Planet Jeffro

A lot of people wonder what I do all day.  Here’s a list of all the stuff I’m currently working on (as of October 22, 2011):

1. BluTrumpet.com business development - it’s a neat new ad network with better yields than iAd and customizable. I’m finding app developers and reaching out to them. Also incorporating their SDK into several of my own apps.
2. VocabSushi - supporting all the teachers using VocabSushi with their classes, looking into a very cool partnership opportunity with a large education website, working with a new social media star who will manage outreach and other stuff, updating the VocabSushi iPhone App.
3. Tutoring - I have 6 high school students. I see them once a week for SAT prep, math and/or physics tutoring.  Been doing this for 7 years.  I enjoy it and am always trying to get my students interested in programming (it’s a much better skill than knowing calculus, as it turns out.)
4. Fareshare - working with our partners in London, Green Tomato Cars, to finalize development of our cab-sharing iPhone app so they can launch it and ramp up for the Olympics. Things are on track and we’re planning to launch in January.
5. Corporate Videography - I work with a big PR company and shoot media trainings.  If you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you’re about to go on TV to be interviewed, you’re going to want to prepare your messaging.  That’s what these trainings are for.  I film the mock interviews (with a backdrop, light, and mic) and play them back.
6. PatientCommunicator.com - this is a communications and practice management platform for independent doctors to streamline their workflow. My father uses it and he cut all 3 of his secretaries (his overhead is just 15%). He was profiled in Forbes for having such a tech savvy and highly efficient (and profitable) primary care practice. I’m working with a business partner to raise money from several already interested investors, and demo’ing to other interested parties.  Also speaking with interested doctors and getting them on board. Finalizing the specifications and product roadmap - our next few releases will sport features never before innovated by any EMR or platform management system on the market. It’s an exciting time.
7. Cnvrge.com - I’m coding this speed-networking via SMS app (though I’ll soon partner with my friend and developer James to unload that work to him), and using the app to run about 2 networking events per month.  Still proving out the concept through lean methods, but people seem to really like it. If you want to run it in your networking event, let me know!
8. Bandsnearby.com - A weekend hack I did with Pinzler, this is Pandora for local bands to help you find which intimate music venue in NYC you should go to tonight.  Had my virtual assistant grab all the bands playing at 13 venues over the next 6 weeks. Still tweaking a lot of functionality and data. Planning to get a designer to clean up the look.  It’s already allowed me to discover a few bands I really love that are local and small.
9. Supermarket Classroom - My mom’s app. This is for parents in the supermarket with their young children who want to give them something educational to do in the context of the aisles.  I just used Tinyproj to find a great graphic designer and hope to get this in the app store within a month.
10. IngeniousOwl.com - An online SAT course powered by Bespoke Education.  I’m working with a designer and star python developer to finalize the functionality and get this really helpful site up and running and into the hands of our students who need the extra help. If you want to beta test it, let me know. Planning to officially launch in January.
11. The Census Bureau - This is a spoof video of the Honey Badger video to celebrate the tireless Census Takers who come to your home when you don’t return the census forms. I’ll be editing this and loading to Youtube shortly. Stay tuned.
12. Blogging / running / walking Sagan (our greyhound) / hanging with my amazing wife (and occasionally proof-reading her papers) / Skype-ing with my dad / dreaming up dozens of new projects and ideas

So yeah, I’m stretched pretty thin.  But as always I’m loving my crazy days which let me regularly work on about 7 or 8 of these things. I rotate through a lot and by the end of a 16 hour day I git ‘r done.

Image via Wikipedia

I stumbled across an odd problem recently.  I’m using the Youtube API to grab videos for a new hack I’m working on with Pinzler (to be released shortly).

This is the basic API call and it returns XML.

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q=QUERY&max-results=10&v=2

Trouble is, sometimes the result is just ONE record, and other times there are many records.  Ok, that’s to be expected, but when navigating this in Perl it throws a weird error - if there is only 1 record, it’s just a simple hash. But if there are many records, it’s an array of hashes and therefore you need to iterate through each array element like this:

foreach $m (@{$data->{entry}}) {

But… if it’s not an array, it just throws a “NOT AN ARRAY” error. WTF?

So I just learned a workaround that does a quick check to see if it’s an array or not using the ref call:

if (ref($data->{‘entry’}) eq “ARRAY”) { print “an array!”; }

else { print “not array!”; }

Anyone have an easier way to deal with this situation? Or maybe I’m doing this totally wrong?