Earlier this month, I started messing around with Android app development, and for a two-week period, that was basically all I did in my free time. I’m glad to say that I am quite over that obsession (at least for a period now). In the end, I churned out 3 apps, VIVA Next Bus, Gas Up Eh? which is an Android front end to my gas site, and Twitter Followers which is a home screen widget that displays how many Twitter followers a user has.

Each app served an educational purpose, the VIVA app was my “Hello World”, the gas app allowed me to experiment with UI layout, and the Twitter widget taught me how to write widgets. Maybe I’ll combine all my experience into a more complex app in the future, but first I’d need a good idea to hit me.

I thought the Twitter widget was a promising idea. It could serve a (world-)wide audience, unlike my other two apps; and for some reason, no one had thought about writing something like that before! I toyed with the idea of making it a pay app – primarily because there is no way to put ads onto a widget – but in the end decided to make it free. Although I think it is a novel idea, I don’t think there is a barrier of entry that would prevent a competitor from writing a free version and killing my market. Plus, I’m not writing apps to try and make a few bucks on the side (and it would probably be only a few bucks!).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: android, appdev, ideas, twitter