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the tech canopy

In this digital garden, I (Dorell James) journals everything I do - from scratching my own itch, to coding and building stuff, to basically everything I care about. This is the best place to learn more about what I am up to recently.

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A huge backlog

Apparently, I have a lot of things to go back to in order to catch up with everything here. How many months was I away? As of the time of this update, it has been 3 months. A lot of things happened in that time but I'm not sure I can catch up with everything here so I'll just do a quick rundown below:

1. 12in12.pro

I've thought about this a lot last December and I after a lot of thought and finally having that clariyt, I decided to give it a try! This was just a really personal project that I wanted to do but it seems a pretty lonely on my end but to be honest, seeing how others are also fighting their own battles and trying to ship something, I thought maybe that if there's like a community for this, it might be a good thing.

I have launched at the end of the month of January. Check it out at 12in12.pro ↗

2. Cebby

Honestly, I didn't thought that Cebby will go this far. It was just a simple idea that I had in mind last Cebu Hacktoberfest 2024, and it grow up to be something that I didn't expect.

The community is amazing! I've met a lot of people and they are all super supportive. I've learned a lot from them and I'm still learning.

Check it out at getcebby.com ↗

Here's a list of things that we're shipped for Cebby.

  1. Calendar Integration - You don't have to keep visiting www.getcebby.com ↗ to never miss a tech event in Cebu! We've added calendar integration so that all events in Cebby syncs into your favorite calendar app. Learn more about that calendar update here ↗

  2. A New Landing Page - Today if you go to www.getcebby.com ↗, you'll be greeted with a landing page that will hopefully give you all the information you need about what Cebby is all about and how it could add some value in your life. View more about that here ↗

  3. Small Calendar Update - Single events on a given day gets a boost as they appear more prominently on the calendar. Learn more about that update here ↗

  4. Cebby reaches top spot in Google Search and other search engines - If you search Cebby before, you'll not find it on the first page of Google. But today, if you search Cebby, you'll see it on the first page of Google. This could only mean that it started to recognize this as a brand by itself. Learn more about this exciting news here ↗

  5. UI Updates - Happenign Now, Quick Nav Filters, Search - UI/UX improvements to make the app experience better. Learn more about those updates here ↗

Progressive Web App for getcebby.com

Exploring PWAs for a Better User Experience with Cebby!

Yesterday morning, I dove into an experiment with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to scratch a personal itch—creating a smoother, more reliable experience for Cebby users in the future.

Why not just stick with a regular web app? 🤔 Here’s the thing: imagine you’re at an event, reaching for your phone to pull up the event info or scan a QR code (especially because someone asked for it 😅). We all try to prepare by taking screenshots or saving details in advance, but that’s not really the experience we deserve, is it?

A Web App Isn’t Enough… Here’s Why:

With a traditional web app, you’re constantly tethered to the internet. And here in the Philippines, consistent, stable mobile data isn’t something we can always count on. Plus, creating a dedicated mobile app for Cebby would just add another app on people’s phones that might not get used often. So, why not meet users halfway?

That’s where a PWA comes in. It’s a website with all the reliability, offline capabilities, and functionality of a native mobile app—without the extra downloads or dependency on internet access.

The User Experience I’m Envisioning:

  1. Open Cebby – Just like a website, but it loads instantly.
  2. Browse Events – Check out upcoming events, and RSVP directly or follow a link to the host’s ticket page.
  3. Store Essential Assets – Important assets like QR codes or event details save to your device, so you have everything you need, even offline. At the Event: When you arrive, you can launch Cebby, pull up the event details or QR code without internet, and you’re all set!

This is the kind of experience I want to create for Cebby users: a platform that works reliably anytime, anywhere, and frees users from data worries. Because good design cares about what you need, before you even realize it.

Let’s make Cebby a reliable companion for every event, no matter where you are! 🚀

Try PWA Cebby today

https://pwa.getcebby.com ↗

#ProgressiveWebApp #Cebby #UserExperience #TechForGood #EventsPH #OfflineAccess

Meta Business Verification

Asked a few friends in the community to help test the app. I already had a hint that the FB App might need to be verified and so indeed. I am patiently waiting for the review so I can proceed with the next steps.

After this, I also need to apply for Access Verification (you could see it in the screenshot above).

I don't think I'll update the web app anytime soon. I'm going back to focus on the backend and fix some issues and improve some areas that I think needs to be improved. A couple of things that I want to do:

  1. Fix the attribution of events to the correct account
  2. Support for multiple accounts for a given event
  3. Probably switch to database functions instead of edge functions for the automated initiating process

That's it for now. See yah!

Tech Events Aggregator Automated Service

I have successfully completed the Event Aggregation service, which currently fetches events from Facebook based on the accounts stored in the database. While serverless functions are familiar to me, Supabase's choice of Deno as their runtime provided a valuable learning opportunity.

The service operates on a 15-minute schedule, checking for new events and saving them to the database using the pg_cron and pg_net extensions. The cron job triggers a Supabase edge function to fetch events from Facebook, and for each account, it calls the edge function to retrieve and store the events in the database.

See the reference commit here ↗

Tech Events Calendar

I finally had the time to work on this idea of mind, an aggregation of tech events in Cebu.

There's two parts of this project:

  1. Event Aggregation: This service automates the process of fetching the events from sources, eg: Facebook, Eventbrite, Meetup, etc. It then stores the events in a database and makes them available via an API.
  2. Web App: This is a simple web app to view the events. It allows you to filter the events by category, date, and location. It's public and will allow people to see the events in Cebu as well as organizers to authorize (in Facebook's case) their apps to sync their events to the site.

View repo here ↗

HubSpot Integration

Today I added a HubSpot integration to the site. This will allow me to keep track of people who sign up for updates. As I start in this journey, I want to be able to keep track of all the people who are interested in what I'm doing.

The beginning

I created this site to start documenting my experiences about all the stuff I'm working on. Today, I'm still not so sure about whether this is a good thing or not but hey, I'm putting it out here anyways. As a monument to getting started, you'll find above the very first screenshot of this site. Stay tuned for more updates!