Help. I need some basic direction.

Getting Started Tell Us About Yourself
#1

Hello,  I am just an average Joe with an idea for an app that I think is simple but I don’t know where to start.

Basically, the apps main purpose would be to allow subscribers to recieve push notifications based on their preferences.

an example would be the Olympics.  A subscriber would be able to choose venue they would like to recieve notifications from. Further granulation would allow them to choose which specific event within that venue to recieve notifications about and final granulation would allow user to choose the types of notifications. (full results, winners only, important announcements, schedule changes, etc.)

If anyone here could get me started in the right direction it would help a ton.

Can I create this myself with Corona or another simpler online tool?

Is this, in fact, a simple idea?

What sort of costs might I expect to have?

What else should I be considering?

Thanks for the help.

RZ

#2

This is not the kind of project you just jump to do because you had an idea. I think you have to start with a passion for programming. That being said you might find that when you start.

But if you are serious the starting point is to learn the Lua programming language. When you know the basics of Lua, you install Corona and try to get something going. 

This kind of app takes months to make, but before you can start properly you need many  months of experience and doing simpler stuff.  You are not going to go from no experience to a great presentable end product without a long winding road first.

The requirements for your idea is first and foremost access to the data. This is presumably provided by a service run by the Olympics in your example.  Also you have to learn  Python or PHP or similar to run on a server (some Linux experience will help). On your server you will keep your users preferences in a database (better start learning SQL as well) and send notifications to them based on what the server finds from the Olympics API. That will take few months :) 

Bottom line, start with something much much simpler. See if you like it, and if you do continue from there. 

#3

While I don’t think the Corona side of this will be exceptionally difficult, the bigger hurdle will be the server side of push notifications.   If you decided to build your own server, you’re going to have to have some expertise in some type of server language (PHP, ASP, Node.js, Java server pages, etc) and some form of online database like MySQL.   Or you will have to pay for a service like Urban Airship that supports grouping of push clients and doing targeted sends. 

#4

Thank you gentlemen.  I am definitely starting from the beginning and not a programmer.  I think the best approach for me may be to contract with someone for concept review and development.

#5

There are a few online tools around that would really suit this project especially the ones supporting RSS feeds you can setup a simple blog eg Wordpress that has built in and automatic RSS generation and use one for the online tools that support RSS feeds and push the data out to your app.  The blog can be managed manually or use automatic feeds to grab content from a third party (eg news sites).

No need for programming anything and no need to learn about push notifications, Occam’s Razor is your friend :slight_smile:

Peter

#6

This is not the kind of project you just jump to do because you had an idea. I think you have to start with a passion for programming. That being said you might find that when you start.

But if you are serious the starting point is to learn the Lua programming language. When you know the basics of Lua, you install Corona and try to get something going. 

This kind of app takes months to make, but before you can start properly you need many  months of experience and doing simpler stuff.  You are not going to go from no experience to a great presentable end product without a long winding road first.

The requirements for your idea is first and foremost access to the data. This is presumably provided by a service run by the Olympics in your example.  Also you have to learn  Python or PHP or similar to run on a server (some Linux experience will help). On your server you will keep your users preferences in a database (better start learning SQL as well) and send notifications to them based on what the server finds from the Olympics API. That will take few months :) 

Bottom line, start with something much much simpler. See if you like it, and if you do continue from there. 

#7

While I don’t think the Corona side of this will be exceptionally difficult, the bigger hurdle will be the server side of push notifications.   If you decided to build your own server, you’re going to have to have some expertise in some type of server language (PHP, ASP, Node.js, Java server pages, etc) and some form of online database like MySQL.   Or you will have to pay for a service like Urban Airship that supports grouping of push clients and doing targeted sends. 

#8

Thank you gentlemen.  I am definitely starting from the beginning and not a programmer.  I think the best approach for me may be to contract with someone for concept review and development.

#9

There are a few online tools around that would really suit this project especially the ones supporting RSS feeds you can setup a simple blog eg Wordpress that has built in and automatic RSS generation and use one for the online tools that support RSS feeds and push the data out to your app.  The blog can be managed manually or use automatic feeds to grab content from a third party (eg news sites).

No need for programming anything and no need to learn about push notifications, Occam’s Razor is your friend :slight_smile:

Peter