BabyAge Widget/App Launched

About a week ago I took a few days to make a widget. I remember when I was at google, and a co-worker said “oh yeah you can add that as a widget” and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what a widget was, and how to add it!

My widget is called “BabyAge” and it simply shows you what your baby’s age is in whatever format you like best.  (Days) and (Weeks and Days) are trivial, but anything involving months get a bit hairy.  If someone is born on January 31st, how old would they be in months and days on March 1st?  Many algorithms/calculators online give you some approximate month number, based on a 30 day month, but if you want to be exact with days as well, it is pretty tricky.  I don’t even really know if there is an accepted standard–I sort of just implemented what made sense to me. So my widget would display (1 month, 1day).

The funny thing about the Android market, or I guess any app market, is that people really like to give you bad ratings and not tell you why.  I received a wide spread of 1-5 star ratings, making me wonder if my widget was displaying the wrong age or was not loading properly.  But I highly suspect that there are people who install it expecting an app, and then can’t find it in the Launcher, so give it 1-2 stars. So then I added an app component!

But then again, there was someone who gave it three stars and said “more colors would be nice.”  I’m sorry, maybe you should just write down everything you ever wanted, and I could try to make it happen for you, for free.

Being the recipient of ratings had made me think about what makes for a fair rating.  I think anything that force-closes, doesn’t do what it says it’ll do, looks terrible, or is genuinely difficult to use warrants a low rating.  But if everything is as expected with respect to the description and screenshots, I don’t think it’s fair to give it a 1-2 star rating.  What would really be helpful and not piss a developer off is to give a 4 star rating and say, hey this is a good start–it would also be really nice if it also had this feature.

Complaints aside, it’s nice to work on little projects like this one, though someone did ask me if I was planning on having a baby soon, because I got very “into” the wedding industry right before I got married.  If you have an Android phone, give it a shot (and/or a good rating), or if you know friends with a baby and an Android phone, maybe they’d be interested. I think it’s neat for always knowing exactly how old babies are. I assume that parents care about these things.

QR Code:

Debugging Android Widget

Debugging your widget is not quite as automated as debugging a regular application, but luckily it’s not too difficult either. You just have to know what to do…so here are the instructions, from Shantanu’s Technophilic Musings

1. Press “debug” on the eclipse menu (or “run” it doesn’t seem to matter)

2. Once the widget apk is sync’ed and installed onto your emulator/device, switch your eclipse workspace to DDMS mode. You can either do this by pressing the “DDMS” labeled button on your top right corner or if you can’t find it, then do it by going to “Window->Open Perspective->DDMS”.

3. Select the process name of your widget from the list of processes shown. By default, this list appears at top left of DDMS window. (See screenshot below). If you can’t see your widget’s process name in the list, it is possible that the widget is not added to the home screen yet. So, do so.

4. Press the green debug button above the process list (See screenshot below)

5. And that’s it. Now, if you had put a breakpoint in the code, do something that executes that piece of the code.

 

How to deter developers with your craigslist ad

I recently started to look for android consulting work, but unfortunately I have to wade through the debris on Craigslist to find hopefully legitimate pay-by-the-hour/project.  Half of the “gigs” for android work are from people looking for someone to partner with for their “great idea.” Oh and they’re not a coder, so can you do all the coding work.  And they have no money to pay you with, but once the app launches, you’ll get 50% of the immense profits!

What a great opportunity!

Here’s a fine example:

I truly believe that ideas are not what makes a startup successful. Of course, the idea has to be solid and not “I need someone to build me a social network, a lot like facebook and twitter,” but once that prerequisite is fulfilled, it’s the implementation and the people that make the difference.

So maybe this guy really has some valuable assets like his “silver tongue” to bring to a partnership, but by keeping the idea so secretive it makes it seem like that’s all he has to contribute.  Furthermore, he seems to trivializes the coding aspect, and makes me think he would not be so fun to work with!

That’s not to say all non-coders should just dig a hole and cry.  But you should have something else to bring to the table other than the idea–it could be capital, design skills, business and marketing experience, whatever, but if I’m going to work with you with no guarantee of payment, it better be good.

On the flip side, this post is a great example of how to effectively go about finding a technical co-founder.  Tracy (aka limedaring) is upfront about her skills and experience, as well as her startup idea and what she needs in a co-founder. Her openness about the startup idea shows confidence that she has other skills that will make the implementation competitive.

APCalcRef Launched on Android!!

The last two months have been a crazy time–wedding planning/execution is no joke!!  But we succesfully got married and are glad to be coding again.

We spent the last two weeks working together on an iPhone/Android app called APCalcRef.  It’s a study guide/quick reference for AP Calculus or college Calculus students.  Tyler wrote almost all the content (since he is the Math PhD) while I made some lists of equations (I can handle LaTeX!).

We put up a basic webpage at apref.com — here are some screenshots of the app

It would be awesome to have a full app “series” with all the AP classes that it makes sense to have an app for.  The iPhone app is coming soon, as it has to go through the approval process.  The Android process was surprisingly painless, which may explain the quality issues with the marketplace =).

If you have an Android phone, the app is free, and ratings would be much appreciated!

Converting Java stack trace to string

If you have an Exception e, you might want to convert the stackTrace to a string to add to your logs.  Here’s a quick code sample I found to do so from JavaPractices:

  public static String getStackTrace(Throwable aThrowable) {
    final Writer result = new StringWriter();
    final PrintWriter printWriter = new PrintWriter(result);
    aThrowable.printStackTrace(printWriter);
    return result.toString();
  }

Google Announces App Inventor

Google announced App Inventor today, what seems to be “drag-and-drop” Android app maker for non-programmers.  Anyone had a chance to play around with it yet?

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for Google.  On one hand, I can see app development becoming more accessible to casual programmers/non-programmers, and letting Android market catch up a bit with Apple’s App Store.  On the flip side, the Android Market may just fill up with yet more mediocre apps.  That, along with its mediocre search and browsability, will be a huge loss for the Android Market.  But if Google can improve users’ ability to discern quality apps from subpar ones (via a centralized webapp for Android App info, ratings and rankings, or just better search on the devices), the mediocre apps may just fall by the wayside.

The video of the App Inventor is pretty funny though:

Any thoughts on the App Inventor launch?

Update

Things have been pretty busy around here, with both of us simultaneously settling into our apartment, trying to get on a good work schedule, planning our wedding and wedding party, and launching the projects we’ve been working on.

As a shameless plug for Tyler’s new iPad app, it’s called CALCZOR and it’s an iPad scientific calculator.  Some of the popular calculator apps out there are surprisingly lacking in functionality.  Order of operations seems to not be a given in the world of calculator apps, for example.  I couldn’t believe it either…  And apparently something that is “necessary” is a % button.  What does said button do?  Well, I guess you can do things like 50 + 20% and that gives you 50 plus 20% of 50 = 60.  Really though…that’s just silly.  Regardless, it’s what the people want, I suppose.

If you have an iPad, check it out! It has super nice graphics and pretty logging ability that renders those confusing M* buttons obsolete.  I never knew how to use them anyways…Here’s a screenshot:

In dress world, things are going well.  Who knew I would end up spending significant hours each day staring at overpriced wedding dresses, trying to figuring out if it’s an empire silhouette or an a-line silhouette?

You can now access the site OMGDresses at http://omgdresses.com! Yay!  I’ve been spending a lot of time  making some modifications to the site so that I can get more content on it.  It’s honestly sometimes discouraging to see an idea that I know is a good idea not immediately take off.  But I know it’s a long process of getting content, users, improving the UI, etc.  Speaking of which, I’m looking to work with  a UI/UX designer.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

A friend of mine from high school who writes this wedding blog has been immensely useful in providing feedback and she suggested that I too start writing a wedding blog to network and get some publicity! Oh dear….how did I, someone who didn’t even want a “traditional” wedding, end up looking at wedding dresses all day and writing a wedding blog.  Oh dear indeed. =)

Looking for brides-to-be / people with wedding dress photos!

So the GWT/GAE app I’ve been working on is ready for some testing and content!  I realize now that the biggest hurdles in making a user content site is, well, getting the user content.  Geez I never upload reviews to Yelp or reviews to Amazon…but some people do, right??

So what is it I’ve been working on?  It’s a user-content based wedding dress photo site, featuring photos of real brides in their wedding dresses.  There are 3243242 things wrong with the wedding dress industry.  For those not familiar, here are some examples I’ve encountered/read about:

<rant>

• Retail: Brick-and-mortar stores are often restrictive, and don’t let you take photos of dresses you try on until you put down a deposit.  Even worse, some cut off tags so you don’t know the designer, so when you find “your dress,” you have to buy it from them unless you can figure out a way to identify it.
• Sizing: Wedding dress sizing is um…messed up.  You hear a lot about people who are “street size” 4 and “wedding dress size” 12. WTH!  To make it worse, stores usually only carry one or two sample sizes.  If you are not one of those sizes, you have to put up with trying on a dress 8 sizes too large for you with clips in the back, or even worse, if you are too large for the sample sizes, they “hold it up to you so you can get a feel for it.”
• Pricing: Oh yeah did I mention these things are ass-expensive? And you can’t even try it on in your size before you place an order on a NON-REFUNDABLE item?  Seriously.  The same exact dress in “bridesmaid” colors can be half the price or less.
• Models: I think the wedding industry really thinks brides-to-be are all tall stick-thin women with scowly faces. That seems to be their strategy for photo shoots anyways.  Weddingbee.com even has a long thread about how weird dress models look.  Here’s a real winner (sadly this is pretty typical of the photos on designer websites):

</rant>

Now that I’m done ranting, on to the webapp… here’s the main idea:

• Dress/Photo Finder: Brides-to-be can browse dresses by different styles and price criteria, and can see these photos of real brides in all shapes and sizes either trying on dresses or on their wedding days.
• User Content: Users can upload photos of themselves in their wedding dresses, or dresses they tried on, along with sizing information and additional comments about the dress.
• Community: Users can leave comments for a specific photo of a dress, and ask the user who uploaded questions about the dress.  This would also be a good place to try to sell secondhand dresses post-wedding (I will be adding a “for sale” checkbox shortly).

I’ve uploaded the app to appengine, and it’s currently at http://omgdress.appspot.com, so take a look!

Here’s a peek at what it looks like so far:

I need your help!

I need help with testing and user content!  I’ve only added a few dresses manually so far.  The idea is that the site will eventually have a lot of popular dresses, but if your dress isn’t on it yet, you can request it through the “Account” tab, and I’ll approve each request (have to monitor content quality somehow…).

This is an alpha version that I wanted to get out there and try to get some content and feedback.  Unfortunately, I don’t know that many brides or brides-to-be.  If you are one, or know some, I would love to get your photos on the site and get some feedback!  Either go to the site directly, or email me at jean@omgdresses.com.  Any feedback would be much appreciated!

How to Use RichTextToolbar in GWT

If you’ve ever tried to use the RichTextToolbar that is showcased in the Gwt Showcase, you will quickly find out that it’s not actually built into GWT.  Many GWT developers have experienced this WTFery, as their hopes to conveniently import RichTextToolbar have been dashed.  It is supposedly so that developers are not locked into using that toolbar, but of course, a good default is better than no default…

As you can see here, multiple bugs have been filed about this exact issue since 2008, to no avail!  Drats, I guess it is one of those things that has low priority because there’s a work-around, but it does affect a good number of developers, which should count for something.

Anyway, to use it in your code:

1. Navigate to <path>/gwt-2.0.3/samples/Showcase/src/com/google/gwt/sample/showcase/client/content/text on your computer, and you should see a bunch of icons, RichTextToolbar.java and RichTextToolbar$Strings.properties.
2. Copy RichTextToolbar.java and RichTextToolbar$Strings.properties and paste them into your source code folder and modify the package names accordingly.
3. Copy all the icons and paste them somewhere (I created a folder  <project>/client/icon)
4. In RichTextToolbar.java, above each “Image Resource…”, you will need to indicate the source of the image.  For example,

   @Source(“../icons/bold.gif”)
   

   ImageResource bold();

   if the directory you copied RichTextToolbar.java is under client.

That’s it, a little annoying, but hopefully it will find its way into GWT itself soon, though don’t hold your breath.

Also, you can easily play around with the Toolbar– I removed the bottom row of ListBoxes that give you lots of control over background and foreground colors, font and font sizes (I don’t want my users to have that much control over how my website looks!), and it ends up looking like this:

Hope that helps, and that it will save a few people some time!

Pomodoro Technique Test Run

Earlier today, I stumbled across this article on lifehacker about the Pomodoro technique–ironically, it was while I was wasting time on Google Reader.  I had heard of it before and it was recommended to me in my previous post on staying productive within chunks of time < 4-5 hours.  It was early afternoon, and I hadn’t gotten any work done yet, so I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a try today.

(ok to be fair to myself, kepler the dog has had some medication recently for an allergic reaction that has a side effect of drinking LOTS of water and having to pee every 2 hours.  Zorro is the only one around here who is getting a good night’s sleep.  Also, we mailed out wedding invitations earlier in the day, so ha! productivity!)

This afternoon, I did 4 cycles of 25 minutes working followed by 5 minutes break to test out the technique, and it worked pretty well!  I was pretty discouraged from multi-tasking during the 25 minutes, since there was the 5 minute reward oh boy google reader time!  25 minutes is a short enough amount of time that it’s very doable to work straight through with no distractions, but long enough to get some real work done.  And at the end of the 25 minutes, I just noted down what I would do in the next cycle.  Sometimes it’s even nice to leave something you KNOW you have to do for the next cycle so that you hit the ground running.

Sometimes tasks can seem so overwhelming, that I just write down vague time estimates like (3 days), and then pretty much try to do everything else so I don’t actually have to address that task.  Breaking it down into smaller tasks I try to get down in 25 minutes makes it more manageable and forces me to start working on it and realize it’s not so bad after all (hopefully).

Anyone else tried out the Pomodoro Technique?  It doesn’t really sound all that revolutionary, since I’ve always heard that you should take a break every half hour or so if you work at a computer.  But somehow having a timer set and knowing that the next 25 minutes is distraction-free is extremely effective.