Posts Tagged “android”
I’m sure you’ve seen them around: those big, inviting launch pages that sites use to gather leads before a public launch. If you haven’t, check out Fab.com for a nice example, or take a peek at Launch Effect, one of the more popular WordPress solutions available.
In the next few weeks, we’re planning to launch AndroidHire. We’ve already got the site online, with a heavily customized theme, and handful of users actively managing job listings. The problem: we wanted to lock everything down to any non-members (while still leaving the main site intact for existing users). Looking around, I saw a handful of plugins (like Maintenance Mode) or full-on themes (like Launch Effect), but I wanted something lighter. Just a simple way to pick off logged out traffic and redirect them to a nice signup page.
The solution proved to be even easier than I imagined, so much so that I figured a blog post was in order. To sort out the guests, simply drop something like this into the very top of your theme’s header.php:
[php]
<?php if ( ! is_user_logged_in() AND ! is_page(‘Launch’)) {
header("Location: http://androidhire.com/launch");
exit(); } ?>
[/php]
The first line is a conditional with two statements. First, it checks if the user logged in. If they are not, they are redirected to my “Launch” page. Second, it checks if you’re already on the “Launch” page, simply to avoid a redirect loop.
Of course, if your data is highly sensitive, you might want to take some further steps, like disabling RSS feeds or locking down (or moving) the /wp-admin folder. This is just a quick and easy way to create a new landing page without affecting the rest of your active site.
The launch page I made is just a simple signup form that ties to Mailchimp. I’ve got two options, one for job seekers and one for job posters. Upon launch, I’ll email out to both lists and hopefully pull some extra attention from an eager crowd.
This post probably needs needs a preface, so bear with me. A while back, I picked up the domain buildsapps.com (don’t bother checking it, it’s long since expired). The plan was to have weekly or monthly local meetups with a small team of like-minded designers and developers with the goal of building and releasing ‘real’ Android apps. I even had a subdomain (austin.buildsapps.com) set up and ready to go but we couldn’t ever seem to get the project rolling.
Because I’m a nerd who lives mainly on ideas, I can’t seem to let this one go. Every few days I’ll have a random app idea or concept pop into my head, none of which I have any time or skills to build. So I’m bringing my ideas to the internet in the hopes that someone out there might be in search of an idea.
This is the first post in my build this app series. All the ideas I share here are free for the taking. I just wanted a place to discuss my app idea and designs and maybe collect a little feedback. The whole purpose of the original group was the sharpen our skillset, after all.
The idea: an SMS client with a ‘stream’ interface
After years with smartphone SMS apps and their fully threaded messages, I’d like to return to a simpler ‘stream’ style list of messages, something more like Twitter or like SMS functionality of the feature phone days.
I think when using a threaded view it’s harder to put the messages into context with each other. With the current solution (default Android SMS or GO SMS), once you’re in Taylor’s thread, it’s really easy to see when Taylor messaged me and in what order, but that doesn’t help me know if his invite came in before or after the one from Anthony. I’d much rather see my messages in a single stream.
When I log into my email inbox, I don’t see a list of contacts first, with their respective emails filed under each- why would I want that for my SMS messages?
Another thing I’d love for this app to do is enable gravatars (or Twitter avatars) so I don’t have to worry about setting contact images for everyone in my phone book. If I’ve got their email address or twitter handle saved as part of their contact info, look up a current image for me!
I’m sure there are some SMS apps that offer this sort of view, but as far as I know there isn’t one that makes it the primary focus. Someone told me GO SMS Pro has an ‘inbox’ feature, letting you see all messages in one stream. I tried it out for a few days, but the execution left a bit to be desired. I think if a dev took this ‘stream’ style as a primary focus there would be a real audience for the resulting app.
So what now?
I don’t know. I hope that someone builds an app like this. I made a few full-res screens to get the ball rolling. One is the default stream screen. The other is an inline reply. If you want the PSDs, I’ve got those too. They were made in a hurry and probably aren’t very organized, but feel free to use whatever you find inside.
If you want to talk about this concept, leave a comment. I’ll try to reply and maybe work some new ideas into the files. Or leave me an idea for a future app mockup. I’m going to try to keep making them for fun and to sharpen my skills. Feel free to play along.
So today I had planned on casually making a post about our upcoming SXSW party, but in the one day since announcing it, the event has completely sold out and already has a wait list in the hundreds. I hadn’t quite expected this.
I mean, I knew Android (and our site) was gaining momentum, but to sell 500 tickets in a matter of hours really blew me away. Maybe I shouldn’t be so suprised, last week we saw Google I/O sell out in under an hour, and those tickets were hundreds of dollars (and likely come with multiple free devices, haha).
I’m even more happy we were able to land Lustre Pearl, they are one of my favorite hangouts in Austin. Also, on the same night, we good friend @toddbarnard is hosting an Activity Streams meetup just down the street. Can you say block party?
We’re still landing sponsors for the party, but already on board are a handful of awesome folks. We’ve got Samsung, NVIDIA, and Netshelter fully supporting the team and should have a handful of fun announcements heading towards the event. We’ll also free food and drinks all night (food trucks on the premises!), anyone that makes it out that night is in for a real treat.
I’ll see you guys there.
If you’re an Android nerd like me, you probably caught the big news today. Google invited some press (my brother was there) to come to the Googleplex for the deep dive into Honeycomb. Amongst the barrage of goodies announced there, my favorite was likely the long-awaited release of the new Android Market.
Bringing the Android Market to the web is something we’ve all been clamoring for for some time now. You can view it now at http://market.android.com. Once you’re there, you can browse the entire catalog of the Market, see ratings, reviews, screenshots, etc. Once you login, you’ll be able to directly install packages to your phone- no waiting, no wires.
My first install today, right after I clicked the button, I realized my phone was in the other room. I ran in to grab it but by the time I got there the install was already complete. I’d missed it but I was still content. This new Market experience is going to be awesome. Say goodbye to shoddy market replacements!
On that note, I think the design of the web market is pretty solid. The layout is a little sparse but it’s a nice break from all the crammed and advertisement packed market replacements we’ve been used to. Many thanks from my eyes to the designers at Google for the whitespace.
On top of the default functionality, I spent the day building a userscript the scrapes some key data data of the app detail pages. Once installed, a textarea is inserted at the top of any details page (and only the details page) that is rendered with the full shortcode needed to create an embed on the Android and Me site. I think it’s going to make a huge world of difference for our authors and I’m SO GLAD the new Market is coded so cleanly. It made scraping the fields a breeze!
Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a longer post and maybe even a video about the userscript, this was just a short exercise to fulfill my daily blogging challenge.
I don’t blog about it much here but my brother Taylor and I run Android and Me, an online news source and community dedicated to Google Android. Today, we are leaving on the Android Road Trip, a 2600mi round trip from Austin, TX to San Diego, CA. We are going to attend the Motodev Summit and the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment Expo. I wrote a much longer and more interesting summary of the trip and how to follow our progress over on Android and Me, so go read about it there: Android Road Trip: Saturday We Ride.
