Releasing an App in 2014

After reading some articles and trends and forecasts for the shape of app development in 2014 it can be quite daunting to think all your work could result in minimal success - financially that is. Forbes had average lifetime income last year at about 6k per developer. Obviously with that the Median would probably be a more meaningful value to consider.

Of course if you're building something for yourself you still have the functionality you wanted and hopefully learned some new tricks when developing for Android.

In any case even if the market may start to reach its peak this year I am still aiming to release at least 3 Android titles this year and I'll detail what I've learnt from the process.

Good luck to other aspiring developers

In 5: New Logo and functionality

Today the Logo is ready to go into the app and onto the Facebook page.

It's been changed and hopefully marks the time for the app to be put up to the test and submitted to the Play Store.

The Logo is the first point of contact with the user and is also the first clue to whether your App is good or not.
I don't believe that the Logo has the power to get users to click it more so than its ability to NOT deter potential interest to click the app.

In any case when designing a new app, or any product for that matter, it is worth your time considering the logo and the branding of your app. It's the first piece of marketing.

In 5 - ready for prime time.

Android development: Next App

It's been quite a while since SarioDev released 10 - Up.  Unfortunately no updates nor its coming to Android or iOS is being announced at this stage. I've decided instead to begin developing my next app and it will be on the Android platform. The name:

In 5

"Wearables" tech for 2014

Now here is one wearable I am definitely interested in it wouldn't be my first after entering into the category - more on that later.
Working mostly on computers all day it is very hard to maintain a good posture (although I've never really had one). Getting a friend to remind you, trying to get pillows to help and many other solutions are all good and can help, possibly. But in reality all you have to do is stand up straight - and do it all the time.

The struggle for me was always consistency, the friendly reminder is rendered useless after a short while. Hence comes in trying to aid the situation during sleep with back pillows, problem is once you're asleep it might as well go out the window. Perhaps there's some simple but effective techniques out there that have worked for others that I'm not aware of?

In any case this piece if tech could solve my problem and could quite possibly be my second item in the wearables category, the first being my Samsung Galaxy Gear watch - which I'm quite happy with. I'll be sure to review that next along with some brief highlight of its use with the note 3.

2014 - A big year

As the new year begins so does my intention to expand the content of this blog. It has been reiterated in the new description of the blog, now titled "Life and Tech by a Sario".

So with that being said, 2014 is going to be a big year for me and for many others I presume. For myself, it is an important year of planning, preparation and development to put myself in the best position possible in the year 2015. Now that may seem relatively far ahead in the future, but a couple of important milestones will be coming up during that time. - My Wedding and of course moving in with my Wife to be.

That leads to a few focus goals over the year which includes Organizing and Planning the wedding as well as continuing to improve as a Computer Systems Engineer. Other interests will also have some goals such as more App Development - expanding to iOS and improving in Android whilst finding time to make the first update to 10-Up on the Windows Store. Improving my personal fitness and adding approximately 10kg to my current weight.
Videography - producing and directing as more work opportunities arise and also learning 3D animation with Blender. 

Now that is actually quite a fair bit due to the fact that my focus will be as a Control Systems Engineer where my career will require improving in many other areas including Logic Design, Network design and security, overall system design and of course knowledge and skills in Engineering Practice.

Of course, it does help that a lot of these areas have small to large transferable skills depending on how you look at them but they exist nonetheless. To help me this year I have prepared a few plans and guidelines for the year in the format shown. I will review and update this weekly to keep me on the ball.



In any case, welcome to the new year of 2014 and good luck to all trying to achieve their own plans this year! Please feel free to share what your goal success secrets are!

Engaged

On September of this year I got engaged. It was a big surprise and I had the event recorded. I finally got time to put it all together and here it is !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLDO5kBn19s

Tweaking

It has been about 5 weeks since 10-Up was listed in the Windows Store and now it's time to start the tweaking process. I recently read a blog from successful app developers, reminding me that I should be tweaking my app often. These tweaks aren't particularly major app updates with new features, but can also be changes to keywords, descriptions, screenshots and more.

With that said, this will be a part of my regular process to try and keep the app up-to-date. Not being able to dedicate full-time like hours to the app, it is difficult to keep up with the competition. These small tweaks will be important to keep up in some way.
So the focus is to TWEAK.