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fieldforceapp

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Fieldforceapp.com dev team; sorry, not using real names 'cause we haven't burned the boats yet & still have day jobs where it's not clear at all if we're allowed to be having this much fun developing for iPhone and Rails.

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April Zero v3 11 years ago

Big change since v2, congratulations. Any plans to commercialize? Would like to see this applied to athletic team performance monitoring.

The article has some pretty good details, and while speculative, second sourcing LTE modems would make a lot of sense, no? The comments seem to be missing the SIP[0] aspect of modern electronic device manufacturing which Apple and others are pursuing[1]... it allows for some "strange bedfellows" and would explain a joint TSMC / Intel solution.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_in_package [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/hon-hai-loses-battle-to-control-...

Thanks for the AMA. You haven't answered the hardware related questions in this thread yet, so I'll try: do you think you'll see the day when YC funds a hardware startup that develops custom ASICs or semi IP for licensing? If so, what type of startup would be a good fit for YC?

it will be only practical to deploy in dense urban areas in my view

Docomo has an eye towards an initial roll-out in time for the 2020 Olympics, and the development of a 'phantom cell' user plane makes a lot of sense given the device density Tokyo. The MIMO beam forming looks like a huge challenge.

Glad to see Docomo moving the goal post forward, though!

Really solid work, I was surprised to see how complete this is, especially compared to Blender. I need to render some scenes soon, importing existing OBJ's and adding new materials. I was going to be using Blender, I'll first give clara.io a try!

One question, sent a ticket already but wouldn't mind an HN bump... I couldn't get 'Render > Render Current Pass' menu option to show? Kinda miss that big green "render now" button.

$12k??? is there no way to prototype an injection mold for less money? I'm trying to make something like the Xbox Kinect housing, for example.

A good lunchtime read, thanks. A couple of misleading topics and word of advice from our own experience [0] of starting Android development after years of iOS development:

- Google seems to moving away from Activities in favor of Fragments (can someone confirm this?) so we'd recommend a Fragment based design pattern;

- App navigation paradigms seem to be evolving quickly, with Google recently introducing Navigation Drawer as a standard [1], among others;

- Choosing the navigation paradigm first seems to important as these seem to be Fragment based, using Bundle objects to share data between Fragments;

- Use Android Studio [2] because it seems a) Google is going to standardize on this, and b) the navigation paradigms are offered as app template options and can be a good starting point presumably with 'blessed' Fragment design patterns.

Good luck!

[0] http://blog.fieldforceapp.com [1] http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation-draw... [2] http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/05/android-studi...

2. HLS tools exist[0][1][2] to convert C to HLD for FPGA programming, these results are used in production designs. As @jangray says below, debug tools are sold by commercial vendors as a value-added capability for production teams; it's not a "freemium" market.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_synthesis [1] http://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado/integrati... [2] http://www.synopsys.com/Systems/BlockDesign/HLS/Pages/defaul...

Nice. Maybe you can take your success in candy and branch out to other dry goods?

A surprise box of Japanese stationery might be popular in the US. No hard data here but I've seen a recent trend of Japanese stationery stores open in Japan [0] and vendors opening physical "antenna" shops here in the West Coast of the US. And, crucially, my pre-teen daughter is obsessed with them. Gambatte!

[0] http://tsite.jp/daikanyama/store-service/tsite-en.html [1] http://www.mymaido.com

Thanks for the post, guys, and the service. Would love to hear from others who have made the jump from iOS to Android, what methods you're using for test and whether you're leveraging any cross-platform tools. AppThwack is a growing part of our stack. Thanks!

Not marketing advice per se, but I highly recommend subscribing to Hack Design [1] and giving more thought to not just the visual design and presentation of your apps, but also the audience. My personal opinion is that non-game indie devs need a niche, what's yours? If you're selling to school kids, then find a good hook. For example, public middle schools in California require Spanish fluency. Sell to the parents of those kids perhaps? Or if you're going after the international tourist, try to combine the language skills with travel info some how: "We'll teach you Spanish before you're plane lands!"

Also, I'm sure I'm not the first one to say it but you've gotta move to iOS7. Do the easy thing and try using all native color scheme. As a design exercise [2] it will help you focus on content.

Good luck!

[1] http://hackdesign.org/ [2] https://medium.com/design-ux/7348987453e3

Same issue here: pre-teen kids asking about why so-and-so has 100's of Instagram followers. The school system encouraged social networks by introducing Edmodo[1]. Signed our pre-teen up with a private / restricted account but that level of restriction isn't the norm. The photo stream seems like a mix of LOLcats and 4chan/v but with a ton of snarky comments that puts HN'ers to shame.

[1] https://www.edmodo.com

What is interesting is that this reported $5B application processor contract with Samsung is likely drying up after the iPhone5S (plus next iPad rev?) as Apple transitions to TSMC. It therefore implies that all TSMC designs will likely be 64-bit, which will now likely change the planning for other pure-play foundries dreaming of that $5B order from Cupertino:

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319218

How to Raise Money 13 years ago

Thank you, pg. I would amend the summary by including an encouraging word to the founders:

"Avoid investors till you decide to raise money, and then when you do, talk to them all in parallel, prioritized by expected value, and accept offers greedily; build rejection into your plans by having a range of realistic, acceptable fundraising targets. Get back to work quickly."

Nice summary, and I agree with the view but good to remember Intel has a two-pronged battle they're fighting now -- ARM's partners (QCOM, Samsung) and the Foundries (TSMC, Samsung, GF, IBM) -- much different than the discrete merchant competitors they faced in the past. Intel therefore has to get to deeper process nodes faster (14nm and below) while also trying to create an embedded x86 ecosystem. I've never seen them more motivated to compete on both fronts.

For what it's worth, here's what Intel's key execs presented to address those challenges at this year's IDF: http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-confims-mobile-focus-shift...

Perhaps it's already been mentioned, but GroupTalent [1] has set up a business to offer this type of 'small project as an interview,' or what they call "Date a Company" to help guide primarily freelancers to full-time employment:

They did a pivot after acquiring Kyle's TinyProj [2] customer base, which included us. Wondering if anyone has any good experience with GroupTalent?

[1] https://grouptalent.com/welcome/ [2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/16/tinyproj-shuts-down-users-s...