Alec Garcia

Immerse yourself in fullscreen 360° panoramas and other content shared by photographers using Insta360's line of 360° cameras.

I reverse engineered the APIs used in Insta360 mobile apps and created an unofficial web app that ports the community for sharing 360° content captured by Insta360 cameras that already exists inside the apps.

Open Source on GitHub: https://github.com/CaliAlec/Insta360-Community

Immerse yourself in the Byte universe: an exciting new looping video app from the founder of Vine.
Explore, watch, and share bytes on the web.

I reverse engineered the APIs used in Byte's mobile apps and created an unofficial web app that lets users anonymous explore and watch bytes or if they login they can access their personalized home feed, like and comment on videos, and follow users.

Open Source on GitHub: https://github.com/CaliAlec/Byte-Community

Read my article… Show more

Immerse yourself in the Byte universe: an exciting new looping video app from the founder of Vine.
Explore, watch, and share bytes on the web.

I reverse engineered the APIs used in Byte's mobile apps and created an unofficial web app that lets users anonymous explore and watch bytes or if they login they can access their personalized home feed, like and comment on videos, and follow users.

Open Source on GitHub: https://github.com/CaliAlec/Byte-Community

Read my article to learn how I did it: https://medium.com/@calialec/how-i-reverse-engineered-byte-and-created-my-own-byte-web-app-2828f5520b25 Show less

Had over 1 million weekly active users before it got taken down.

• Chrome extension that lets you view your friends' Instagram Stories in the browser.

• I built a Chrome extension that retrieves your Instagram.com auth cookies and injects them into the headers for requests to Instagram's private Stories API in order to return a list of all your friends' Stories.

O̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶S̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶G̶i̶t̶H̶u̶b̶:̶… Show more

Had over 1 million weekly active users before it got taken down.

• Chrome extension that lets you view your friends' Instagram Stories in the browser.

• I built a Chrome extension that retrieves your Instagram.com auth cookies and injects them into the headers for requests to Instagram's private Stories API in order to return a list of all your friends' Stories.

O̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶S̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶G̶i̶t̶H̶u̶b̶:̶ ̶h̶t̶t̶p̶s̶:̶/̶/̶g̶i̶t̶h̶u̶b̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/̶C̶a̶l̶i̶A̶l̶e̶c̶/̶C̶h̶r̶o̶m̶e̶I̶G̶S̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ (Taken down due to cease and desist letter.)

Read my article to learn how the extension works: https://medium.com/@calialec/chrome-ig-story-bribing-the-instagram-story-api-with-cookies-c813e6dff911 Show less

• Matcha is an edge-to-edge chaotic fire hose of Instagram Stories grouped by context — there is an endless amount of content. We can take you to Chile, London, or nearly any place in the world and we try to pull Stories from those regions. The result is like sticking your head into a cold flowing river — a snapshot of inappropriate raw human interaction and genuinely funny moments. In essence, Matcha gives you the general feeling of any place on earth in seconds. By design, you can zero in on… Show more

• Matcha is an edge-to-edge chaotic fire hose of Instagram Stories grouped by context — there is an endless amount of content. We can take you to Chile, London, or nearly any place in the world and we try to pull Stories from those regions. The result is like sticking your head into a cold flowing river — a snapshot of inappropriate raw human interaction and genuinely funny moments. In essence, Matcha gives you the general feeling of any place on earth in seconds. By design, you can zero in on any user’s story or just traverse forever in the void. You can also watch your friend's stories as well as curated/suggested stories using Instagram's algorithm. Oh, and you can stream Live Videos too.

• We invented our own mechanism for pseudo-fetching Instagram Stories from a particular location. There doesn't exist an API or a way to get a story from a location so we built a process that searches media on Instagram posted at a particular location, then we look to see if any of the users who posted that media have a story. Matcha relies on the fact that someone posting a photo at a location within the last 24 hours probably has a photo on their story taken near that location as well. It’s definitely scrappy but this means that we can potentially show Instagram Stories from any part of the world.

• We both deeply respect the product team at Instagram and we’re big fans of how much they’ve pushed the Instagram product in the past year. This is our small contribution.

Check out Matcha and lose yourself everyday. 🍵

https://watchmatcha.com Show less

• Tinycrate is a web loot messenger where users communicate with mysterious crates that can hold anything.

• I contribute to the full stack of the web app alongside Freddie, who came up with the idea and designs. I also implement the database schema and security rules on Firebase.

• Tinycrate is currently in production with a private alpha.

• Tinder's new feature Tinder Social has a user privacy vulnerability that lets you see your Facebook friend's Tinder profiles.

• Used React.js and Material-UI to build a web app that utilizes Tinder's private API to retrieve information that the Tinder client already receives and uses it to present a UI for the user to interact with.

• The Tinder profile on Tinderface will show the user’s biography, photos, distance away, and best of all: when they were last active, which was… Show more

• Tinder's new feature Tinder Social has a user privacy vulnerability that lets you see your Facebook friend's Tinder profiles.

• Used React.js and Material-UI to build a web app that utilizes Tinder's private API to retrieve information that the Tinder client already receives and uses it to present a UI for the user to interact with.

• The Tinder profile on Tinderface will show the user’s biography, photos, distance away, and best of all: when they were last active, which was actually removed from the Tinder app, but their API still sends the timestamp.

Live Demo: https://tinderface.herokuapp.com/

Open Source on GitHub: https://github.com/CaliAlec/Tinderface

Read my article to learn more about the vulnerabilities: https://medium.com/@calialec/tinderface-stalking-your-facebook-friends-on-tinder-d8fb11af408 Show less

• Used React.js and Material-UI to develop and design my portfolio website to look like a native Android app (looks better when viewed on mobile)

• Open source on GitHub: https://github.com/CaliAlec/calialec.github.io

• Impulse helps you discover activities with your friends and people nearby.
• Independently developed and designed the Android app and implemented Parse as the backend.

Entangled is an Android watch face that connects two anonymous people forever.

• I developed the watch face and companion handheld app that talks to Parse. I also implemented the backend logic on Parse, to keep track of users and sent interaction messages. Freddie designed and pitched.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/20/entangled-is-a-watch-app-to-fight-loneliness/

Introducing the fastest way to communicate. Pop a pic to your friends' lock screens and it will be the first thing they see.

-Formerly known as Bunch (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bunch.android), ScreenPop lets you easily access the camera from the lock screen so you can take a picture and send it to your friend's lock screen.

Selected as one of the "Best Apps of 2014" by Google, Locket is the intelligent lock screen that brings you the top stories every time you wake up your phone. Locket learns your interests and habits to bring you contextually relevant content on your lock screen. The more you use it, the smarter it gets.

-I contributed to the development of the product during all its phases/pivots with the rest of the team.

Locket Phases:

-Original pay-per-swipe model: paid users a penny… Show more

Selected as one of the "Best Apps of 2014" by Google, Locket is the intelligent lock screen that brings you the top stories every time you wake up your phone. Locket learns your interests and habits to bring you contextually relevant content on your lock screen. The more you use it, the smarter it gets.

-I contributed to the development of the product during all its phases/pivots with the rest of the team.

Locket Phases:

-Original pay-per-swipe model: paid users a penny every time they unlocked phones in return for viewing advertisements on their lock screen. (http://blog.getlocket.com/post/54547825218/the-birth-beginning-conception-of-locket)

-Locket Cast: Allowed users (internal, curated, and celebrities) to "cast" content to Locket users' lock screens. (http://blog.getlocket.com/post/72472531945/introducing-locket-cast)

-Locket 2.0: Allows users to swipe through multiple lock screen images featuring news curated and designed by Locket. (http://blog.getlocket.com/post/90000912624/multiple-lock-screens-and-save-for-later-features) Show less

• Won $20k by coming in 4th place (Heroku category) at the Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon.

• I developed the Android app and Java backend server from scratch within 36 hours.

• Freddie pitched and did Product/Design/PM.

"Tinder for Events and Activities" - Find a place to go, things to do, events to visit, and just enjoy good times.

• I helped implement some of the UI on the Android client during the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon 2014.

CLASSUP! is an education-related Android/Google Glass & web application developed at the Pre-I/O Google Glass Hackathon event in San Francisco. It is designed to assist instructors and educational institutions to gain real-time metrics from students in the classroom by monitoring their physical responses to subjects being taught in the classroom.

Taking advantage of the gyroscope inside Google Glass, CLASSUP! registers any head nods and shakes as direct stimuli responses and transmits… Show more

CLASSUP! is an education-related Android/Google Glass & web application developed at the Pre-I/O Google Glass Hackathon event in San Francisco. It is designed to assist instructors and educational institutions to gain real-time metrics from students in the classroom by monitoring their physical responses to subjects being taught in the classroom.

Taking advantage of the gyroscope inside Google Glass, CLASSUP! registers any head nods and shakes as direct stimuli responses and transmits that data discreetly directly to the instructor. The instructor can monitor the responses live as a life pulse and see if the students are being engaged and can make on-the-fly adjustments to the class based on the responses. As an alternative, students can also send their feedback using a web application or a Google Android device.

• I helped implement some of the UI on both the Glassware and Android application. Show less

Finding doggy playmates is hard, but dog socialization is an important part of dog ownership. Waggly makes it quick and simple to find playmates nearby for your dog.

• I developed the Android application from scratch within 48 hours. Hanna designed and pitched.
• Our team received a cumulative score of 9.3/10 from the judges.

I was responsible for developing the front-end of Locket's in-house CMS dashboard that allowed our content curation and design team to upload and manage content that is published to the lock screens of the Locket app users.