OurTraction

My biggest fear upon leaving university was that I would get stuck at a place like Initech;  that my best days were behind me and it was now time to start the grown-up process of working to pay for all of the fun from my youth.

My experience at rtraction has been far from that.  I have a say here  and my ideas matter. rtraction is more than a web development shop, it’s also a place where really neat things get created. It’s also a place where one can say “really neat” and not get beat up. Definitely better than school.

Here are just a few of the really neat projects that make this the best job ever.

NeedVision

Last July I had the opportunity to mashup Google Maps and back then, the fancy new  Kiva API to create a slick new way to look for microlending opportunities.

NeedVision shows you available Kiva loans on a map of the world. It’s also open source. If you can make NeedVision better, do it. Then tell us about it

1000 Acts of Kindness

1000 Acts of Kindness, aside from being a great Corporate Social Responsibility project, is a very cool website from a technical perspective.

In November I was tasked with making the front page of the website into something really cool. I had been looking for an opportunity to put the parallax effect into practice, and this was perfect.

Compost

Compost has been my pet open-source project since late last year. It allows designers to gather feedback from their clients, in a graphically appealing and intuitive way.

For more information about Compost and how you can get involved, check out compo.st. An iPhone version is in the works, and a BlackBerry version is currently being planned by a member of the local development community.

PolicyTool

In collaboration with technology lawyer David Canton of e-Legal, we rolled out PolicyTool. PolicyTool lets you fill out a simple questionnaire and then generates a policy based on your answers.

Since its March release, PolicyTool has made a nice splash in the social media scene. It is very nice to be able to say that you’ve been part of something that went viral.

LondonFUSE Code Blitz

One day in March, the dev team worked collaboratively to build our first iPhone app for London Fuse. In eight hours we had a working version of the app that listed upcoming events in London Ontario.

If you have tried the app and would like to make a suggestion for the next version, check out LondonFUSE on uservoice.

eatsure and Open Data

Encouraging the city to open more data, Noah Stewart, David Millar and Shawn Adamsson created eatsure.ca using data from the local health unit’s Food Inspection Disclosure Site.

This is very exciting – as more data becomes available, the more really cool projects we get to create.

Podcamp London Twitter Visualization

The most recent supercool project that I had the privilege of working on was the Podcamp Twitter visualization. In addition to CodeIgniter, jQuery, and the Twitter API, the project makes use of clever CSS3 transformations to create a 3D effect.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Everyone at rtraction has the opportunity to take some time every month for a CSR project. Past projects include 1000 Acts of Kindness and Reforest London. This is an excellent opportunity to get connected to the community and use our powers to do good.

Office Pranks

As with any office, pranks happen every once in a while. I don’t mean to boast, but my latest masterpiece in this area has left others… speechless. What can I say? Pranking one officemate while framing another and simultaneously preventing revenge because the prank was officially a “good deed” – priceless.

Now, look at your job. Now look at my job. Look at your job, then back to my job. Sadly, your job is not my job. But it can be, because we’re hiring!

If you have any questions about the job posting or any of our projects, ask away in the comments section below.