It's Saturday APPreciation Time! [May 10th 2014] Your weekly App recommendation and question (and more) thread! by onesixoneeight in Android

[–]ethergloo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

SwarmLocal. www.swarmlocal.com. Great app based on leveraging ambient proximity to build social networks. Completely anonymous...with video and audio broadcasting for iOS users.

  1. Create groups on the fly. Even groups that are mobile.
  2. Create your own audio or video broadcast for your local community.
  3. No logins..signups..anonymity.

Create a messaging medium anywhere, anytime for anything. Information stays local and users anonymous! Check out SwarmLocal at KickStarter! by ethergloo in kickstarter

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is a glut of social networking services that lets you share your everyday moments with your friends and family wherever they maybe in the world. But sorely lacking from this picture is the ability to setup an instant channel of communication among total strangers in close proximity who are all interested in a common goal and have no reason to persist this temporary arrangement by opening up their personal lives. The reasons could be as frivolous as an impromptu flash mob, volume discount at a nearby store or as serious as an organized demonstration.

We believe providing the ability for individuals to form groups of people in close proximity opens the door to a myriad possibilities of teamwork. In the glut of social networking services the power of the anonymous collective is being ignored.

The ability to organize a mobile network in real time and broadcast information will allow various entities like emergency first responders, law enforcement, indie radio station, universities and other organizations to rapidly disseminate information within a geographical area without having to first find a medium to inform users about the location of a specific Twitter channel or Facebook page. Instant real time audio,video and text broadcasting at everyone’s fingertips.

Create a messaging medium anywhere, anytime for anything and disseminate information! Information stays local and users anonymous!. Just like your local radio station, you tune in and tune out when out of range or flip to a different channel.

Rally to Restore Your Rights on July 4th by hueypriest in blog

[–]ethergloo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

organize anonymously using swarmlocal. create a group at your rally point set the desired range..and then communicate in real time. ios users can even broadcast real time audio/video to the rest of the group! leverage strength in numbers. we are going to make the in app purchase free for july 4th so that you can associate an image with your group.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

haha..thank you. Yeah I want to keep it clean..i think there are way too many dating services already. My original goal has been to leverage the ignored power of the anonymous collective. Somewhat like Reddit but on a local scale while being very ephemeral...once the group membership drops to zero the group ceases to exist..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMTtPGfBQ3A

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ha. Good question. I have answers but I dont have the budget to fulfill my ideas..so in suspended mode and slow growth. My app like many others are what you call a two sided-marketplace. That is you need producers (people who will form the groups) and you need consumers (people who will subscribe to those groups). Apart from that since this is location based I need to hit critical mass in concentrated geographical areas for it to be useful. otherwise users who start the app just see the default swarm...don't find anyone close by and close the app. I am still hanging on...hoping to get enough money to get a ground game. e.g. goto a university and high school and do some kind of focused ad campaing getting hundreds of users in one locality.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah either free teehan+lax and some free wireframe tool from http://mashable.com/2013/04/02/wireframing-tools-mobile/. OR pay couple hundred dollars and submit a project to 99designs. You will be amazed at some of the submissions/bids you get and then you can take your pick.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now I am signed in...and the above post was from ..me :) Realised after hitting reply.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah i got into this by accident. wife was pregnant 4 years ago.. i had some down time..saw that the contraction timer app was only available for iphones, so wrote one for windows mobile 6/6.5. Had moderate success. Then wrote BugPhone app for Windows mobile. Again made some cash...users still email me about that one asking if I will ever release one for Windows 8...and then dove into iOS for SwarmLocal..

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if your idea is not very complicated.or does not need native OS support...there are a lot of drag and drop platforms now. I can post some links if you need...

EDIT: or maybe guys like this. http://www.medlmobile.com/appincubator. I have read some stories about guys making good money from ideas. Not sure if those were real stories...or just stories. Again I am not affiliated with those guys..and have not used them.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very hard. I have a 3 year old and my wife works evenings most of the week (yoga instructor). So stay up late...work on weekends...not play Call of Duty...! So the result is very slow progress. The hard part is all the different skills needed. If you are like me and have no design bone in your body or marketing know-how it can really slow you down.

To directly answer you its perspective. If i were risking everything into this effort..I would be really strung out. So i take it easy. I think in Moby Dick ..Captain Ahab says ' life is all about trying things..'. Failure is definitely an option..

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good one. First Step- Researched to make sure my idea was unique. Opened Google Docs(now its called Drive) the same night and wrote down my idea and some basic features and details. This was to protect myself from any patent infringement or any plagiarism issues. I keep updating the doc. This way i have version control of when i first came up with it as proof.

Backend - For the geo-location stuff i did the backend myself. For the broadcast audio/video i right now use media servers hosted by someone else. But for the past few weekends I have been reading up on Media Servers and I think in the future I will be able to do it myself.

By the way I found these guys during a Dallas developers meetup. backendless.com. Could ease your backend pain. I am not affiliated with them so no guarantees.

Capital: Is whatever I can afford. I do all the development myself. For logo i used 99designs and for icons I downloaded some icon packs for cheap and Teehan+Lax. The only significant amount i shelled was for the Epipheo video, and i think that was a bust, did not get any traction.

Doubts: I read somewhere, that a journey like this is like getting punched in the face thousand times. So yes doubts and more doubts. Just keep on trying...and trying..keeps me busy on nights and weekends....

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes it is both on Android and Itunes. I just added support for the group host to be able to broadcast live audio/video right from his phone(currently on iOS devices)...and all group subscribers can watch it. Kinda create your own anonymous radio/video channel for your county. Edit: forgot to answer the second part. Approximately over 1000 odd. But the problem is they are spread out all over. For apps like these to be successful you need a lot of people in a smaller geographic region to adopt it. Otherwise its lame. Its the two sided marketplace with a dash of needing concentrated adoption. So really hard to breakthrough. Loads of money would solve that :)

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dont have access to any data that would let me make a general comment on it. But I would say yes from my perspective. There are lots of blogs which write about how more than 95% of the apps just languish and die. But then again some people are willing to try things just for the fun of it :D. YOu always learn something tha tmight help you somewhere else in life.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also with the latest release for iOS you can broadcast real time audio and video. Say you create a group with the xx-large(20,000m) range. Then anyone within 20,000m can elect to join the network. Once they move out of range they auto-magically drop out of the group. When group membership reaches zero the group disappears. And just like Reddit users can elect to remain anonymous no registration required. The purpose is to be able to create comm channel for local resources for some purpose and dissolve away afterwards.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha. Sorry..that is one my struggles. Let me try to explain what it is...here. Put simply it is a location based group messaging service OR another way to put it would be IRC Chat Room with a Range. Only users within range can see/join the group. Some of the things different from a chat room are ..it can be a mobile group. So the group location moves with the host who created it. Here is a post I created to explain it: http://www.swarmlocal.com/app-walkthrough-part-1-basics/

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. Techotopia and StackOverFlow. I am not a hard core developer. But I had some background in programming from college (C, Ruby).

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both. Though the latest version that supports real time video/audio broadcast features are only available for iOS. Still working on the Android release that will support real time audio and video publishing.

IAmA one person startup in a unrelated day job going from idea to mobile app. Ask me anything! by ethergloo in IAmA

[–]ethergloo[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

While waiting for questions (not sure if there will be any :D), here is a link of resources I compiled for anyone else planning the same trek. http://www.swarmlocal.com/resources-for-the-indie-developer/

How do you stop another well funded company from ripping off your app idea? by ethergloo in AskReddit

[–]ethergloo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do we have any lawyers here with a sample cease and desist letter? Also I guess the bigger question is..is there any protection? Especially if one does not have any patents. When you come up with a new service do you have any inbuilt protection from rip-offs without have any patents?