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To promote the use of our adopted development framework, Zend Framework, 9xb recently came up with 'Zend Day'. A day where we split the studio team off in to three groups of designers and developers, and instructed them to build a working web application in a day that must use one or more of, in some way or another, the following widely used online services:

- twitter
- flickr
- Amazon

Each team needed to build something that effectively uses one of these services in a way that was potentially useful to our clients, or the online community in general.

The Teams

The teams consisted of:

Team 1
Mike Van Rooyen
Jonathan Beeley
Gary Hartley
James (the work experience kid)

Team 2
Martin Hughes
Joanne Taylor
Jay Heaviside

Team 3
Peter Smith
Mazen Shaheed
Christian Bailey

As soon as the starting gun went off (figuratively speaking of course), I was impressed with the level of enthusiasm in each team. Each table was a buzz with ideas, examples and more "web 2.0" buzzwords than I can physically stomach. In a very short space of time the curiosity and sense of adventure that people once had with website development was re-ignited. I've been using Zend Framework in my own time for about a year and half, and to see everyone get settled in with it so quickly felt good. Everyone was on the same page, and dropping advanced programming terminology that would baffle (and probably bore) most people.

The Projects

Team 1: Twebop

Twebop would use people's love of music to generate a list of the most talked about music artists on twitter. It would search twitter for tweets that mention a music artist, and then provide a top 10 based on the most tweets. Music is subject to taste, so not everyone would say good things about a particular artist - but therein lies the point. It was an ever changing, self-generating list of artists that were hot-topics at that time. It would also query Last.fm for each artist, and see how many people love 'em or hate 'em - allowing users to get an unbiased and informed review.

Revenue could be generated by the site owners by providing affiliate links to online music stores, and given the massive role that music plays on the Internet as we know it today, that revenue would most certainly be big.

Team 2: Snappr

The more vowels you remove from a product title the better. Fact*. Snappr was a simple idea, but would attempt to use all three of the services at once. The basic concept of the application was to produce a top 10 list of the most talked about cameras on sale today from Amazon, show what people said about the camera on twitter, and provide a few photographs from Flickr that people had taken using that camera.

To do this it first queried Amazon for its best selling cameras, which were then used to search twitter to see which was talked about the most, and then it searched flickr for any images tagged with using that particular camera.

Revenue could be generated by providing affiliate links back to Amazon. This idea was not limited to cameras, as it could be expanded to anything from artists or concerts, to gardening and automobiles.

(* probably not a fact)

Team 3: Triprogle

This was an example of how you can effectively integrate flickr with Google Maps. The idea was that the map would centre on a particular location, query flickr for any photos taken around the area, and then plot these on the map. A great way to showcase the beauty spots around popular holiday destinations.

The Results

It was a difficult decision for our judges (two people we temporarily stole from the sales and marketing team), who saw potential in all three projects. The results were:

Most likely to gain popularity: Twebop

Most likely to be expanded and generate revenue: Snappr

Most innovative: Triprogle

The reality is that everyone's a winner. The studio are winners because they can flex their development muscles and show how creative we can really be even under pressure. 9xb are winners because we can show you what can be done with the tools available on the Internet today, and how we can do it. You, our clients, are winners because you're working with a talented and creative bunch of people who's deep rooted passion for the Internet means that you’re getting the best of the web today, using advanced technologies and keeping up with the fast-paced nature of the Internet, and a product that really does turn heads.