Dr. Laurin Ostermann

Coding

I have always wondered about how you can tell a computer what to do in an efficient way since I was a teenager. For more than ten years now, I do know. My expertise ranges from various high-level programming and scripting languages like C/C++ or Objective-C to Julia, Python and Xojo. Most recently, I really enjoy developing websites and web applications in HTML/CSS/JS and PHP/mySQL. Together with my sister Teresa, who has a substantial background in design, a couple of neat projects have come to life in the last years.

Web Applications

Designing nice webpages is one thing, but actually having a website do something useful for the user, i.e. being a web application, is something completely different and a lot more challenging. Here are some examples of recent work in that realm.

TH Cal

TH Cal

The technical crew (sound engineers, etc.) of a local concert venue, the Treibhaus in Innsbruck, needed an application where they could coordinate shows and have all the information pertaining to today’s gig available at a glance. So, I went out and created TH Cal, which allows the head technician to put in all the details about upcoming shows and the crew to view and edit them. The application is designed with a well-arranged view on a large computer screen down to a view presenting the most important things on a phone or a tablet computer. I have used Bootstrap and Fat Free Framework to develop it. There is a demo version of the application at demo.th-cal.tk and I have put the code on GitHub.

Online Booking Engine: Four Seasons Travel

Online Booking Engine: Four Seasons Travel

Together with Matthias Arzberger, who did the design, I developed an online booking engine for the Innsbruck-based airport transfer service Four Seasons Travel. Besides being multilingual with German, English and Russian, the engine handles the payment process via credit cards as well as sending out confirmation emails, which include a PDF transfer voucher with a scannable voucher barcode. In addition, coupon codes and an affiliate partner portal are available. Bookings made on the server are synchronized to the local office for further processing. The engine has been written entirely from scratch and it features many cool behind-the-scenes programming concepts and techniques. See for yourself (even if you don’t plan flying away) at airport-transfer.com.

Websites

My goal is to design modern, light-weight scalable and responsive websites Sometimes I like to use a CMS application like WordPress or Joomla, sometimes I do it myself, e.g. with the Bootstrap Framework. A few examples can be found below.