The economy might be challenging for many, but not for students working with the Qube Lab. Of our original five students, four have graduated and the other has taken a position with an innovative organization that he met through the Qube Lab.

Here’s a synopsis of where they landed:

- Dave Allen – Epic in Madison, WI – Epic is the world’s leading electronic health record company and Dave is a developer there.

- Matt Briancon – Bloomberg in New York City – Bloomberg is the world’s leading provider of business news and data, and Matt is a developer there.

- Brian Seeders – Listener Driven Radio, Northeast Ohio! – LDR is an innovative firm that puts the control of radio content in the hand of the listeners, and Brian is a developer there.

- Omri Shiv – Case’s PhD program, Northeast Ohio! – Omri is pursuing his doctorate in Information Systems at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve and he will be helping to manage the Qube Lab.

- Eric Tutlys – Akamai in Cambridge, MA– Akamai is the (again!) the world’s leading content delivery network, and Eric is an associate solutions architect in the Advertising Decision Solutions group.

John Knific and his team are passionate about music. Knific is president of CitizenGroove LLC, a local Cleveland company that provides web solutions for serious musicians – enabling musicians to bridge their academic and professional careers.

CitizenGroove needed a way to transcode the thousands of audio files it receives everyday so that they could be accessed in a standard filetype. This transcoding needed to be done in such a way that it did not disrupt the regular operation of the site by adding server load. Working with the CitizenGroove development team, the Qube Lab architected a solution and developed it using Django, the Python web development framework used by CitizenGroove’s team. This solution consisted of a single application (in the Django sense of the word) that is run on a separate server that accepts requests from the site to transcode files as they are uploaded. The application uses ffmpeg, an open source, cross- platform library for transcoding audio and video, and the simplicity of Amazon Web Services to accomplish transcoding at minimal cost to CitizenGroove.

According to Knific, “CitizenGroove was very pleased with the work done by Qube Lab. They delivered exactly what we needed at a fraction of what most third-party development groups charge. We were a unique situation. CitizenGroove already had two full-time web developers on staff, but we couldn’t keep up with the demands of our backlog. With Qube, we were able to easily section off a “modular” project, and reduce the pressure on our internal team. As a recent graduate of CWRU and young business owner, I respect how Nick Berente has brought together young talent and showed them how to function as a professional software development group. I implore every entrepreneur to take advantage of the organized, energetic, and intelligent Qube Team… before they all graduate, get hired by the big guys, and you can’t afford them anymore.”

According to Nick Berente, director of the Qube Lab, “The project for with CitizenGroove was a great experience. John and his team are professional and very capable young entrepreneurs. CitizenGroove’s ePortfolio web application is precisely the type of niche technology platform that will shape the next wave of professional social computing. Also, their Digital Auditions application is an elegant and powerful technology. We are thrilled to be involved with their organization.”

Matt Briancon, developer for the Qube Lab, summed it up: “Working with the developers at CitizenGroove was a breeze. They are good people, excellent developers, and they were a pleasure to work with.”

CitizenGroove

CitizenGroove LLC (http://www.citizengroove.com) is a new service to help musicians while bridging the gap between academia and the music industry. While the internet is lined with music sites designed by businesses following the trends of the week, CitizenGroove was built by college music majors turned professional musicians. Born out of a dorm room at Case Western Reserve University, CitizenGroove has grown considerably since its founding in 2008. It is the vision of CG to create a professional networking solution for content creators, interconnecting artists, academic institutions, and the music industry on a single web-based platform.

John Steidley, a veteran marketing executive from the medical high-tech industry had an idea for a “super” mobile application.  So he founded Intelligent Mobile Support (IMS) and one of the first things he did was hire the Qube Lab to develop a prototype of the idea.

The idea involves a mobile application that provides “on-demand delivery of critical information” to mobile business professionals. His patent-pending Mobile App offers a unique combination of interactive 2-way text, voice and Internet connectivity that provides a systematic approach to On-demand Support, Mobile Learning and essential social networking features which he calls Intelligent Networking. The nickname “Super” Mobile App came into being as it works on any smartphone.

John presented a prototype of the Mobile App at the world’s largest medical trade-show last year.  The application is now in production for a medical technology company and is also being used by a Fortune Global 500 technology organization. The IMS application has been selected as a finalist in the Best Mobile Application category for the 2010 NEOSA Best of Tech Awards.

“Working with the Qube Lab is fantastic,” states John Steidley, the President of Intelligent Mobile Support, “The team has a ‘we can do that’ attitude, ability and enthusiasm that helped turn a simple idea into a ‘super’ mobile app.  It was exciting to have a working prototype to show customers and gather market feedback. But it was even more exciting to work with the talented ‘super’ team that helped create it.”

According to Nick Berente, the director of the Qube Lab, the students also benefited from the experience: “What a pleasure it was to work with John.  The guys benefited from his wealth of experience and his unique perspective.  John is really a great example for the guys professionally, and his application is cutting edge.  We were really excited to work on the project and we are proud of the result.”

About Intelligent Mobile Support

Intelligent Mobile Support, LLC (http://www.imobilesupport.com) was founded to provide “on-demand delivery of critical information” to the mobile workforce of our clients.  IMS focuses on the needs of a modern healthcare sales force inundated with rapidly changing markets, customer needs, new products and competitive information. The company is based on the business value proposition that on-demand availability of information is the kind of support that allows a business to react to market dynamics faster, be more competitive, lower costs and execute on their business mission.

The Qube Lab is a great place for educating bright students in real-world issues of software development (and at the same time bringing our clients some tremendous value).  Inside Business magazine recognized this by naming Nick Berente one of the region’s top tech professionals for his work with the Qube Lab.  http://www.ibmag.com/Main/Archive/Powered_Up_11612.aspx

The Qube Lab has been all over the media lately.

OK, maybe not all over, but a few of us were on Channel 3 News and we were in a Crain’s Cleveland Business story in October. We’ve been hearing from a bunch of people on both stories.  It is amazing how many people watch WKYC news and read page 11 of Crain’s.

On Channel 3, it was a story about how Wi-Fi is easily circumvented and packets can get intercepted:

http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=125268&catid=45

Of course, they were with us for two hours but the story was just a couple of minutes. Anything we mentioned about SSID, opening portals, and the detailed, balanced way we viewed these things did not really come across.  We were probably too technical and Mike the reporter wanted sound bites (like the comment James made about what is “stupid”).

The Crain’s story was about Goldstein, Caldwell & Associates – our friends who work with small startups (http://www.goldcald.com/).   It did a nice job introducing us.  Here’s the text that discussed the Qube, followed by a link to the story:

“…The Qube Lab, a software development company Mr. Berente leads at Case Western Reserve University [note: The Qube Lab is not formally associated with Case, beyond all of us also either work or go to school at Case], stood to benefit by partnering with the early stage business development firm in University Heights. However, Mr. Berente also found that he and Goldstein Caldwell’s founders shared a passion: helping Northeast Ohio’s young entrepreneurs…

“…More people should share that focus, said Mr. Berente, who leads a group of students who provide low-cost software development services to Goldstein Caldwell’s portfolio companies and other organizations. “The companies that everybody is talking about were not created by 40-somethings,” said Mr. Berente, who also is an adjunct professor at CWRU’s Weatherhead School of Management and a research fellow at the University of Michigan’s school of information.”

The article “Young entrepreneurs build firm around startup investments,” was written by Chuch Soder and ran on the October 19 issue:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20091019/FREE/310199972

Thoroughly testing software is a good idea. Yes, that’s a pretty obvious statement; however, it’s one that doesn’t seem to be fully understood all the time. I understand bugs popping up under the most random of circumstances. That’s almost expected; however, when a bug pops up when a program is running through set-up, that’s unacceptable.

We’re working on a project that requires the Drupal platform for a client. The client requires that new stories that are created on Drupal will be posted to Twitter and Facebook. That should be simple enough as there are modules to do this using Drupal. Wrong.

I’ve now spent a good two hours trying to set up Twitter integration with the site. Not only was the module completely unintuitive, that is, I expected it to post immediately after I set up my account and created a story. No, it required more modules that needed to be installed, but weren’t required upon activation as well as setting up a user’s specific twitter account, creating special triggers, and a lot of debugging. This is where my frustration stems from.

Why is it that once I hit publish I’m immediately greeted by that all too reassuring PHP error handler. A Google search quickly turned up multiple users experiencing the same problem with the creator saying he fixed it in the next release. After I fixed the first bug, another came up of the same nature. Luckily, there was another patch on the same page as the original problem.

So is the fun of using open-source, community driven applications

Physical Computing is an art that blends software, hardware, and human interaction. I’ve been incredibly interested in this process from both an art standpoint (I’m a musician and a designer at heart) and from the software and hardware standpoint (I’ve been programming for as long as I can remember).

I bought the Arduino platform as well as the Parallax RFID reader and keychain tags a while ago when I first got serious about making the jump into the hardware side of things. During that time, I’ve created a device that will Tweet what beer you pull out of the fridge (Code, I need to put the movie up).

In our apartment, I have a cat and my roommate has a dog. Besides the occasional roughhousing between them, we have stumbled upon another problem. While my cat can jump to a high place to get his food, the dog cannot. In fact, we have yet to find a place to keep the dog’s food where the cat cannot get to it. This has become a problem as 1)I don’t want my cat to get sick eating dog food and 2)my roommate would rather not pay for my cat’s dinner.

Our ultimate plan is to let the pets roam free; however, we can’t leave their food unattended or each one will eat the other’s food. After verbalizing the problem, I immediately had the solution:

We will put both bowls out in the kitchen (this isn’t necessary, nor is it desired as the cat, for the moment, spends most of his day in my room). We will also rig up a piece of cardboard on a stick that’s the diameter of the bowls. Each bowl will have it’s own cardboard cover. We’ll attach the sticks to servos and connect the servos to the Arduino. Additionally, we’ll have the RFID reader plugged into the Arduino, and we’ll put the tags on the pets. When a pet comes next to the bowl, the RFID reader will pick up his tag and know, based on the tag’s serial number, which arm to lift. They will only be able to get their own food (unless they decide to collude, walk together, and eat the other’s food). Problem solved!

I know there’s probably a much simpler, non-technical solution, but where’s the fun in that

Where Northeast Ohio organizations can work with the region’s brightest students in a win-win web development relationship.

Web Applications.

Next-Generation Thinking. (Literally!)

Cutting Edge Technology.

The Qube Lab provides a low-cost alternative for organizations to develop software that they might not otherwise create or to explore ideas from an innovative point of view.  At the same time, local university students gain valuable experience developing real-world applications.

The Qube Lab helps organizations with small scale web-based applications of all sorts. Examples include new application prototyping, mobile applications, dashboards, and virtually anything creative and IT related.

Qube Lab Fellows will be trained using the MS .NET environment and JAVA. They will also have training with databases and some specific applications such as Microsoft SharePoint.