Flexnode Blog

When we were having lunch in KFC and brainstorming on our next killer app like we usually do, we thought Budgetarian was a keeper. We stumbled upon the idea from how gamification and location aware apps have been the rave and wanted to make use of the same concepts to save money.

The niche of budgeting apps seem like the perfect place to start. We pitched the idea during Sabah Got Ideas (SGI) and came home with 20k to kickstart the product. More importantly, this gave us the confidence that our idea holds some value to our target market, not just in our heads.

So what is Budgetarian?

Its a mobile application that changes the way you budget and spend. We think that budgeting apps

That’s not enough though and that’s why we’re releasing a survey (and the reasons behind it) to validate our assumptions. If you got a few minutes to spare, help us out by completing Budgetarian’s survey.

Our blog has been awfully quiet recently as we’ve been heavily involved in the Nov ICT Month events here in Kota Kinabalu. These past 2 months have been the highlight of our year. Here’s  a summary from Lim’s blog.

WebcampKK (Watch the Videos)

On November 4th, we had our fourth and biggest Webcamp KK ever. With the support from SATA, we flew in 3 awesome speakers from KL. Premesh Chandran (MalaysiaKini CEO, Allstars.my), Kamal Fariz (Founder of Bitfluent & Fluentspace) and Wu Han (Chief Designer of Mindvalley, Founder of Webcamp KL).

Sabah Got Ideas

The day after, John and I joined Sabah Got Ideas, a pitching competition organized by SATA. This was the Kota Kinabalu District level and we finished second to enter the finals. 2 weeks later, at the finals, the unthinkable happened. We managed to finish in the top 6 for 20k.

Our pitch was about a mobile budgeting app dubbed ‘Wife in your pocket‘. For all the insights and lessons we learned, check out my previous post on how to craft a memorable pitch.

Hackathon KK 2011

Then on the final weekend of November, an old friend of mine, Edham Arief together with the support of Sabah Computer Society organized our first ever Hackathon in KK. We were tasked to build a working application in 24 hours. Our team (John , Isaac and I) finished first with the app (CityQuest) that rewards you for exploring the city.

So what next? We’re determined to release Budgetarian and we’re taking the first step. More to come on our next blog post

WebcampKK ended the year with a bang with the final meetup of 2011

In conjunction with our ICT month, we were privileged to invite some of the most amazing people to share their experiences. It took awhile but here are the videos of the talks on that day

Webcamp has hit its 3rd installment. Here’s a summary of some of the talks given.

Webcamp KK Group -  Event on Facebook

A quick and dirty presentation on Modern Web Development (using Agile Methodology and Tools). Just a short introduction to the workflow and tools used by some of the big names out there.

by John Wong (Flexnode Solutions)

This is a presentation I gave at the second Webcamp KK about web design. There’s quite a bit of info and tips for those of you who are starting out in web design.

For the all the links and references, check out this post.

After launching StartNow, we knew the next step would be to share the vision through a real meetup. Having a real community of people who meets up regularly to share their experience and expertise is crucial for growth of the local entrepreneurial scene.

Thus, Webcamp KK is born. We hope to have a strong community that inspires each other to start amazing new projects. Watch the video for a brief overview

Webcamp KK Episode 1 Intro from John Wong on Vimeo.
Introduction to the first webcamp by TS Lim.

View more @ Webcamp Channel

The first meetup was a great success. Check out the following blog posts for slides / more info

• Clips Of Logic
• Rapidea
• Edham’s Blog

What next? Get involved.

Join the Webcamp KK facebook group for the latest updates

I’ve always wondered why we have more users from East Malaysia, and I was only enlightened when I had to organize a movie outing in Kuala Lumpur. Organizing cinemas based on location was a total pain when I wanted to compare showtimes of a cinema in KL and one in Selangor.

Now you can pick your favourite cinemas so you don’t have to play with the dropdowns ever again. This is definitely a win for our KL/Selangor users especially when using the mobile version of the site.

Head over to Showtimes.my and try it out now

Note : We’ve also improved the performance of the site. Expect faster load times and tell the world because we’re ready to handle more traffic now. =)

Out of all the sites we built, Showtimes.my has always been the most popular and useful. The idea of the site is to present all the movie showtimes in a single and easy to navigate page.

This is all good until you try to load it on your mobile device. The layout of the page wasn’t designed with mobile devices in mind. But no worries, today we are finally launching the Mobile Showtimes.my site.

Now if you are on the road or don’t have access to a computer, whip out your phone and go to http://m.showtimes.my for all your movie showtimes needs.

The site was put together in a night so if you encounter any bugs or issues with the site, drop us a comment here. Thanks!

Finally, we managed to get around to revamping our company site. It’s inspired by Flipboard awesome website. The site design and graphics are all done by Marissa (freyra).

Spanking new site

For those who are interested, here’s a list of scripts we used on the site.

• CodaSlider 2.0 – Sliding and navigation of the page
• FancyBox – Show screenshots in a lightbox
• jQuery hashchange event – Detect hash change in page url and update navigation header.

Check it out at www.flexnode.com and let us know what you think.