Time Ranger

Participating in an event & turning an idea into reality can be very difficult and cumbersome sometimes. To ease that pressure and let you just focus on your project to give it a real shape, is the real motto of this extension.

It is an extension made for the participants, by a participant, with love & keeping all things in mind that can somehow ease the project development phase.

So, let's dive into the major functioning of the extension:

⭕ As I am from India and whenever I participate in any event, mostly it is based in the western part of the world (like UK, USA) and I know that the TIMEZONES conversions are a pain in the head because adding 10 hours 30 minutes to your timezone to get the idea of deadline is very tough. I know Google Calendar is there, but it doesn't fulfill the need because the calendar reminder doesn't help us in either knowing how much time is left in the deadline, and neither intimates us at regular intervals. In short, it's hard to deal with the GMT OFFSETS. To ease the conversion process, I have programmed this extension in such a way that it can help you in converting the timezones from a choice of 50 timezones that cover almost every part of the world.

A deadline date & time is present on the Overview page of every event, but the problem is that it is in the organization company's timezone. And if you are a participant from India/USA/Colombia/Brazil and you want to participate in a UK-based event you can use the extension to get the timezones converted to your selected timezone & that even with the help of a click. I haven't used any API for this. I figured out and did the mathematical computation for converting a timezone into other using the GMT offset and I am proud that it works fine with any input.

🔴 On Devpost, for an event, there is a schedule given, that contains important dates for submission, judging & the declaration of the result. The extension can also convert all of those dates to your required timezone

⚫ Apart from the life-saving timezones conversion, as you will use the extension, you will notice that it will also change the prize money 💰 to the currency that is being used in the selected timezone. Whenever we first check out an event, the total prize amount of the event affects our minds a lot and becomes a deciding factor. But it has the same problem as that of timezone, the rate is in some other denomination from where we will be living. For example, as I am from India and if I am converting details of a US-based event, then the extension will not only change the EST/PST timezone to IST but will also convert the amount of the prize in Indian Rupees from $ (which was initially present). So, the extension is smart enough to extract that INR is being used in India & automatically does the conversions.

⚪ For the currency conversion, I have used Exchange Rate API as it gives accurate currency conversion. We all know that RATE LIMITING is one of the problems while using any 3rd-part API and as a plethora of participants will use the devpost platform regularly, that means many will also use this extension. And if on every iteration, I will be calling the API, then there are high chances that within a couple of minutes of usage, I will be hitting that rate limit and the extension will altogether stop working. So, to completely take RATE LIMITING out of the picture, I have ensured that for a user, the extension will fetch the currency rates data once a day (because they are updated in the API itself, once a day) and the new set of data will be fetched next day. Thus ensuring that there are a limited number of API calls being made.

🟠 Conversion aspect is great, but this extension has a lot more to offer. There are a few events that draw one's attention in a moment and we want to keep track of those. Currently, if we have to do so on Devpost, we have to participate in that event and then only the event will be pinned up. But this extension lets you bookmark up to 5 events and they can be viewed/accessed by the user anytime from the browser and you don't have to either open the devpost site or even enroll in that event. You got to 👀 what you like. Not just they are added, but they contain information regarding the event like the name, organizing company, deadline, prize & the devpost page link for that event. You can directly hop onto the devpost's event page from the extension whenever you like.

🟡 Searching new events according to the various tags is now way easier, more accessible & cooler than ever before. Open the extension and you can see the 4 tags that show various options for things like LOCATION, STATUS, LENGTH & INTERESTS. If you want to switch the content of the tag, you can do so by clicking on any of the tags & the content will change. Once satisfied with the tag's contents, click on the ORANGE button to search for the required events.

And boom, the search query will be made and you can just view the results that you got for your constructed choices. It is obvious that for a combination of 4 tags, the results will be limited. In that case, you can click on a tag with keeping the CONTROL key pressed and that will search for the particular tag. Say, you want to search for the AI/ML events, so firstly make sure that you toggle the last tag content to AI/ML (with the Ctrl key being not pressed) and then click on the tag, keeping the Ctrl key pressed and boom, you will be shown the results for the particular choice.

🟣 You can use the REMIND checkbox to instruct the extension to remind you about those events that will be ending in 10 days. Just check the remind option and whenever the extension will find that there are less than 10 days left in an event, that event box will be highlighted and the chrome text-to-speech service will speak out regarding the same. Anytime, you wish to stop the tts, just switch off the reminder option.

⏺ The clipboard icon can be used to copy the information of all of your bookmarked events and that will open the WhatsApp window in the browser through which you can just share your go-to-events with your contact or even send on WhatsApp to show your friends that which events are you participating in. The text is tailored for Whatsapp & will ensure that the events are exported most elegantly.

🟤 A well-made project can't be completed without great error handling and the same I have done with this project. I have covered all the edge cases and the error divisions will pop out as you make mistakes while using the extension.

Don't forget to catch up with the social sites of Devpost present in the extension's footer.

There is a lot to be explored in the extension and a lot to be benefitted of. Use the extension to the fullest and make something great 🎉