A new month, a new Challenge

November a new month, time to get a new focus. I am very pleased that I was able to post everyday in October and hope to keep that going through November right on till the new year. Once I reach Jan 01 2010 I will take a look back and decide if I want to keep the posting every day or go to a different schedule. Of course I am participating in both National Blog Posting Month and National Blog Writing Month in the month of November but really I would be posting every day with or without them.

nablo09.90x33 NaBloWriMo - National Blog Writing Month

For November I’ve decided that I want an additional challenge. I’ve been considering different challenges I could set for my self. I thought about Nanowrimo but I don’t think I have time or the inspiration to do it. Also one of the great things about Nanowrimo was the events, and I know I Don’t have time to get to many if any of them. So since writing fiction isn’t for me right now and I’m already committed to writing my blog that leaves either programming or something entirely new.

Now isn’t the time to be something new, so programming it is. I have been recently thinking about an app a day. when a programmer spent a month writing an ‘An App A Day’, one programmer wrote 30 programs in 30 day. It was quite impressive so I have been thinking of doing something along the same lines, but not quite as ambitious. I am think an app a week or every other week or maybe a month. I’m not sure yet. still working out the kinks. The biggest being what kind programs am I going to write. I’m hoping not to over complicate my life by choosing apps that sound good but never quite get done. So I’m going to see this as a learning experience I’m going to do things that I will find useful to use and to have written, I wont be concerned if there is another application out there that does something similar I will just write my app.

For my first application of have narrowed it down to 2 choices.

Ping.FM Desktop and Mobile client

A simple application for posting to social network sites using Ping.FM’s API. I want to have a simple way to post to ping.fm with my status updates and images. It would be nice if I could target specific social networks as well as run from either my desktop or phone.

TTC Schedule Desktop, Mobile and Website

I would like to be able to check the schedule for  TTC (Toronto Transit Commission)  buses and street cars from anywhere at anytime. With the launch of  OpenTO I know have access to the raw data needed to make that a reality.  So I’m thinking it would be an interesting project to take that raw data and parse it and build a simple user interface for it. I could do a desktop, mobile and even a web interface.

Both these applications have would have multiple interfaces and both would be useful to me on almost a daily bases. I plan on releasing all my applications for free download, and I’m considering releasing the source under a open source licence if I can get over being self conscious of my code.

The question is which should I do?

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