student apps – Seidenberg School News

Computer Science students showcase mobile apps

On Tuesday, September 20th 2016, Pace graduate Computer Science students showcased their projects from the computer science classes they had been taking. Dr. Christelle Scharff, the Chair of Computer Science in New York, curated the projects from different courses. The presentations were attended by fellow students in the Seidenberg and the Pace community, and were a way for students to share what they had learned and accomplished, and encourage other students to build fantastic projects when they take the classes for themselves.

Undertaking projects in classes useful for getting the hands-on experience of building something, but it’s also great for job interviews. “It is important for students to use courses they take to build innovative projects; they can use these projects for their portfolios,” Dr. Scharff said.

The showcase was an excellent demonstration of some of the projects students realized in their classes. Here’s some of what our students shared:

City Access

William Dickerson, who had taken CS 641 Mobile Web Content and Development with Professor Haik Sahakian, used Ionic and D3 to develop an app that helped people become better informed of how accessible New York City is from the user’s location.

“I want people to have a, ‘this is where I am, how accessible is my city?’ feel” William explained. “For example, like Google Maps, City Access will guide you to the nearest subway stations; however, it will also include nearby restaurants, parks or anything in your area you live in that you should know about.”

Multiplayer Maze Game

In the SE 765 Distributed Software Development class taught by Dr. Tamer Avcilar, Ersin Akkaya used Java and socket technology to develop a multiplayer maze game. The program has several available mazes. The mazes contain coins that users need to connect without intersecting. Students could even play the game during the presentation.

Stooper

Tony Chen and teammates Greg Goldberg and Jones Rawles, built an app that allows New Yorkers to get free things! Stooper shows listings and locations of places nearby that are giving away items that you can take without spending a penny.

The team split the tasks to ensure the app will be developed during the 3-week project. Tony created the login, contact, register and listing screens. Greg worked on the the splash screen, navigation drawer and the Google Maps integration. Jones Rawles was in charge of creating the donation page, where users can donate money to a charity. This app was the result of taking CS 639 Mobile Application Development with Dr. Scharff.

BizList

In Professor Chernak’s capstone course, CS 691 Computer Science Project I, teammates Harshada Gothankar, Akash Khedekar, Akanksha Gupta, Alex Lieberman, Ayesha Imran and Bijen Khakkhar developed a web app that serves as a commercial real estate portal. “It’s a very unique project in that it relates to finding commercial spaces,” says the team.

Users pick a location they are interested in finding commercial real estate space in and, depending upon the type of business, the app will come up with potential locations within budget and provide with information about the type of environment the space is located in (e.g., parking space).

These capstone courses (Computer Science Project I & II) present students with opportunities to work on projects they are passionate about. It’s a great chance to come up with innovative ideas such as this one!

The CS graduate showcase is a recurring event, taking place at the beginning of each semester. If you are interested in learning more, talk to a professor about it or get in touch with Dr. Scharff.

Mobile app and web development is a big deal at the Seidenberg School, so it was fantastic to see so many students presenting their work in that area! Follow the Pace Mobile Lab on Facebook to learn more about what we get up to in tech.

Congratulations to all of the students for their creative work!

Daniel Botero brings fresh Moffee coffee to Pace

What do we want? Fresh coffee! When do we want it? Now! How do we get it? By ordering it through Moffee, an awesome new startup created by our very own Daniel Botero (MS-CS ’17).

Dan has used his entrepreneurial vision and applied it to a thriving industry: bringing coffee to the masses just when they need it the most. Moffee is a coffee delivery service that accepts orders through its self-titled app and brings your order to your location on or around the Pace downtown campus.

“I didn’t just love [coffee] because of the caffeine. I loved drinking it and became used to it,” says Dan. Daniel came up with the idea for Moffee when he took a notice of major coffee houses and observed how people would wait in long lines just to get a cup of coffee.

When ordering your coffee, you have complete control over what you want. Pick the type of drink (espresso, latte, hot chocolate, tea, etc), the milk, and the sweetener, and Moffee will make it to order. Dan is running the service on weekdays between 9am-6pm, which is perfect for getting that much-needed caffeine fix before class or during study sessions in the library. Moffee is also inexpensive by usual standards – most drinks will run you between $3 and $5.

After ordering, you will receive details such as the name of the person bringing your coffee, their number, and you can even track them by GPS. Payment is complete when the delivery person scans your order QR on your phone, so you don’t pay until your coffee is in your hands. Worried it’ll get cold? It won’t – Dan uses specially constructed lids from Taiwan that ensure the drink stays nice and hot.

His experience in starting Moffee has taught Dan a lot about how to run a business, including many dos and don’ts. Some ideas and strategies went well, while others fell flat and needed to be disregarded altogether. “I was always asking myself what else I could do and what my next idea was,” says Daniel.

In the future, Daniel wants to have a space where the employees can relax and do homework while waiting for orders to come in. Jobs with Moffee are offered to Pace students only, and the coffee shop would be on campus. Interested in applying? Contact Daniel through the Moffee website.

If you would like to learn about Moffee and discover awesome promos, visit them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Have you tried Moffee Coffee yet? Comment below and let us know what you think!

Seidenberg School’s second year of creating mobile apps with Ionic

The Seidenberg School’s CS 641 Mobile Web Development class just wrapped up its second year, with 54 graduate students and one undergraduate in the class this semester. Students created iOS and Android apps with the Ionic 2 framework, and created online portfolios of their work.

The class is taught by Adjunct Professor Haik Sahakian. “If you’re a web developer, Ionic turns you into a mobile app developer as well. You write apps in Javascript that run on iOS and Android from the same code base. And it’s a fun way to learn Angular 2.”

One of the apps from the class was selected for a showcase of graduate student work being put together by the department chair, Dr Christelle Scharff. Written by William Dickerson, it uses the D3 and Leaflet JavaScript libraries to display a travel map of New York City. A user selects a point on the map and how far he or she is willing to walk, and the app displays which parts of the city are reachable with a single subway ride.

“[My app] began as a webpage, which took me about 40 hours to develop into what it is now. If I started from scratch today, it would probably take me less time, but D3, Leaflet, and even JavaScript were new to me at the time. Transitioning the webpage to a mobile app using the Ionic 2 framework took very little time, just a matter of hours.

I liked how each lecture and assignment in the Mobile Web class built on the previous one, allowing us to put everything together into projects worth sharing. We started the first lecture with a blank html file in a text editor, and by week 15, we had covered enough libraries, tools, and web fundamentals to build quality mobile webpages and apps.”

William Dickerson

The class’s apps feel very similar to native apps. Prof. Sahakian said Ionic achieves this because “it comes with web-based UI components that look and behave just like native components, and it uses the open source Cordova library to connect with a mobile device’s hardware and features. An Ionic app is an enhanced web page embedded in a native app wrapper, rather than a native app itself, so it’s a little slower than native for complex features and animations, but it works well, and enables web developers to build apps quickly.”

CS 641 Mobile Web Development is offered every Spring semester. Dr Scharff’s collection of graduate student work will be displayed in the Seidenberg Mobile Lab at 163 William St in the fall.