“Shout Gameplay is a revolutionary game experience that takes place during live events. Each Gameplay Event is open and free to play with every player having the chance to compete with other players and win money and prizes from our event sponsors. You play, you win, and our sponsors pay. It’s not gambling since you are not putting up your own money.”

HumanXtensions was approached in December of 2010 to first work on the administrative interface for the Shout Gameplay platform.  This phase of development, per the customer’s requirements, would utilize absolutely NO back-end software, but would be written completely in HTML/CSS/Javascript using jQuery, and then interact with their existing back-end using JSON REST Webservices.  This “client application” provided all of the authentication and session management, and then allowed the Shout Gameplay administrators to create and manage their games in advance, and while in progress.

Phase Two of the project then moved to implementing a similar solution for the web site users … taking their designs and again creating a completely client-side experience again using the same HTML/CSS/Javascript technologies and interfacing with the client APIs on their back-end systems.  We also developed the jQuery Mobile registration process for mobile users to be able to sign-up via their smart-phone browsers.

After several months of cooperative development, we had created a highly scalable client application designed and written completely to run in the browser, eliminating the need to scale the back end as more users participated, and also enhancing the responsiveness of the application by eliminating the requirement for “round-trip” page refreshes with the server.

“Mobile Surveys and Rewards – Our unique mobile platform allows you to engage your customers at the best possible moment – at the time of sale. Mobonics makes it easy to know what your customers are thinking; simply create a mobile survey in our online survey builder and start getting feedback! Reward customers who participate with valuable coupons sent to their mobile phone.”

HumanXtensions was approached by the founders of Mobonics when they only had the idea of what they wanted created.  We not only partnered on the development, but also assisting in the requirements, design and feature set.  HumanXtensions was able to bring experience in text messaging application, and user experience, to this project, and create something far beyond the initial plans.

The Mobonics platform consists of an administrative interface with roles for admins, clients, and end-customers.  Through this portal the administrator is able to create a pool of categories and questions that can be used by clients on their surveys.  The clients, through this same portal, can pick the questions that they want asked of their customers and see a comprehensive dashboard showing the details of the surveys taken.  Through the integration with Twilio the administrator or client can pick a Twilio phone number to use for each client’s surveys.

HumanXtensions developed all of the text message web-hook handlers that actually perform the surveys – identifying new and repeat customers, randomly picking questions, logging the customer responses, and handling opt-in and opt-out requests.  All of the results are organized by client so that both the administrators and clients can get a clear picture of the survey activity and results on their respective dashboards.  The dashboards provide numerical, chart, and “feed” displays of all activity.  In addition, there are nightly e-mail reports that are generated and sent to the admins, and clients, reminding them of the service and it’s value.

There are several other features that round out the platform – including account status tracking, account expiration, and account type – all of which are used to enable and disable various features based on what the client had paid for with the service.  Lastly, clients are able to “reach out” to specific customers with text messages in a controlled fashion without sharing the customer’s mobile number, and allowing for easy opting-out of these texts.

HumanXtensions is still working with Mobonics in a longer term strategic partnership to continue to enhance and extend the platform, and continue to add new features and value.

Yes Media already had an existing client tracking system with an extensive set of database tables, and so the solution created had to leverage many of the existing tables and then add it’s own tables to track the specific daily deal information.  This use of existing data tables also included integration with the existing authentication and authorization system used by Yes Media employees.

HumanXtensions developed the Daily Deal Portal using a LAMP solution, with some Ajax work done using jQuery.  The Yes Media team provided a set of mockups of the site, and HumanXtensions worked with their team to develop a work flow for the deal process.  This work flow required that the Daily Deal portal supported several roles of users: admins, sales people, and customers.  In addition, the sales people had to be able to schedule the deals in all of the regions across the country where Yes Media was offering their services.

The work flow consisted of the admins designating sales people and their associated regions.  When a sales person logged in, they could review the deals they had already scheduled in each region, and create new deals while on the phone with a customer.  The deal would consist of a specific day, the price, cost, description, images, and other pertinent details.  Once a sales person felt that they had everything together, they could submit the deal for approval.

Administrators were in charge of the approval process, and when they log into the system, they are presented with the list of deals that need approval.  The admin is able to review and edit all of the deal details to ensure they are complete, and then either send the deal back to the sales person for changes, or approve the deal for publishing.

HumanXtensions also created the nightly publishing system that integrated with the Yes Media templates to create a landing page that customers would be linked to.  This page merged all of the deal data into the page, and then linked the customer to a e-commerce page for the actual purchase.  The URLs that were created by this publishing system were used to track the source of the links, which were generated as unique identifiers for each user.  The publishing system also generated the mass e-mails – each one containing the unique tracking links – that again merged the deal details with a custom e-mail template.  Additional database tables tracked all of the mails generated, sent, clicked, and acted on.  The system also handled the unique opt-out system for customers to remove themselves from the mailing lists.

“KarmaKey lets you combine all your loyalty cards onto one single device… your phone. Amazing, right? Now you can avoid the hassle of having a wallet full of half-punched loyalty cards and achieve zen with the new KarmaKey app!”

Scott Lemon, the founder of HumanXtensions, is also one of the founders of KarmaKey.  HumanXtensions tapped into it’s broad and extensive wealth of experience to architect and develop the KarmaKey platform from bottom to top.  The solution involves .NET code integrated with the POS systems, an Amazon hosted LAMP solution providing the core data warehouse and admin/user portals, and a mobile application written using Appcelerator’s Titanium environment.

The core of the KarmaKey platform was built on a set of XML and JSON web services which provide the POS systems and mobile application with sophisticated and secure access to the KarmaKey data services.  As a part of this core is also the administrator portal, where the KarmaKey staff and monitor the overall system, and view comprehensive client reports and charts.  There is also a notification and feedback system allowing the administrators to view system notifications, and feedback from clients and end-users.

When a participating merchant signs up with KarmaKey, the POS integration service is installed in their POS system.  The POS integration service was written to perform several different functions:

• collect and upload transaction data
• receive trailer data and KarmaCodes
• add KarmaKey redeem button to the register
• request KarmaCode validation
• apply redemption discounts to ticket
• provide fallback transaction queuing
• provide automated code update service

All of these functions were implemented in a .NET service, combined with Micros SIM Scripts, which then utilize the XML Web Services to communicate with the KarmaKey back-end services.  HumanXtensions designed a streamlined installation process to install from the web, and a secondary update service to allow KarmaKey to scale the upgrading process – automating it to minimize human involvement – as they grow and add more installations.  The back-end services created by HumanXtensions were also created as an extensible architecture which will allow KarmaKey to integrate with other POS Systems in the future.

KarmaKey also required a merchant portal allowing the business owner to log in and view overview and detailed information about their sales and loyalty program customers.  The merchant portal created by HumanXtensions allows the merchant is able to see an immediate Overview of their loyalty program – card holders, transactions, claims, and redemptions – that can give the merchant a quick view into the activity today, over the last week, and over the last month.  All of these analytic numbers are generated from the various carefully designed database tables where the raw data is collected.

The merchant is also able to see various sales charts that give them insights into their business and sales trends, showing the number of sales per hour, day or month and the trends in sales amounts.  The charts leverage Google Charts and were created to show counts of transactions, total sales dollars per period, and average sales dollars per period.  These are only some of the many charts that can be created from the wealth of data being collected.

HumanXtensions also implemented a “news feed” that shows the current and historical activity within the merchant’s loyalty program so that they are able to see the new customers who have joined, and what activities their loyalty program customers are taking.  This feed displays the various activities as a stream, and is created by querying the numerous different database tables and combining the result into a time-ordered list.  This feed is designed to evolve in future versions of the platform to provide a place for the merchant to reach out to specific customers via the mobile application or text messages, and also to launch customer specific reports.

The final aspect of the merchant portal was the creation of a series of customer profile information charts.  These charts combine the sales and transaction data with the opt-in customer profile data and provide the merchant with greater insight into who is participating in their program.  The initial set of charts display to the merchant details about the gender and age group of the participants, what other KarmaKey loyalty programs they participate in, and a distribution chart showing the balances of their card holders.  HumanXtensions designed this aspect of the project to be able to continually add new and more valuable charts as the wealth of data accumulates.

HumanXtensions developed the mobile application for KarmaKey using the Appcelerator Titanium platform.  Using this platform avoids the unnecessary burden of creating multiple codebases of souce code to support multiple types of mobile devices.  The application communicates with the back-end JSON Web Services using an advanced protocol developed by HumanXtensions to support secure authentication, multiple device logins, and geo-based queries all allowing for multiple asynchronous requests and responses.

One of the requirements for the mobile application was to allow a KarmaKey user to easily locate nearby participating locations.  The solution for this combined the use of the mobile device GPS with automatic geocoding of the locations in the back-end services.  One of the JSON Web Services allows the application to easily query for nearby locations and displays the results.

KarmaKey users also need to see their cards and balances, along with claiming KarmaCodes for points and creating KarmaCodes to be able to redeem their points.  All of this was implemented using additional JSON Web Services, and also encoding schemes which allows for the use of different image resolutions for the different types of mobile devices supported.

The KarmaKey users are also able to edit and maintain their profile information through the mobile application.  HumanXtensions architected this using a WebView control within the application which displays HTML content using jQuery Mobile.  This hybrid approach was chosen to allow the profile pages to be extended and enhanced without having to modify the mobile application, forcing it to be updated in the various app stores.

Most recently HumanXtensions developed integration between the KarmaKey platform and Twilio for the addition of SMS Text Message support.  This set of features is continuing to be enhanced to extend the KarmaKey platform past “smart” mobile devices to also be able to provide support for standard feature phones.

KarmaKey is one of the more complex distributed applications developed by HumanXtensions, and is an ongoing project which is still being supported and enhanced.

“Shopping Nanny is a service designed to ensure that you get the best price possible on the items you want at the stores you prefer. Your Shopping Nanny does all the work behind the scenes searching for coupons and discounts, finding the best sales and checking for store specials so that you don’t have to.”

The Shopping Nanny system was built using a core Oracle database, surrounded by a series of data acquisition modules that harvest grocery store and coupon data from a wide range of sources.  HumanXtensions began development with the extensive administration interface, allowing the Shopping Nanny team to manage the vast inventory of items, and also to create and administer the Shopping Nanny users.  The administrative functions also included a dashboard allowing management to see key trends in the use of the platform.

The HumanXtensions team then moved on to the integration of the Shopping Nanny graphic design assets, and creation of the home page, registration process, and all user portal pages.  The user registration included a multi-step process which allowed Shopping Nanny to capture e-mail contact information, create a “try it for free” access, and then also manage multiple levels of subscriptions, prices, and promo codes.  HumanXtensions also implemented an affiliate tracking and discount system within the platform that utilized custom URLs that were used by the Shopping Nanny sales force to provide revenue sharing, and special customer discounts.  All of this tied into a standard payment gateway system with recurring billing.

The core functionality of the Shopping Nanny user portal pages required some of the most extreme jQuery and Ajax development.  The user profile system was designed to have a wide range of profile data.  The various profile pages each tracked a “percentage completed” and all of that rolled up to provide the user with a total profile completion percentage.  All of this was built on a series of complex database tables, allowing for extensive reporting and analytics.  This foundation was in place for many future uses.

In addition to the profile, the user portal contains the ability for users to dynamically create multiple named “shopping lists” with auto-complete of the grocery item names, and rapid keyboard optimizations allowing customers to easily create their shopping lists.  While these lists are being created, background searches are spawned to look for specials and coupons at the customer preferred stores.  Users also have the ability to save and recall shopping lists for re-use, and the Shopping Nanny team can even create “recipe” shopping lists for special occasions or holidays.  All of these lists are easily accessible to the users.

During this 6+ month project the HumanXtensions team collaborated constantly with the core Oracle database team, the testing resources, and Shopping Nanny management to create a solid, feature rich solution.

“The HumanXtensions team has made significant contributions to the Shopping Nanny project, and have been instrumental in helping us take the first steps toward making the promise of Shopping Nanny a reality.” – Benoy Tamang, CEO, Shopping Nanny LLC

We were extremely busy in 2008 with the creation of Scintilla Communications, Inc. and the spin-off of our SMS Text Messaging platform – Zipfo – to the new company.  HumanXtensions has since continued to provide strategic consulting and development to various clients in differnet markets.

We are now continuing our research and development in mobile computing, social networking, and desktop productivity tools.  Keep your eyes on this site … we’ll be announcing some of our new projects soon!

Scott

• complete user profiles, profile pages
• friending, profile commenting
• user-generated content (posts, photos, and events)
• full content commenting, promotion, and moderation
• rich content access control mechanisms
• content moderation delegation
• e-mail notifications to users and admins
• automated third-party news syndication
• complete ad-rotation system with tracking
• activity analytics for monitoring site/user activity

Salt Lake City, UT, March 28, 2008 –(PR.com)– HumanXtensions L.L.C. today announced that Founder and CTO Scott C. Lemon was once again named for 2008 as a vSpring Capital Top 100 Venture Entrepreneur, also known as the v|100.

vSpring Capital, a Salt Lake City early-stage venture capital firm, conducts the annual v|100 to recognize outstanding entrepreneurs with ties to Utah. Each year, vSpring asks members of the Utah business community to nominate individuals who are most likely to lead a successful start-up technology venture in the next five to seven years in a C-level executive role. Nominees who garner the most votes from their peers in a nominee-only second step of the annual voting process are then elected into the v|100.

Lemon, who has founded and contributed to several Utah and California based technology companies, is the founder of HumanXtensions – an Internet Software Consulting and Product Development company – and also recently founded Scintilla Communications in January of 2008 to focus on the extensive experience in SMS and Text Messaging gathered through his consulting practice. Besides his own businesses, Lemon has become well known in Utah’s entrepreneurial community through participation in local events, and contributions to numerous local Utah companies. Lemon has been named to the v|100 for the fifth straight year, since the inception of the v|100.

About HumanXtensions L.L.C.
HumanXtensions L.L.C. (www.HumanXtensions.com) is a privately held Internet Software Consulting and Product Development company that provides consulting services in a broad range of Internet technologies to clients world-wide.  Leveraging the same knowledge and experience HumanXtensions also develops its own products and technology for sale and licensing.  HumanXtensions is actively involved in projects with large and small clients, and has recently completed projects for Adobe, Overstock.com, and CollegeFootball.com.

About Scintilla Communications, Inc.
Scintilla Communications, Inc. (www.ScintillaCommunications.com) is a privately held communications software and services company that is creating a next generation platform for two way communications with mobile devices and cell phones. The Scintilla platform provides for the management of users cellular phone information, and the coordination of two-way messaging with individuals or groups, allowing businesses and employers to easily communicate with their customers and employees. Services provided by the Scintilla platform are available now to select customers, and new pilot accounts are being accepted by contacting sales at www.ScintillaCommunications.com.

###

• complete user profile solution
• consumer and business functionality
• two-way SMS Text Messaging integration
• public and private group capabilities
• moderated and open messaging options
• definable future reminders with repeating capabilites
• twitter.com integration features
• public group catalog
• full analytics and reporting

• basic user management system
• multiple file upload capabilities
• video library management with titles, descriptions and tagging
• scalable, distributed background transcoding of video formats
• creation and management of static and dynamic video playlists
• video widget placement and content association management