Statusinator Update

Just pushed a new version of Statusinator to the Market. New Features:

• Create Albums from the Upload Photo Activity
• Progress Bar updates when uploading photos.
• 60% faster photo uploads.

Labels: Statusinator

4:29 PM 4 comments links to this post

Losing Steam

I wrote an entry back in early October saying that I had, to some extent, lost steam on my Top Secret Project. Since then, I still haven't worked on my project as the last time I took a serious look at the code I realized I had a serious unmaintainable mess of 20k lines of python, javascript and java. So what do I do now? I am not experienced enough a Java programmer to really re-vamp my Android client and I feel that it is the most important component to get the app ready for use. I have had one person call interest on my project recently and I haven't sync'd up with him primarily because I've been trying to aviod the project. I need to get back to treating this project like a (part-time) job. I have realized how difficult it is to cultivate an idea without someone to discuss it with. Paul Graham wrote an essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) a while back about how any successful startup has had two founders: Paul Allen and Bill Gates, Larry and Sergey, the two Steves. Right now I am without a second half to work with and I think more than the messy code base, this is the reason I've been avoiding working on my project. I still don't want to spill the beans on the project yet but I feel I'm going to have to soon if I can't get myself out of this rut. Heck, I've even written two blog entries on this flight and not a lick of code and airplanes is where I get my best thinking done.

With the holidays approaching, I hope I can take some time for myself and buckle down on this problem, attack it with some code and some elusive, ksw-aggravating, stres relieveing blog entries.

There is one other thing sucking up my project time. My other project is taking off (to some extent). While it only has a 40% user retention rate that does mean 3200 people do have the app installed on their phone! I am very excited about this as I have never had this direct an impact on other people before. And again, while I have had people say they were interested in helping out, so far I haven't seen any dedication to the cause.

I suppose this is understandable because I am a terrible leader person. I even went to leadership training last week and they kicked me out. Well... They didn't kick me out, that was a lie. I enjoyed the three days of training but don't feel any better prepared to be less awful when running a project. When I ran the d20mm project for NWN a few years ago I managed to run out the original project lead and one of the primary artists. I had taken over the project before the original lead and I started not getting along so it wasn't a hostile take over or anything like that. I have also alientated people at work when doing "leader" like things. I supposed that could be what causes projects that I work on to fail. I wrote a while back about maintaing a project as a hobby and feel that I cannot live up to the ideas that I set down.

In any case, despair despair, regret regret, scared scared. What do I do now that I've met my coding limits, dedication and stress limits on my project?

Labels: project, Statusinator

11:07 PM 0 comments links to this post

Feature Requests

Being able to implement a feature request and push a new version of your software within 24 hours of the request is pretty cool. Hopefully it makes up for the instability my app tends to have.

Labels: Statusinator

11:24 PM 2 comments links to this post

Statusinator

I've updated the first app I wrote for Android, Statusinator. It is a client that you can use to update your status and upload photos to Facebook. It will be up on the Market as soon as it is launched, but until then you can get it from the Project Homepage.

Labels: Android, Statusinator

4:37 PM 0 comments links to this post

Statusinator

Last year after the Android SDK was released, I wrote a small app that allowed me to upload photos and update my facebook status with a native application. Here is the result. I re-implemented a subset of the official facebook API because I didn't understand it. (It wasn't "not invented here syndrome" it was more of a "I am not smart syndrome"). Anyways, I've posted the code at statusinator.googlecode.com and there is a Facebook app page as well.

Labels: Android, code, facebook, Statusinator

9:36 PM 0 comments links to this post