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Social shopping community

DealBundle is social shopping community created and supported by members for deal fanatics. At DealBundle you can find quality deals submitted by members from around the world. The community determines what deals will be included within DealBundle based on ratings and popularity. Deals that have been promoted to DealBundle can still be rated and commented on. In-fact, you can view the "Most Popular" within DealBundle from the homepage (it is populated in real-time, so check it often for the best of the best)! The web site has a powerful admin part with intensive use of AJAX. QArea Inc. has created plug-ins for FireFox and Internet Explorer for the quick deal postings. Users can share their deals, post comments to the posts, can communicate via integrated webmail. The site has unlimited categories nesting, stars rating (like yahoo has), tags (like gmail and docs.google.com have), power search engine, black list words filtering. Dealbundle also uses XML and a lot of JavaScript to make the site quick and user-friendly.

Social networking community creation

MyLoki is a service offered by Boston-based SkyHook Wireless . Skyhook can determine your location based on the nearest WiFi routers that it picks up through your computer.

MyLoki location enables social networking. As you travel around MyLoki can automatically let your friends know where you are using your favorite platform - Facebook, RSS Feeds and badges for your blog or even Jaiku. You can pick and choose how and where you want your location to be displayed. MyLoki gives you total control over the posted location and who can see it.

Your location can be delivered with the help of Loki toolbar, which is downloaded on your browser from any place nearby WiFi hotspot. This information can be reported in a number of ways. You can get your own MyLoki page that shows people your exact location, or you may have a constantly updated map on your blog which displays your current position. You can add the map as a Facebook app or create an embeddable badge and append it to your e-mail signature. You can also create a location feed integrated with any GeoRSS service, such as Google MyMaps, Jaiku and Yahoo’s Fire Eagle.

QArea team has implemented the project from the scratch. It’s built using Symfony 1.0 framework. QArea was also responsible for redesigning Loki.com site and its integration with MyLoki.

The major challenges:

• Google Maps;
• Facebook application (users’ profile FBML box, posting to the feed and a standalone FB application which allows the users to set their location while surfing on Facebook);
• The web-site (authentication, users’ privacy setting, history and groups locations viewing, generation of badges examples, RSS feed);
• Loki.com channels (developed own XML DTD for generating HTTP requests);
• iPhone API (own XML protocol as well);
• Updating of users’ location using Ajax technology (we have created a centralized database which stores and shares the information about users’ location between Facebook application and MyLoki standalone application);
• FireEagle, Twitter integration.

QArea team has united separate projects into one by developing and implementing the following features for Loki.com:

• Channels: specific links to various LBS (location-based services) sites with your current location in themselves. There’s no necessity to enter your location manually if you want to rent a flat or looking for a cheap gas station.
• Loki JS API subscription: Skyhook's Loki allows other location dependent sites to place special JavaScript code which fetches users’ current location from Loki toolbar (installed on your computer). Loki.com site provides JS API registration and some examples for developers.
• FindMe page demonstrates the power and preciseness of Skyhook's technology. Users can view/set their location and try all available channels there. • Blog, downloads page, main page tell the users how it works and allows downloading Loki toolbar.

Online platform for doing business in the jewelry industry

The online platform allows jewelry professionals (retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers) to fully utilize the Internet to compete with online retailers. The web-site offers the most comprehensive suite of cutting-edge technologies available to the jewelry professional today. Unlike static bulletin board websites that provide out-dated information and make their users sort through a long-string of posts to identify, buy and sell merchandise, this online platform supplier-populated database ensures that information is easily searchable, up-to-date and uniform resulting in a practically tangible product that sells itself. The site is comprehensive technology tool that opens great business opportunities by enabling owners of jewelry stores to create online shops with custom design without need of creation their own site. Besides the site itself, most notable features are Live Help (jabber client with web frontend), Geo search (by address or zip) for shops/goods withing given radius or within given area. The major challenge of QArea is the implemention of many features for the site, among them:

• IM live help – web frontend to Jabber servers which gives site visitors live support while support staff use any jabber client.
•  Sell/buy forums, which allow convenient trade between different store owners. Google geo search of nearest stores by given radius or postcode.