In addition, I took a new job at a new company. Lastly, a death in the family derailed my free time and energy for innovation for a bit. I have since returned full force with a lot of new ideas and desire to make the app better.
At its inception, the goal was to learn mobile app development and play around with new cloud technologies, specifically Google's App Engine and No-SQL datastore. By day, I am a .Net developer who works heavily with Sql Server. I have always said to myself: "There has to be a better way". Well, I am happy to report, I think there is. Not that No-SQL databases come without their challenges, but they are definitely more natural to work with.
Since I run a barbell club in my spare time, I have actually used the program to help me track everyone's progress over time. We are about 16 weeks into where everyone has been using the program consistently and tweaking their training based on it. In 4 weeks, we have a meet test. It will be very interesting to see the correlation between all the statistics gathered and how they translate to real numbers.
In addition, I solicited many users for their feedback and suggestions.
Here is what has been added since the last blog post:
Support for the iPad
Support for HTML5 compliant browsers and large screens for viewing more information
Enhanced Calculations
A new way to group, sort, pivot and query your log for information.
In addition, I have taken the application through several versions of the underlying frameworks:
Google App Engine and JqueryMobile.
I also experimented with a 'social' feature where you could follow other lifters, etc. In fact, I spent a HUGE amount of time on this. However, a law of app development is emerging that states: keep it simple. Focus on doing core features very well. In a rush to create an app everyone was talking about and sharing information with, I put on hold things which would make it useful to the individual. So, that being said 'Social' is taking a back seat to functionality. The feedback I have received and prioritized is as follows:
- allow for custom exercises
- distinguish between raw and geared lifting when doing calculations
- add the ability to keep user data private and filter out the noise of other lifters appearing in menus
- add the ability to expose entries in a typical web journal format so that a person can enter their data here and ANYONE, even those who aren't users of the app can see it.
- add graphics to the calculations so the sheer amount of data actually means something
- put native app store wrappers around it so people can find it in the app stores of their various phones (iPhone/iPad will be my first target).
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Coincidentally, an old co-worker, and one of the best programmers I have ever worked with pinged me and told me he was buying a Mac Air because a lot of people at his workplace were using them and he felt his skills were going to lag behind. I had been feeling that a lot myself lately. My feeling in software development is that the various specialty in tiered development is not good enough anymore to be at the top of your profession. So, not to be outdone, I went to the Apple store, played with the Mac Air and bought one the same day. In an experiment in coding, I took this machine with me on my family vacation. I was able to actually do a lot of programming on LiftTracker while my wife was driving around. The size to power ratio of the machine is simply amazing and through OS X Lion's user gestures, the laptop was very usable, even without a mouse, and even in airplanes and cars. I am simply blown away. Apple is seriously on a role.
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So... I will try and keep back on point with blog updates and more frequent releases.
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