Virtually Shocking

Valentine’s Day

Originally uploaded by marb75

It’s not Valentine’s Day, but that’s the title of the picture. Happy Friday everyone, and happy 4th of July (Independence Day) to my American readers!

I posted my first for-pay app to the Android Market yesterday. It’s something I wrote because I couldn’t find anything like it. It’s very simple, and the point of it is to simply track one’s spending within weekly and monthly budgets.

I have tracked, using a spreadsheet, my disposable income for at least five years. I used to take out my weekly budget in cash every week, but now I work at home and so most of my spending is online via credit cards. I wanted something that would let me track how much of my budget I had left and tell me how long I had to stretch that money.

My first thought was to produce some sort of thin, credit-card-sized device that would do it, but I realized that would be too time consuming and expensive. Instead, I wrote this simple Android app. After all, I pretty much have my phone with me at all times, so I’d never be far from entering my expenditures.

I hope that there are people out there that have a similar need and are willing to pay $1 to have that need met. The first 24 hours have not been promising, but in the end I have an app that I like, and I guess if people eventually try it and decide they like it as well, it’ll be a little extra spending cash for me.

I made a simple site for the app: SpendingCash

Would this sort of thing interest you? Why or why not? Do you think it’s worth $1?

It is available on the Android Market and the Google Code project page.

Improvements include louder bell sounds, automatic volume maximization, smarter handling of the onscreen keyboard and the text input fields. I also improved the icons in the app to meet the Android guidelines.

Just uploaded, you can download the APK here. I think I’m going to release this one on the Android Market as well.

I fixed an outstanding screen rotation bug, made it so that vibrate mode applies to both the bell and the ringtone, and upgraded to the Android 1.5 (Cupcake) API.

littlelove

Originally uploaded by Victor M. Martínez

I don’t think the artist intended this, but the spiral in this abstract heart made me think of re-entry (one type of arrhythmia). Happy Friday everyone!