Progress Report - Success Finally!

I have finally finished coding up my application. It does not meet the grandiose desires I had at the beginning of the term but let's face it, that was a lot for one person to want to accomplish in 10 short weeks without knowing Objective-C. My application does have a nifty application icon and splash screen, don't blink as it goes by, that I am pleased with. Once the application gets started it displays a table with a list of choices for calendars to display. Users can click on the calendar they wish to view and it will open a mobile version of the specified calendar in the safari browser. This step is were I find my biggest disappointment in the app I have created. When I chose to scale down my ideas I had every intention of displaying everything in the app but after weeks of struggling I gave up and went this route. I do have some ideas of how I could possibly go back and get this working and think I will continue to pursue it at a later date.

Progress Report - Double Argh!

I am still struggling with this blankety, blank app. What I am trying to do does not seem like it should be rocket science but evidently I was wrong. I feel like I have made little progress since last week at least nothing that I can show and I am definitely feeling the pinch of the upcoming deadline. At least if I have not been pouring myself into this heart and soul for the last few weeks I could pass it off as being ill prepared or misjudging deadlines and the complexity of the task at hand but I have been working on this religiously night and day for weeks.

I do think that I jumped in too quickly and tried to forge ahead before I had spent enough time learning. I put out a call for help with my employee who works with coding regularly. She has never used x-code but has done a lot with C++, PHP and ASP so she forged into the coding with me with a warning that she may not be able to assist. After a bunch of talking through functions and testing various areas of my code we decided that it wasn't working but that I had found the right location for what I needed and just needed to figure out how to call the data into the function given the code I had written. I walked away from the experience feeling like I needed to understand more about Objective-C but with more comfort in monkeying around in the code to test components.

With all of this in mind I decided to take twenty steps back this week and make myself learn again. I purchased the Objective C videos from The Pragmatic Bookshelf and took detailed notes while I watched. This really helped me understand a lot more than I have previously and I am just starting to plug away again to get my code on track. I really think that one of my biggest problems thus far has been that I hate to throw away any progress I have made away in an effort to go back and rewrite code from scratch given my new knowledge.

So I am going to forge ahead yet again and take the next two days off from work so that I can hopefully accomplish something before it is due. Wish me luck!

Progress Update - Argh!

I feel like this project is a constant battle of one step forward and two back. I think a lot of my problems come from being tired and feeling the pressure of time lines. I was so thrilled with my progress last week that I began forging ahead into RSS programming only to find myself reworking code I had already written because I was too tired and somehow accidentally wiped out a couple of days worth of work that I could not get to work again even though I thought I was doing the same thing. After banging my head against the desk for three days I decided to leave the project alone for almost 24 hours and work on other neglected work. I believe this was very helpful, not only did I make headway on my project for my other class but when I returned to the coding I was thinking much clearer and was able to get my coding back to where I had been as of class time last week.

Working with the RSS feed has been another challenge. Although I have been able to successfully get an RSS feed running in an application on its own I have been unable to mesh it with the coding I have completed thus far. For me it is important to get the application running as I envision it so that it will function properly and easily for the end user. So I am still plugging away but feel like I am moving very slowly.

Progress Report - iPhone App Creation

I feel like I have immersed myself in x-code the past few weeks. The first book I purchased seemed relatively good but I was really struggling to get through it and was not seeing the connections that I needed to be making in order to create my app before the end of the semester. I found some great video at the Pragmatic Bookshelf for learning how to do iPhone programming and I think they have been the key to jump starting my progress. There are five videos in the "Writing you First iPhone Application" training set. The videos are a bit fast at times so I have to slow them down, pause them or out and out rerun certain sections to make sure I have the steps right. Since I chose to code along with the video using this process of pausing and rerunning certain sections of the video I would often introduce unintended errors which would then need to be debugged before my app would run as the one in the video does. This process, although tedious has been one of the most valuable learning opportunities because you can never learn code better than by debugging it. I have been through all but the final one thus far but feel comfortable beginning work on my app.

The past two evenings have been spent setting up the mainWindow.nib file and all the various functions in the appDelegate and ViewController files. When the application opens I now have a title bar and navigational listing of the different calendars I am going to offer on the calendar. Each of the items on the navigational listing only goes to a blank screen but that will be tonights project. I hope to begin placing the functions that access the RSS feeds associated with each calendar into the view. I have success modified and completed a previous tutorial that did this exact thing but have to figure out how to integrate that into the work I have done thus far so that I can control the way my app looks and processes. After that step is complete I will need to write the coding which will allow the user to delete calendars they do not what to use from their navigational menu.

Wish me luck tonight!

Steps in the Process: Interview with a Prospective End User

Now that I am starting to make some headway on my iPhone app coding (baby steps count) it is time to talk to a possible end user to see what his/her thoughts are about having an app for the college. It's always a good idea to conduct studies like this early on in the process to uncover what a user really wants or does not want before you begin coding and have to throw it away or start over again. I compiled a few questions and found a subject who was willing to participate. I felt that selecting someone who already had an iPhone or iPod touch would be helpful since they would already be comfortable with the device and understand its capabilities.

The Interview:
I have interjected my thoughts about the answers under each response.

Question 1.
If you could have an app on your iPhone or iPod touch about the university what would you like to have on it?

I would really like to have access to directory information (student, faculty/staff and departmental phone, email and address listings) as well as access to my email, PeopleSoft accounts, university stored file space. I would be nice to have one portal to access all of clarkson accounts in one spot.

My thoughts:
I had thought about adding an email link or functionality to the app at the beginning because George Mason's app had it on their when I did my initial review. I rejected the idea because I felt it unnecessary given that ability to pipe your email through the mail app itself. When questioned about this, my subject suggested that he would find it very functional to have all of his university interaction within one device.

Although this is now a consideration again I think it will be for a future version of the software and is currently beyond the capabilities that I have in the time I have to complete the project. I would have to do some serious exploration on security issues and interacting with the AD/ldap system that we use for authentication because I think just adding a link to access the email client with safari is pointless and less functional than just having be part of the mail app built into the device.

Question 2.
If you could download a university app that offered you access to the calendar on your mobile device would you like to see all the available options for calendars or would you like to be able to add and delete calendars based on your needs?

I would like to be able to add and delete based on my needs much like what I can currently do with the calendar version online.

My Thoughts:
I thought this might be a nice feature to have the other day when I discovered that there were functions that would allow such capabilities. I had not tied the functionality of this idea to the current capabilities of the online calendar though. It looks like I will have to continue to dig and figure out how to do this one.

Question 3.
Would you find a campus map of the university that offered additional information about buildings or landmarks useful?

It would be cool, specifically for incoming freshman.

I would really like it if it was interactive enough to help me find locations in building that are often hard to find. Some of the rooms in buildings on campus are numbered oddly and make it difficult to find my class. If I could click on buildings and view floor maps that would make it easier to find those hard to get to classrooms.

My Thoughts:
I had the same thoughts here. I think this would be the piest de resistance if I could pull it off. So far this has been much harder than I originally thought and I have been struggling through figuring out how to do it. I did find a ray of hope yesterday, The Pragmatic Bookshelf has some nice video tutorials that are only $5 a piece. I downloaded one on the mapkit and will see soon if it helps or not. I may end up tabling this until a future version as well.

Question 4.
Are you interested in news feeds from the university?

Not really. Some people would but they don't particularly interest me.

My Thoughts:
This didn't surprise me. I figured this will be a nice add to the app for content and some will like it and others won't care.

Question 5.
If an app had a few modules on it that did not meet your needs but one or two that did would you still use it?

Yes, I just wouldn't use the app portion that I didn't like.

It would be nice if I could move the modules around within the app to best suit my needs like I can do with the apps themselves. I would also like to be able to add links to some of my favorite university sites or others that I visit a lot.

My Thoughts:
I wanted to make sure having modules like the news or a campus map would not be a hindrance to users if the portion of the app didn't interest them. I'm glad to hear that it wouldn't matter. If it did I would have to consider making apps with a little more tailoring towards specific audiences. Moving modules around inside the app is a very interesting idea. I suppose it could be done since the main interface does it and I should be able to access any of the same functionality inside the app. The biggest hurdle to accomplishing this would be finding the functions to make it work. I think this is a bit beyond me at this moment but again would be something to consider later. If I could add the ability to delete a module this would also take care of the tailoring problem from question 5.

Question 6.
What are your favorite apps and why?

I use the mail and Safari most with the rest of my downloaded apps being games. I do have an app called RemotePad which is a touch pad for your desktop. It works as a mouse for your desktop. I like it because I got used to using the touch pad on my laptop and miss it on the desktop. With the wireless capability it allows me to use the controller anywhere without it taking up space on my desk.

My Thoughts:
I asked this just out of interest and to see if I could glean any information about how this user uses their mobile device. I figured through a better understanding of this I could tap into this need to make my app more useful.

In the interest of time and the difficulties that I have had getting started I am going to focus on creating the calendar module for now and if time permits I will move on to the map.

Digital Natives

I think that the first real generations of digital natives are just coming into being. Palfrey and Gasser talk about digital natives as those who were born in the 80s and grew up using computers throughout their formative years. Although this generation grew up when computers were beginning to become commonplace in homes they are only mildly on the cusp of what a digital lifestyle has and is becoming.

While I was reading Born Digital and particularly the chapter on digital dossiers I could not help but think about my children and how many digital documents must exist on them already. They are only 5, 4 and 19 months and I myself have already posted about them on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. My daughter's pre-K class has a web site and the teacher posts regular pictures of the kids doing activities for parents and family to see. We recently switched doctors and I noticed that the new office has digitized all of our previous physicians records and keeps everything digitally they do digitally rather than using pen and paper. I don't have a problem with these methods because I myself am comfortable in this environment but my children are unaware and out of control of the information that is being pushed into the world about them.

The text has really made me think about what I, myself post and how I present it. I'm not sure I will change what I am doing because I don't feel a few images are not that harmful but with sites like the wayback machine in existence my children are clearly living a life as a digital native whether they like it or not and have minimal control over the impression that others have of them based on this information.

Mobile Device Users: Different or the Same?

Do all mobile device users use their devices differently or the same?

The question is an easy one to answer, absolutely not. My husband and I both purchased our iPhones at the same time but we each have completely different uses for them. While I have an abundance of apps and am in a constant search for more to make my life easier he only has two or three beyond what came with his phone. He is quick to tell you that he loves his phone for the iTunes, he has roughly ten of his favorite songs in a playlist that he listens to constantly. He also uses it for the phone, address book and web browsing capabilities but that is about it. He asked me to upgrade his phone the other night and teach his how to use it and what it could do. When we got to the app store he had no idea what to look for. He didn't want to pay for anything and had no idea about what he would want to make his life easier. In the end he continues to happily use his phone that allows him to surf the net, make calls and play music.

I think we are a clear example of direct opposites when it comes to the use of the phone. I use mine for everything. If I could order an external keyboard for it I would problably spend as much time on it as I do my laptop.