Bufferbox is building a service desperately needed by online shoppers everywhere. They popped onto my radar at the last startup camp! I only chatted with them for a few minutes, but that few minutes of unconference-hosted, face-to-face interaction was enough to convince me to keep an eye on them. Now they’ve launched a service for students at UW (perfect trial customer segment selection guys!) and made an elegant, short video to show how it works. Check it out.

Video hosted by another Waterloo region startup, Vidyard.

–Simon

Your part-time role will be to maintain company finances, in communication with employees, clients and partners, and to help the CEO and staff stay organized and deal professionally with partners and clients. You’ll have the opportunity to work as much as 80% at home, and all you have to do is send us your resume and answer the questions below!

We’re looking for someone to:

• Know and use QuickBooks/Simply and practice high-quality bookkeeping
• Handle expenses, record-keeping, payroll, government filings
• Communicate with employees, clients, and partners
• Help us stay organized!

At Monolith Interactive, we make mobile software. We’ve made apps like Kik Chat, Monolith Loop, and an awesome personal health app for a major US company that we can’t identify. And we all work from home 3-4 days out of the week!

How to apply:

Just answer any 2 of the 3 questions below and send in the answers along with your resume. It’s that easy!

1. If we are paying employees and A/Ps by email transfer, give 4 key points on how they should be handled.

2. Suppose that we have decided that we need to handle something more formally. We believe it is important to adopt a process that is formal enough to handle new complexities while maintaining our flexibility. Provide 3 things you would do to figure out what kind of changes would be best. (Example areas might be human resources, customer communication, or office management.)

3. Create a 5-step process for you to help the CEO handle an overload of incoming calls and emails.

Email your response to us with your resume to jobs+bk-bl at the url of this website.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

EWB would add to that:

Facilitate a market for fish and you feed a nation.

Monolith’s CEO, Simon Woodside, is active in the Toronto Professional Chapter, who are building up EWB’s links beyond its traditional fields in Canada’s engineering schools. He’s just created his annual EWB Perspectives Challenge: Help us combine business and caring to change Africa.

We will be matching every donation to Simon’s campaign up to $1000 dollars.

We’re really excited about this and hope to donate the full $1000, so go read Simon’s perspective, and if you agree, maybe you can contribute a bit to solving some of the world’s biggest problems!

You must:

• know pointers, object and data structure & algorithm patterns already
• know at least one major programming language (C, C++, C#, Java, Scala, Haskell, etc.)
• be ready to learn the iOS and android SDKs fast (we’ll help)

Aside from that, what we’re looking for people who love making great software, and think they’re good at it. You’ll work with people who have been coding Cocoa/OpenStep since 1998, a mathematician, a systems design engineer, and a CS PhD in software radio, among others. If we hire you, we’ll start you out with a part-time contract, with the possibility to move to a full time position.

Demonstrate your qualifications by answering 2 out of these 3 tricky questions:

Q1 – C Pointers — Here are some interesting lines of C code. They will produce an int result, but first you have to make some small changes so that it will compile. What will be the result, and why?

int * foo = 1769;
int result = &10[foo];

Q2 – Algorithms — Imagine an array containing all of the four letter strings from “aaaa” to “jjjj”. In other words, it contains:

 ["aaaa", "aaab", "aaac", ... "aaaj",
  "baaa", "baab", "baac", ... "baaj",
  ...,
  "jaaa", ..., "jjjh", "jjji", "jjjj"]

and therefore the array has 10^4 = 10000 entries.

Suppose you are given this array, with all of the entries mixed up so that they are in random order, and furthermore, one of the entries appears twice. So there are 10001 entries — the original 10000 strings and the single duplicate.

Provide high level pseudo-code for an algorithm that will find the duplicate efficiently.

Q3 – C++ Objects — Here’s a C++ program that has some errors:

• 2 compiler errors
• 1 runtime error
• 1 line is missing

Provide a fixed version that will compile & run.

Note that you may need to add some additional #includes at the top depending on your platform.

SEND TO: jobs+co-mi at the URL of this site. Include your answer(s) and some source code that you have written, whether it’s open source, for assignments, for fun, or whatever.

(PS Please keep the answers to yourself!)

//// File: futurama.cpp ////
#include <iostream>

class Drinker {
public: Drinker(); void drink( int potency ); int _numberOfDrinksSoFar;
private: virtual int cantDrinkAnyMoreThan() = 0;
}; Drinker::Drinker() { _numberOfDrinksSoFar = 0; }
class Robot : public Drinker { int cantDrinkAnyMoreThan() { return INT_MAX; } };
class Human : public Drinker {
};
void Drinker::drink( int potency ) {
  _numberOfDrinksSoFar += potency;
  if( _numberOfDrinksSoFar > cantDrinkAnyMoreThan() ) { std::cout << "I'm all done." << endl; }
}

int main (int argc, char * const argv[]) {
  int beer = 5, coffee = 3;
  Human fry;
  Robot * bender;
  for( int i=0; i<6283; i++ ) { bender.drink(beer); }
  for( int i=0; i<100; i++ ) { fry.drink(coffee); }
  std::cout << "Bender: " << bender->_numberOfDrinksSoFar << "  Fry: " << fry._numberOfDrinksSoFar << std::endl;
  fry.drink(1);
  return 0;
}

Some may argue that applications of this kind are a modern take on the Newton’s Cradle style of executive toys – frivolous and without any point.  But then they’ve maybe not tried software such as this.

Professional musicians are telling us how much they like it, but what I love is how Loop exposes the joy of creating music to the rest of us.

Monolith Loop is most definitely relaxing, and it’s one of these apps the iPad seems made for, with time lost under the twin hypnoses of the smooth, breath-like circles bumping against each other and random melodies they create.

As soon as the circles become too many and the sound becomes too much, you’re only too happy to tear it all down and start again, radius by growing radius

We’re experimenting with the pricing for Loop. What’s it worth to you?

Switch the player to 480p for better quality.

Get Monolith Loop 2.0

“The first time I used it I was absorbed for about 25 minutes. I sat creating random sounds, tapping the screen to create ripples, sucked in by the melodies and slightly hypnotised by the soft colour fades and gentle ripples.”

You’re welcome, Chris. And, more importantly, thank you for the review!

In the past three months, we’ve received a lot of amazing feedback from our users around the world. Since you’ve taken the time to write to us, we’d like to take the time to tell you how much we appreciate these comments and the support. Your diversity is amazing! We’ve received comments from Japan to Germany to the UK and from right here at home. We’d like to share some of these comments with you.

Jordan Rudess, Wizdom Music / Dream Theatre (USA):

Beautiful, simply beautiful – Subtle, musical, original, appealing, thoughtful, easy, inspirational. Oh yeah – and free. Thank you!

Onebraineno (USA):

Wonderful – A great free  app to make beautiful ambient music. Great for a stressful day.

Ewan Hoozarmi (UK):

BEAUTIFUL!!! This is the first time I’ve been moved to write a review of an app. For all their technical wizardry, few apps have any real emotional resonance – this does. Monolith Loop has such a playful, intuitive interface that it is quite a joy. Even some of my technophobic friends who usually wouldn’t go near an iPad love it! All in all – the perfect combination of the iPad’s audio and visual interfaces to create something quote lovely.

Bende Marseille (France):

Original and creative – a fun way to create music. An app simple enough for a baby to use but that can be used to compose melodies where randomness combines with creative intuition. Free, minimalist and functional: everyone can compose! Very relaxing, super zen!

So, thank you for making us a part of your day. We hope you continue to enjoy Monolith Loop and writing to us! Stay tuned, we have some awesome updates in store.

If you haven’t tried out loop, you have no reason not to! Download Monolith Loop.

iPhone Native Applications

A native application runs on the operating system for which it was developed. On the iPhone, native applications are written in Objective C and run on iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. This means that the app, and any updates, must be installed by the user via Apple’s App Store distribution and approval process. Native applications have the advantage of access to hardware features, such as the camera, accelerometer, and compass. In addition, software development kit (SDK) frameworks give developers access to iPhone resources, including contacts, calendar events, and photos. Native applications also allow the developers to design richer user experiences.

The pitfall to native applications is that they are single platform. Such applications are designed with a single platform in mind and are not easily portable to other platforms. It can be nearly as much work to port an iPhone app to run on an Android device as it was to develop the iPhone app.
For a variety of circumstances, developing a native application is the best choice. For instance, if the application is complex in that it contains many screens or steps, such as a game or complex animation, building a native application would be wise. Native apps are also best when lots of data must be stored on the phone or when speed is a priority. Applications which require use of most hardware features, for example knowing how the device is tilted, must use native apps as such information cannot be attained through a web application.

Web Applications

Web applications, of course, run on web browsers. They are written in HTML+CSS and JavaScript. Web apps fill certain needs of developers that native applications cannot. One of the biggest benefits of web applications is that they are multi-platform. These apps can run on iOS as well as Android, Symbian, etc. JavaScript, however, may not be interpreted in the same manner by some browsers and in some cases, may not be interpreted at all. In these situations, porting efforts may be required. Another benefit of web apps is that they do not require installation. Any user interaction with Apple’s App Store is unnecessary, although, the option of packaging the application for distribution by the App Store is available.
If you considered a web app even 6 months ago, take another look at what can be achieved. New frameworks have made web app an option for apps that would have needed to be native not long ago.

New in Web Apps

There are new web app features, mostly from HTML5, that aren’t commonly known:

• Web apps can be cached on the iPhone for offline use when a wifi or 3G connection is not available.
• They can also store local data, even a client-side database on the mobile device.
• Hardware access is slowly being opened up. On the iPhone, web apps can get the user’s current location from the GPS.
• New Javascript frameworks make it easy to create near-native UI for web apps. Sencha Touch aids in building applications for iOS and Android phones and tablets. It offers design of a rich user experience, but is more difficult to learn than some simpler JavaScript frameworks such as jQTouch. jQTouch is the better option when emphasis is on the development of web content.
• Users can install a web app, adding it to their home screen with an icon and splash screens just like a native app.

There is a third option that allows developers to write apps with web technologies but get access to device hardware, device data, and App Store distribution: Hybrid Apps.

Hybrid Apps

Combining web and native applications relieves some of the drawbacks of each type of app. This is done by “wrapping” the web app with a native app to gain access to more native features, such as some hardware features and iPhone resources (GPS position change, accelerometer, camera, audio playback and capture, etc). Like native apps, these applications must be distributed throughthe App Store, making them easier to find and monetize. PhoneGap is the leading framework for hybridization, with wrappers for multiple platforms, so the same core web app can be turned into a native iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, or Symbian app.

What Should I Use?

The strengths and weaknesses of each approach mean each one is the best choice for some applications.

Choose Web If…

Use of web applications is the simpler option and more advantageous in certain situations. When hardware features are not required, except for, perhaps, a simple GPS, and only small amounts of on-phone data is required, using a web app is best. Similarly, when speed is not crucial, but portability between platforms is, use of web applications is the better choice.

Choose Native If…

If you want to design a deep, complex user experience, possibly for a game, want to use Apple’s high-level APIs, like developing with C-style languages, or need killer performance, go with a native app. If you want to work with well documented frameworks with lots of example code, for now, native apps are the best option. You’ll have to deal with memory management, pointers, and lots of delegate pattern use, the learning curve can be steep depending on your background.

Choose Hybrid If…

If you want to share a codebase between devices or really prefer writing web apps but want to use App Store distribution or device hardware that isn’t normally available to web apps, a hybrid app fits your needs. If you’re used to writing web apps and want to put together a pretty standard app that needs to look like native UI, a hybrid app might save you a lot of time over learning Objective C.

If you’re still not sure what type of app is best for your application, contact us.

HTML5 Logo by W3C

This is the first time I’ve been moved to write a review of an app. For all their technical wizardry, few apps have any real emotional resonance – this does.  Monolith Loop has such a playful, intuitive interface that it is quite a joy.  Even some of my technophobic friends who usually wouldn’t go near an iPad love it!

Thanks Ewan Hoozarmi!

Get Monolith Loop>>>