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Feb
24

2016 State of the Union

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Business
CLIENTS, CREW MEMBERS, FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND FELLOW AMERICANS: WELCOME TO LUNARLINCOLN’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS (2016 edition).

If year one was a quiet tiny team of two, and year two was a crazy rollercoaster of growth, year three was a lot of figuring out the finer points of business and moving onward and upward. What comes after the giant hurdles? The answer is hundreds of tiny hurdles. (And overcoming those tiny hurdles is surprisingly painful – similar to stomping on Lego’s in the dark – who knew?). But now that we’ve stomped all those hurdles and arrived here at 2017, I have to admit looking around that we did a pretty awesome job. We built so many new things this year, in so many different areas. We got smarter, we got stronger, and we even made a teeny bit of money in the process.

 

But I digress, let’s get down to our favorite thing every. single. year. The Work!

The Work

We added several new and diverse clients: Bkon, Camping with Dogs, GoNoodle, HealthHere, Lasso, TReAD Lab, Pacecoach, Oak Hill School, Revl, Subpac, Synchronous Health, Tandum, and VDCI …whew I think that’s it. (Totally didn’t realize it was this many clients, holy crap you guys!)

With these guys (and gals) we got to work on all sorts of new things:

  • ResearchKit apps (tap for that dopamine..keep tapping…keep tapping)
  • Conversational Bots (hello Karla)
  • iBeacons and the Physical Web (beer + beacons!)
  • Customizable characters (my favorite is the cheeto fingers one)
  • Video streaming (Peanut Butter in a Cup loudly for the whole office while testing)
  • Instagram puppies (who have adventures in the great outdoors)
  • Designing naked medical bodies
  • Interfaces for running to your favorite jamz (personal running tune preference: Weird Al)
  • Ticketing, Tune Controls, and Tracking your Videos
  • Making doctor’s visits pleasant (and efficient!)

Some have shipped and are available for your pocket computer right now. Some were featured and reached #1 app in Apple’s App Store. Some were used at events with tens of thousands of attendees. Some helped people do their jobs better than ever before. Some help you get out there and get moving.  Some are still in progress. Some we haven’t even mentioned above because they are too cool and top secret to be hinted at as of yet. We’ve added many of them to our Work page with greater detail, along with our amazing clients saying amazing things about yours truly. Check it out!

The Team

You can’t do the work without the team, and we’ve assembled a stellar team….I would almost say they are rockstar developers…but I won’t because that terminology is stupid. They’re really, really good. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

This year, we had our first interns (MLK class of 15) and we welcomed Cory Wilhite to the crew. There were many Friday lunches, a single ice cream truck quest (found it after weeks of hearing it!), several arguments over code abstraction, and as always: general hijinks.

 

The Community

We wouldn’t be here without the love and support of the Nashville community, be it developer or mobile dev aficionados. This year we put our money where our mouth was and sponsored several events. Some of which we spoke at and some of which we merely cheerleaded from the audience. Each of these events and groups are great examples of creativity and innovation that is flourishing in Nashville.

  • DevFest Nashville
    • Intro to Android
    • Native versus Hybrid Development
  • MTSU ACM
  • Global Game Jam
  • Creative Mornings
  • Startup Southerner
  • Nashville Mobile Developer Usergroup Cagematch
  • Nashville Cocoaheads
    • Thinking Functionally in Swift
    • An Apple a Day: Developing HealthKit Apps
    • Continuous Deployment for iOS

The Future

So what’s next? Definitely more of the same and hopefully more of better things.  In the meantime we’ll keep building, keep coding, keep working with the community, and we’ll keep checking back with you as the year progresses.

Here’s to LunarLincoln in 2017!

Love and gratitude,

Jennifer, Wiley, Travis, Patrick, and Cory

 

 


Feb
29

Solving Hard Software Development Problems

  • Posted By : Travis Smith/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Coding

One luxury we as programmers often take for granted is the vast wealth of others’ experiences available for perusal at our fingertips.  Rarely do we encounter a software development problem so challenging that Google and StackOverflow cannot offer assistance. However, when working with cutting edge technology, these elusive obstacles arise more frequently and I’ve dealt with my fair share of them here at LunarLincoln.

While there is no steadfast problem-solving algorithm, most code artisans (I’m hoping this name sticks) will first consult the web.  More often than not, the hunt ends here.  An experienced developer will know the specific keywords that will help narrow the search for the solution to their problem.

giphy-2

But what if you encounter a problem that nobody knows how to solve?
Worse, what if nobody else has ever tried to do what you’re doing?

This is where we have to break out the big guns. Let’s use an example.

When I worked on Compass, I was tasked with figuring out how to stop it from draining the user’s battery so much.  At the time I hopped on the issue, Compass was tracking location data, motion data, HealthKit data, calendar events, photos, weather and more.  All the time.  Yikes.

compassiconintegrations1

Unsurprisingly, most phones didn’t react well to this kind of stress, and the largest complaint we got from testers was the drain it had on their phones.

Since everybody knows that premature optimization is the root of all evil, I had lots of avenues of attack.  The first matter of business was to figure out the biggest culprits.  Using Apple’s Instruments program, I was able to run the app and observe the battery usage levels as well as find out which parts of the app were consuming most of the CPU cycles.  As it turns out, recording a user’s location was creating huge spikes in battery consumption.  Knuckles cracked and fingers wiggling, I was ready to take a stab at it.

Adventure Time Deer

The first thing I did was dig into the current implementation to see how it worked.  The app was always tracking location, even in the background, with the highest quality accuracy.  And that’s great for results, but bad for battery.  Fortunately, I had a place to start looking for a solution.  Todd had a pull request ready which he said improved battery life but was ruining the accuracy of the location data.  His idea was to use geofencing.  He would wait until a user stopped moving, disable the GPS, and activate a geofence around the user.  When a user had moved a significant distance, the geofence would trigger, and the app would resume high accuracy tracking until the user stopped moving again.

I thought that was a brilliant solution, but as I researched all my options for tracking location, I learned it wasn’t going to work as we wanted.  Geofencing just didn’t offer enough precision.

giphy

The location logger app

The location logger app

The second solution was the phone’s motion coprocessor.

We were already tracking the user’s activity state, and I opted to hijack this information to determine when to activate and deactivate the GPS.  When a user is stationary, turn off the GPS.  Otherwise, crank it up.

Now I needed to create the algorithm to make this happen.  To iterate on the fine details of algorithm, I created a really small, ugly, but highly functional app that tracked my location and let me plug in my actual activity state (to make sure the motion coprocessor was accurate).  I would walk and drive around the neighborhood to test its accuracy while measuring its battery consumption. (Ben even went on runs to test the running measurement, and may or may not have eaten it on a piece of random construction material. Sorry Ben!)

The location accuracy visualizer app

The location accuracy visualizer app

When the tests were done, I would export the data and compare the location data to the route I actually took.  I created another tester app just to map the travel lines.  Using this, I could see whether my algorithm was precise enough to meet our needs.

In the end, I was able to create massive gains in battery performance without any noticeable hit to location accuracy.  Of course, the app still needs a lot of battery, but my models showed that multiple more hours of idle use could be seen, especially when stationary.

This form of rapid prototyping helped immensely in crafting a solution to this open-ended problem.

Surely this wasn’t the only way to solve this problem, nor is this guaranteed to be the best solution.  But one of my favorite ways to tackle a problem is to build myself some proper tools.

 

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – (Probably not) Abraham Lincoln


Jul
20

Better, Stronger, Faster

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Coding

“Gentleman, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability. We can make it better than it was. Better, stronger, faster.”

Please excuse my take on the Six Million Dollar Man quote but it’s true. With more minds, more space, and better tools we’re really excited for all that we can build in 2015…and beyooooooond (wait, that one is Toy Story).

SixMillionDollarManGIF

For our clients we can now build more, faster. We have a greater breadth of experience with our five developers to better serve niche specialties.  More developers also equals more manhours or wo-manhours available. Is your startup blowing up (in a good way?) – yes we can double our scope this week and yes someone on our team has unique insights into the code you need built.

On the internal side we can now devote more time to infrastructure (build servers, client information portals, moar expert-dev blogging). We now also have time to build detailed processes for the many, many things that revolve around building apps that aren’t just development – like marketing, QA testing, user testing, prototyping, and launch plans.

Come test drive our improvements yourself. Work with us to make the future of mobile development better – one Six Million Dollar Project at a time.

 


Sep
15

Its getting crowded in here, you guys

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Uncategorized

These blog posts are no longer getting written and posted on the weekend, y’all! In addition to LunarLincoln adding their very own minion, we’ve added the Lincoln part of LunarLincoln full-time.

Things that get more awesome with Wiley + Jenn (+Travis) full time?

  • In-house UI/UX design
  • In-house design and usability consulting
  • Post-app launch marketing advice
  • Web development (don’t you want a nice app website, to go with that nice app?)
  • QA testing
  • Even more blogging and twittering (and more gifs)
  • More company-built products
  • Admin tasks at lightning speed (and you get an invoice, and you, and you, and you)

Doesn’t this sound nice? I think so too.

ps. I’m really excited to do this full-time.

happy


Jan
10

The. End.

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : App Advice, Business, CaseCollage

You’ve had the idea. You’ve built the app. You’ve marketed the hell out of it. You’ve seen results. You’ve made updates and improvements.

But now what?

Are you done? Close the lid, package it up, never look at it again? You could. For CaseCollage, this app did achieve what we set out to do. We got widespread exposure. We got to practice the whole app launch process from start to finish on an app that wasn’t really “our baby”. We learned more about working processes and how to run more efficiently in the future.

CaseCollage definitely has more we could do. In fact we have pages of “future plans”: Refining UI to add a copy/paste element, implementing in-app printing and delivery with third-party companies, additional templates for other hole-designed cases or case company partnership. But all of this requires significant additional time commitment. And we all know time=money. Whether its time for client work or time for new ideas – the current rate of income for this app doesn’t work out for future CaseCollage development.

It is hard for many to decide when is your app finished. It isn’t always as simple as profits. There are a lot of questions to weigh: Is the app something you are passionate about? Is it something that could see leaps and bounds of improvement with some updates? Is there a dedicated user base and room for growth? What about your current user base? Do you want to leave them in the lurch for future OS updates? If we had deeper, more complex answers to some of these questions, maybe we would pause and devote some more hours to the project. But, as stated above, it did what we wanted, and we’re happy with the final results (and app).

We aren’t completely shuttering CaseCollage and never looking at it again. Rest assured, I will still be coddling my instagram audience with daily/weekly new designs, and providing basic customer service (for the millionth time, please print “fit to page” do not print a screen shot, no shit, that isn’t going to be sized right). It is just time to devote the majority of our brain power to new exciting endeavors.

Just like the Internet and their goldfish attention span, we have one as well.


If you’re late to this rodeo, you may not know, we built an app and wanted to share some of the details. You can find related articles below:
Part 1: The Ah-Ha Moment And What Comes After – The idea for the CaseCollage app

Part 2: Building an App in 2 Weeks – App development process, Wiley’s analytical take

Part 3: Roller Coaster App Store Review – App store submission hurdles

Part 4: Becoming “Internet-Famous” – Prepping for launch and app marketing 101

Part 5: Squashing the Bugs and App Maintenance – When things invariably go wrong

Part 6: A+ Work: Analytics and Ad Tracking – What are all these chart thingys?

Part 7: The. End. – The lifecycle of an app


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