Sephira Software Logo Sephira Software is a small software development consultancy specializing in simple and elegant web applications.

Portfolio

Jason's Deli

In Fall 2007, we worked with Brains on Fire (an identity company based in Greenville, SC) to create a new website for Jason's Deli. The site is powered by Drupal, an open source content management system that we customized to work with data from OrderTalk, an online ordering system. Couple this with some beautiful graphics from Brains on Fire, and you've got one of the best restaurant websites in the world.

Mashfest

We are currently working on building Mashfest, which aims to be the best site dedicated to music festivals on the web. The goal is to make it easy to access and post photos, videos, and lineups for every major music festival ever held! It's still in development, but check it out!

Stratos Framework

In 2006 we released Stratos, an object-oriented web application framework that features Ajax integration with Dojo, object-relational mapping, a built in authorization system, and a web based control panel so that you don't have to edit a single line of XML. How do you think we built all of these applications so fast? Oh yeah, you can use it too. Download it for free.

GeeGuides

Durango, Colorado based GeeGuides develops interactive art education systems designed to provide children with the tools necessary to understand, interpret, enjoy, and create art. GeeGuides is run by some folks who worked on Disney films like Mulan, Lilo and Stich, The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast. We've assisted the creative minds at GeeGuides with several projects, like this electronic greeting card creator.

OdonataCentral

In 2007, we relearned our Biology so we could help Dr. John C. Abbott develop a new version of OdonataCentral, which he describes as a A Model for the Web-based Delivery of Natural History Information and Citizen Science. Ever wanted to plot the species distribution for Acanthagrion quadratum with the Google Maps API? With OdonataCentral, you can.

AdGrad

Does Facebook not meet your needs? Ever needed your own social networking site? We've built one from scratch. In 2006, we helped the UT College of Advertising create a social and professional networking site for alumni. The site empowers alumni by letting them easily network, post resumes, portfolios, job referrals, and keep in touch after graduation.

CHIP Counseling System

CHIP is a web application career counseling management system. It provides interfaces for accessing client demographic information, scheduling counseling and outreach sessions, viewing employee counseling and outreach schedules, tracking appointments, writing case notes, and a built-in, customizable listserv e-mailer.

Student Community

Back before MySpace and Facebook even existed, Joshua and Larry developed a web application to allow students at the University of Texas at Austin to sell and exchange items, discuss campus issues, and review apartments, bars, and restaurants. We modified phpBB, an open source bulletin board system, to work with UT EID authentication, UTDirect, and Oracle.

University of Texas Directory

If you ever studied or worked at the University of Texas, you've probably used this thousands of times. Need to find someone affiliated with UT? Type in all or part of someone's name, UT EID, or email address into the box, and the UT Directory gives you everything else. Not at a computer? Need to invite someone to lunch, but you don't have their number? No problem. Just use it from your phone.

You Called It

That's nice, but what about sports? Before the 2006 college football season, we developed a cool site to allow sports fans to compete for prizes by guessing the final scores of college football games. We wanted to find out whether there is any wisdom in crowds or whether being a fan of a particular team affects your predictions. It turns out that football fans see the world through insert-school-color-tinted glasses.

Faculty Staff Directory

The UT Directory is nice, but the Jackson School of Geosciences wanted a customized version just for them. So we gave them what they wanted. Their version is limited to JSG faculty and staff, and is browseable by letter or administrative unit.

Longhorn Living

Ever needed to find student housing? It can be tough. That's why we created Longhorn Living, a site that helps students at UT-Austin find great deals on apartments and campus-area dorms.

Grad School Financial Database

When you're in charge of funding hundreds of Geology graduate students, and the students are different every semester, sometimes Excel alone doesn't cut it. That's why we created a web application that allows Jackson School administrators to keep track of their financial records. We even integrated the web application with the University's mainframe data, so student academic information is updated automatically.

AISD Placement System

Excel also isn't the best technology choice for enabling dozens of coordinators to place students into teaching positions at the hundreds of elementary and middle schools in the Austin Independent School District. That's why we created the Student-Teacher placement system, which makes it as easy as clicking a button.

COE Scholarship Application

Who fills out a paper application for scholarships anymore? Not students in the College of Education. Josh developed an application that provides all students from within the COE and the College of Liberal Arts the ability to submit a scholarship application online. The application provides authorized COE staff with the ability search, review, print, and approve scholarship applications.

Grants.gov

Grants.gov is a centralized suite of services that provides a simple, unified electronic storefront for interactions between grant applicants and the Federal agencies that manage grant funds. These grant services are offered and accessed by means of a web service. Josh helped create a proof-of-concept application that integrates with the published web service methods from Grants.gov.

Online Academic Services

Back in the old days, you had to fill out a paper form to apply for graduation. You also had to see an academic advisor in person to discuss what courses you would take. Not anymore. Students in the College of Education, Jackson School of Geosciences, and College of Fine Arts can do this online, thanks to a suite of academic services that Larry created in 2006.

Job Network Visualization

The University mainframe has many batch jobs that run overnight. They are large, complicated, and have many dependencies. That's why Larry helped create a proof-of-concept visualization tool to graphically portray these job networks using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Who says you don't use recursion in the real world?

Fitness Buddies

Ever needed a jogging partner, but didn't know how to find one? This novel website helps people who are interested in exercise and fitness meet up with one another. We developed a custom solution for managing the fitness articles on the site, and integrated vBulletin with the site's look and feel.

Texas Agricultural Research DB

Established by the 77th Texas Legislature in 2001, the purpose of the Texas Agricultural Research Database is to enhance communication about agricultural research in the State of Texas from research facilities to interested members of other research institutions, private industry, and the general public. If you spend a lot of time on this site, you will learn a lot about cotton and boll weevils.

RSS Aggregator

RSS is nice, but which feeds are worth subscribing to? This RSS aggregator was created to allow people to read about what's new in higher education from a variety of sources, all in one place.

LTC Timeclock

Suppose you are the manager of several computer labs that are scattered all over a large university campus. You employ dozens of part-time student workers who proctor these labs. And they don't work for free, so you have to pay them by the hour. How do you keep track of their schedules and how many hours they worked? How about a web-based timeclock and scheduling system that allows your employees to clock-in remotely from any lab?

Holdem Tools

Holdem Tools is a web based Texas Holdem odds calculator. The front end was created using PHP and JavaScript, while the backend is powered by the poker-eval library, which is written in C. For the drag-and-drop cards, we made use of the scriptaculous library. Want to have your own personal odds calculator? Holdem Tools is an open source project. You can download it for free.