Last week we ran through the live test of storc, my app for the Blackberry Playbook for tracking contractions. It worked as advertised, and helped us to identify when to call our doctor an head to the hospital. No sales or reviews yet, but its out there, and it works!
Oh, and by the way, the next day our beautiful baby boy arrived. That was kinda important too.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
storc, my second app, is now available
Yesterday, I released my second app for the BlackBerry Playbook: storc: a Simple Timer of Recurring Contractions. My wife and I are expecting our first child in the next two weeks, and I thought something like this might be useful, both to myself and to others. You can check it out here: http://bit.ly/kGNVuw
storc asks you to press a button when a contraction starts and when it ends, repeating multiple times. Then it will summarize how long each contraction was, and what the time between contractions was. These are questions that we'll need to answer for our doctor to help him decide when it is time to go into the hospital for delivery. You can also see all this data in a history list, and in two different charts.
It was an entirely original idea, but apparently I'm not the first. When I was all done and ready to release, I searched AppWorld, and found several others already in place. It's a simple concept, so there isn't much to differentiate, but I believe my implementation is more complete than others (storc is the only app to include charts), and, in my opinion at least, has the most pleasing UI. Of course, storc is by far and away the best name!
I guess we'll have have to wait and see if Playbook users agree.
storc asks you to press a button when a contraction starts and when it ends, repeating multiple times. Then it will summarize how long each contraction was, and what the time between contractions was. These are questions that we'll need to answer for our doctor to help him decide when it is time to go into the hospital for delivery. You can also see all this data in a history list, and in two different charts.
It was an entirely original idea, but apparently I'm not the first. When I was all done and ready to release, I searched AppWorld, and found several others already in place. It's a simple concept, so there isn't much to differentiate, but I believe my implementation is more complete than others (storc is the only app to include charts), and, in my opinion at least, has the most pleasing UI. Of course, storc is by far and away the best name!
I guess we'll have have to wait and see if Playbook users agree.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
ExerTrack removed from AppWorld
The first mobile app I wrote and released was ExerTrack. I was pretty proud of it. I wrote it in a couple of weeks, and released it in time to receive a free Blackberry Playbook, at a time when they were running a promotion to populate their app store (AppWorld) ahead of the Playbook's release. It is an app that allows users to track their exercises (I'll provide a more in depth description later).
As I said, I worked on this app prior to the Playbook's release, which means that I didn't actually have a device to test it on. I tested it on my desktop, and within a simulator supplied by RIM, and all seemed good. When I released it, I even got a couple positive reviews, so I thought all was good. However, when I finally got my device, almost two months later, I tested things out, and found the app was pretty much unusable. A drop-down selection control that I used was not 'optimized for mobile' which apparently means it doesn't work (but worked in the simulator). I thought I had created a very flexible app, but it turns out most of the flexibility was never realized, because this stupid control only displayed 2 choices instead of the unlimited choices I had imagined. I was very disappointed.
So, today, I removed ExerTrack from the store. I hope to fix this problem, but it is more difficult than you might think. Not only was the Playbook not released when I wrote it, but I was using a pre-release version of Adobe Flex, and it seems the actually release changed so many things that my project files are unusable. This means a complete rewrite, though I can salvage some of the logic. Very frustrating. I really hate leaving my customers hanging, so I will try my best, but it will take a fair amount of time, and the look and feel will be considerably changed.
Oh, and I also need to rename it, as I have since learned that ExerTrack is a name already in use on the web...
As I said, I worked on this app prior to the Playbook's release, which means that I didn't actually have a device to test it on. I tested it on my desktop, and within a simulator supplied by RIM, and all seemed good. When I released it, I even got a couple positive reviews, so I thought all was good. However, when I finally got my device, almost two months later, I tested things out, and found the app was pretty much unusable. A drop-down selection control that I used was not 'optimized for mobile' which apparently means it doesn't work (but worked in the simulator). I thought I had created a very flexible app, but it turns out most of the flexibility was never realized, because this stupid control only displayed 2 choices instead of the unlimited choices I had imagined. I was very disappointed.
So, today, I removed ExerTrack from the store. I hope to fix this problem, but it is more difficult than you might think. Not only was the Playbook not released when I wrote it, but I was using a pre-release version of Adobe Flex, and it seems the actually release changed so many things that my project files are unusable. This means a complete rewrite, though I can salvage some of the logic. Very frustrating. I really hate leaving my customers hanging, so I will try my best, but it will take a fair amount of time, and the look and feel will be considerably changed.
Oh, and I also need to rename it, as I have since learned that ExerTrack is a name already in use on the web...
Another New Start
Ok, so the last reset didn't really stick. Problem is, while I consider my life busy and fulfilling, there hasn't been much I feel the need to share, outside of my occasional post to facebook.
But now, I have started developing mobile apps (2 so far), and I realize that I have no way of getting feedback from my customers, other than those that write reviews. And even when reviews are written, I have no way to reach out and respond, or ask for details. This has proven to be a big problem. The first app I created, I released even before I had the device to test it on (of course I tested on a simulator), and it turns out it had a glaring flaw (topic for another post), but I only realized it recently, after over 200 people had already tried the app, and probably dropped it in frustration.
So, now I will maintain this blog regularly, both as a way to share my thoughts, but more importantly to give my customers someplace they can turn to for a dialog on the improvement of my apps.
But now, I have started developing mobile apps (2 so far), and I realize that I have no way of getting feedback from my customers, other than those that write reviews. And even when reviews are written, I have no way to reach out and respond, or ask for details. This has proven to be a big problem. The first app I created, I released even before I had the device to test it on (of course I tested on a simulator), and it turns out it had a glaring flaw (topic for another post), but I only realized it recently, after over 200 people had already tried the app, and probably dropped it in frustration.
So, now I will maintain this blog regularly, both as a way to share my thoughts, but more importantly to give my customers someplace they can turn to for a dialog on the improvement of my apps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)