tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-160044111519280502024-03-19T03:10:36.022-05:00GrottWorkShopBlogA blog about android application and android hacking.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.comBlogger395125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-22373435467474699872017-02-15T14:06:00.000-06:002017-02-15T14:06:49.517-06:00Mobile Hybrid Apps and AndromedaOkay, the limits to mobile hybrid apps has always been on the Android side and not the iOS side. What if Google merged Chrome OS and Android into a different mobile OS kernel, could they than get rid of the Moibl eHybird app limits on the OS?<br />
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It appears that is exactly what they are doing with Andromeda. Android Apps and Chrome apps on one mobile kernel.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-9240937997785367362017-02-13T15:26:00.002-06:002017-02-13T15:26:46.766-06:00US Weak Dollar SalvationFro the last 40 years both the GOP and Democrats have promised to fix Globalization problems in the form of high costs of Healthcare, Education, and Housing(they climbed 10-fold in last 40 years and that is not sustainable). Notice that there efforts add up to zero.<br />
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We are headed for a situation in which there is low income, weak US dollar, and high GDP growth in China, India, and possibly Africa.<br />
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So do you want to know how to counter it? No, elected officials will not help.<br />
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There are certain areas that one can invest time and some extremely low cash outlays to stable-lize and increase your financial position over several decades.<br />
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But, fair warning it's not for the coward or the lazy.<br />
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And the secret is as valuable as anything Mr Buffet has ever stated.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-45968244902916600752017-02-11T10:50:00.002-06:002017-02-11T10:50:52.692-06:00Revenue PlanningEvery UIKit online store has somewhat a following with stats ranked high to low:<br />
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ThemeForest<br />
MaterialUp<br />
Html5Ninja<br />
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My idea is to use MaterialUP as the A/B test platform in that I test certain UIkit designs there to know which one will get the most traffic. Than because at MaterialUP UIKits can only be up a full 12 months unless they are updated take some popular UIKits and make some changes and republish them on ThemeForest and HTML5Ninja.<br />
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This way I can a re-occurring revenue base.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-23510475496914254832017-02-06T14:49:00.001-06:002017-02-06T14:49:43.108-06:00LESS and SASS crapI understand that it eases building CSS frameworks. But, really on the non-framework front end developer side it really has a flawed concept.<br />
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CSS was made to separate the style from the content and layout. And we have the effective strategy of creating unique class names per distinct and different layout in a site so that one can not only style it but also do some limited A/B testing on certain design attributes of the site.<br />
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But, the CSS frameworks css files are so massive that one would not consider combining both the site css and css framework's own css in the form of LESS or SASS files. So we get this Hyde Jekyll thing where some vars are changed via the LESS or SASS files and having to use extra css code to get the site html files to a state where its update-able.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-74028071734726460592017-02-04T10:50:00.000-06:002017-02-04T10:50:40.099-06:00More Than One Online Store-UIKitsSo I have been wondering why someone has not made the effort to push UIKits to more than one online store. Of course, each online store wants exclusivity to the UIKits but one can change enough things through automation to make that happen and yet still have unique UIKits authored for each online store.<br />
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Sure one has to adjust to the level of design competition for each online store, but once yo do it successfully with one store it should be easy for the rest of them. The real effort seems to be in the template-tooling.<br />
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BY template-tooling, I mean not just converting the UIKit design to use a template engine but integrated with that template engine so one can change design elements fast as I want the layout to be unique but than the design elements variable.<br />
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By my estimation, if i put in the extra hours to template things than I double my gross sales income. That seems somewhat worth it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-71582695717396255662017-02-02T13:55:00.002-06:002017-02-02T13:55:40.899-06:00Teaser-Ad CopyOne of the challenges to putting UIKits on the challenger, MaterialUp, instead of ThemeForest first is the teaser image in the marketing assets is somewhat smaller at a size of 400 by 300 pixels.<br />
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Obviously, the right side is probably going to be taken up by a preview of the UIKit somewhat at 200 by 300 pixels. But than I have somewhat less than 200 by 300 pixels to target the audience with ad copy. I think the key will be to use as many icons as possible to than boil it down to the essential ad copy text that I need to use.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-30197110251531722972017-01-28T11:28:00.001-06:002017-01-28T11:28:43.956-06:00Vlogging CamerasOkay, while my UI-kits are in the process of going up in about 7 days, let's talk vlogging cameras since in about 90 days will be vlogging.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat">Casey Neistat</a>, usually recommends the Cannon 80d, he tried Sony cameras but they did not have view screens that flip to view like Cannon.<br />
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My case, the first time out I want something a little less than the $1200 or higher sticker price of a Cannon 80D. Nikon has a nice inexpensive camera that takes video called <a href="http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nikon-coolpix-s7000-16-0-megapixel-digital-camera-black/3839016.p?skuId=3839016">Nikon Coolpix S7000 at about $250</a>.<br />
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Its not a 20 mega-pixel like the other expensive cameras but in comparison low end androids are at 5 mp and high-end androids are at 10mp. Thus, 16 mp wil be fine for now as I practice youttube vlogging.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-77541625618945229642017-01-14T11:41:00.000-06:002017-01-14T11:41:53.326-06:00The Mobile CanvasThe benefit of building some design UIKits based on html5, js, and css for desktop and mobile is that if I use the mobile device as my canvas the limitations serve to allow me to focus on the pedagogical of theory of Material Design.<br />
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In doing so,I can than understand why header images in mobile material design apps ia bad idea and why parallax image containers in material design CSS frameworks should be banned.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-52870678129260234242017-01-02T15:16:00.001-06:002017-01-02T15:16:45.737-06:00UI Kit ProductsObviously, the first set of UI kit products is for html/css/js and in fact Material Design based. Should be interesting to see which ones take off.<br />
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At the moment using two frameworks, Materialize and Bootstrap as I have not figured out how to incorporate or integrate 3rd party stuff with Google's successor to MaterialDesignLite.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-50415680296655493382016-12-05T15:25:00.004-06:002016-12-05T15:25:54.365-06:00UI Kit ProductsOkay, somewhat early announcement. I have some UI Kits that I am developing that will be released on UpLabs MaterialUp in January as commercial products. Some are Dashboard Kits and some are Android UI-Wireframe kits.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-9494704098471213282016-12-03T10:50:00.000-06:002016-12-03T10:50:03.070-06:00Bootstrap Experiment OneI will be trying a bootstrap experiment. I am going to be pushing out some creative design products that are related to my mobile design work in a certain marketplace to see how much traction those commercial products receive.<br />
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If I am lucky it pays for some needed things such as a new laptop with 1-2TB SSDs.<br />
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I will be reporting my progress when I can right here so that others may attempt to replicate the efforts for their own bootstrapping.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-70705276437819851962016-12-01T14:10:00.001-06:002016-12-01T14:10:16.520-06:00Material Design Color Palettes IIIThe 3rd and probably final tweaking of my Material Design Advance Color Palette should be up in a few days. The improvements is finally finding the tool that mathematically calculates color contrasts and keeps them within the WAG guidelines, namely Paletton found here:<br />
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<a href="http://paletton.com/#uid=15B0u0kkOmIaszwfLrXpxi0u+cj">Paletton</a><br />
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Also check out the <a href="http://www.paletton.com/wiki/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Colorpedia">colorpedia on color theory</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-25566949840312450542016-11-29T13:35:00.002-06:002016-11-29T13:35:28.843-06:00Advance material Design Color Palette IIThis an android color resource file denoting a full advanced color palette for material design. Both Monochromatic(Minimal design) and Google vibrant are supported.<br />
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<a href="https://gist.github.com/shareme/d55154a4fa58b94881bf609b0e644203">Gist Url</a></div>
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The bottom black and whites is for Monochomatic with the top half serving as the palette for the action color. Obviously, the top-half is the Google-inspired vibrant color palette.</div>
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It has substantially more colors than one shown as an example in the Google material Design Guide. This is the first major tweaking of colors.</div>
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The gpl gimp file for it has not been created yet. If you do create one send me the gist link to my email listed on my github pages:</div>
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<a href="http://shareme.github.io/">GH-pages</a></div>
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So that I can properly point to your created gpl files in my gist.</div>
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As far as a gimp formatted UI-UX kit, its being created at the moment by choosing the best UI kit and completing the gimp conversions(ie converting to xcf and keeping the embedded rgb profiles). Should be sometime in December when I post the full UI kit including the gpl gimp files.</div>
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Remember folks, Google in its Material Design Guide directly states their Hues-And-Accent color matching and monochromatic matching. BUT, they also imply indirectly the other two possible color matching styles as forms of branding. One is choosing the color matching that fits the branding needs of the android app you are designing.</div>
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Not every branding case will match up with Google Vibrant or Monochromatic or the other color matching styles. Its your job as the android app designer to determine which color matching style best servers your client's branding needs.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-79972402918508833982016-11-21T15:32:00.003-06:002016-11-21T15:32:57.995-06:00Silicon ValleyWakeUP CallTrump getting elected sent a very loud call to Silicon Valley to wake up to the effects of both tech disruption through job loss and income equality. And yet if you look at the Democratic message lately they still have not got the message.<br />
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Look SV VCs, if you do not solve job loss through tech disruption and income equality dumb voters will solve it for by voting you out..what part of that message is not clear to you?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-1835361794696746192016-11-19T10:41:00.002-06:002016-11-19T10:41:51.157-06:00Does Minimal Design fit in Google Material Design?Yes, in-fact it does as if you read the color area of Google Material Design it states you can use monochromatic color schemes. Than the accent color becomes the action color for user actions.<br />
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Your flash of brand color comes at the beginning in the app intro onboarding.<br />
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You will find that app users appreciate the negative space focus on content and app features.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-88420637088844667472016-11-17T17:25:00.000-06:002016-11-17T17:25:53.125-06:00Counter to Minimalism<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/the-rise-of-minimalism-in-app-design-91524d3fdf4b#.7xencolm7">Rise of Minimalism</a><br />
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The article highlights a point that with brands adopting minimalism a competing app gets lost in that one cannot differentiate between the two apps.<br />
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The answer may be slight slivers of color and other adornments that do not take up much space but are just enough to differentiate.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-85336817774924992782016-11-16T15:43:00.000-06:002016-11-16T15:43:06.738-06:00CheatSheets-AndroidSort of pivoting the android dev books in that seeing if doing cheatsheets first on subjects like activities, fragments, etc helps me better tease the book while helping me see the over-all picture that I have to write about in the chapters of the dev books.<br />
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Naming of the cheatsheets is up for grabs..it wil be SomeNameCribs probably.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-15954149040665350152016-11-14T16:17:00.001-06:002016-11-14T16:17:44.133-06:00Lead A/BSo since A/B testing is so good on app onboarding and other UX issues its about time I test in my lead gathering. So the next few days testing some LinkedIN invite texts to see which has the greatest impact among VC and Angel investors.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-87820280232027745712016-11-12T11:40:00.002-06:002016-11-12T11:40:54.523-06:00UX-ProgressI am on the final parts of the first release of the BlueButterfly UX library set. That specifically means that some new UX elements and app demo videos coming out and some medium articles.<br />
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As the videos are produced gif them and finish overhauling my gh-apges site.<br />
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The challenge is where are the UX mobile app gig leads. I know where they are not and that is all the freelance platforms online. So the idea is to push out marketing blurbs via linkedin invites of interesting VCs, reddit forhire posts, HN posts,medium articles, a linkedin article or two, etc.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-6465277059016904262016-11-10T16:18:00.002-06:002016-11-10T16:18:49.148-06:00UX-Lib-OrganizingNow, I am the stage of re-organizing the UX-libs. The reasoning is that the ones integrated with back-porting I only have to use for the next 36-months. Thus, I want to be able to quickly refactor them to not have the Carbon integration but instead us AppCompat.<br />
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The good news is found a new plugin FreeLine which does speed up gradle builds so that means I can go with having the UxLib package have 25+ modules without major time wasting during builds. It also means I have less of need to track how much methods I am using ie the 65k method limit.<br />
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I am ending up having a core Uxlib composed of Carbon, Materialize, and MaterialValues and my added full real color material design palette. Than every other UX lib is inits own module.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-5231735336129077542016-11-09T13:12:00.001-06:002016-11-09T13:12:16.966-06:00Programmer Meal AppSo I have always wondered about lifestyle apps, those apps someone creates that pay that person's lifestyle with somewhat minimal upkeep of the app. I think I will try a cooking app.<br />
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What I mean by cooking app is that the recipes are in database form so that the app can calculate and generate a grocery list when you tell it your weekly meal plan based on the recipes in the app. Not a billion or million downloads but it should be nough downloads and in-app purchases to help pay for something.<br />
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Programmers are somewhat bad at cooking and that bad technique than bleeds into poor diet habits and other unhealthy stuff. If the meal app covvered just some basics in cooking with some flexible meal recipes that might just be the right thing to put out there.<br />
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And I have to do this creatively as I do need UX app demos out there for my own marketing purposes. So I can do a Programmers unhealthy Meal App first somewhat as a joke and not worry that someone is copying it, thus it protects my real app and real trademark with that app as than its hidden by obfuscation as its not that unhealthy meal app.<br />
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I still need an app name, even if its a UX demo...<br />
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GeekSnacky<br />
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The challenge part is the portion conversions of the ingredients so that I can have the app compute the grocery list based off of the users defined weekly meal plan.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-13882436517751282432016-11-07T14:54:00.002-06:002016-11-07T14:54:24.047-06:00Elevate-Ripple, etcDrawables and Layouts can only go so far as far as back-porting. Evidently, to get full dynamic changing elevation like on the raised buttons I will have to use Carbon and than port the other cleaned up UX libs to Carbon. Oh what fun..Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-17065922037235103842016-11-05T12:40:00.000-05:002016-11-05T12:40:47.763-05:00WebSite-RevampIn my quest to define myself as designer-developer I think I should bring the Google Material Design message further to the front in my website. Here is what it looks like now:<br />
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<a href="http://shareme.github.io/">MySite</a><br />
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Not bad, but I think I should have my UX App demos on the first page in the form of say one or two best ones.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-82510501248409476232016-11-03T15:31:00.002-05:002016-11-03T15:31:46.224-05:00UX Challenges; Photo AlbumsGuess what one of the biggest UX challenges on mobile is? Getting a designer or developer to realize that on mobile that a photo album cannot be implemented the same way as one does it on web for desktops.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16004411151928050.post-54542806996454541932016-11-02T13:34:00.003-05:002016-11-02T13:34:35.225-05:00Adoptable Storage-Your Apps on SDCardThose buying new Android Devices should know that some OEMs limit Adoptable Storage..Moto and HTc do not..Samsung and LG do..The reddit thread explaining things is <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/496sn3/lets_clear_up_the_confusion_regarding_storage_in/">here</a>.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03138729233812657779noreply@blogger.com0