone development. Most interested in working with Sundance filmmaker to create game for movie tie in. Thinking about getting into consulting after talking to Bruce Kim at the first iPhone developer meetup. Still most interested in working on my own projects.

Reading game development blogs,… Continue

Added by David Neely on December 16, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Finally...

It's been a rough semester (I had to pull 4 all nighters this week), but we have finally finished a prototype of our game for my school's Demo Day presentation!

The game is called Poggle, and it's for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It's a difficult game to describe. In some ways, it's like a real-time "Rock Paper Scissor" game. The best feature (and one of the more complicated) is that it can… Continue

Added by Sherwin Gao on December 16, 2009 at 1:00pm — 4 Comments