Show HN: Evertracker - My First Real Side Project | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Evertracker - My First Real Side Project

blog.danielna.com

80 pointsdanielna23 comments

Any developer/entrepreneur who realizes the wisdom and accuracy of Don Rumsfeld's famous tongue-twister is on the right path:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

* [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know, we don't know.

Even more wise is realizing that it's ludicrous to most people!

And wisest yet is using it as a barometer to rule out ever listening to those people who find it ludicrous.

Don't feel bad about not creating a "profitable side-businesses after one marathon 48-hour coding session in a single weekend". I bet a lot of side projects posted to HN took much longer than 48 hours to complete even if the author claims it was all done in a weekend. You should be proud for having released anything at all. And kudos for being candid about the level of time, effort and perseverance that went into your project.

Great job on the app and the video. Looks like you took care to really make the process as simple as possible... that being said, tracking every minute of my day gives me anxiety.

Looks like a great app, but testflight says I can't install it on my iPhone 4S - is there any reason you're not supporting this device?

I'm not exactly sure about the technical details, but that "can't install on the device" notice is what everyone will see until they send us the email that requests access. The email automatically submits an iPhone-specific identifier that is used to install the application. I think this is what is usually required of testflight, but I could be wrong.
We're all on the 4S, so once we get the email we'll do our best to add you to the testflight list as soon as possible. Sorry for the confusion.
And we've heard from a lot of Android users, and we feel your pain! One of the developers on our project doesn't even own an iPhone so you have someone vouching for you on the inside. It's definitely on our list of to-dos.

Testflight doesn't really work like that - for any app not approved by Apple, you can only open it with your device if the UDID is registered in the build as a tester device.
What testflight does is take your device's UDID (when you register your device with tham ) and allow the developer to rebuild or insert your UDID into the build, and then you can install to your device.
There's still no way (with an unrooted device) to install an unapproved app without the UDID in the build - testflight just greases the path for that process.

As long as you have iOS 5 or later, you should be able to install it. To add to what Daniel said, once you get that error, your UDID (an identifier specific to your iPhone) will get sent via TestFlight to me. I will add your UDID to the distribution profile so that you will be able to access it (you should get a notification at this time). I hope you enjoy it, and since we are very actively developing it, any feedback would be useful for us. We encourage you to send an email to feedback@evertracker.com.

Great idea, and well presented. For those new-year's resolution type of folk, being in the habit of keeping track of your daily accomplishments goes a long way towards helping you fulfill your personal goals.
If you have success with this, I'm sure people would be excited to see updates that let one track units other than time and 'ones', such as calories and distance travelled.

That was a really enjoyable story about the process danielna. I don't have to know the first thing about your app to have learned something. Much better than barfing out "Here is my project vote for me."
So now I will check out your project and vote for it if it is the best ;)

I have loved this idea for years. I had wanted this same app when the iphone first came out.
However, it would be great if some of these activities can be triggered based on GPS location rather than clicking.
What about setting waypoints to track between. I set a waypoing GPS location for my home. Then I set one at the rain station near my house, then again near my job and finally at my job.
Measure commute times between all these points automatically.

Yeah, this feature has been requested a lot. And one person even commented on using NFC to have even finer control of automatic tracking. For example, having a NFC tag in your car detect when you get in and when you arrive and get out of your car. Tons of really cool ways to make this App even better.

I think NFC might not work too well, as the range is fairly small. So you may need to swipe your phone near it? But I am not sure.

Now this is the kind of stuff I love to see on HN!

There was an interesting collaborative working hack in there with using Dropbox for real time development with Xcode and two devs on different laptops (at least thats what I think they were doing).

Yup, you're correct. It worked well since there were only 2 of us and we were working and separate parts most of the time. Updates were always instantaneous and we always knew when someone was working on a file because we would get a notification as soon as they saved a change. Not the best setup, but it worked for us.

Nice article Dan! And thanks for including a picture of Mochi, he'll appreciate the celebrity status within the start-up community.

Great app! Something I planned to build long time ago... Great job guys!

Awesome work Dan. Excited to give this a try.

Awesome app and idea. very useful!

Awesome blog post Dan!

Great article!

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