Categories
Product Reviews

Product Review: Balsamiq Mockups

Have you ever wanted to quickly mockup software, website, iPhone app, etc? Most people do it on paper, or try something in Visio, or Word, or even Excel!!! But they just lack that feeling of what they want you to build. I was looking around on the web and stumbled upon Balsamiq Mockups

I download the Adobe Air app pretty quickly and got started, I wanted to see how quickly I could mock up a website I am working on, because there are some new pages and I want just a template, and then be able to quickly mock up what a new page would look like and let the other team members see it without having to code anything. Check this out (this is an example of my site, not the final version):

image

I did this in less than 5 minutes. I spent more time and refined it to what I wanted, and now I have a template which I can use for new pages, and also a mockup of a report page.

Check out http://mockupstogo.net/?c=1 to get more items, and see examples. You can mock up pretty much any existing site on the web or app, this software is awesome! I wish I would have had this for the last 8 years doing software development.

There was one thing I couldn’t figure out, which was a bar graph but having the bars as columns, but I am guessing I just don’t know how to rotate it, or I need to download some more mock objects.

If you are looking for some software to easily mock up new projects to clients, or to other users on your team, or whoever, check out this tool, you will find that it is easy to use and allows you to quickly mock up and communicate what you are looking for in an end result to your devs as well as other team members (there are some awesome collaboration tools they have baked in – even if someone doesn’t have balsamiq installed, they can import an XML file into a web version to view what it looks like, tweak it, and email it back to you)

Try it out, and happy mocking! 🙂

Categories
Geeky/Programming

GPS Update

Well, If you look at the right side of my blog, I have an update. I have been working all day on getting the GPS stuff to work. I made an app to sync with my Bluetooth GPS, and upload the coordinates in decimal to my website. Then I read it and create a Google Map. There is a lot more to come, but it is pretty good for  2 for 1’s at G Allen’s outside (of course, the GPS works). Check it out!

 

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Categories
Geeky/Programming Life

T-Mobile Dash + GPS + Mologogo = Debacle

I have my cool new T-Mobile dash, and my Pharos Bluetooth GPS, but I just want more.

Currently I can see where I am on the phone using Windows Live Search Maps,  but I just want more.

I want to be able to post up my coordinates every minute or so, save them or map them or what have you.

Mologogo seems to be the answer to that, but there are always issues. First off, the site can’t seem to stay up for more than 10 minutes at a time. I did some digging and found the IP address, so I added that to my host file

216.127.82.54 www.mologogo.com

Second, the SmartPhone version seems buggy, not feature complete like the other versions, etc. There doesn’t seem to be a place to set up a remote URL feature so I can post up the coordinates to my own server, which is really what I want to do.

Also, I am looking into GPS.Net again. I will play with the trial, #1 because the final version is 250 bucks, and previously I could never get it to work right. Maybe if I get something going I will just use that and forget mologogo.

Hopefully I can get something going here this weekend, I want to be able to track my coordinates as well as take a picture, upload to flickr or some URL and save it with the waypoint. Then I want to create .kml files for Google Earth so I can track where I have been, and photo tag them. Tall order for this weekend , but we will see. I will be on vacation in Seattle/Portland starting middle of next week and I want to track my vacation, like where I go, etc. We will see 🙂

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