Author Archives: Premasagar

Winning app for the HP TouchPad

URL: dharmafly.com/hpwebos-hackday/demo/ I went along with Andrea and Sym to The Guardian to join a hack day for HP’s new TouchPad tablet – an interesting alternative to the iPad that uses web standard technologies for creating native mobile applications. We won the competition(!) with a prototype app for exploring live web content, such as news, […]

Bitnotes #1

A few little bite size updates of what we’ve been up to.

A web app for tiny tasks and a crowd of volunteers

URL: tasket.dharmafly.com People like to help out with a good cause, but it can be difficult to find the time. What if, through the Web, we could gather enough people and bring them together to achieve something great? At Dharmafly, we’ve been hard at work creating an open source tool called “Tasket“, which we hope […]

JS1K: Phi

Demo: js1k.com/demo/695 Code: github.com/premasagar/js1k Way back, in the dark, distant past – long before the days of the interwebs and cellular telephones – programmers were limited to a mere 1 kilobyte of computer memory for their programmes. Every single character in a computer programme, every dot and semicolon mattered. What if we only had 1KB […]

What makes a UK Online centre?

URL: rewiredstate.org/projects/what-makes-a-centre We previously blogged about helping to create a prototype SMS text message service for the Government’s UK Online Centres. The centres help people get online for the first time, and are a key part of the government’s strategy for Digital Engagement. We also worked on a handful of data visualisations to highlight the […]

Digital inclusion goes mobile

URL: rewiredstate.org/projects/sms-centre-finder There are 61 million people in the UK and 10 million of them have never used the Web. How would you help someone to get online for the first time? The job of the Government’s UK Online Centres is to help bridge the digital divide, by providing places with free public Internet and […]

Show me the money

URL: guardian.co.uk/datablog/…infovis (fullscreen version) There’s been a lot of discussion recently about public spending, amidst a global recession, countries in crisis and the emergency budget. The Guardian has been following this closely and, when the UK Treasury released “Coins“, its huge database of Government spending, the Guardian invited a small group of programmers and experts to […]

Science Hack Day and The Revolutionaries

URL: dharmafly.com/revolutionaries/ Last week saw an exciting event that brought together scientists, programmers and designers: “Science Hack Day“. Held at The Guardian in London, this was an up-all-night two days of web development, hardware building and invention, with the goal of prototyping new services and tools for science and scientists.

Festive Geekery

It’s geek festival season, down here in Brighton. First up is dConstruct, a one-day conference on the cutting edge of interface design and user engagement. And then it’s good old BarCamp Brighton, now into its fourth incarnation. BarCamp, always a favourite, is a handmade 2-day conference, pulled together by its community of participants. Everyone gives […]

Teen Hackers Take Over Google

At the weekend, I helped mentor a group of tech-minded teenagers at the community-led event, “Young Rewired State“. Held at Google’s London HQ, this was a two-day, action-packed programme for 15-18 year olds to build something better with government data on the web. And the results were truly impressive. Young people are sometimes written-off as […]