Building a cell phone app

[djs13]

I'm interested in building a cell phone app and I was wondering if anyone on the fastlane has done something like this could help me.

My idea started like this: I was in Fort Lauderdale over spring break and me and my friends had a difficult time finding bars/clubs after we left the one we were at. When you're not from a specific area it's difficult to "bar hop." I thought how easy it would be if there was an app which outlined where I was and where the bars are located around me.

I'm envisioning a map that dictates where the user is, then pin points the surrounding bars/clubs. The user could click on a specific point (bar), read their hours, if its 18 or 21 and older, and possibly even what kind of drinks they offer or if there's a special.

I'm thinking about targeting the college market as well (not just metropolitan areas), and putting in a rating feature where users could scale different attributes of each bar.

I've been told an app like this shouldn't be too difficult to build. There isn't too much programming since I can use Google Maps or an alternative which is what the app will take up mostly.

My problem is I don't have much programming knowledge. Should I try to partner with a programmer to get this thing launched? I plan on doing all of the map modifications myself (finding the bars/clubs, listing their hours, etc) so the work would be split pretty evenly. Or should I try to outsource this? How much do you think it would come to?

Thank you for your help.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Likwid24]

Be careful what you mention on this forum or any forum. You don't know what kind of sneaky people are out there looking to steal ideas. I wouldn't think there would be too many fastlane members that would do anything sneaky, but I see that there are plenty of guests that check it out. I would try to be more vague. In my invention thread I post what I'm doing but never really say what it is exactly. Of course you can always do it bigger and better but what if the idea thief does it bigger and better.

 

[djs13]

Be careful what you mention on this forum or any forum. You don't know what kind of sneaky people are out there looking to steal ideas. I wouldn't think there would be too many fastlane members that would do anything sneaky, but I see that there are plenty of guests that check it out. I would try to be more vague. In my invention thread I post what I'm doing but never really say what it is exactly. Of course you can always do it bigger and better but what if the idea thief does it bigger and better.

Thanks for your input. I agree the fastlane community is pretty trustworthy, I guess I just figured it takes alot of motivation to build something and I don't think I could ever build a startup without truly feeling like I own that idea (not necessarily meaning it's completely original or hasn't been done before).

I'll make my post a little more vague, but if I need to repost the details in order to help answer my questions I will.

Thank you.

 

[mrhahn]

How technical are you? If you're not a programming-type, will you be able to read programming tutorials to learn? You'd have to see if it's something you can pick up on your own, otherwise team up with a programmer to develop your app. Even if an app seems simple, there are technical details that may not be apparent to you at the start.

If learning the native code of the mobile platforms seem daunting (iphone -> Objective C, Android/Blackberry -> Java) you can check out something like Ansca Corona, Appcelerator, or other "middleware" mobile frameworks. Basically you write your code in a scripting language, similar to javascript, then the middleware compiles it into native app code that runs on the mobile platform (iphone, blackberry, android). Also you have to make sure these frameworks contain the features that you need, as some do not take full advantage of the native code.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Neon]

Be careful what you mention on this forum or any forum. You don't know what kind of sneaky people are out there looking to steal ideas. I wouldn't think there would be too many fastlane members that would do anything sneaky, but I see that there are plenty of guests that check it out. I would try to be more vague. In my invention thread I post what I'm doing but never really say what it is exactly. Of course you can always do it bigger and better but what if the idea thief does it bigger and better.

Ideas are worthless; implementation is priceless.

 

[CEBenz]

Anyone else see an opportunity here that isn't mentioned?

 

[djs13]

Anyone else see an opportunity here that isn't mentioned?

Would you mind sharing?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[sharky]

You can already do what you're looking to do in google maps on your smartphone and/or iPad. I just did this last week while traveling, clicked on google maps, then clicked on find places, Bars, or Restaurants and it used the gps to show what was in the area. You can even click thru on the pinpoints to go to their websites which gives you all kind of info including menus, hours of operations, etc.

 

[Guest3722A]

So execute better than google. maybe set it up to where the restaurants/bars can download their daily/happy hour specials.

 

[CommonCents]

A great mobile app idea is letting patrons provide real time information for others. Allow users to upload pix of the crowds at bars/restaurants and give them a time stamp. That way when you are deciding which spot to go to next you can see how busy it is. Who wants to walk in to a dead place? and possibly pay cover? Would be simple and a value to users. Would feed on itself. Look at how 4square gives people some silly title (mayor or whatever) claim to fame for checking in to a spot and people will do it.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[CEBenz]

Would you mind sharing?

Maybe someone could come up with a WYSIWYG type app software. Might be an interesting engineering challenge.

That said, as soon as my 2 current projects are up, I may venture into learning about programming apps.

Anyone have suggestions for learning how to write apps if they have very little knowledge of code. I know enough html to be dangerous but can sort of decipher. PMs are ok to.

 

[mrhahn]

Maybe someone could come up with a WYSIWYG type app software. Might be an interesting engineering challenge.

Just do a google: Google has the App Inventor: About - App Inventor for Android and for iOS games there's GameSalad GameSalad - Game creation for everyone â„¢ - GameSalad

 

[djs13]

App Investor looked interesting, but according to its website:

Am I able to upload my app to the Android Market?

Currently there are technical limitations preventing an App Inventor app from being uploaded to the Android Market, but we are actively working to resolve this.

I feel like that's a pretty big limitation.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Darkside]

I'm interested in building a cell phone app and I was wondering if anyone on the fastlane has done something like this could help me.

My idea started like this: I was in Fort Lauderdale over spring break and me and my friends had a difficult time finding bars/clubs after we left the one we were at. When you're not from a specific area it's difficult to "bar hop." I thought how easy it would be if there was an app which outlined where I was and where the bars are located around me.

I'm envisioning a map that dictates where the user is, then pin points the surrounding bars/clubs. The user could click on a specific point (bar), read their hours, if its 18 or 21 and older, and possibly even what kind of drinks they offer or if there's a special.

I'm thinking about targeting the college market as well (not just metropolitan areas), and putting in a rating feature where users could scale different attributes of each bar.

I've been told an app like this shouldn't be too difficult to build. There isn't too much programming since I can use Google Maps or an alternative which is what the app will take up mostly.

My problem is I don't have much programming knowledge. Should I try to partner with a programmer to get this thing launched? I plan on doing all of the map modifications myself (finding the bars/clubs, listing their hours, etc) so the work would be split pretty evenly. Or should I try to outsource this? How much do you think it would come to?

Thank you for your help.

There are already apps out there that do this sort of stuff. A new one launches practically every week on TechCrunch. Location based phone apps are a heavily targeted sector right now. I would avoid getting into that if I were you, especially since you lack the technical knowledge to build such applications.

 

[Inphinity]

AppInventor is great in theory, but it's currently very limited, and not all that straight forward. It's great for doing the UI layout though, heh.

 

[mrhahn]

My fault, I didn't fully research App Inventor, I guess there is definitely a need for an easy to use app creator.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Inphinity]

The problem is the complexity in making a fully-capable WYSIWYG app designer tool.

As much as I've racked my brains over it, I can't see how you would make one that is as flexible and powerful as actually coding it. You would essentially just have pre-coded methods and classes that can be drag-and-dropped in with some parameters customisable. Great for basic apps and functionality, but there's going to be a point where you need to do some actual coding to go further.

Even with web design, WYSIWYG editors are still pretty rubbish, even though they've been commercially available for over a decade, and in some cases have had huge money poured in them (Dreamweaver, for example) - but to get around the above problems, they all include the ability to custom code.

And I can see a similar approach for an app designer. Things like the jMonkey engine and iOS SDK actually do a reasonable job of making the basic stuff, well, basic, though.

Appcelerator is pretty awesome, too.

 

[mrhahn]

Even with web design, WYSIWYG editors are still pretty rubbish, even though they've been commercially available for over a decade, and in some cases have had huge money poured in them (Dreamweaver, for example) - but to get around the above problems, they all include the ability to custom code.

Not to change topic, but this is a good example of a dam decent wysiwig editor: Make a homepage in minutes : Flavors.me. I guess it's more of a one-page editor, but just goes to show what could be done.

Anyways, I agree with you. It would be a difficult task to design an app builder. Basic apps could probably be built, but since apps can be so complex, something like Appcelerator may be the simplest form. I'd have to look into it some more.

 

[Inphinity]

Flavors.me is great - if you want a simple page to be an individual persons "home page" as such, with all your social networking and such stuff. But in terms of an actual site builder, it's useless. As far as I've ever found, it can't, for example, integrate with MySQL to do DB queries etc and return results.

No, things like Joomla, Drupal etc are getting close for a non-coding web page creation platform, but theres a way to go yet. Apps will get there, but it will take its own time, as web development has.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Guest3722A]

Where I'd start would be with using a powerpoint presentation so that your ideas are organized for the programmer and designer you're going to hire. (If you want to save $$ find someone who can design and program your idea.)

Use the presentation software like this when illustrating it to the contractor you've hired:

Here's what screen 1 should look like... when you push this button it goes to screen 2... this button takes you to screen 3.... etc.

Once your basic idea is down then you can look on the outsource sites to get some quotes and ask questions. When hiring a contractor(s) to do the job, you need to make sure that they will upload it for you to android or iPhone or wherever, otherwise, there are services out there that will do this for you. The trick here is to have them download it from your computer, so they'll need to take over your system during this process. You DO NOT want them to do it through their computer because from what I understand, they can end up owning it.

Depending on the complexity of your app, you may be looking between a couple hundred to a couple thousand $$ for the contractors to do all the work and some will warranty their work for future bugs.

 

[NHS]

A great mobile app idea is letting patrons provide real time information for others. Allow users to upload pix of the crowds at bars/restaurants and give them a time stamp. That way when you are deciding which spot to go to next you can see how busy it is. Who wants to walk in to a dead place? and possibly pay cover? Would be simple and a value to users. Would feed on itself. Look at how 4square gives people some silly title (mayor or whatever) claim to fame for checking in to a spot and people will do it.

Thats exactly how I would do it. Setup a website and an app synced together. Your phone gives your position and pops up any of the happening spots that night. Promoters can use it, owners can use it, customers can give real time feedback.

Also you can put those weird barcode things in the clubs and it takes them to the site and the app to download.

My brother is still learning to build apps. We have a few ideas but might be another year before we start building stuff.

 

[healthstatus]

I guess there is definitely a need for an easy to use app creator.

No there isn't, this is a barrier to entry, you either have to code it yourself or be capable of specification writing and hiring. There are already enough crap applications out there without having to put up with a bunch of poorly designed and buggy, tinker toy apps.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[mrhahn]

No there isn't, this is a barrier to entry, you either have to code it yourself or be capable of specification writing and hiring. There are already enough crap applications out there without having to put up with a bunch of poorly designed and buggy, tinker toy apps.

I agree there's a bunch of crap out there, but that wasn't my point. An app creator tool could bring in good revenue. How poorly designed someone makes their app isn't my problem lol.

 

[djs13]

I agree there's a bunch of crap out there, but that wasn't my point. An app creator tool could bring in good revenue. How poorly designed someone makes their app isn't my problem lol.

Exactly. In fact, the more crappy apps made = the more successful this type of startup would be.

 

[Inphinity]

Exactly. In fact, the more crappy apps made = the more successful this type of startup would be.

Maybe we can call them Crapps.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Gonzosan]

Maybe someone could come up with a WYSIWYG type app software. Might be an interesting engineering challenge.

That said, as soon as my 2 current projects are up, I may venture into learning about programming apps.

Anyone have suggestions for learning how to write apps if they have very little knowledge of code. I know enough html to be dangerous but can sort of decipher. PMs are ok to.

I always thought about this too, I've been wanting to get into building Apps myself although realized that the "premade" programs out there (like Google's Android program) are very limited and not user friendly at that. Personally I'm learning programming on my own, as far as Apps go, I don't know of any, but I'm learning how to us Unity3d to make some games in the future. I'm sure you can use it to build an app, although it's kind of like using Photoshop to resize a picture. None the less I don't know of anything taht's a WYSIWYG type editor. I know I want to create a few programs like that, for different things, these days everyone wants to create something might as well cash in.