Instapol lets presenters create free polls for their audiences to answer on their smartphones.  Results display instantly on custom charts that can fit anywhere in a presentation.  Most of the development has been completed over MobileHackDays, and now the team is now working on releasing it to the public this coming weekend.

About the Team:
Charles McQuikin – ctmcquilkin@gmail.com
Chuck is guilty of designing the Instapol logo, presentation and jQuery mobile front-end. As a Jr. UX Architect at RPA in Santa Monica he designs mobile and desktop web applications. He is also recent AD graduate of the VCU Brandcenter and has experience designing logos, websites, and advertising. He also writes some PHP, jQuery, HTML5/CSS3 too. His other car is a mountain bike.

Rahul Swaminathan – Rahul@RahulSwaminathan.com
Rahul designed the backend of Instapol along with Paul using Ruby on Rails and some Javascript. He is a computer science major at Harvey Mudd college, and has worked on multiple projects in the past. He is also a part-time internet marketer and advertiser.

Ozzie Gooen – Ozzie_Gooen@hmc.edu
Ozzie had the original idea for Instapol and worked to interface the front end with the back end.  In his free time he studies Engineering at Harvey Mudd and works on a variety of other cool projects.

Paul Hobbs – Paul_Hobbs@hmc.edu
Paul worked on the backend of Instapol.  He is a computer science senior at Harvey Mudd College finishing his last year.  Next year Paul is planning on working at LinkedIn.

We applaud or team

1) Submit your slides to la@mobilehackdays.com
2) Make sure to include your team members full names and team name
3) Include your postal mailing address

Then we will send you a certificate to show your participation. The winner of the event will receive a special certificate.

John Bergmans (@jbergmans) is the founder of Bergmans Mechatronics LLC.  He performs WebSocket application research and creates custom data acquisition and control system software. His firm’s client base includes companies in the software, industrial, and medical sectors.

Use of WebSockets in Mobile Apps
WebSockets is a bi-directional, high speed interface for communication between web browsers and servers.  This interface is particularly well-suited for situations where data needs to be transmitted from a server to a browser at high rates and with very low latency.  When combined with the use of a message broker, WebSockets can enable the development of large-scale, multi-user, browser-based applications.

Examples of mobile applications that could make use of WebSockets include:
geolocation systems (eg display of bus, taxi or friend location information);
real-time data push and user feedback for mass media or live entertainment or sporting events; and, live streaming of time-critical information (eg stock price information, news, on-line auctions, database contents).

John has created a number of notable WebSocket-based applications, including:
EarthControl – a real-time, multi-player spaceship game for Facebook.  EarthControl is possibly the first Facebook game to use WebSockets.
CollectdViewer – a system for visualizing data from the collectd statistics collection daemon at high-frequency in the browser; and, LabSocket – a general-purpose software framework for extending data acquisition applications to a browser.  This framework has been used in SportJury, a Swiss ski competition judging system which features the use of iPod touch devices for data entry.

More information on John’s work with WebSockets is available here.

Ismail Elshareef (@ielshareef) has been confirmed to be in attendance at MobileHackDays LA. As Director of Front-End Engineering at Edmunds.com, Ismail introduced engineering principles and best practices to the HTML, CSS and JavaScript development at Edmunds, including building high performance, reusable components. Ismail’s experience is broad and varied, he has held lead and executive roles at government, media, ticketing and automotive companies in the US and Europe. In addition to being an accomplished Web architect and front end engineer, Ismail is passionate about entrepreneurship and social innovation, and is co-founder of driftr.com and voterspring.com.

Ismail recently spoke at Google and the Velocity Conference on web performance and some of the achievements he’s accomplished at Edmunds. He may also be speaking at the Velocity Conference in Berlin in November of this year. We had the pleasure of having Ismail speak at our local LA HTML5 Developer Group, on the Business Case for HTML5.

We are excited to have Ismail with us building apps at MobileHackDays! Come out and code with Ismail.

Without further adieu, the Adobe Dev Team:

Tim Dawbarn is a software developer based in Los Angeles, California.  He has has over 10 years experience creating applications for a variety of industries.  Prior to focusing on web and mobile applications, Tim developed intelligence software for the Department of Defense, and games for the Xbox console.  He has developed numerous applications and websites for companies including G4tv, The E! Network, The Style Channel, Take Two Interactive, and Citibank.  He specializes in Adobe Flash and Flex development and has recently worked on high-profile mobile projects aimed at multiple platforms.

Hasan Otuome has been involved with Technology for over 10 years. During that time he has worn many hats: from developer to author and instructor. Hasan is currently Chief Software Architect for Almer/Blank, located in sunny Venice Beach, CA. Most days he can be found designing and developing Flex and AIR applications, IT infrastructures and more from dawn to dusk. When Hasan is not immersed in code or the classroom, he tries to share his knowledge and insight plus interesting things he discovers on his technical journeys with the community on his blog, http://technophi.com.

Omar Gonzalez is a Senior Software Architect at Almer/Blank who has been developing for the web for over 10 years. Omar has developed Flash video applications for companies like eHarmony and has spoken at conferences like FITC on such topics as Flash video, Motion XML, and AIR. Over the past few years he has been developing Flex applications, harnessing the power of Flash Platform technology to create web, desktop and mobile device applications for as many platforms as AIR will target. Omar is on the resident faculty at the Rich Media Institute, teaching topics in Flex, HTML/CSS, and web development, and he is the current Adobe user group manager of LAFlash. He has also written a book on advanced flex development for Friends of ED.

Michael Dela Cruz is a Flash Designer with 7 years of industry experience and is currently an Interactive Designer and Project Manager with Almer/Blank. Although he started his career as a Flash Designer, Michael has recently gotten involved in the project management side of projects and frequently handles multiple roles on multiple projects. As an active member of LA Flash and The Rich Media Institute, Michael seeks to grow as an interactive industry professional as well as help others achieve their goals in the interactive industry.