I built a web app that would setup secret Santa groups. You could add friends from Facebook or just manually and it had a neat feature where you could group individuals that you didn't want to "get" eachother, eg you could group couples in larger friend groups so they didn't get eachother.
It used a genetic algorithm to generate the pairings and handled all the messaging so the organiser was also kept in the dark about who got who.
I slapped an Amazon ad on there and it worked great, but I never bothered marketing it so it got very little usage and eventually I took it down when shutting down an old server.
I learnt a lot about mysql and genetic algorithms, both of which I've gone on to use extensively in my job so it was well worth it overall, just sad it didn't generate a bit of passive income :/
It used a genetic algorithm to generate the pairings and handled all the messaging so the organiser was also kept in the dark about who got who.
I slapped an Amazon ad on there and it worked great, but I never bothered marketing it so it got very little usage and eventually I took it down when shutting down an old server.
I learnt a lot about mysql and genetic algorithms, both of which I've gone on to use extensively in my job so it was well worth it overall, just sad it didn't generate a bit of passive income :/