exertrak submitted

My first app attempt was a workout stat log, which I called exertrack. But it had some significant bugs that essentially made it unusable, and I felt compelled to remove it from the appworld while I fixed it. However, due to beta software that I had used, fixing it might entirely rewriting it, so I ended up starting over from scratch, and resubmitted it under the slightly new name of ExerTrak (it turns out there was already an ExerTrack out there).

It has been thoroughly tested, has quite a few new features, and of course, it actually works. I submitted it to the app world for approval today, and i'm looking forward to getting it out there. The original app, despite its flaws, actually garnered some positive feedback, and I've tried to incorporate some feature requests for the original in this new release.

So far, only released on PlayBook, but I have plans for other platforms as well. First up, Nook Color.

storc has a customer or two

I just learned that I finally have a couple paying customers for my labor contraction tracking app, storc for the playbook. Nobody has written a review yet, so I still don't know how it was received, but it is nice to know that someone out there might be using it. I look forward to the prospect of some feedback.

I hope that I can release it soon for some more platforms, and hopefully reach a wider audience.

The search continues...

I spent most of yesterday either changing diapers, or wrestling with Flash Develop (mentioned in my previous post). I followed some steps in various tutorials, but I couldn't get a simple project to compile, even when I used one of the out-of-the-box project templates. Probably with a little more time I could get it to work (after all, others use it), but I don't have the patience for it right now, so I've decided to pursue alternatives.

Not sure which I will ultimately choose, but I've identified two promising tools built on top of the MS Visual Studio IDE: CodeDrive and Amethyst . A third altenative is FDT , which is built on top of Eclipse, just like Flash Builder.

I hope I find something I like soon. I had hoped to spend my weekend working on apps, but this has been a setback for me.

Flash Develop

Up until now, I have exclusively used Adobe tools to make my apps. Considering this has all been a learning experience for me, it made sense to follow all the tutorials to the letter, and they all directed me to Flash Builder. However, my evaluation licenses have now expired, and before I drop the cash necessary to upgrade, I thought I would look around to see what else is out there...

First thing to try is Flash Develop (when I first searched for it I accidentally typed Flesh Develop, but that's not the kind of thing you want to google). A new beta version, 4.0, was just released, so that's where I'm going to start.

I'll post again with my experience, but you can find more info on the tool at http://www.FlashDevelop.org

storc gets live test! (now I'm a daddy)

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.

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.

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...