Offical Website: www.PointsWatcher.com

Description

Points Watcher is an Iphone application that will allow people using weight watchers to calculate and keep track of their daily point allowances (learn more about it at weightwatchers.com ).  I’m developing this application for 2 main reasons.

1. I wanted to try and create an IPhone app that emulates some of the IPhone functionality

2. I wanted to be able to do weight watchers with out anyone really knowing about it (of course I guess writing this negates that)

The easiest, and free way to make this app is to make it an online application, which means people will have to use Safari (on the IPhone) to access it.  Of course this also means that anyone with internet access can use it as well. (You can check  it out at www.pointswatcher.com)

Design

Since I am no where close to being a great designer, I thought it would be easiest to emulate the design of the IPhone ‘Settings’ application.  I also figured this will make the application more recognizable and easy to use for my target users (IPhone users).

To the left is a screen shot of the IPhone settings window.  To the right is my design for PointsWatcher.I think I’ve got the design pretty much nailed down.

IPhone settings window

Points Watcher

Development

For now, since the Application is web-based I am going to be developing it in PHP & JavaScript.  I’ll also be using the latest version of the jquery library to make things a bit easier, and some Ajax functionality.

In the future I want to transfer it into an actual IPhone application, but before that I’ll have to learn Cocoa, and or Capachino (Which I’ve already wanted to learn for sometime).

Also like all things Apple I want to keep points watcher simple, and not overbearing.  I’ve decided on just a small list of  features;

• Individual user accounts (free to have)
• Ability to keep track of daily points used
• Ability to save the point value of foods for later referencing
• Ability to calculate point values
• Ability to view history and progress

So  not to many features where the application would be overbearing, and not too few to make it useless.

Development Progress

01/12/09 : Began design work for application, as well as purchasing of domain name (Also, my birthday)

01/14/09: Began Javascript development to emulate IPhone slide effect (see Post about it)

01/16/09: Finished inital javascript & Planning.  Begin PHP development.

01/17/09 – 01/24/09 : No development (had no spare time)

01/24/09 – 02/10/09: Major work, app is 75% completed.  It keeps track of users daily point intake, an inventory of food items for later references, and users can view their history.  All that is left ot build is registration and some account functions (set daily point values, change password, ect)

02/17/09 : Completed PointWatcher v1.0!