Walk With You has been one of the most exciting projects I have ever worked on. In this post, we would be going through the journey of it, understand how it all started and where are we so far with this amazing adventure.
This Journey started with a very simple idea, an idea to help everyone stay fit and network, socialize while doing the same! We all have been to that situation where we would like to go out, walk and talk to someone on the topics which interests us. While it sounds like a very easy, just call a friend and go out, but it does not really work all the time. Sometimes these walks are very unplanned, for example:
Going to the nearest groceries store
Walking your way towards the office (If you are fortunate enough to live nearby!)
Coming back from work
A random evening walk to feel the nature
A walk with your pet?
All of these can be unplanned and we don’t mostly have a partner with us on all of these walks. That’s what acted as an origin for this app!
Find a walking partner
We created an app which can find potential walker around you and matches them with your preferences, these preferences can include your average steps, the language you prefer to talk in and even your profession to make sure we are sparking up some really amazing conversations! The app helped find there walk partners, give you the location to meet and provide you with an option to chat and communicate even after completion of the walking session.
Solo Walks
Now the next big jump in our journey was to have the support for people who did not found a partner! Maybe there is no one around or you just want to explore the world alone while listening to some nice music. Having these walks tracked on a map had a huge potential so build one additional feature called “Solo walk” to cover these scenarios. Not only these “Solo Walks” provided a way to track your walks but also provided a little motivation to complete your daily goals in terms of the number of steps!
Health tracking
Till now we had understood that apart from walks there was a need of the Health element to be available in our app and we decided to roll it out as a new feature! Our app was now able to track the number of steps taken by the user by integrating with Google Fit, Apple Health Kit and FitBit! The data taken from these devices were synced with our servers to give a customized goal for your health. Our aim was to help users track there steps and improve it further by completing the goals shared by the app customized according to your walk pattern.
Groups feature
This worked fairly well! Having easy access to your steps and motivation to complete the goal helped drive health awareness to the next level! But we wanted to take it to the next level and that’s where the Group feature was introduced! With Groups we allowed users to create a group of family members, friends or colleagues and track the steps for the whole group together! Group can have a customized goal, and every member of the group can see how everyone is doing in the group. We can see who completed the goal, who has taken the most steps and who needs some more motivation to reach the goal.
Activity Insights
By this time we had enough data from the users to provide them with some more analytical advice and that’s where our new Analytics tab comes in the picture!
All these features grouped together gave us a strong foundation to not only track our walks, find new walking partner’s but also track health of our family members. We are continuously working on improving the app further and including features like notifications with your goals written and opinion to invite friends directly in a group even when they don’t have the app installed!
While we have done a lot there are many more things planned and coming soon to all of our Walk With You users. But at the same time, we would love to hear your feedback and the features you are most interested in!
Interested?
Loved what we have built so far? Want to give it a try? Download it now using the link below:
Hello friends, at the time of learning the android app development we all make many small apps and this app the Morse Chat is one of my complete app that I have created while learning the basics of Android development.
I can surely say any intermediate Android developer can make the exact app in just like an hour but at the start of learning the development process, it’s one of the biggest milestones that I achieved at that time. So today in this post I am actually gonna discuss why and how this app actually got developed. Well for starters in Android Development you would be able to learn a lot and for those who are like “ That’s all? I can make it in just an hour” Can actually understand and correlate the mindset of the development process which we all go through while developing the android app or seriously while developing anything on our own.
Development of everything starts with mostly two reasons only :
You Got a Project or work to make that app for someone.
You just make it because you think its needed or may be because you need it there.
For me, this app the Morse Chat came to existence from the second reason, believe me for every starter that’s the only feasible option as they can’t really imagine getting a project from someone else!
I was just watching some movie and there a saw an intelligent scientist who was kidnapped sends a message for help by using the tap sounds. Well, I got totally screwed up and wanted to know how he managed to do so and even if he does how are others able to understand it. I did few searches and came to know that he has used the Morse Code for that.
So what’s next? I wanted to be like him and I started learning the Morse code!! But after wasting like 3 days I realized that it’s not something that I should waste my time on it just looks good in movies! But still out of excitement I started writing my social media status in Morse code! It just felt exciting that nobody can understand what it is and if they are even a little smart they can try to get the meaning of the message back. It was like sending a message for smart peoples only!! But writing the Morse code was a boring work! And decoding it back was even worse!!
Then I tried searching for translators and found many available online but guess what I wanted it offline and as an app. From this point my mind got a stuck can I make this make app??? Why not? All it takes is just simple logic and I was already learning the android app development at that time. So I went on. I used every knowledge that the tutorials has given me and made seriously too simple layout (Best I can make at that time). You can have a look here …
Then after that next target was logic. I had a path in my head:
1. Take the input
2. Loop through it,
3. Replace every character,
4. Handle space in some way,
5. Finally, do both code and decode via the same interface!
Wow , now at that time this was huge as even taking and showing the input back felt like a victory at those times but with above steps I started did many google searches learned and applied a lot and finally completed the app.
You know what was the best part of it?
I actually completed the app! You can be the biggest developer and write hardest of the world’s logic but if you can’t finish the whole app (even in buggy form) you will not get that feeling of being a developer!Because that finishing would give you a sense of confidence , it will work as a proof for yourself that YES you can and you have completed many apps.
So? What are you waiting for? Are you a beginner too? Just try and complete this app just now!! It’s the simplest you can get and fastest you can make. Just start downloading the app from play store below
After downloading open it and try to understand how it works, then start a new android project and just make a copy of this project! Once you are done you will know you can and you will because you know how to complete it isn’t it?
Today we are going to brainstorm the Idea of a simple phone call reminder app! From last few months am finding my self struggling to remember and call my relatives and friends on time. Job and other works are taking so much troll on my life that I was not able to catch up with my near and dear. And that’s what gave me the Idea regarding this App!
What is this aim of this App?
The main objective of the app would be to help me remember that I need to call my friends and family members. Well this seems to be a fairly easy task and even a reminder set in the calendar should be able to do the same isn’t it? And I completely agree with your point, at the same time, I do believe there are few missing bits which we can add as a feature on top of the reminders to make this app the Ideal one for helping us remember our friends and family members
What features are we looking for?
As we are still in the discovery phase nothing is defined now, at the same time, I do have some Idea’s on what can make this app even more awesome!
Remind us when to call our friends or relatives
Maybe we can add some notes after the call to help us get some context on what we discussed last time 😅
Smartly suggest whom to call today
While we are still far from the actual design these few points can help us drive the design and the structure of the ap further!
What tools/resources would we use?
Every development work requires some tools or resources to complete the project. At the current stage I can only think of these many resources:
Android Studio (I may experiment with flutter a bit but I have better grip with Java and Android Studio!)
Real Android Device (I don’t really like emulators)
Firebase for Storage and network calls
Few libraries which currently am unaware of 😅
Conclusion
While am very excited about this project but am also aware of how lazy and distracted I can be😁! So we don’t have any timelines set, I will keep working on this project and add the details in here do let me know in the comments if you have any further Idea’s or features in your mind for this app or (to add distraction) any other app!
There are many situations in our Life where things look wrong. Maybe we are not able to achieve our goals or maybe even worst you just don’t know what you are doing with your life. When we start accepting our failures as the path of life, everything becomes pointless. The goal of life gets limited only to living while we are missing out a major part of enjoyment in our life and everything becomes dull.
I have seen many people underestimating them self, thinking they are good for nothing, the world will have no effect if they suddenly vanish from it someday. I will not say I have never gone though these same thoughts ever in my life. I have seen myself the question about the mere purpose of my existence, cursing myself for the steps that never had dares to take. But now when I see it, everything makes sense, there surely can be a bad time but it will soon float away like clouds. When people say they are useless and there is nothing that they can do in there life I feel surprised! I feel surprised at the fact that they are not able to visualise the power I can see inside them. All of these people are cursing them self fro there failure even without thinking maybe that failure was to make them understand the correct way? Maybe all you have done till now was just an exercise so that you can do amazing at something else?
Counting your own potential by comparing your self with others is just misleading and can never show you your true potential!
You need to open up your mind and see what you are because all I can see is a Awesome person!
So what is the solution for this?
Solution to this problem is as simple as it can be. You don’t need other approval to count your potential, you don’t need a degree to mark your talent and you need is Unbreakable Confidence and Believe on your self that you can, only you can do it!
I agree things might not have worked out great last time, at the same time, you never had that confidence in yourself that it will? Isn’t it so? Once you start believing in yourself you have already won 80% of the challenge! You just need to find your true passion to apply this confidence on. How will you find your passion? To start with anything you love doing even a little bit is your passion! You might not be crazy for it, but still doing it even for a few minutes if provides with a satisfaction, that’s your passion!
Am not saying leave your current dull job in search of passion all am saying is find your passion in whatever you do and add your belief in your self to be succesful in life.
Once you have your belief in your favor nothing is impossible! It’s not about being successful in life it’s about being happy and the faith and trust on ourself provide this happiness. At the end, if you are happy all of your efforts are at correct place.
Summary
First I thought I should add some real-life example of how believing in them selfs changes life many individuals. But then I dropped that Idea to create this dull post you know why? Because my aim was to show you what your beliefe can do instead of what some of our real-life superheroes have done! And am sure if you even have a little trust on your self you can do it! You can do whatever you want to do in your life.
Multiplayer games are fun! Not only that they add up to the challenge, playing against a real human being is always a special feeling. Like everyone else I also loved to play Multiplayer games which in turn motivated me to build Realtime Multiplayer Games. If I will be honest I don’t really know much about multiplayer games yet, at the same time, I can promise you by the end of this journey you and I will have one production ready Real-time Multiplayer Game launched on the Playstore! (I am a bit Android Fan!)
NOTE: This is not a Tutorial (Even if it seems like so)!
I would only be sharing what I did what worked, what did not worked and code snippet of what I wrote as well, however, it would be done with an assumption if you knowing what you are doing! If you think I skipped something, that's probably because I thought its something you should already be aware about.
Why Google Play powered Real-time Games?
There are many useful services for creating Multiplayer games but the one I selected is by using Google Play services. The obvious reason for this choice is complete control over how I implement it and ya it’s free (Who does not like free?). The possibility of not requiring a server which will handle the game looked amazing to me! The users would be able to play games by sending data directly to each other, which is way more faster (complex as well) and scallable as no servers are envolved.
Prerequisite
To continue with on this journey of building our first Real-time multiplayer game in Unity3d you will need:
Unity3d Game Development Tool
we are going to use Unity to make the Game so you surely need it!
Some experience with Unity3d Game Development
By experience I mean you should know where to find what! And ya you should be comfortable with adding your own logic and moving the objects around.
Google Play Service Licence
We would be launching the game there and we will need it to setup Multiplayer as well! Don’t have it yet? Grab it now it’s just 25$ one time fee.
Good to go?
Planning the Game!
Before we move forward and start the Unity Editor it’s very important to understand what do we really want to make? Multiplayer for sure! But what kind of multiplayer game? Let me tell you what I have in my mind! I would be building a simple 3d Real-time multiplayer Tank game! You might ask why tanks the simplest answer is they are simple (they don’t really jump! Do they?), we can restrict them a lot to make things even simpler (like only allowing them to move in 4 direction!) and finally they can shoot and kill each other! (Multiplayer is no fun until we start shooting each other!)
In next part (This page already look’s long to me 🤕) we would be discussing the basic setup needed for multiplayer games. (Make sure you have your google play services account ready by then!) Believe me it’s going to be super crazy! Lots of multiplayer concepts and things that will go wrong once we start! So get ready and let’s again in the next part! (In Progress)
