We could have had a great time together.
Instead, you tried to sell me something.
Optimize for Happiness (Tom Preston-Werner of Github)
So I’m working on a new project that has been brewing in my mind for a while. I’m going to aim to have a working prototype by the end of August, have users beta testing through till December and hopefully have my first paying clients by next year.
What is it?
The App is called “OurSchoolDiary”. It lets each school create their own School Diary app, where students can sign up and keep track of their homework, assignments and tests. The big win over competing solutions is that here, when the teacher adds an assessment or task, it automatically shows up in the students diary. We’re helping even unorganised students stay on top of their work.
On top of that, we’ll let parents receive emails informing them of their child’s progress. This way parents and teachers can work together to make sure they support their child’s education as much as possible.
And the final advantage, the school gets to show off how cutting-edge they are because they get their own “app”. Logo and everything!
A Blog
As I go, I hope to keep track of my progress on this blog. (I’ll post to this category specifically, so you can subscribe by RSS).
Why keep a blog?
- For the history, in case it is ever significant
- For my own reflection and understanding, regardless of if it is a success.
- To show off some cool technologies I’m using:
- Web Apps – I’m not aiming for distribution through the App Store, I’m going a full HTML stack. Not even a hybrid using PhoneGap. This is a page you can view in a browser, and use offline, and the experience will be identical.
- Haxe – this is a sweet programming language that lets you target Flash, Javascript, PHP, Java, C#, C++ and a platform called Neko. Up until now it’s main success has been in the indie-games market, but I believe it is mature enough to work for a full web-based productivity app. Client and server. We’ll find out how that goes!
- To look back on my decision making processes after we’ve launched, and see if my thinking was accurate.
- To raise interest in the project
- To explore some of the topics I find fascinating:
- Usability
- Design
- New Marketing
- Business Strategy
- Contribution to the community
- And a few more…
That’s all for now. I’ll try submit a couple of posts a week (at least) until I get this thing off the ground.