app

Students launch app to help users find the best Freshers’ events

Sep 17, 2019 – by Emma Hussain

A group of Exeter students and graduates have created an app to help students discover events in the city. Officially launching this Freshers’ Week, Motive is the brainchild of developer Mitch Robinson, 2019 Computer Science graduate, and designer Louis Evans, second-year Computer Science undergraduate.

Responding to feedback that Facebook has become too saturated with events, Robinson told Exeposé that Motive aims to “encapsulate everything that a student might want to do.” The team have worked with the Students’ Guild and the Exeter Civic Council to integrate a range of events into the app, including both nightlife and other activities.

‘We want to help societies reach the right people’

Given the enormous number of events on offer in Freshers’ Week, the Motive team want to help new students figure out which events are popular. Once they have signed into the app using their Facebook account, the ability to both ‘like’ events and add them to a personal calendar will create an events ranking. Robinson told us, “You’re not just going into Facebook blind, you actually have a view of what your peers think is good.”

In addition, the team hope to increase visibility for Guild society events. “The biggest club promoters can just determine where people go, and societies just get a little bit left out. We want to help societies reach the right people.”

Robinson developed Motive last year as his dissertation project. The team behind it have benefitted from Google grants, as well as financial and technical support from Think Try Do, the student start-up incubator based at the Innovation Centre. Think Try Do offers up to a thousand pounds to projects pitched to them by students. The Motive team said the incubator have offered them invaluable help, including social media workshops and business advice.

Motive is live now, and is available for free on the Apple and Google Play stores.

Living the Dream

Exploring the concept of lucid dreaming, and why research into sleep science has culminated in the launch of an app that you could only dream of!

Dreams are odd. They can be things of complete and utter joy or frightening nightmares where you just want to wake up. Would our dreams be different if we had the power to control them? This is where lucid dreaming comes into play. This is a type of dreaming where you, the dreamer are aware that you are in the dream therefore granting you a new level of control over what happens within said dream.

The term was first coined by Frederik van Eeden, a Dutch author and psychiatrist in 1913 and from this point on lucid dreaming became a great topic of scientific research. Decades later and lucid dreaming is said to help improve creativity, problem solving and language skills as well as aid those suffering with phobias and anxiety. It is the new found control within the dreamscape which allows such improvement to occur. Lucid Dreaming takes practice however with veterans of the technique highlighting the length of time it took them to master.

“Lucid dreaming can help improve creativity, problem solving and language skills”

Frederik van Eeden. source: wikimedia.commons

This is where the iBand + comes into play. A device designed by Arenar- a technology start-up- in Amsterdam, consisting of a headband, pillow speakers and smartphone app. Its unique selling point is that it boasts the ability to induce lucid dreaming, amongst other, more sleep enhancing, qualities. In keeping with the primary topic, the device stimulates lucid dreaming through audio-visual cues. The headband detects brainwaves, monitoring them in addition to the stages of sleep the body experiences. Once the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep is reached, the device plays calming sounds from the pillow speakers which intelligently adjust to the natural sleep cycle whilst light patterns are emitted through the red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs set into the headset.

“The headband detects brainwaves, monitoring them as well as the stages of sleep the body experiences”

REM sleep has been connected to lucid dreaming since the proposal of such from Celia Green in 1968. Such an association was proven by Stephen LaBerge through the use of Electroencephalography (EEG). This combination of audio-visual effects is intended to awaken your awareness within your dream world without actually waking you up. The system uses the aforementioned EEG within its technological composition allowing the sensing of electrical activity to occur. But the iBand + is not just for the induction of lucid dreaming; its creators have promoted that their device can help you both dream and sleep. The biometric sensors within the device can track body movement, heart rate and body temperature. These integrated sensors can additionally monitor your fitness levels, despite the lack of physical activity. All these extra observations by the device can offer an indication of the user’s mental and physical state, which could determine potential sleep issues.

Simplified sleep phases by Kernsters. source: wikimedia.commons

“iBand+ can indicate the user’s mental and physical state- determining potential sleep issues”

And where would a new technological gadget be if it didn’t have a funky app to accompany it? The app allows you to monitor what your body is getting up to during the night, the quality of your sleep and how you can change your sleep pattern to maximise the positive effect on your body. The app offers easily accessible and interpretable graphs and ratings to help you understand where you’re going wrong at night. The device is so concerned with sleep improvement that it even offers you the chance to awaken feeling refreshed, rather than the typical groggy feeling many of us feel as we hit the snooze button for the fourth time and nestle back into our sheets.

This glorious awakening is caused by the device knowing when you should awaken through its inspection of your sleep cycle; once this information is known, the system will imitate daylight through simulated natural sunlight and sound during the optimum stage of your sleep cycle. The creator, Samir Raut, has stated that the company “truly believe that iBand + will enhance people’s quality of life”, and from the aforementioned features it’s easy to see why.

“iband+ imitates daylight using simulated natural sunlight and sound during the optimum stage of your sleep cycle”

The idea is definitely proving popular as the company’s kickstarter page asked for €50,000 and, as of now, the company has been sponsored an amazing €644,249! People want to experience the ultimate virtual reality, or maybe just want a good night’s sleep. Luckily this quirky device offers users both.

Anonymoose – Exeter’s answer to YikYak

Disclaimer: the author of this article was an early adopter of Anonymoose.

What is Anonymoose?

Anonymoose is an anonymous, location-based online message board. The website is designed with mobile in mind but it works on tablets and computers as well. Users write short text posts that are visible only in their local area. You can comment on other nearby posts, upvote posts you like and downvote ones you don’t. Posts can be viewed in order of most recent, highest rated and most commented. Everyone has a private profile where they can view their activity – posts, comments, upvoted and downvoted posts – and their Mooscore. The more active you are on the site the higher your Mooscore will rise. The user base is located mainly in Exeter at the moment but the site will work wherever you are in the world.

What prompted you to make it?

Originally I was working on a site that read through Yaks on the Exeter YikYak feed and analysed the activity. It had graphs showing the busiest times, a wordcloud of most used words and phrases, and a hall of fame that would show the top Yaks of all time. Unfortunately, YikYak’s major changes over the summer made the app much less popular and rendered my website worthless. Removing anonymity was an unpopular decision, but the removal of ‘my herd’ in the middle of the holidays meant the majority of the Exeter user base was simply unable to access our feed. Herds were later re-enabled but the damage was done: YikYak had managed to destroy an awesome community here in Exeter. I wondered whether I could put together an alternative – something that would fill the gap old-style YikYak left behind. I began developing Anonymoose as a hobby project with no real expectations. As the site started to come together I decided to take the plunge and make it public.

Yikyak had managed to destroy an awesome community here

Why do you think YikYak failed?

Ultimately YikYak was a combination of two ideas: anonymous posting and location-based posting. Remove one half of that combination and you remove your unique selling point. I think the YikYak developers must have felt the pressure to de-anonymise from another source, perhaps from their investors. Without adverts I have no idea how YikYak made any money to operate. Maybe that was the issue. Modern online advertising relies heavily on tracking user activities and knowing personal information in order to target ads. When you’ve got an anonymous user base you don’t know any of that information which makes effective advertising a lot more difficult. It was a sad downfall for a great app. YikYak attracted posts from people who perhaps didn’t want to post elsewhere. Raunchy secrets, scandalous gossip and risqué jokes are fair game when nobody knows who you are. Anonymity also gave people the confidence to reach out and ask for help about serious, private issues. Of course, this is a very optimistic view of anonymous message boards. YikYak had their fair share of controversies over the years – posts on YikYak have been likened to scribblings on a toilet cubicle wall. There have even been calls to get it banned on some campuses. Luckily, what I’ve been seeing on Anonymoose has been very reassuring so far. The overwhelming majority of the current user base is very friendly and with careful moderation I’m sure we can keep it that way. With the help of a supportive community I’m confident we can build up something great again.

4a. How will you ensure you avoid any copyright issues?

First and foremost Anonymoose is designed to be a YikYak alternative. This, of course, results in a familiar look and feel. However, I don’t want to create just a YikYak clone. I’m going to be updating the site with new features and styling tweaks, pushing Anonymoose forward with its own unique design and features. YikYak are doing a good job at moving far away from their original design. With new developments to both Anonymoose and YikYak our respective apps should end up comfortably different.

4b. What do you aim to do differently?

Most importantly I intend to keep the site anonymous! I also love getting to discuss design ideas with the Exeter community. There’s been tons of great suggestions and helpful bug reports that people have been posting. The end result is a collaborative effort between me and everyone using Anonymoose. There have been several user suggestions that have been added to the site already, which is something you wouldn’t see with YikYak. Examples include the Busy feed (most commented posts), what icons to use in the comments, and the ability to view upvoted / downvoted posts in your profile. In fact, the name ‘Anonymoose’ was actually suggested on Exeter YikYak when I first mentioned I was developing the site.

I intend to keep the site anonymous

How will you manage a growing user base – are there plans to get more people involved?

For the moment I am just focusing on increasing the Exeter user base. I’m looking into ways to promote the site across the campus without breaking the bank. I’d love for the site to spread elsewhere but there are development goals I’m looking to achieve before this becomes a priority. Keeping the user base contained within Exeter gives a decent amount of room to grow while also keeping the user base contained enough to manage. Once the site grows beyond Exeter there’s additional considerations. I’ll need to be looking at more powerful servers, larger databases and more storage. Moderating duties will also increase. At this stage I may be looking at getting more people involved to help development.

I’m looking into ways to promote the site across the campus

What are your future plans for Anonymoose- will there be an app?

I’m going to be giving parts of the code a bit of a rebuild soon to provide a smoother user experience for visitors and an easier development experience for me. I’m also going to be implementing a report feature. The community is currently very friendly and there’s not been any issues so far, but with continued growth there will come a point where this will be needed. These updates will pave the way for more exciting features that will help Anonymoose catch up and then move beyond the existing features of YikYak. I would love to allow people to share content other than just text, the most requested being images. Adding image posts will require a lot of additional moderation but it’s on the horizon. I think a private chat feature would be cool. This would be kept anonymous like the rest of the site, rather than enabling usernames like YikYak’s chat. I’d also like to add some small incentives to keep active on the site such as achievements. Finally, I have an idea to introduce a profile of sorts for certain verified accounts which could be used to post official updates. For example, imagine if the university could post short news updates or Unit 1 could tell you all about their latest club night right there in a section of your Anonymoose feed. I think this could be a great feature to keep the community updated on what’s going on around them and generate even more discussion. If all goes to plan there will be an app soon. At first I will be putting together a basic app that is essentially just a wrapper for the website with notification support (a much requested feature not possible with just a website). A fully-fledged, native app will come at a later date as development continues.

What can Exeter students do to help?

Get on Anonymoose! The site is only as good as its users. Make posts, upvote things, invite your friends. The more users, the more content, the more activity, the better the site will become. Tell your friends to join, come and like the Facebook page, share posts you think are funny. Spread the word that it exists. If you’ve got an idea to make the site better then make sure to post it. I see good suggestions posted all the time and implement them when I can.

Where can we contact you?

If you’ve got a bug report or a feature request that you don’t mind being public the easiest way is to post on the Exeter Anonymoosefeed. I check it constantly.

Anonymoose also has a Facebook for site updates and screenshots of popular posts.

facebook.com/anonymoose.co.uk

Otherwise, you can send me a good old fashioned email:

contact@anonymoose.co.uk

Exeter graduate to give TEDx talk in London

Exeter graduate and Kompas App co-founder Tom Charman has been invited to give a TEDx talk this month – asking audiences: “Are We Ready for the Future of Technology?”

Charman announced the event on Facebook on 2 October, telling followers he was “happy to be able to ofﬁ0cially conﬁrm” his ﬁrst ever TEDx talk, held at Royal Holloway University on 22 October.

“Giving a TED talk has always been at the top of my bucket list,” he told Exeposé.

Charman graduated in July with a BSc Hons in Economics and Politics with European Studies. Since then, he and fellow Exeter graduate Olivia Higgs have worked full-time on the innovative travel app Kompas, which the pair co-founded in 2014. The app has launched for BETA testing in London, Berlin and Munich.

“we’re so keen on leading the way by using this innovative technology.”

Higgs and Charman began work on Kompas while studying abroad in Munich in 2014/15. The venture was formerly called Hidden Planet, launching with the Hidden Munich blog, which has since amassed over 19,000 Instagram followers. The pair then teamed up with designer Kurt Henderson to develop plans for an app which builds “travel recommendations based on each individual user, as opposed to generic suggestions around a city.”

The technology used in the app was the inspiration for Charman’s talk, which focuses on artiﬁ cial intelligence, biohacking, and quantum computing.

“After starting KOMPAS with Olivia, Doug, and, Kurt I found myself fall quickly into Artiﬁcial Intelligence and trying to get a better understanding of where I see KOMPAS going,” he said.

“Artiﬁcial intelligence is key to personalisation, which is why we’re so keen on leading the way by using this innovative technology.”

The team were in Copenhagen representing Kompas at the University Startup World Cup in early October. “We’re building corporate partnerships with a number of organisations, and we’ve secured partners that will help us push out to a wider audience in the next few months,” Charman said.

A BETA version of the app is available at www.kompasapp.com.

Lecturer’s climate change game hits the App Store

A game has been developed in collaboration with scientists at the University of Exeter to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change on the Antarctic ice sheet.

“Ice Flows” was developed by Anne Le Brocq, a senior lecturer at the University, with the support of Exeter company Inhouse Visuals.

The British Antarctic Survey is the leading researcher in the project, which is being exclusively funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.

Other universities involved in the project include UCL and the University of Oxford. The National Oceanography Centre has also contributed to the research, along with teams from outside the UK, including the Alfred Wegner Institute in Germany.

Le Brocq is optimistic about thegame’s potential: “The use of a game helps not only to visualise the system, but also to provide an immersive environment for the player to fully understand the behaviour of the ice sheet and how it responds to changes in the environment,” she said.

“Hopefully it’s fun to play too!”

The game was launched at the SCAR (Scientifi c Committee for Antartic Research) Open Science Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

It is now free to download from the App Store, or can be played online at www.iceflowsgame.com.

YikYak take further steps to remove anonymity

The social media platform YikYak took Exeter by storm after it launched in 2013. It was by every measure a success – the students loved it, the university supported it, and the company expanded it (even coming onto campus multiple times to hand out stash). Fears that it would abandon its key feature – anonymity – begun to surface in March when YikYak unveiled handles (a form of username), and many individuals, myself included, believed this signalled a shift in company strategy to remove the anonymous function. In recent days it appears that our concerns were not unfounded, as the latest update has removed anonymity, enforcing handles on all those wishing to participate in the app.

the latest update has removed anonymity

This should be seen as a clear mistake on YikYak’s part – the platform was founded on a promise of anonymity, and the removal of this feature cannot be understated. Many of those using it found the app to be exclusively useful in two ways; firstly, it enabled communities to be communicative in a local area (a feature termed ‘herds’), and secondly, people were able to voice their thoughts without putting a name or a tag to it – no-one knew who posted what. There was a certain comfort to it; if you woke up in the night with pains, or you had issues with handing in an assignment, or even if you just wanted to complain about general issues, you could turn to the app and post a ‘yak’. Others could offer insight and information, or simply agree with you, and the entire experience must surely have helped countless students.

Further, the anonymity function was exciting – students suddenly had a platform to complain about flatmates, or discuss politics, or even inform others of news on campus, and they could be free to chat with each other at will. No-one knew who they were talking to, and this was a useful feature – something completely scrapped when the same few ‘yakkers’ post on the feed with their handles on. Students must now be careful exactly what they ask, who they talk to, and what they reveal, because they are now building up a portfolio of titbits on their handle that can be used to either identify them in real life, or lead to just another form of cyber-bullying, as handles will now be targeted. YikYak claim handles were a way to give users a ‘unique voice’ in their community – it appears, however, that most users did not want a unique voice, they wanted to be able to blend in. Knowing your yakarma, and knowing what you have posted and replied to on YikYak was fun. Unfortunately I can only see this change leading to a massive reduction in unique posters, and a rise in a form of celebrity culture – regular posters, or those with novelty accounts, will dominate the app.

The ability to be anyone, and say anything, was fantastic

Any regular yakker in Exeter could tell you about Green Boot, or Red Acorn. The ability to be anyone, and say anything, was fantastic, and will be sorely missed. YikYak might still function as an internal message board for Exeter students, but with the further removal of herds in the latest update, that has now been scuppered as well. Many students have found a gulf between the lively nature of Exeter’s herd, and the unashamedly post-apocalyptic husks that are their home-town feeds. It appears the company gambled on the loyalty of their user-base, and the functionality of their app, and the coming months will reveal if it paid off or not (although I expect a new app to pop up and reside in the market-gap vacated by YikYak). This is not the first time an app has changed itself to resemble competition (in this case YikYak has taken steps towards Twitter), but in the past it was large companies who could afford to take risks – Google Plus trying to emulate Facebook, YouTube trying to emulate Twitch, and recently Instagram trying to incorporate features of Snapchat. I expect the company behind YikYak to either backtrack in the face of criticism, or take further steps along the road to censorship – perhaps they may require you to link it to a social media account, or an email address. I, for one, am disappointed.

Forest App review: procrastination plantation

I don’t often pay for apps. In fact, swiping through my phone, I can’t find a single one which I actually purchased. Maybe it’s because I’m northern. Maybe that’s a bit politically incorrect. So when I impulsively forked out 79p for Forest about a week ago, I almost surprised myself. I wanted to see if this minimalist utility could help me escape the slippery slope to graduating with the infamous ‘BA in Procrastination’.

Forest is an app which aims to stop you using apps — or at least, it strongly encourages you to stop using apps. The theory, like the design, is incredibly simple. You set the timer, and leave your device with the app open. Then you do some work, and — if you complete it without caving in to the temptations of social media — it rewards you by planting a virtual tree in a virtual field. The more work you do, the larger your forest grows. But if that Facebook notification is just too interesting to ignore, or that Tinder match needs stalking ASAP, and you leave the app, your tree will die.

As a bonus, they’ve made the trees look very sweet — and the dead ones look very sad — so it feels especially evil when you murder them. So far, I’ve been setting it for thirty-minute stints, and it’s definitely succeeded: there are quite a few moments where I’ve wanted to randomly check social media out of boredom, and been told off by the positive messages on the stylish-yet-minimal mint-green display: phrases like “put down your phone” or “hang in there!”.

I haven’t even failed yet, because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I don’t want a dead tree ruining my perfect plantations. The app is even running while I write this; unfortunately, that highlights one of its flaws, because I’m meant to be doing university work: as helpful as the app is, it ultimately still relies on your own willpower to some extent, and (as we all know) there are always other ways to procrastinate.

However, when I do sneak on my computer, I’m far more aware that I should be at work, and this guilt eventually sets me back on track. There are a few added extras in Forest, most notably the clearly-displayed statistics, offering a run-down of each day’s successes and failures. If you gather enough points, you can ‘buy’ other varieties of tree for your forest; if you earn even more, a company will plant a real-life tree in a country like India or Zambia — at the time of writing, a total 5746 trees have been planted by app-users. It’s a nice touch, giving physical rewards for hard work. As I learnt from this year’s series of The Apprentice, gamification is a growing field, and the gamification of concentration is a brilliant idea.

In a world where the majority of people are embarrassingly reliant on technology, it’s nice to use this dependency for good. By tapping into a love of cute trees and an appreciation of neatness, Forest really could be the simple saviour of the student. They definitely aren’t barking up the wrong tree with this one.