Ask HN: What did you create in 2011?
What side projects, apps, hacks did you build in 2011?
* Created http://jspkg.com for hosting javascript packages. A sort of plugins.jquery alternative, except for all JS projects. This is still a very active work in progress that I've been working on for about 7 months now.
* Created the jquery dynatable plugin as a semantic HTML5 replacement for jquery datatables (http://jspkg.com/packages/dynatable).
* Rewrote basically the entirety of the rails/jquery-ujs adapter (kind of a creation, right?) that's now included in Rails (https://github.com/rails/jquery-ujs and https://rubygems.org/gems/jquery-rails).
* Rewrote the entire remotipart gem for ajax file uploads in rails (https://rubygems.org/gems/remotipart) (again, I'm assuming the rewrite counts, since it essentially became an entirely new project that happened to have the same goals as the original).
I also contributed to a lot of other open-source projects like the ruby carrierwave gem, citizenry, ruby sunspot (solr gem), ruby-git gem, and some others.
I consider these contributions to be pretty much on-par with things created, because whenever I want to create something, my first step is seeing if there may be some existing project that even comes close, to which I could contribute instead of starting something new for people to keep up with. So really the only difference between creating and contributing is whether or not I can find something of similar quality and purpose that already exists.
* http://www.coachulous.com, a web app for triathlon coaches
* http://loanarranger.heroku.com, a visualization tool for mortgage/car/student loans
* Aspect Ratio Converter (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aspect-ratio-converter/id4776...), a calculator for resizing images, embedded video, and flash objects without screwing up the aspect ratio
* http://www.receiptparty.com, a service that stores and organizes your digital receipts
* http://realpersonreminders.com, telephone reminders from a real person
Reddit Notifier (for your OS X menubar): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reddit-notifier/id468366517?m...
I also did a really stupid javascript library: https://gist.github.com/1138419
Hopefully 2012 will be even better!
My plan for 2012 is to create revenue from one, or all of the above sites.
Started writing (semi) regularly on my blog, http://tgriff3.tumblr.com - a big step after many stops and starts.
Also a visualization of US Foreign Aid using D3: http://www.euphonious-intuition.com/USForeignAidVis/
It's not been as much of a success as I was hoping (currently 1200 registered users, with quite a large number more of unregistered users), but it was a project that I started and finished =)
Congratulations on shipping your project! I'd like to check it out, but seems down for the moment...
EDIT: It's live actually. Looks like a problem on my end.
You don't need to register to use 90% of the sites functionality, so most people probably never register.
But it's free to register, so of those that do, probably only 10% come back and use the site regularly. Certainly it only seems to translate to about 100-200 uniques a day.
I'm still getting about 2-10 registrations a day, so hopefully (given a long enough period of time) that number will go up.
The big problem at the moment though is that I've submitted to all the app directories that I could find. This made a huge difference in google page rank for "disposable email" (made it up to page two at one point). Now though, with no new links I'm slowly sinking (now down to page four).
http://getlocalne.ws (Global News Aggregator) and http://www.RapiDefs.com (Web 2.0 English Dictionary)
I created it to learn Ruby, Sinatra, JQuery, and web development in general. It was a fun little project.
You wouldn't believe how many sites I've seen using that theme, unfortunately it's arguably the best SaaS theme on themeforest, one of my goals this year is to get a new site deign.