What is it?
There is a lot of downtime when you are on paternity leave. So, I took the opportunity to learn a bit about mobile software development. I started with wanting to write for the iphone, but quickly found out that I needed an iphone and a mac to do it correctly. So I settled for the blackberry, since Reba and I both have one.
What I came up with is: mBabyTracker. Predictably, this is a silly mobile and internet application that tracks things for our newborn baby Isabel. Specifically, it tracks her awake time, sleeping, pooping and eating.
Here's how it works:
1. baby does something, in this case: poop.
2. Reba opens mBabyTracker on her blackberry, clicks “baby poops” and then “submit”.
3. mBabyTracker sends the information up to my server at www.mBabyTracker.com where it is stored in a database.
4. At any time she wants, she can go to www.mBabyTracker.com and view a historical chart that shows when Isa was awake, asleep, eating or pooping.
5. Notice the new little brown star!
How did I build it?
For the blackberry development I used the RIM Blackberry JDE and handset simulators, and Java. For the web server it’s good old Vbscript and T-SQL hosted by Gearhost, a nice cheap little hosting service I use. The reports are displayed in a cool flash based charting tool called Fusion Widgets. The whole thing was free, except for the hosting cost $20/month I was paying anyway, and the one time Blackberry cert registration, which was also $20.
Is this important?
NO! There are lots of baby tracking websites out there: www.trixietracker.com is a good one for example. I just thought it would be fun to learn how to write stuff for the blackberry and Reba was having a hard time remembering how the baby’s sleeping pattern has been.
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