Buddy Runner – Best Android Running App

I’m proud to announce that Buddy Runner was released!

Instead of investing in expensive sport watches, you can turn your mobile phone (currently Google Android) to one. Buddy Runner allows you to track your workout, while clearly providing statistical info and real-time voice feedback during the workout.
Go ahead and check my dashboard at http://www.buddyrunner.com/yossi.pik

Yep, this is what kept me busy in the last weeks and probably will keep me busy going forward as now there are real users (500 downloads in the first 12 hours) with feature requests and bugs to fix (not much).

So, if you have a G1 phone, go to Android Market and get yourself a buddy to run with.

keep following me at http://www.buddyrunner.com/yossi.pik

The 80/20 Rule

Following my previous statement ‘coding is fun’, I had some long coding hours which reminded me the complexity of developing a real product.

The first thing coming to mind is the 80/20 rule – it takes 20% of the time to complete 80% of the product but the remaining 20% take the rest 80% (there are several variations of this rule).
In practice, developing a cool demo is relatively easy. Many sources/samples are available on the web. The underline platforms do provide much of the basic functionality needed. Cutting corners is fine (actually it is a must). And it is clear who will click where and when.
But… converting it to a real product is a different story. Dealing with edge-cases, ensuring scalability to support many users, ensuring the architecture will be extendable in future releases, working on a pixel perfect UI and many other activities take much more time than the first quick-and-dirty demo.

So, is the statement ‘Coding is fun’ still correct? I would still say yes, mainly because of the satisfaction of creating something using your two hands (keyboard and a mouse).

The context of that is the initiative I’m working on – it is going to be shipped next week! As the first user to work with it I can ‘objectively’ say it’s a great product.
As the application monitors a run (among other things it does), it is challenging to test the scalability to deal with large data as you need to actually record the run. Therefore on last Saturday I ‘had’ to run 18km. Any volunteers for testing a marathon :-)