Friday 22 October 2010

Android Business Application Mashup.

Mobile applications are an increasing theme at work where our SAP customers have lots of Data and Logic in there ERP systems that they want to make available to their employees on the road. The new smart phones are a great user experience platform for displaying and doing simple interaction with this data.

I did a quick example application for a service technician that mixes data from the ERP system with the functionality of the phone. This was so much fun and quick to program once I got the hang of the Android platform. My company even did a video of it which has come out great.



I am tempted to do an IMCA application but I can not think of anything that would be useful. Maybe a measurement form, regatta manager, boat info lookup.. however it seams better to do this stuff in a web application which will then run on all devices. I started this with the mobile news and blogs page. The stats say that 7.24% of the visitors are mobile devices but the mobile page only get 1.50% of the views. I would be interested to know what you users think of this? Are you interested in more Mobile initiatives or is the site OK as it is?

7 comments:

Fred said...

Hi Doug,
I am done with the mobile device (other than using it as an emergency phone). Last bill (Silvaplana included) was about 780 € for one month only. Nearly a new sail.
Keep up the good work and have a wing in the pipeline.

Doug Culnane said...

OK thanks Fred, that is the kind of real world feeback i was looking for.

Looks like you need to turn off roaming data, especially in Switzerland.

Wingo is a really interesting development and idea. Maybe I have a project for next winter.

foiltown said...

I didn't realise there was a mobile version can it be set up to divert mobile users directly to the mobile. Or at least a more obvious link.

Doug Culnane said...

I have built a redirect on the first page:
http://www.moth-saiing.org

iPhone and Android devices should get sent to the mobile version.

I hope it works.

Doug

n4rkla said...

Android moth specific GPS App?

Performance logging/analysis
Upload tracks/data to IMCA site

Probably a tonne more options I can't think of.

Unknown said...

Hi Doug - very interesting reading your Moth blog, is it possible that I can email you direct re a project that I'm working on - kitesurf foilboard. I know there are many Moth overlaps but I am not entirely certain if what I have in mind will function. Just looking for the opp of discussing some ideas - chris@otgeuro.com. Thanks and have a great day.

Doug Culnane said...

There are a few sport tracker applications which would do the GPS stuff if you are brave enough to take your phone on the boat. Reprogramming one of these just for the Moth seams like a lot of work and a bit of an niche thing.

Uploading tracks to the website and replaying races we had at the Euros but it does not work on my Linux / Firefox computer so I do not know if it is any good. This would also be a lot of work and so it becomes a bit more than a quick fun thing to program. Maybe this would be a good commercial idea to build up a sailor database with results and race tracks...

Thanks for all the feedback it really helps to get some responses to stuff as it is not always easy to understand the user experience without it.