Wednesday, December 30, 2015

The Marketing Draft, LAUNCH THEIR LIVES

So now I took part of the working tagLine and did a draft of some ad copy about Android Application Development:

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LAUNCH THEIR LIVES

Mobile Applications are very different from Web Applications. Web Applications and Google Searches are about the INTENT to do SOMETHING.

Mobile Applications are more EMOTIONAL  in that LAUNCHING and RETELLING someone's LIFE in terms of THEIR HOPES, DREAMS, and ASPIRATIONS and steps and tools to obtain those things is what the MOBILE APPLICATION is all about. YOU WANT THEM to feel that the MOBILE APPLICATION they just downloaded and or bought gives them some steps and tools towards REALIZING THEIR DREAMS, HOPES, AMBITIONS, and ASPIRATIONS. If you do that in your Android Application than you will have those mobile application users for LIFE as far as them using your application on a monthly basis.

The other IMPORTANT aspect of LAUNCHING THEIR LIFE is that by transforming data to a new use or service one can provide resources in the form of tasks and steps that TRANSFORMS ones LIFE in doing a set of tasks of an activity.

But you need a structure of code that combines with a visual stunning GUI using HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY and HUMAN BIOLOGY that provides a framework that in little steps LAUNCHES THEIR LIVES in steps towards REALIZING THEIR DREAMS, HOPES, and AMBITIONS.

ANDROID vs iOS

ANDROID and iOS are of course different mobile application platforms. ANDROID has some distinct advantages if you are in need of a fast way to do a POLISHED GUI MOBILE APPLICATION in fast amount of time. Some brief background into this area.

The C computer language was designed for constructing Operating Systems because programmers were tired of using Assembly Language that had to be optimized per CPU as C is CPU agnostic. With C++ the added more stuff to the C for OOP use.  ObjectiveC, which iOS uses, and Swift are still just layers on top of a COMPUTER LANGUAGE that is still oriented toward the Operating System creation way of doing things. Its still quite a bit in-flexible and not fast in code creation as far as creating Applications.

In ANDROID's case it uses the Java Computer Language which was designed to make it easy to build OOP applications without the in-flexible HEAVINESS of Systems Operating Programming C-way of doing things. This is one-half of the core reasons why I can take a 4-month estimate of completing an iOS application and state that the Android edition of the same mobile application will only take 2 to 3 months to develop.

FAST AGILE ANDROID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT


The other HALF of DOING IT FASTER THAN iOS has to do with understanding that GUI mobile application have a-lot of boilerplate code to them and that one can build up a GUI and Mobile Application set of libraries to reduce, SIGNIFICANTLY, the amount of boilerplate code that has to be created. This goes to the heart of the GROTTWOKRSHOP difference in that I can create the Android Application faster than any iOS developer you can get to create the iOS application and that Android Application is structured in a way to assist the Android Mobile Device User to LAUNCH THEIR LIFE.

By LAUNCHING THEIR LIFE you can LAUNCH your start-up. By LAUNCHING THEIR LIFE you can LAUNCH that increase in productivity that saves your enterprise money. WILL YOU NOT TAKE THAT STEP TO LAUNCH THEIR LIVES?



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It still needs some word-choice, word repetition and length tweaking. But its getting to the point of what one hopes to accomplish as far as a start-up or enterprise in asking some one to develop a mobile application for them.

SIDE NOTE: This marketing draft is somewhat in my tone and voice so copying it to attempt to use for yourself will not produce good results.  You need to do the work of figuring out a marketing hook for yourself and than the work of writing the ad copy.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Launch Their Life

I have been trying to come up with a way to describe why mobile applications are different than web applications on a more marketable level.

Launch Their Life...

So this is the first part of the tagLine I came up with as that is really what every firm or start-up hopes to accomplish with the mobile app that they have someone build. Its not just consuming something but empowering THEM to Launch their own Life one moment-at-a-time.


Monday, December 21, 2015

Google, I Being to Wonder About You

Google, I begin to wonder about your firm when one of your inside recruiters contacts me as has no idea what the Google current Gradle Android plugin is or what the old brittle one that I worked on is in mentioning my Linkedin Profile highlighting such a thing.

Do us a favor for all the hard working developers out there, have your inside recruiters look at github  and bitbucket profiles instead..PLEASE!

Thursday, December 17, 2015

VVMP, WTF?

Yes, that is what you eventually end up with if you start using Google DataBinding with MVP, a structure of View View-Model and Presenter.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Visual Design vs OOP Dev Best Practices

Most design folks get this wrong.  Visual Design is what triggers the impulse of the mobile user to download a mobile app to try it.

OOP Dev Best Practices is what takes the feature set of the android application and allows the developer to make a set of architecture choices that make a intensively highly stable app which than moves the monthly user retention curve for that android application upward. As choosing the right Architecture choices gives the developer a flexible framework to evolve the app-user-work-flow to impact and move the monthly user retention curve upward.


If you do not start with a strong android java developer you will not get that highly stable android app container to inject the visual design into for that first impulse download or buy. Thus, you will get instead a high initial download rate but somewhat poor user retention curves.


I have to state it this way due to past experience at a Music Start-Up last year. In that they used an outside firm to tell them that social media impacts the user-retention-curve, well not it does not impact the user-retention-curve but instead like visual design impacts the first user impulse to download that app and try that app.

The reason why this is important is that start-ups only get funding past speculation when the user-retention-curve data indicates a sticky product as far as high monthly amounts of users using the mobile app.



Monday, December 14, 2015

MVP and MVVM Design

I am now at where the agile dev design process of developing a MVP and MVMM patterns libraries. But how to implement this as certain choices have un-intended consequences.

Such as what? The choice of what to bound generic types by for example.  In view models and models to be precise you could bound the generic type to the android class, Parceable.  Nothing wrong with it as the JVM junit test side of things on Android as the android.jar has the methods as stubs on the jvm junit testing side.

So what is the un-intented consequence?  Guess. You have to create ParceableTester to mock the Parceable class.

But, probably the pure POJOs folks will disagree, with the new Google strategy of having a test JVM Junit style android.jar with the test flavor in a project one can use Parceable in model objects in both MVP and MVVM as long as one remembers to construct a ParceableTest class to mock the Parceable class.

Not too bad as its only one small extra class.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

New Agile Build Process

So I am on the last step of my new agile build process which is integrating the debug overlay tools I have into each app module gradle flavor. It than is a snap to say run anew product flavor build and get when the installed apk runs the debug  overlay that is focused on that scope whether its design checking assets loaded or even checking the database or viewing debug log on the device.  Speedier as the old way is to load the apptool to device turn on its service and than install and run the app-in-progress.


Thursday, December 10, 2015

Duz App

So while I am at I should do a demo app that takes less time to develop than the GWSMusiKal app.  My thinking was maybe to mix wikinotes with todo list feature set with cloud storage.

I seem to have a mind block as far as naming so I guess the name will be GWSDuz.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

MusiKal-GoogleCast and AmazonFling

Last year in working for the Music Start-up they never got that the Android Device and Software ecosystem is different from the Apple iOS ecosystem.  One of the differences is how you cast audio to all the different devices.

In the US Market both Amazon and Google have usb cast-type dongles for devices and accessories for casting to different speaker rigs. And we have to consider this as that is the 2nd most popular environment to listen to music from a mobile device, ie the home.

And at the same time in the Android ecosystem we have those who customize their own ROMs. We do not want to shut those particular android device users out.

Than we have the differences in App Store and Service approaches of Amazon and Google.  Amazon, because they are the underdog, wants AmazonFling to work on all android devices whether they have Amazon store installed or not.  Google has limited GoogleCast to PlayStore Android devices.

Side note, for those not in the know Google does a Play Services stub lib for developers which developer link to but when that is compiled it actually points to the downloadable playServices apk that the user is prompted to download before using the full play services of the app.

Thus in GWSMusiKal I have to set it up so that with the Google Play Store edition having two cast libraries both googlecast and amazonfling along with providing the additional whisperplay jar lib dependency as whisperplay is already installed on Amazon devices but not Android PlayStore-enabled devices.

Where it gets a little tricky is that I have to instruct ROM-customizers to only use the PlayStore app and in Amazon's AppStore I have to instruct users to only install the Amazon AppStore app on FireOS devices. Why?  Because Amazon does not have or has not implemented their own package-manifest style filtering as they use the one that AOSP has come up with. So I do little cautions in the app descriptions and some detection of a FireOS device and etc to do a user caution if they downloaded the wrong edition.


Side Note: I do not know at this point whether I should implement a way to play music files from the cloud services of Amazon and Google. On one hand its probably very important as it may be a in-popular-demand-feature that users might expect. On the other hand if it competes with Amazon or Google services it might get the app pulled and ban from Amazon's and Google's app stores. And I do not think Amazon or Google has public android-intents for their music locker and play services from cloud-apps which means I cannot integrate in that way of starting up those apps.

But, its something to check on to see if they made public intents or private ones. Obviously, if they are public than I can integrate by having those apps start-up when the app user needs that functionality. Of course, that means that we set it up so that MusiKal can replace the default music player to get the full-feature-rich experience of music listening.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

MusiKal-The App Structure

Okay, so the app name is probably MusiKal and hopefully I can span both the Google Play Store and the Amazon Store and devices without too much pain. But the app structure is not something that can be quickly hacked together but instead requires some planning.

The AndroidTV UI stuff is accessible at 17 via the support library called leanback but AndroidTV is actually 21 api. Android Auto is 21 or higher. And Amazon Fire TV uses different stuff than AndroidTV. But since LeanBack Support lib is not using the native part I can do one combined UI as module library that spans both Google Android and Amazon Fire.

The fly-in-the-soup is Android Auto which is 21 or higher. So on the Google side of things I have to one app that spans 17 to 19 and than another app edition that spans 21 to 23 that includes Android Auto. The app that spans 21 to 23 would have two library UI modules as dependencies one that is the common UI and one that has the Android Auto specifics.

Android Wear is its own separate app and there are NotificationCompat classes in the support libs for the phone/tablet side of things.

On the Amazon side its a little easier one app for both phone/tablet and tv.  Still have to find a Google cast replacement though.

I will be using the MVP approach as with AndroidTV UI its Presenter based. And I will be using Dagger2. I am keeping using package names to identify the domain layers.

On a side note, the audioFX new apis start coming in at api 17 and 18 anyway so its a chance to use those as well as the default music player in android OS does not use them for some odd reason.

If you are a Github member and do a follow of me you will see the github repo for this pop-up as the name GWSMusiKal:


GWSMusiKal Repo 



So that is generally the approach to it..Sort of different than the Google approach with that Universal Music App sample as on a lot of stuff they just punted..well its simplistic sample what do you expect?  It does look backwards in that most of the app is in gradle subproject modules which had to be implemented that way to so that I could implement apps both for Google Play Store and Amazon Store.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Music App-In-Progress

Last year, I did some work for a music start-up. So I wanted to get back to some of the development puzzles I encountered last year and take another direction in solving them.

So I broke down things, first was to break down the back-ported UI feature libs into those I know I had to use but also audit them and clean them up so they work as advertised.

Second, was getting a reliable set of gradle build scripts that sort of match the development workflow I was implementing. App has several product flavors for debugging both code and design.

Third, was working out a implementation strategy as music apps like some android applications has many different devices and with the re-introduction of AndroidTV it gives me a chance to work out how to handle something that along with Amazon store and devices might have 3 to 5 different apps.  My idea is to implement the music player BO's in a separate library.

That way I can vary the UI of the two UI components of the player across devices and apps and I can have an adaptable UI that spans well the different aspects of android TV, auto, wear, etc.

So rest of December this blog will be filled with screen shots, code, etc of that music app in progress.

Why I Ask Freelance Inquiries To Email

Maybe you do not have a clear idea of what a freelancer developer does on a daily basis. You see I have this list of short-term things and this list of long-term things and I on a daily basis complete tasks from both lists.

When you contact me asking if I am interested in a project with no details except that has an aggressive schedule, what am I to do but to ask that you email me the details of the project to me. If instead of doing that you instead insist on requiring me to call you, well that convinces me that there might be some problem with you following directions.

Please respect the freelancers time as they are doing many things during day besides what you hope they do for you.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Fast Prototype Prep

So, I am on my last phase of developing a fast prototype system with the goal of being able to do a 2-week spring on the core feature of an android application and than be able to do some market validation analysis.  Very different from the broken water-fall system.

What is different is the amount of up-front preparation I had to complete to get some type of system both in android libraries already prepared and revamping my gradle build process to have the debug tools integrated and design debug tools integrated. But it is still flexible enough that as new processes and tools dev, I can than add those to the full system.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Angle.co etiquette

If you invite a developer to a conversation about a dev opportunity at your start-up should be willing to have a conversation. Do not do the hr-recruiting drive-by-shit as its somewhat rude and disrespectful !

Saturday, November 21, 2015

On the Road to Rxjava

Okay, a little background the java.util.Observable has a flawed mechanism.   Oh gosh what could it be?

Facebook was talking about recently byte code weaving callbacks. But in that clear-as-mud post they did not state why other than the implied speed boost.

If you look at the code behind the new definition of Observable that Google's data-binding library uses you will find that the callback mechanism was rewired(not rewritten at the framework level but the array/collection of was implemented differently). That is where the speed difference is coming from when you compare speed of the data-binding Observers callbacks to a regular android callbacks as far as having a collection of callbacks that are called in a group.

In short words, even if you do not adopt using Google's data binding library and may not tackle rxJava right now, one should re-use the Observable classes from the databinding library and the rewritten and rewired callback mechanism.

That way one would have some of the benefits without fully tackling Rxjava right now.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

An obstacle to App priacy

GWSGarlic is very small library to help you put up another roadblock to those who would download your app and decompile it and upload to another app store under their name.,

Monday, November 16, 2015

A Suggestion, Product Flavors

Do you as android developer realize that all those neat tools like scalpel, madge, etc can be implemented as viewgroups and thus can in fact overlay on the debug variant of a product flavor?

So now you know..:)

Saturday, November 14, 2015

CTOs-do your homework

Once again, a CTO of start-up contacting me about leading a team who obviously did not do any homework and just search for dev terms. And to top it off my profile kind of screams intermediate android developer not team lead.

CTO, if you cannot do basic reading to determine whether I am intermediate or a senior android developer why should I talk to you, you stupid fuck?


Thursday, November 12, 2015

Android QA

Now the fun part of my new GWSJinn build system, android code qa. I should route it so that I can always get code qa via the terminal but only code qa reports generated when product flavor prodRelease is built or when the project is executed on a ci server.

To complicate things I never use product flavors on my library modules, only the app module. And that is not even the real fun part, which is doing some fancy xml parsing to come up with an Android Code specific QA dashboard.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Engineering VS Design

I have to rant about something that has been bothering me for awhile. I am not sure how to present it so it may not seem as clear as I think I am making it.

Apple's recent design revamp and Google's recent design revamp in their respective mobile platforms was not started by a 'design'. Apple and Google were collecting data and observing patterns in that data concerning User-Interfaces in-general. But where or how did they know to go to data and its collecting in user labs to get the new design approaches?

It happens to involve a certain philosophy revolution in the 9th century that affected every hard and soft science known to mankind. CI Lewis in the early in 19th century came up  with a theory of knowledge, in his work titled..Mind and the World Order.

Basically, we can gain knowledge of how the world works by examining data and patterns in data. In the Mobile  User-Interface context we are re-organizing data for a smaller screen size and other factors that demand that we cast the UI into a new form that is easier for humans to grasp and use right waya without an instructional manual.

Even with International Design(Swiss Design) it was based on some new human knowledge of how our brains work and how our eyes work and transforming that new knowledge which had some new data and patterns basis into  a new design process. No-one realizes that all that data and its patterns are somewhat engineering based, not design based.

We keep hearing start-ups and other firms make the same mobile developer mistake of insisting with the lack of senior developers around that its the one-app portfolio of visually stunning ap that indicates the mobile developer needed when in fact according to both Apple and Google within their own hiring funnels its in fact the strong engineering software engineer that happens to do mobile applications that is in fact the choice that should be made.

Or to put another way, the short-term gain in getting that visual stunning one-mobile app-portfolio mobile developer is soon displaced by a medium-to-long-range loss in that the strong software engineering skills are not there to plot a long-term course of successful additions to that mobile application and surrounding services it uses.

Engineering in its practices of data collection and data analysis to determine patterns drives design not the other way around.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Android Gradle Build system

This is the new Android Gradle Build System I am transitioning to:

GWSJinn

It has the new Google Mock best practices of using flavors using dagger, rxjava, etc.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Angel.co startups, READ

If you are an angel.co listed start-up before you hit that interested button my angel.co profile could you PLEASE FUCKING READ IT?! I AM NOT AN IOS DEVELOPER. All my github profile stuff is on android..get a fucking clue. And my angel.co profile states funded as I am not either your VC or banker.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Start-Up CTOs are Stupid Idiot Fucks

So you might wonder why I code audited some back-ported UI libraries and cleaned them up. And I have run into CTO idiots who do not understand this point about RxJava or even Reactive.js on android.

On android we always have to deal with the UI elements that we back ported to get the consistent look and feel that users expect.
Guess what you need to do if you use reactive? For RxJava all those UI libs I have now soft forked now have to reference the RxJava View UI elements for me to use rxJava with them.

But, its easier as I already cleaned up the library code so its just replacing certain imports with RxJava RxBinding imports and some minor changes.

And its a nice filter to weed out all the clue-less co-founders and CTOs I do not want to work for.

BTW, if you are adapting Google's DataBinding..guess what? Yup, that work Jake Wharton did with RxBinding..you will have to do something similar to add the Observable to the views and widgets. At least if you want two-way communication between the View Model and the view.

And Facebook's reactive is worse in that it limits you not back porting UI features in the first place and lossing all data when the device orientation changes oh that is game winner right there!

Monday, November 2, 2015

RxJava Contributions

In the next few days will be making several more RxJava contributions namely some stuff that RxAndroid is missing but should be in anew library, etc.  If you are a Chicago start-up seeking android dev with RxJava savvy than you should email me.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Chicago Disrespect

I just spent 30 days on a wild goose-chase of following up a CTO's email invitation to meet me at my location over a subway paid meal. I set it up this way as I have found that I want to choose a start-up to work at as an android developer that appreciates that they did not do the training as far as acquiring skills and development process, that I in fact did.

I would also like to find a start-up that instead of giving lip-service to treating someone like a human, actually follows through on that in fact does in fact take great pride in treating people like humans. Is there such a start-up in Chicago?

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

GitHub re-org

So what I have been organizing to get set-up is that I want to control the conversation in qualifiing a freelance/job lead. If you ever read startup developer ads they usually ask for a github or bitbucket user name.

Well, that is the idiot way to do things..what we should be doing when we see that is to point to some github or bitbucket repo where there is a list of git repos  and why the viewer should look at them.  The reason is of marketing as you are not in control of what libraries and projects become popular on github or bitbucket and that is what gets listed in your profile page.

So you want to create different git repo profile page with the git repos and projects your prospective employer or client should look at, hence my re-org of the some of my git repos and how they are presented.

Within the git readme's themselves I do an implementation block early-on that describes the the implementation with the marketing intent that I have to market to the start-up co-founder looking for an android developer.

Than I carry over the same marketing intent to the my made-up git repo profile page in that I am listing my stackoverflow top 17% user stats, open source android projects that I contribute towards, and point out how the git repos fit together in bringing an android application to life as a fully polished mobile application.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Jitpack, the non obvious

The non obvious jitpack tip. Put the debug keystore in root somewhere and have the demo app signed with that key and the default passwords/alias in a properties file committed to git.

Otherwise you will get a build failure on all your libraries that you are trying to use jitpack to deploy.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

I am not doing Coffee, But Seeking

I am not doing Coffee but seeking a Chicago start-up who is seeking android developer and who is somewhat serious in relocating someone rather than a start-up that pretends to be interested in relocating an android developer. Part of the process is buying me a meal at my local subway so that I know in fact your are somewhat serious in wanting to relocate me.

Monday, October 19, 2015

I DoNot Do Coffee

Its typical of a start-up co-founder or start-up CTO in facing the need for an android developer to offer to talk to some developer over coffee.  But, I do not do coffee.

In code auditing 80+ android UI libraries which back ported features I can tell you due to me having some best android practices enforced in my manual engineering habits that I really am not in any mood to waste my time over talks over coffee. If you want waste over developer's time or yours that is up to you.  But I can assure that my recent code audit proves that there is no general correlation between a resume and quality android java code output.

That alone should shock you enough to stop using the broken hiring system and try something better.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Madge, Scalpel, and DesignOverlay Together

What if you could combine Madge, Scalpel and Design Overlay together with it just being a quick menu press to switch form one tool to the next all within the same exact debug version of the app? I think I found a way to make that happen..even quite ingenious even.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Google Engineer, you need to be shot

The Google Engineer who did not wrap the 17 api text direction call in the AndroidMainfest template in the latest AndroidStudio release needs to be shot..some of us are still developing apps for api 16 dude or gal.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

New Medium Series

Hopefully, on Monday will be posted the first in my Medium series On The Road to An App. I fully expect to fill it full of of both java best practices and android best practices. You may want to either bookmark my Medium profile or follow it:

My Medium profile


Tuesday, September 29, 2015

NewWave Marketing

I have figured out a new way to market dev skills/services to start-ups. At least I think it will work. Basically, I am doing a series of Medium articles showing developing an android application from the very first part to a medium sized prototype.

What convinced me to use Medium is the high user engagement rate as I was getting 60% of viewers reading the article and that is higher than viewers reading this blog, my twitter posts, my G+ posts, and even my Facebook posts.

Thus, tomorrow is my first post in that series on Medium.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Jason Calacanis is Wrong on Google And Apple AGAIN!

Jason Spouts off again with out facts  but in most locations in the world we have to deal with facts. So lets go with this one, how much ad revenue does Google earn?

According to most sources its $60 Billion.

Now what is being used to replace that revenue? Its in-app purchases which is 98% of PlayStore revenue. Which by most estimations is $20 Billion for Google right now.

Now for that 3rd point, How much traffic does iOS uses generate for Google properties or those properties using Google ad services? iOS has 50% of US web traffic only. The only problem is the world wide internet traffic is 10 times the US amount.

Apple is not in the game to attack Google as that does not meet their long-term plans despite Jason Calacanis's untruthful biases(untruthful inn that they are not backed by facts and facts point towards the opposite sort of things)

Here is what Apple sees long-term, they want to become the app maker platform for those displaced by technology progress by enabling a greater mobile experience which in turn makes app makers more money. It has nothing to do with Google. Unless, you did a content site that was complained about to Google by a large portion of Google search users. Jason has been withholding knowledge of that fact for years.

come on Jason Calacanis deliver some effing facts!

Thursday, September 24, 2015

StartUps Who use Angel.co

If you are a startup and use Angel.co you might want to pay more attention as when us mobile developers find you not responding to our note stating that we are interested in your startup get the general idea to show interests in other startups who need mobile developers.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

State Singletons

State Singletons is an article where I show a pattern in which the State Globals are not coupled but in a direct fashion with a one catch-all class that saves them integrating with the android life-cycles and the saving class is made singleton via a proxy and some app class wiring.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Recruiters, stop the emailing at closing time

Recruiters, stop emailing at closing time..I give the same damn reasons and the same rules I follow no matter what time of day you try to drive-by-email-spam me. Part of me doing a code audit and cleanup of 50+ android libs has proven that there is no correlation between listed experience and actually quality of android app code. Hence, I REFUSE TO BE A PART OF THE RECRUITER SCAM that makes the claim to a client that a recruiter can deteremine and find a quality android developer.

If you are a startup firm you should be demanding more for you recruiter than the usual lies they peddle.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

A StartUp Puzzle

I thought it wold be interesting to see how many or which start-ups might recognize that putting some volatile 3rd party UI libs under some code clean up and management is an engineering solution to a problem every start-up faces in how to have the newest UI features in android without the huge manpower costs. Since putting up my github repo of 50+ cleaned up libs thus far I have received a marked upswing in interest from startups listed at Angle.co but no validated leads as of yet.

Come on startups, I only bite at Recruiters.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Apple did a horrible android App

So Apple decided to ignore material design and do an android app to migrate to iOS, apparently users were not pleased:

The ventureBeatPost

Contrast that with MS who have went all-in in embracing android.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Please Recruiters

Do not send me any more stuff about design agencies needing remote android developers as remote developers do not fit their business model and hence they are not seeking such things. It might help if you read my linkedin profile which states no recruiters in the first place.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Mobile-UP

Some people have noticed a report coming out on the the amount of time spent in mobile apps compared to TV:

FlurryMobilePost

The main take away is that we are spending almost 200 minutes in mobile apps while only 160 minutes watching TV.

But for mobile start-ups there is a more important indirectly relatable statistic, ie in-app sales. In-App sales in mobile applications just surpassed the search-ad industry in revenue.
This is important as due to screen space the freemium ad based model was never long-term sustainable as there is not enough space for ads and not enough click-throughs.

But, with this change to a new advertising medium of in-app
purchases we have a shift in where the ads occur and how they integrate.  We now have to treat the free application as the ad for the in-app purchase.

Thus, the in-app purchase of a feature has to feel like the premium feature you cannot live without. And the freemium app has to feel like its a usable application but while at the same time hint at having more features and power.

I have been talking before about the Elephant-in-the-room with technology progress in that start-ups do not answer the question of when technology disrupts full-time employment where are the
jobs or revenue for families going to come from?  What if its
coming up with a mobile app product and using the freemium model to sell in-app purchases?

Remember, folks, the estimate is that the USA is loosing 8 million jobs to technology progress yearly. Assuming that we may have 1 milliion in the USA already building mobile apps obviously we need to be higher in in-app purchases revenues as it comes out to less than $10,000 per developer. But, we are close to where that steep climb in part-time mobile app makers become revenue-enriched and that become a better business job-wise than the shitty part-time job they had.And unlike some GOP politicans both Apple and Google and Amazon can claim that there mobile app stores are job creation machines.


I am not saying that everyone is going to be rich like Trump. But, in 2016 there is projected to be $31 Billion in in-app sales. Or to put it another way that is the amount VCs invest in Chicago startups on a yearly basis...so its not yet a full national things just yet but its growing, right now $10 Billion in growth per year.  But, I think there is some room for some part-time mobile app makers to market a freemium app geared towards in-app purchases and get some coin for their families and at some point to quit that shitty 30-hour job they may have.



We need to call this something. Why? Because, in this strive towards that upward in-app mobile purchase revenue climb we are not going to get government help with thier focus on Billions Dollar Start-Ups. we essentially will have to create our own movement the brings non-developers together to help each other attain this.

Right now, the phrase that seems to fit is:


Mobile-UP

Its not a start-up as its smaller than a start-up and really has no plans to IPO as its just a small business run on the side to get coin for a family.  But, it does fit thes one person things of
making mobile apps.

I probably should do a changethis manifesto about this maybe..

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Tech Bubble Popping

Remember fall of 2008? That nasty financial house-loan crisis that sent the World into recession.  Did the startup Bubble pop like all the nay-sayers said? NO.

The tech bubble is not on the financial side as with only allowing high-monied people to invest and high control of when one can IPO a startup the financial side is somewhat controlled from bursting.

But what is the one thing if taken away does in fact burst that tech bubble? The idea and co-founders labor source. What do I mean?

Start-ups, 99% of the time, get started by those without major debt. But, unlike previous decades we have a higher percentage of people in major debt. What happens when we run out of that source of co-founders? Exactly, the bubble bursts in terms of  the group of VCs and Angels now decides that the new ideas are not good enough and pulls back to invest only in established startups.

Remember, the last big hit in economic impact as far as consumer spending up-swing was when China in moved a whole bunch of labor from its less urban areas to its urban areas and that was close to 1 billion people.  The next economic increase like that will be India if it can get its act together in building out electric, sewage, and water systems nation-wide.

Once those consumers are on-line we have no other big economic increases in people turned into consumers. That coupled with increasing debt and a technological progress march that reduces
human jobs wil present a new set of challenges.

At that time we may see a startup bubble deflate due to no new ideas as the amount of people debt free to pursue startup ideas will be significantly less.

The only counter to this deflation seems to be the reliance upon the immaturity of our technological systems to form an efficient AI and the human desire of new services that make use of all the digital information we as humans and as firms produce in the actual form of small businesses making applications and new services in the pursuit of a small-piece of the American Dream.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

How to Standout Contacting Me

If you are a start-up in need of an android developer here is how to standout in an email to me:

1. Look at either my android demos videos or code and describe something you like.

2. Mention that the dev opportunity is remote and the start-up is fully funded.

3. Know the difference between an ART VM and ARM chip, if not than damn well ask someone smarter than you.

Since no-one else bothering me to do their recruiting jobs is doing this you will effectively standout in all the emails I get and move to the top of my list to be replied to.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

My Next Droid Development Device

So I will soon have some coin to pick up a new Droid Development Device:

Samsung S6 Edge

That is the GSM one via walmart online ordering, its $999 but I would get a 15 megapixel camera and the 64 gig internal memory. And its pre-installed with Android OS 5.0.2 and unlocked for GSM carriers with 4G LTE. I am very sure it has NFC, but walmart does not list that in the description.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

LowCost Oil Gone, Goodbye

Suddenly, Saudi Arabia blinked and is now letting Oil rise to $50 per barrel. I submit its more than a blink or wink in that Saudi Arabia never had enough spare cash to pay off OPEC to make it work.

The only question is what big item was SA trying to get USA to swallow?

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Recruiters, If you cannot view my code or demos than FUCK OFF!

Kind of simple folks, REAL RECRUITERS care bout product si much that they actually look at android app and UI demos, than there are those who take on a recruiter label but just are inf act scum lower than a fucking snake.

If you are a recruiter and will not view my demos, than do not fucking contact me PERIOD!

Thursday, August 27, 2015

The Chinese Sky is Falling!

The Chinese Sky is Falling! Better Run and hide under a Rock!

Now, for what really happened. Pretend for a moment that Communist China is a big VC firm. To keep Chinese money invested at home they decide on a business and job creation spree.

Except 30 years ago there was not many ready-made-businesses. So they kind of invented a few which in turn did not really have plans to make profits.  Short-term, it goes really well as they get 10% economic growth, jobs are created, and middle class Chinese invest money in China.

Than after 30 years with not enough consumer spending growth in China to create more real jobs for non-zombie companies everything goes poof to the point where China now will only see about 3% economic growth.

Gee, you mean China will along with US VCs invest in those firms that have a solid plan for profitability in 3 to 5 years?

Folks, the sky is not falling as there still is plenty of rich middle class Chinese with money to burn in the investment markets. Change is good not bad.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

StartUps-China Melt Down

China melted oh darn it.  If you are a funded start-up than obviously you need to stretch the capital you have as it more capital deals will not be coming for awhile.

If you have not reached seed capital funding yet, its either break it down into something smaller that can funded via service consulting fees or pull the plug.

Monday, August 24, 2015

The Benefits Of MS goofing up Upgrading to Win10

The benefits of MS goofing up upgrading to Win10:

1. OS lacks the added hooks that report geo-location, etc to MS every 30 minutes for the US Federal Government to  over-apply warrant to..
2 OS runs faster.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Recruiters and temp Firms

I do android remote freelancing. That means I work remotely and ask for the first week as a cash advance. Please stop spamming my LinkedIN inbox, Google email, and my Google Voice number unless you can meet those two terms.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Freelance Marketing

You know it's funny, we have certain freelance sites that seem to better to cater to developers in wanting to see developers well-paid like Upwork, Toptal, Gun.io, etc.  But, if we search github or even Behance we do not find the other full marketing piece.

What I mean by a full marketing piece is that if one is using these freelance sites to hopefully write a RFP that gets the result of a gig awarded than one would want this full marketing piece that will with the choices of visual demos and polished website ad copy viscerally hit the intended marketing target in such a way to cause that target full read the RFP rather than scan or glance at it.

While I can do type of systems study and find out when gigs get listed at these freelance sites(some are even easier to figure out..gun.io was somewhat simple even), its still that visual visceral reaction that I need to trigger to get-the-door-open.

This is why I insist in talking to co-founders rather than recruiters as recruiters have no sense of product or marketing. And quite frankly, throwing it at the wall to see what sticks is not marketing. Its more of the interruption spam that we see on TV and hear on radio.

Co-founders have a sense of product and marketing and I somewhat like those conversations about techniques.  But to get back to thing-at-hand, the reason why I have been figuring out how certain libraries and widgets work is that I need to collect all those things in my own massive project that than shows demos covering certain areas of android native java application development in a certain visual way.

Than I can take those visual items and add ad copy to that in a nice github page that get's seen first during the quick scan of the RFP that every potential client does. The reason I do not think the RFP matters that much as most freelance sites have divorced the developer interaction during the request for proposals document preparation to such an extent that its better to hit them visually with something stunning and than just some bullet points in the RFP. As you will end up redoing the RFP anyway when you write the contract in that you will ask all the questions that the client did not answer before and re-write the RFP you did in terms of assumptions, weekly milestones, etc.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Gun.io Your Pathetic

Let's see let's make a disaster. I start putting very detailed complaints in certain RFPs at gun.io, the rfps where the gun.io staff is writing the request for rfp. Staff sees the complaint and approves the complaint ridden rfp that I have written to be seen by client.

Way to Gun.io staff..you cannot make this idiot shit up..how many gun.io employees does it take to screw a client and the developer?

Saturday, August 15, 2015

is Google DataBinding Wrong II?

Okay, so lets review with some new information. First, two-way communication between ViewModel and Model and View.

Obviously, one can use an even bus such as Otto to wire up that other mode of communication from your UI widgets to ViewModel. And by making the event objects pojos with no android calls in them that means they are testable.

SO the fly-in-the-soup is how much is put into the generated classes. Right now, the doc reads setters and getters. Thus we can test for values but a small part of the logic you put into the xml files to enable data binding obviously is not in the getters and setters.

I am just going to have to work some examples to wrap my head around this..

Thursday, August 13, 2015

is Google DataBinding Wrong?

I have this deep sense that the putting of view logic into the xml-IDE-editing system removes the value that this part offers in being part of the View-Model POJO. The sense comes from the testing JSP, etc.

The problem now is how do I prove it in a way that makes sense to most developers both beginning and advance. The other aspect is maybe Google is cooking something up to use the tools-lib to assist the xml-IDE combination to do some sort of view logic testing.

Angel.co UI Sucks

Not the site mission but the overall implementation of the user-Interface.  We are suppose to be able to search the site to find those start-ups that are funded and that are offering dev positions with salary amounts and stock potion amounts listed.

The distinct problem is that when most start-ups lie about salary, ie they are not funded to the point of paying that salary, the current User-Interface becomes this prison of lying games.

The other aspect is that when start-ups do not get adequate funds to cover any operational costs they instead refuse to list the investment round amount. So it becomes a game of hide and seek in determining any funding amounts.

And quite frankly it's a truth in advertising issue or FTC issue if a start-up is listing salary on a job posting ad and has no money to pay for such a salary. And it's just as bad as someone coming into your email inbox and claiming your skills fit a job when they have no idea what your skills are or what the job skills are of the job they are peddling.

This is why I am looking for that start-up that refuses to use recruiters and HR to find an android developer as they than already understand the marketing problem and are willing to go all-out to solve it. That means something in terms of user advocacy in that is more probable that start-up will give a shit about the product in terms of the user as they understand the marketing impact when they do not have the full detailed attention of the co-founders brought to bear on the problem.

And quite frankly the caring about the marketing of the start-up and the advocacy of the user of the products has to come from the top  of the start-up at the level of the co-founders. With having to act as a un-breakable team the individual teeam members do not have the political power to correct marketing or user treatment if it does not flow from the top-down.

I want to find a start-up that gets this and quite frankly the Angel.co UI is in the way of that task.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Gun.io Sucks

Let me state that the concept of Gun.io is unique in that use your github.com repos to qualify as a developer and gun.io assists in the client coming up with the repo and determining if client has enough budget to get something developed. No worrying about the client having money, its handled by gun.io. And a guarantee for the client.

What could go wrong? Well, quite a bit actually if its the wrong implementation.

Let's do this the system analysis way. What is the intermediate product?  One is the project being developed, the process, and the rfp being developed, again the process. Why? Because that is the two things the client interfaces with and if those are not right than other competitors beat Gun.io in amount of projects completed and developers signed. Currently Toptal and UPwork do exactly that feat.

They key problems stem from having the client annonymous until a developer is chosen. Why? Because the expertise to determine if the rfp is technically feasible and costs feasible is not in Gun.io staff's hands as that expertise among specialized areas such as mobile native front ends and other front-ends is in hands of the developers who are members of gun.io.

Thus we have gun.io assisting in detailing the rfp without relying upon the expertise of the crowd of developers they have gathered. HOW THE EFF CAN THAT WORK? In fact it does not in fact work. I just ran into another example where the client wanted to do this experimental thing and it was mentioned in the rfp that Gun.io had a hand in detailing where client wants it done in Unity via a dll on android and the C/C++ apis are locked up by Google requiring root permissions and thus can only be done via java apis as a native android java application not a unity dll. Not to mention that fact that experimental projects are always rfp'd differently because in fact is experimental, often times its a retainer rather than rfp. How the eff could Gun.io miss that?

If Gun.io would have the client named instead of anonymous, one can use the contracts between clients and developers to enforce communication using gun.io, one could implement a RFP issues board where developers could open issues during the several weeks-to-months process of detailing the RFP to alert the client to technical and budget issues in the RFP. In fact some of Gun.io's competitors in factt do this feat.

The other major problem is that the RFP editing process is not git versioned. Why not? RFP's on Gun.io's system get changed all the time without any clues to the thought process involved or the assumptions made leaving the developer in the position of having to guess whereas if it was git versioned we as developers would be able to see some of the thought process in terms of changes to the rfp.  The other aspect is when that RFP changes the developer is not allowed to change their proprosal.  SAY WHAT THE EFF?

Another aspect is there is no two-way commuication, sending email to Gun.io is like sending it to a black-box where nothing comes out. A way around this is to set up an issue board where the Gun.io staff has two or three dasy to clear issues posted on a day. And this for both the developer and clients who are members of Gun.io.

Another aspect of the RFP system Gun.io has set up is that you may have thousands sending proposals which means essentially Gun.io's promise that developer's questions will get answered by the client during the project award process are somewhat meaning-less and somewhat naive. A better way to handle it is drop the anonymous client attribute and have an issue board set up for each open rfp combined with having the rfp git versioned so developers see the edits and allowing developers to modify their proposals after they are submitted(marked as a new proposal version, of course).


Another aspect of the product is the developer process as it touches both Gun.io and the client. Would it be so effing hard to set up a system whereas when the project is awarded to the developer and the developer accepts that a private https Slack channel be set up for communication between the developer and client. Slack has an api to do things like that.

Gun.io really could be a neat system to use for those firms needing development, if someone really paid attention to the effing product!

And I will not even get into the failing write for Gun.io project due to lack of action Gun.io's staff part.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

MobileApp State of the Nation

In 1985 a song came out by John Cougar Mellencamp called Face-of-Nation in which during the recession and Reagan as president, he blasted the GOP reaction of ignoring the poor and the working classes.  Here it is another recession, this time world-wide, and we are starting to see the beginning of the effects of automation in that there are less jobs for us humans.

Everyone is worried that less jobs for humans might be a bad thing.  But, we forgotten some important elements and trends that may lead us to a brighter future.  As human-kind is put online we as humans in our business and public and private lives produce a lot of information.

The disadvantage of our technological state right now is that no system or systems have a mature enough computer language and or AI to automatically adjust to the new data in the act of organizing and transforming it. In short words people are making mobile applications to organize and transform this data in the task of feeding this human-kind-internet beast.

Which means we will see more small businesses making mobile applications as a means to earn revenues and profits. That means there is a mix and symbiotic relationship between the big platform start-ups like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc and the mobile application makers.

It is not a big-start-up-fits-everything type of evolution.  And that also dovetails into how we should approach both providing capital and providing education resources as we need both capital raised for big start-ups and the small mobile app makers and we need both those who just learn the basics of coding and those who make the higher sacrifice and actually go through the full process of completing a computer science degree.

I do not have all the answers for you, I just know that given certain trends that we are doing it wrong in this big all-encompassing focus on big start-ups. As we need both the big platform start-ups, the middle-sized start-ups, and the mobile application makers that integrate with those and have success as small businesses.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Peter Thiel's Social Bling

It might seem strange to put Peter Thiel's words in the consumer light, but I assure you it will hit you like a-ton-of-bricks.  For reference, if you google search for Start-up classroom notes pdf you will find that someone has prepared acopy of notes for you to reference his thesis as he presented that in his start-up class.

One part of Theil's thesis is he makes the point that since the 1970s income and salaries in real money terms have not increased but declined.  Now, it gets interesting in that what do we grab when we give up?

Some of you will say, illegal drugs and drink, etc. You are not wrong in that there is a whole slew things we grab as distractions from that realization that we are not making any headway or progress. But, somewhat humans are positive animals they tend to even though they may be facing no progress economically they than will search for ways to make progress in a social status manner.

Or put another way, Facebook and twitter have reached the decade old status. Fads usualy start to decline after 5 years so why has not facebook and twitter declined but instead are not fads?  It goes back to why use some our time to buy a facebook or twitter
distraction? I mean we don't do it with Email or SMS.

The key here is that people are using their time to buy something that acts as bling in that it elevates their social status. How does this pertain to mobile applications?

If I am right than the aspect of making a mobile application in some whay the user transformer in that it makes a user a hero in their social network and thus the social likes and tweets become part of the social bling trail that someone would use to eventually download and or buy the mobile application. In short words, your friend sees the social juice you received with a mobile applicaiton and they want the same social bling in their social network.

So its not enough to integrate with a mobile activity but we have to make that user the hero within their social network of their peers. As their peers see that elevation of their friend  than they will want the same mobile application that resulted in that social elevation of their friend.

This is differen than Kevin Rose's theory of gamification. In Kevin Rose's mind Zynga rose because of gamification. Unfortunately, Zynga in fact rose due to abuse of facebook's refusal to enforce policies and that was highlighted when facebook's enforced their policies and Zynga fell crashing to the ground.  Gamification in most respects divorces the incremental rewards from the effects of elevating the application users social status among their peers. Kevin Rose found in his own start-up that gamification without elevating the social status of the mobile application user as part of the application user interactions is nto effective at surging a mobile application download and usage growth curve.

Going back to the RapChat example, one could make an avatar award system whereas the avatar you use on the rap forum boards changes in that as your raps get noticed you are awarded points to buy more accessories to accessorize, ie bling out, your avatar. It sounds corny, right?  Its not, elevate the social status of the mobile application user through interacting with the mobile application. That is the growth curve right there, make it act like social bling in the user's life in their social network!

Some further points. No, its not described in the Google Android Application Marketing documents. But, by the same token its not in the iOS application marketing documents either. But, there are some sublte hints that maybe Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft while they do not yet fully subscribe to the theory I have expressed here are in fact opening their minds to such things.

Monday, August 3, 2015

DONT BE RAPCHAT

Okay, time for me to get into trouble. So here is a typical
Angel.co start-up named RapChat

RapChat Angel.co profile


The key words in there profile:


400,000 users in 2015


You should notice that they do not list the total users for 2015 nor give a listing of users gained each year in existance, Rapchat has been around since 2013.

RapChat is a music application, you listen to some music and compose a rap that is recorded than shared. But, what part of the full music audience are we dealing with?


Now, I am going to talk about something dear to my mobile application developer's heart....the audience.

In the USA there are about 220 million mobile users online. One percent of 220 million is 2 million. Hence, why most VCs and Angels use it as a guage to whether to trigger funding.

Side note, you as that start-up like RapChat that does not yet have seed capital funding needs to avoid the mistake of attempting to double down on two mobile platform and and define the 3 different audiences; early adopters, mid-stream adopters, and late adopters.

Karaoke bars exist because some segment of the population wanted to sing-a-long with western songs to emulate westerners. That is why it was cutural trend in Japan and spread to those areas of the US with large Japanese populations.

So in RapChat's case we have to know why a person would choose to rap. Or to put another way why is rap chosen as form of expression and what forms of expression does rap replace. And that is part of the problem with the application in that rap is a cultural experience.

There is in the urban environments where rap is heard a whole cultural experience of trying to one-up your friend with raps and those within that rap culture see rap as the new form of poetry what was originally song prose in the form of both blues and jazz.

RpaChat has forgotten that part of that cultural experience in the rap culture was in fact social.  In other words the back-end ot the RapChat application is not an enabling rap socialization platform. You have to replace the environment that originally gave rise to rap with a back-end that gives an audience to someone composing the rap.

What do I mean? It could be a simple as contests for some gift card, listen to this music song, compose a rap with the song, and submit the rap for a chance at winning the gift card. And than you turn around and tell a story about that gift card winner what work they do what things in life they do, etc.

Side note, I have worked for music start-ups in the past and they always make the mistake of not making the user of the music appliation a star socially. One tiny story every month, ho-hum ho-hum.


And you will notice that you are attacking two different goals at once with those contests. One, raising MAUs. Two, raising the number of new users.


In summary, if at pre-seed capital stage do not double-down on another mobile platform. Pay attention to the audience and figure out how to make them stars. When your start-up reaches the seed capital stage($1 Million to $5 Million) than you can start planning on porting the iphone application to android as at that point it makes ROI sense as that increase in numbers beyond the 2 million in users will than trigger the next funding round.

This is why I insist on being interviewed at my location over a paid subway meal as I want to find out if the co-founder staff of the start-up understand how to get an audience. If they do not than there is no use of me joining the start-up as most developers are not listen to in the aspects of gaining an audience, etc and so it is easier for that to happen if the top staff knows how to get an audience.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The NSA hACK

So why is NSA making the attempt to collect all communication?  We have two data types, un-encrypted and encrypted. Which you think is the ruse here?

If I encrypted something with one key and send it one time to only one person, its secure. Well sort-of as if has a part that is the same content wise with another message using the same key it is no longer secure. Remember, Gmail uses one SSL key folks, so does Yahoo and MS and Apple.[Slight correction, all those who use SSL/TLS have one key per short session with the key being set to anew on if the session is long]

Or to put it another way NSA needs to collect all encrypted traffic to brute  force attack through message attacks a particular key and or particular message. It gets more accurate, the brute force attack, if you have almost all the encrypted messages of a particular key.

What is the counter? Change your keys often and vary what human language you use in the content such as using a human language that has a high amount of letters, Chinese.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

I have a Secret

I have a secret but the secret is not the content of the secret but the packaging of the encryption used to encrypt the secret and the generation of the keys used. The war on NSA over-stepping their mission is about to take a new turn, its been 5+ years of starving and struggling to discover this new mathematically complex invention.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

The CodeQA Trick,Android and Gradle

Okay, so I will give the mock-like code to enable codeQA on your buildtypes/buildvariants:


gradle.taskGraph.whenReady {taskgraph ->
if(taskGraph.hasTask(preBuild)){
//than we do codeqa on main sourcesets
}
if(taskGraph.hasTask(preDebugBuild)){
//than do codeqa on debug sourcesets
}
if(taskGrap.hasTask(preReleaseBuild)){
//than do codeqa on release sourcesets
}
}


You put the codeqa task and the checkDependsOn(youttask) in the if bracket. your preNameBuild gets named for the particular build type or build variant. Its a in-elegant hack but it works.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Gradle AutoCodeQA Progress

So I have been composing notes on the particular build system I use for android development at:

GWSAndroidReadMeTemplate

and what is exciting is now I am to the point where I can put the codeqa tasks in automate it for use with dagger android projects.

A little background. Android SourceSets under the Gradle build system are not Gradle SourceSets so things like the codeqa plugins within Gradle do not auto-execute as far as recognizing what sourceset they are suppose to analyze.

The other challenge is that you of course want these tools to run when the CI server runs but not when you incrementally writing code. That is quickly solved by integrating with disable PreDex code in that the same command to assemble and disable PreDex for Ci servers also enables the codeqa tool runs.

Than there is 3rd challenge in that you may want the output of JDepend, PMD, Checkstyle, FindBugs, and Android Lint merged which requires coding xslt merge files about 4 or 5 in total.

If you are a funded Chicago or USA start-up its the type of engineering you may want in an Android Developer.(No I do not deal with recruiters)

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Some Start-Ups Suck

What really sucks about searching for remote 1099 contract android developer opportunities is that most Start-ups lie about things, such as they will list a gig or position with a salary and no-equity but in fact they have no funding to make good on such an implied promise.

And the Angel.co interface to weed out all the liars, really someone should be effing shot for that web interface design.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Microsoft doesn't hire more Girls because their scared of Girls

Microsoft doesn't hire more Girls because their scared of Girls beating them in a field that they thought was their place to hide. The day is coming when a Girl will lead a company that will put Microsoft out to pasture..

Monday, July 13, 2015

Debugging Android Libraries

In a library you are coding stick publishNonDefault true

in the library build file. Now stick the hugo plugin dependency in the root build file and apply the plugin in your library build file. Now oh the magic..set the compile project to use path and configuration and set configuration to debug. Now use the library in your app and you will be magic get debug logs of the library as extra. Neat huh?

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Android Bug canvas.drawText

Okay this is for the Android Bugs canvas.drawText and canvas.drawTextOnPath for text sizes below 1f and above 256 on 4.x and 5.x devices with hardware aceelration on.  You guys ready?

Use canvas.drawPath instead. Evidently, we are dealing with some changes in native coding not fully followed up in all methods.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Angel.co Clowns

In marketing to statrt-ups to gain the next gig you have to watch out for Angel.co clowns. What are Angel.co Clowns?

They are the clowns that you do not want to work for in that they will put up a job ad with listed stock options of 0.1% and salary of $80,000 but not mention that they are unfunded and that the part time work of doing the app only upside is the job when funded. Bare minimum if they want to ask someone to do that than there should be an offer a little higher than 0.1 % stock potions as doing the app is the trigger point for the funding round.


Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Github Repo Makreting

Well, the leads have doubled by 200% and qualified leads are rising as well. All I had to do was change the readme's of the github  repos to address the audiences I was attempting to reach.

Basically, that means I should have a new start-up gig by the end of July. Not bad..

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Yahoo YOU SUCK!

Yahoo, I can guarantee that if you proceed with auto-registering yahoo as my search engine via java updates that I will never mother fucker use your services!

EAT SHIT AND DIE YAHOO!

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Apple and Fibbing slides

Everyone has seen that internal slide from apple attempting to predict iPhone higher in market share than android in the US.


April 15 Comscore numbers indicate Android 52.2 percent of US share and Apple at 43.1

Monday, June 15, 2015

Gun.io Wrong Again about Mobile

Okay, now for the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-me post.  This gun.io post on How to hire an iOS Developer  is somewhat wrong on the major points to the point where its somewhat the clueless leading the clueless.

First point, there are two types of mobile applications. Those that do not require a-lot of interactivity and can be developed using a mobile web framework. Those that do require high interactivity require native code such as ObjectiveC, Java, etc and are based on the platform target.

Second point, you are always attempting to compute the return on investment early in the process of picking a developer. Why? Because if you have no idea of the ROI than you probably have no clue about what a proper budget might be for said app development.

In fact most professional firms in the fortune 500 category compute the ROI first before fully fleshing out a plan to show the developer.

Sorry, to rant but the mistakes were not tiny.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

App Prototyping Problem Solving

So after a brief informal study of what firms and startups ask mobile application developers to build I know some areas that are somewhat rich in low-hanging-from-tree problems that can be solved with application prototypes and libraries.  Sure, I could have done the same demo applications as everyone else but is not solving any immediate problems as far as software multipliers(ie libraries that I can expand and use to gain project gigs quickly).

Workflow libraries are fun  in that you have interesting things like how do you model a workflow of steps that can be out-of-order and how do you differentiate between the out-of-order-steps model to the in-order-steps model.

So, now you know my fun next 9 days inputting the sample apps together and the library.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Hardest part, the Narrative

Many say that the hardest part in establishing a design and development shop is getting that first big customer.  But, for those of us that care beyond the weekly check it seems to be that the narrative is the hardest part to establish.

On-one-hand you do not want to be that schmuck that tells people no. But, by saying no you get a handle on control to the point where the mobile application your are building matters to you and than you find you are at your best in pushing out a quality designed and developed mobile application.

And you have the fact that you are expressing this narrative to different audiences and you might have to provide different narrative hooks to those difference audiences.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Marketing tricks

I have increased my read or hit count by 300% so I thought I would share the main trick. I used

IFTTT

to make sure my blog posts are shared, tweeted, G+.  Making sure facebook was added correctly provided a huge increase.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Its Macroons


If you have not guessed yet the Android 6.0 level 23 is or has the name of Macroons(MCN).

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Freelancers-linkedIn

The problem when using LinkedIN when freelancing is that recruiters tend to ignore the freelancer term in the tagline, your profile etc. I have found a solution that allows recruiters to act as lead filters.

In your LinkedIN profile summary state your weekly fee structure as the first sentence. Suddenly, recruiters finally understand..

Thursday, May 21, 2015

SEO Withdrawal

So I am re-vamping my marketing after reading Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Mr Dunn. The idea is stop relying on very short-term SEO tricks and actually build content and a relationship with the audience.

SEO tricks is like drinking coffee, soda, or tea  to pick up energy to work extra hours. Over the long term our body doesn't react well to such abuse. It is easier to some quality exercises or some light weight training and a relaxing sauna and by than you have your second wind to wokr some more hours with better results.

Part of the process is learning what each audience of each platform likes in subjects to content articles in that facebook is different than twitter, builtin platform is differnt than say hackernews, etc.  So I am sort of doing some non-formal A/B in that I post a test article on multiple platforms and than for the follow up article change it per some perceived ideas of how the message should differ per platform and than measure the hit results to see what worked.

The other aspect is learning where the different audiences are at as in what platform they are on. For, example I have to reach start-ups in two distinct ways since I cannot publish on every city builtin site as that does not scale. I found that at least on builtinchicago.org that I should be building relations by gaining followers to my profile as that will boost my article posts to appear on the front page. Than I cover start-ups in other US-markets by taking advantage of gun.io's offer to allow me to earn some revenue off of article authorship at gun.io.

I know that I have to follow that up with developing a quality article or two for smashingmagazine and get them to publish it. And that is basically querying the person in charge of the mobile dev/design section to see what articles they want to see next and what is popular and using that feedback to come up with an original article idea and than produce that article.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Agile Android Development

Apparently, the first step is not IntelliJ LiveCode templates. Instead once you get your gradle build set just right and proguard files and the lint file and the extra files for espresso than just use this project as a guide:

https://github.com/zsiegel/generator-android-gradle

What that forces you to do is setup a yeoman generator that uses NPM goodness to setup an android-project generator with all your lib prefs and setup prefs already set. thus, your android project setup in literally seconds.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Facebook Got A CLUE!

Facebook finally figured out that maybe Android devs might not want ot move to SF and maybe they might want to work remotely, see:

http://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/35le8g/weekly_whos_hiring_thread/cr5jf0n

Now, if they would consult their recruiter logs they would find all those devs who complained to recruiters that they wanted remote and they than might be able to find someone.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Paleo not a product

When I first saw this listed as a client of design firm in Chicago targeting start-ups I got worried:

Paleo.io

One, I was worried that my WeEat application suddenly became non-unique before I even had everything lined up. Two, the second concern was that there now suddenly was a design firm that understood creating a product in Chicago.

Than I took a look at the application. Yeah, its a nice app out of millions. The only problem is its not a product yet,  How do I know? People watch with me sometime, the most people is not at grocery stores they are at instead restaurant franchises ordering something as they work too much and have no time for  grocery shopping.

Paleo is looking for a problem where none exists, rather than what is in front of their eyeballs. That is one of the problems when you interview end users rather pick the sites where they are numerous at and just watch and take some notes.

This is why I have this big freaking block about working for any design firm, most of them have no effing idea about product.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

We Do READMEs Wrong

Started changing some marketing stuff  so that I get more of a conversation through all of my design an development outputs. We tend to do READMEs wrong in that we target our tech development or tech design audience rather than the other buyers of the product, at least I do.

Thus, I came up with a new README template for my android projects, GWSAndroidReadmeTemplate.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Marketing insights

Some parts of the new marketing plan are taking off. Still about 30 days before I do slide deck about it though. I can state even a channel where the overwhelming noise is non-leads can be made to eventually provide better leads and less noise.  Yes, I am talking about LinkedIN.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Linkedin Assylum


So LinkedIN unrestricted my account finally. But it was very Dilbert-esque drama, in that I had to send a one sentence acknowledging following LinekdIN's TOS.

The majority of problems is not with Internal recruiters. In fact I have never had problems with internal recruiters as they follow the professional best practices and do not contact people who are marked freelance in their LinkedIn profiles.

The problem is two-fold. One, you have all these independent recruiters in a hurry so they do what is called a spam-drive-by in that they never fully read a LinkedIN profile and resume attached to it but instead just send out their opportunity posting en-mass. I say recruiter, but that really is not correct. The one's abusing the LinkedIN system are the lower-level sourcers hired by the independent recruiters to produce a lead-stream. Yes, confusing because they use the same exact recruiter title.

Two, LinkedIN users have no way to fine-tune which leads to receive in that its either all-on receive messages from everyone and THE LINKEDIN USER spending all the manual time sorting through messages. Even worse is the solution of recruiter spam to tell each LinkedIN user to mark the messages spam as unless it is very blatant such as an ad in the message, LinkedIN staff will never restrict the recruiter account based on a user pressing the mark as spam message action choice.

So what is the solution? One, I signed up with XING. But even than will probably be the same set of problems.  So I am creating a Mail List for that purpose as it will indicate when I finish a gig/project and be listed as the main interaction way in my LinkedIN and XING profiles.  That way it will filter out rest of the recruiter scum while at the same time still allow me to funnel any LinkedIN and XING leads to the platform I control and thus I can enforce what interactions are allowed and be somewhat not spammed and allow me to reduce the manual work at sorting leads from LinkedIn and XING.





Thursday, April 16, 2015

Bootstrapping WeEat and WeFit II

Part of the challenge in funding a portion of the seed capital round of a mini-start-up is that what to do in obtaining revenue before the product is out the door. In my case, I developed some product ideas that due the data-sets they require have about 650 hours development time including data of the data-sets.

Thus, I need smaller products or service items that bring in different revenue mixes until those products are in the app stores. What I found was some firms that would allow me to produce some small service items and get paid in commissions of sales on big ticket items on their websites. And, without giving too much away, the service items indirectly integrate with the process of raising my freelancer gig cred and so its something that gets me multiple layers of leverage.


Tuesday, April 14, 2015

LinkedIN has surrendered to Spam Recrutiers

Apparently, you can no longer respond to a recruiter using LinekdIn Messages to spam(drive by spamming..you know the technique..they read your profile see you do nto have that skill but than spam you will job posting for that skill) you via Linkedin messages...yeah that much Dilbert-ness. Just got my LinkedIn account temporary restricted.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

The Story of the WeEat Mobile Application

I loss some family members due medical condtions brought on indirectly and directly by wrong or poor diet choices. The most recent was my cousin Tony due to diabetes and he was only 42 years old when he died this past April.

At first I wanted to do a diabetes mobile application that would hook into the REST api that most stomach insulin pumps have to better facilitate the monitoring of diabetes.  But, that would require some resources that I currently do not have an abundance of thus I searched for another product to create that would overlap areas  such as diabetes, etc.

And so I started reading franchise restaurant and grocery industry periodicals and every trending story was about more Americans eating out at franchise restaurants and grocery stores responding by putting franchise restaurants in grocery stores. And so the thinking was is there a fragmented data-set attached to that trend?

So I found one fragmented data-set, the nutirtiional menu item information. And than I started visualizing how that data could be re-organized and re-visualized for choosing better menu items according to a user's diet preferences which they would set in the application. And I started to see that it was possible to do that in such a way to totally transform the act of franchise restaurant menu food item choices activity into something somewhat fun for all dieters.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

WeEat-Funding Challenges

A lot of startup people make the mistake of planning funding with the outlook that they are the 10% or the 1% at the top. But, with that no-limits outlook you make too many mistakes in planning for
what cannot be predicted. It is much easier to plan like you are the bottom 10% and come up with a winning strategy as far as funding.

Thus, I am at the bottom 10% of startup nobodies and what funding options do I have?

The background information is that there is enough empirical information out there on what the download count was when a mobile application startup got either a seed round or a
round beyond seed to indication that trigger is 250 Million downloads. We also know that using the right SEO approach in the application description in the app stores and the individual mobile app web page will produce 1 Million to 2 Million downloads.

My first funding option, would be to get accepted in a StartUp incubator. Specifically, the NWI Tech Foundry which is held in the Fall here in Northwest Indiana right at the city next to me
with an application deadline of between June and July of this year.  But, to be blunt honest the only thing that would count on the application is the condition of the app demo and the particular organization that puts on this incubator does not look at app demos as part of the application process and thus this is probably not a successful option.

My second funding option, would be if some Angel Investor decides to provide a seed round.  While my WeEat mobile application is slightly in the Fitness and Healthcare areas; it is not enough
of a direct correlation to produce some Angel Investor interest in those areas. I say those areas as they are trending right now as far as both VC and Angle Investor interests.

My third funding option, would be to grab some consulting service fee revenues. While that is possible as I am getting asked more frequently; I certainly count on that to provide everything.

My fourth funding option, would be to grab a startup remote gig that allows me to 1099 the service revenue and allows me to eventually have that 1099 income registered under a company name.
Why?  Has to do with marketing and branding as just working for some place does not have any positive impact on marketing or branding and having that under a company name which can be branded and marketed with those marketing efforts under my control seems like a better setup.

Thus, at least for my own startup I was lucky in that the startupproduct I came up with has some beginning stages where seed capital required is at a minimum level to allow me to be able to use the
3rd and 4th funding options. Well, not luck as I am using some advice that was given to me and several startup fans sometime ago by the co-founders of 37Signals.

Specifically, the co-founders of 37Signals had recommended to those who wanted to create a startup to choose those product ideas that can be market validated and require extremely low amounts of
seed capital. It seems like common sense, right?

So that is my funding options for the WeEat mobile application as far as the immediate short-term funding.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

StartUP IP Challenges

One of the fun challenges of startups is the IP laws.  For example, in the WeEat application marketing wise he have all these copyrighted images that could help in the IN-App purchase triggers. At first, yes I cannot use them as they are not my copyrights.

But, what if I vector-ize the image and add some splash of color as that would be derivative image. So now I have that type of question fro my lawyer friends, can vector-ize a copyrighted image and thus will the derivative by thus under my copyright instead of the original image copyright.

If true than I have a way to make a creative header for all my lists in the application and the individual cards.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

WeEat

So what is WeEat, it is a mobile application with a delicious twist on dieting. One of the challenging aspects is how to determine what the free features should be so that they trigger an ever increasing IN-App purchase conversions.

Okay I guess I should explain. In physical marketing such as Grocery items, you put the impulse buys at the end caps of each grocery aisle. Usually, these impulse buys have a nice additional marketing displays to complete the impulse triggering.

In mobile it is more like how search is done in that you want the missing item to say to the customer, hey to get that missing set of items its only $.99 right from the app store and you can use it right away. But, for that to work the non-missing items have to be enough so that the user can use the app right away.

For example, a features mix of some popular items along with some not so popular items. But you leave enough popular items to be bought through IN-App purchasing so you still make enough money past the development costs of the application.

Monday, March 30, 2015

a few days after Starting the startup

So its few days after I started working on the MVP for the startup I am starting. I have figured out how to change the mockups of the UI for a more effective design.

I am still quite 'high'. I do not know how else to explain the feeling up pure glee in finding a huge fragmented data-set and than a effective way to couple it to a mobile activity in a mobile app with 1 billion potential mobile app users.  Never tired, always sugar wider feeling.


Saturday, March 28, 2015

Alpha Mockup MenuItem Card

Just an alpha mockup of the menuitem card of the startup health app I am developing. The hardest part is coming up with a visual cue-ing that works with about 25+ individual values.  Basically, food groups on the left edge and allergen indicators on top edge.

I probably need to instead of giving a visual cue of green, yellow, or red do a colored pyramid score visual right by the serving size at the top.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

JBehave with AndroidStudiio

With the changes in the android gradle plugin 1.1.x to allow plain jvm testing we should be able to irregardless of whether we use Robolectric or not be able to enable JBehave acceptance testing.Should be fun finally having acceptance testing as an equal partner in the dev workflow