Saturday, June 14, 2008

Let’s have some fun today. And do an application that is just for kicks. I had a really hard time coming up with a Friday the 13th themed mobile application. I finally thought of one: The Pocket Death Calculator. Yeah, it’s a bit crazy, but it’s good not to take yourself too seriously. There are lots of these Death Clocks on the Internet, here’s a famous one: The Death Clock.

 

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Pocket Death Clock

This application is about how many lines of code you can write. It shows how a simple idea in a good looking package can really charm a lot of people. Most people enjoy a surprise, or something unexpected, something to break the day from being ordinary and routine. Sure you can write the next great mobile financial planner package, or you could write a quick “fun” app to put a smile on someone you know’s face.

The UI is really simple just a background image file, but it is a good looking background image file. And that is pretty much what is pulling off the application. I thought about putting glowing red eyes on a timer and having their visibility randomly change, but decided to leave it as an exercise for my readers. Try it you’ll be surprised how much it really sets off the application. And makes it stand out.

The death calculation engine is straight forward: we take the user’s age and gender and modify the average human life span appropriately. Then we subtract the users present age from their expected life span. Next we calculate the number of seconds in a year. We use our cryptographically strong random function to pick a random second in that year for the user to “die” on. Now we have our death date. It’s a simple matter to calculate the number of seconds the user has left. We put everything on the screen and update on a timer.

There you have it.

Possibilties:

Simple applications always have the best possibilities. We talked about adding glowing eyes. But you could also add random death quotes. You could also ask the user more questions and better guesstimate their death date. You could also “guesstimate” where and how they would die using data easily found on the Internet.

Always good to know you have less than a million seconds before you are going to die from a shark attack in Quebec. Plenty of time to pick up some shark repellent.

 

 

 

 

Download executable: pocketDeathClock.cab

Download Source Code: pocketDeathClock.zip

Feedback:

I think this is our first humorous application, not counting Mobile FX, what did you think of it? Would you like to see more of these types of applications, that are creative idea based, or more of the technically focused applications? I like to keep a good bit of variety to show all the possibilities, so I hope that is working for everyone.

If not, share your idea for tomorrows application.



Saturday, June 14, 2008 00:14:00 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [5]  |  Trackback
Sunday, April 13, 2008

imageI got to check out the city some today. I heard that it was supposed to be a nice warm sunny day, but I guess the sky had other plans for today, like rain, rain, and rain. :D

Pretty cool hotel, I at the Renaissance, right down the street from the convention center. One weird thing is there is a light switch that controls the power to my desk lamp, AND the router for my Internet. There another "light" switch by that one, but I haven't figured out what it is for yet.

I've been hoping for some big things to happen in Mobility and this year seems like a good year for some of them to take place. Hopefully, there will be some non-NDA announcements that I'll be able to share with everyone. If not, then there's always the weather ;)



Sunday, April 13, 2008 06:00:46 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [2]  |  Trackback
Monday, April 07, 2008

image Well, how cool is this, the Lower Alabama .NET User Group, or as I'd like to call them, the Mobile .NET User Group which of course is located in Mobile, Alabama.

And I thought we were cool with the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group, or as I like to call us, the PDA .NET User Group.

 

imagePeople like to ask, "What is a Pee Dee"? So, in case you been wondering, here's everything you ever wanted to know and more about what the Pee Dee is: Pee Dee - Wikipedia. Since we meet in Florence, SC a lot of people ask us what is Florence famous for? Without further delay: Florence, SC - Wikipedia.

One thing Florence County has is "one of the few instances of a dropping of a nuclear device on a civilian community in the United States and the only site where a civilian structure was destroyed." [see Mars Bluff - Wikipedia]



Monday, April 07, 2008 03:00:01 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Sunday, April 06, 2008
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Sunday, April 06, 2008 03:00:17 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Friday, April 04, 2008

Growing up I always loved Mad Magazine, and one of my favorite parts were all the Mad Fold-Ins, in the back of the magazine, that Al Jaffee created.

The New York Times has a special online article that has many interactive Mad Magazine Fold-Ins on topics ranging from Presidents, War and the Military, Pop Culture,  to Sports.

Fold-Ins, Past and Present - The New York Times

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Friday, April 04, 2008 03:00:39 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

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