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Weekly Check-In (2021 Week 3 - All welcome!)

Hello everyone,

Seems that we all are busy and as usually I'm a bit late in adding my own reply. But there's no post to reply to. :)

However I do think it is worthwhile to keep going what was started by @Janice.
Here's the weekly check-in post (I will add my reply later today)

  1. How did you fare last week?
  2. What's on deck for this week?
  3. What's your goal for the month?
  4. [Optional] Brief description of project with link (if applicable)
  1. 3
    1. Good progress last week in balancing things with day-job and side-project. UI and UX improvements that make the project feel more uniform across the pages/settings/features.

    2. I continue the work to make all the screens feel like one app rather than multiple experiments tied together (which is what it was)

    3. Goal for the month is to have a finalized decisions on using different bootstrap components across the site.

    My goal early on in the new year is to hit a rhythm / fixed schedule of getting small tasks done every day -- even if that is just a copy-change or writing another test.

    So far so good. Since Christmas there have been updates 5x week.

    I am building a bookmark manager for teams in public: https://www.curabase.com

    1. 2

      Looking great. I especially like it that your description talks about a drag and drop interface for reordering the bookmarks. As that was immediately one of the things I wondered about.

      One remark.
      Just under the "Create your first page" button, it says "no signup required!".
      Also wondering if it wouldn't be better to have a button that says "Start organizing your bookmarks" or something along those lines.

      After clicking that button, I am basically stopped, because now I do have to sign up... Uhmm..

      1. 1

        LOL. You are absolutely right about the "no signup" and now "signup" -- I changed the user flow without updating the copy. SIlly me.

        Fixed, and thank you so much for the feedback.

    2. 1

      That's how to do it! Keep up the good work

  2. 2

    How did you fare last week?
    Sadly I have not had much time for Vimalin. I did some troubleshooting for issues reported by users.
    In both cases the main culprit was hardware failure (yet again). For the first report it might be possible that the user can work around it by making a change to his virtual machine. So that's what I suggested.
    In the other report.. I suggested to test the hard disk..

    For the rest it was a week of paperwork (VAT accounting is a pain) and consulting.
    The consulting bit is good as it helps a lot.

    What's on deck for this week?
    Dig into some reported issues with vimarun. Had a few new users find some issues with Vimarun not working well for them.
    One is a race condition and the other one is some sort of loop that's happening.

    Goal for the month?
    Keep on growing the sales for Vimalin and fix a few issues with vimarun.

    Brief description
    Vimarun - run VMware Virtual Machines automatically.
    Vimalin - automated Virtual Machine backups for VMware Fusion, Workstation and Player.

  3. 2

    Having a great week! Started the new job on Monday and I'm still onboarding, etc. Did a lot over the weekend and also working a side contract project which I need to finish ASAP.

    However, I have been able to find some time to knock out some more items on Announcr as I march towards the release line. A few hours a day is working out nicely.

    [Last Week]

    • Created a standalone API POST call to send any message to any Announcr device (if allowed)
    • Added filter tags to users and locations so people can find their needles in the haystacks, and steer clear of hearing things which would not make them smile (use case.. political!)
    • Added a bad word replacement filter and user/location based profanity filter setting. Will replace curse words with things like "Bunny, Rainbow" etc
    • Created an Active/Passing Mode toggle switch to enable that mode
    • Created an autoresponder functionality so a user can auto-send messages to locations they pass. Will expand this functionality later on to include a set of messages/sounds for more novelty
    • Made a more efficient file generation utility to make sure I'm not repeating a Polly sound file generation for the same exact voice and text message. Huge reduction in AWS costs and CPU time
    • Streamlined my data field names in return JSON data for a 60% reduction in data transfer!
    • Added a nice full-screen text edit utility for any desired input field the way FB does it
    • Created generic OK/Cancel/Yes/No modals for alert purposes
    • Created "Update the GPS Coords" function and UI
    • Completed passing trigger timeouts and resets, made them persistent in the DB per user
    • Fixed the FB Login
    • Created a working iOS build
    • Fixed a nasty problem with timestamps
    • Updated Action list UI for a cleaner sleeker look
    • Added voice selection for a Speak action
    • Created Windows build of the Announcr Speaker app
    • Created Register Device functionality for a remote control interface for devices without keyboards (used to add devices to locations)
    • Added a Do Not Disturb mode

    [This Week]

    • Create the Arrived staggered time trigger
    • Create the Exited time trigger
    • Show some kind of user id and location id so people can add each other directly
    • Stretch goal: add a history screen so you can see recent triggers and events and replay an audio payload

    [Goal for Month]
    Landing page and early signups for "Talking Houses" by Announcr
    Landing page and early signups for "Audio Notifications" by Announcr

    [Description]
    Announcr is a location-based audio notification platform. Trigger various actions depending on user locations. Play sounds, make API calls, etc. New Landing Page

    1. 1

      Love it.

      There's no stopping you. Announcr is on a steady path to release and it looks like that it is going to be a great release!

      1. 1

        The challenge as always is going to be hitting the mark(et). The problem definition/pain point isn't obvious, and it could be nothing more than a novelty with wide potential utility. So I will need to cover some ground in getting the word out about that utility. The big leap last week was in making it more ACCESSIBLE! So someone can download and try it out faster ;)

        My son threw a monkey wrench into my plans last night too by saying "you know what would be cool Dad, is if I was driving and heard a message from a house I was passing and could respond on the spot and say a custom message back without typing it, because people driving won't want to type" which means crossing all the way back over into voice assistant territory again. I can't deny his logic though.

        1. 1

          The logic certainly makes sense.
          Doesn't mean that it has to be in version 1.0 though.

          1. 1

            Yeah, I'm definitely going to punt on that!

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