#appcademy

[akanshmurthy]

w9d1

WEEK 9??! Wow, time flies when you’re coding...

Today, I continued to work on my final project. After fixing a few bugs this weekend, I focused my time on finishing out the design of my profile page only to realize that the design of the model was questionable and that I would need to rethink it. After rethinking it for a while and coming up with a more modular design, I spent a few hours trying to make in-line editable entries in the profile page only to realize that the external library I was using was messing up some of my earlier code/libraries... Then, I made a decision to have the profile page keep a similar post structure to my home page and things seemed to work out. I extended my search functionality to choose the first item found if the user hits enter or clicks the submit button and I incorporated the new posts on my profile page as part of the search corpus. Phew- what a long and hard day. 

I’m looking forward to getting all my functionality right and my bugs cleared during this week. 

[appademic]

Sep. 11 - Week 6, Day 4

Ever wondered how a website allows you to hover over an image and display a zoomed in box beside it? Or how websites allow for smooth slideshows? Well, that's what we learned how to do today, and it was pretty cool to see ways to transform our HTML.

We started out writing a simple tab system. There were multiple links, and when you click one, it would change the content of the tab, fading between the previous content and the new content. Pretty simple to accomplish, but still cool.

After that, we create an image carousel--click an arrow to the left or right to browse through images, kind of like Facebook or a slideshow. This proved to be a little harder than the previous, with some cleverness required to make sure the images transistioned smoothly, and looked nice.

The next thing to do today ws a plugin for a thumbnail system. The idea was that there were 5 visible thumbnails, and 1 visible actual sized image. Clicking a thumbnail would change the active image, and you could navigate the thumbnail display to different thumbnails. This part proved to be a little trickier than thought, and took some debugging to solve. The core concept that was used to solve the problem was that we needed to store the current thumbnail and active image index, along with the offset to the thumbnail position. The end result was a nice looking image carousel, which we tested using album covers.

Finally, the last task was the zoomable image plugin. This one proved to be a difficult with various things interferring With displaying the focus target box, for example. A lot of time was spent trying to debug it, but at the end of the day, it was finished.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the power of jQuery and the relative ease of adding functionality to objects through plugins.

[mangatar]

Mangatar launches the new Dengen Chronicles app exclusive to Windows Phone

We are very proud to announce the release of the first mobile version of Dengen Chronicles exclusively for Windows Phone users.

As you may recall, we had a great experience in AppCademy last year, enjoying the intensive training with world-class coaches from Nokia and Microsoft. We learned a lot and we came back to Italy with a strong commitment to developing an amazing Dengen app for the Windows Phone Store. Learning and experimenting are huge parts of our startup path and we have consciously worked, in order to be true to our ambitions.

We are sure that the new game mechanics will make the difference: the smart integration of NFC and movement sensors will offer users a special gameplay, winking at mobile consoles.

Dengen Chronicles on Windows Phone Store 

Press Kit

Press Release ENG

Press Release ITA

[kramkr]

When the cat's away, the mice will play. Nah, but I’m sure a little bit sad not to be around #appcademy right now.

But I will return and life goes on. I think not being there for a time is also a very good test for the team. Let’s see how that goes.

[kramkr]

You know our team is supposed to do some coding for the @appcampus this weekend. But in our team we liked the Idea of the Startup Weekend very much. It is basically a chance to apply what we learned so far in the first week of #Appcademy and now apply that to another project.

I’m like really happy that we had a great Idea yesterday and that it was a success. So what we basically do this weekend is to create a startup in less than 3 days.

So as I’m not a developer I cover the business plan and the marketing. For our team we found 1 more software developer and also 2 more designers.

So for this weekend you should join my other Tumblr as well and see what’s going on there. I bet you will like it!

http://run4yourlifegame.tumblr.com/

[kramkr]

For those who wondered how @appcampus actually looks like: Wonder no more watch the video.

I made this video the last days really early, that’s why it is so empty. I think it doesn’t really get the vibe of that place. Actually it is even hard to explain, you really have to be there to understand. All this people from around the world with creative ideas and all in the same process of making it reality.

Today on day 4 we first had a session where we talked about the business canvas from Steve Blank. We talked about it quite detailed. Obviously everybody could buy the book, which is probably a good idea for somebody who wants to found a startup, but the real value of the session are the additions and the experience of the coaches. Also the feedback of the other team can be very good.

Later the day we had like a 2,5 hour session with two coaches looking into the design of our app. And again it becomes clear how valuable an early feedback is for a startup project. On the whole each team is equipped with a framework which will be useful not only for the current project, but for every project in future.

[kramkr]

Today at #appcademy we are supposed to imagine our key customers.

But with a complete different approach. Because when you think of a startup you always ask yourself what are my customers. Bit in the lesson today we take, that a little bit further.

Our task is to do a collage on which we imagine a customer. But it had to be a “real” person. So we had to came up with a complete story about their live.

So in our case we have the 16yr old student John Dorian, his 37 year teacher Barbara Streusand. And other players are the principal Skinner and the politician Quimby.

All teams were provided with a loit of magazines and enough white space.

You might think that is a pretty silly way of thinking about your customers. There were even teams who didn’t join, bur I already took alot out of it. Although it is a imagery person you really start to see some thinks you didn’t take into account earlier.

Later this day we had to find out about our own identity. Which was also very intresting. But I think I will do another post for that part in the future but not now.

[kramkr]

Well done is better than well said.

It is really true and the day today made that clear again. A Startup is not only about well saying it is also about doing. But before you actually can do something you have to be clear what you want to do and for that it is very important to know what you actually want to do.

Today @Appcampus was a lot about getting clear what your App is about. The session of this day where hold by Michiel Maandag and Risto Tattari.

One the one hand they gave us a good framework which we had to apply to our projects. And one thing became clear very quickly: Concentrate on the core features of your app. So now after the actual session we will go to the whiteboard and have to go through our apps. And then we will watch the new Xbox reveal, but that is a different story.

By the way the quote was by Benjamin Franklin. Oh and by the way if you want to learn more about Michiel visit his website.