It's finally that time ... where I get to share with you about the project Han, Yush and I have been working on.

Füüñk allows college students at Carolina to leverage their social networks and the vast amount of information published by UNC to manage class registration.

For the time being, Füüñk is Carolina-only, but we HOPE that we can spread it to other schools as well - this is a fundamental idea that we feel really helps students a lot. Carolina is a testbed for ideas and execution ... once we get it up at Carolina, we'll try to spread it to other schools :)

The problem is that Carolina doesn't have ONE location for course search engine, course lookup, major/minor information, etc. Each system is stored separately; what happens is come registration day, students open up about 4 browser windows, get out a scrap of paper, and try to find a good schedule of classes.

Füüñk simplifies this process. Füüñk keeps course schedules, your previous class schedules (for prerequisite information), your major/minor information (to see how each class fits into your schedule), each class' classification (is it a general college, is it an arts and science, is it a cultural diversity class) and ties it all into one screen. Not only this, but we've managed to get professor grade inflation data and post it all on this site, so you can see what type of grades your professors give out (you can also get really granular and see how a professor grades for a specific class!).

On top of this, we've also built in a social networking layer. Unlike other social networking sites, we have no interest in building a gimmicky social network - no advanced profiles, no profile pictures, etc. When you add a "friend" in the system, anytime you do a search for classes, you can see immediately if any of your friends are registered for your classes. In the future, we want to expand on this by allowing users to comment on classes (we already offer professor commenting); you will be able to track what classes your friends have taken and what types of professors they have enjoyed taking.

The fact of the matter is that class registration at UNC is a mess - it's a total hit-or-miss. Given the wealth of data that is available, it was simply a matter of time before one site brought together all the information in ONE place. We've thrown into the social networking because we believe there's a HUGE value in being able to rely on your friends in registering for classes.

There is TONS of work left on the site to do - this release is merely a proof-of-concept. The site is somewhat buggy still, and the UI is a total mess (no consistency). I'll be cleaning that up in the upcoming weeks, but the general concept is there. Feature-wise, we had to cut down a LOT on the original list of features, but those will slowly be added in, but by bit.

Füüñk

Oh yeah, check out our business cards. (Yes, I chose pink as our primary color. Just cause pink is the new hot color.)

P.S. I'm gonna be writing a lot of Füüñk-related entries for the next few days, so be warned. Boredom ahead, Will Robinson!

Posted by roy on October 27, 2005 at 12:53 AM in | 10 Comments

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Comment posted on October 29th, 2005 at 05:56 PM
Free information?! No, this cannot happen. Everything must have a price tag, my dear Roy! ... Surely you have some insidious plan to extract monies from the people?

Anton Zuiker (guest)

Comment posted on October 29th, 2005 at 04:43 PM
Nice work, Roy and partners. How about coming to the next Chapel Hill Bloggers Meetup on Thursday, November 10 to demo the service?
Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 08:28 PM
Han, Yush, and Roy ---the Holy Trinity.
Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 07:30 PM
funny thing about fuunk...

it's pretty much only UNC that has seperate websites.
Comment posted on October 28th, 2005 at 09:20 PM
well, that's only one step of the site. no other site, afaik, ties in your social networks as well as your previous registration information to the level that we want to do to accomplish our end goal.
Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 10:47 AM
Looks like the ideal site. You've gathered information that is available in many different places and put it into one, easy to use location. When can I buy some stock? :-)
Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 06:17 AM
That's pretty cool... our registration system @ school is kinda like that, there are surveys compiled about classes (we have to fill out evaluations on our classes before we can get our grades) so we can find out the difficulty of the class, whether people liked it, comments about the prof. & some other fun stuff. And like when you add something to your schedule it throws it into a calendar for you with information on when your finals would be and stuff. but dude, fuunk sounds sweeeet(:

benstar (guest)

Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 06:08 AM
if im not mistaken, it compiles info on entry into college subjects/classes in Carolina.

over here (sydney) the education board runs a site like this. i'm surprised you guys have to goto several websites to get the info.

roy should run for government.
Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 01:06 AM
interesting... tell me more about this fuunk. i am confused.
Comment posted on October 27th, 2005 at 02:38 AM
ditto.