In the last couple of years that I’ve owned an Anrdoid, I’ve tried everything from ColorNotes to Any.Do to store small bits of information. Trivial stuff such as
- daily medicine dosage
- recipe of my favorite sub (which my wife needs me to text every time)
- frequent flyer / loyalty membership numbers
- utility / bank account numbers, etc.
Such information that needs to be handy is usually lost under complex navigation menus. I’ve seen folks saving this information as draft messages (SMS) or even using memos which does not allow tags & full-text search. And that’s precisely the problem I tried to solve with Bitstore.
Download BitStore*
My hands were yearning to write some code and this couldn’t have been a better time to try out mobile app development with PhoneGap. Before this, I did try installing the Android SDK but the learning curve seemed quite steep, and after all, my purpose wasn’t to develop coding skills. PhoneGap with jQuery mobile & Jasmine for unit testing were apt for the exercise I had in mind – the simplest cross-platform app to keep & easily access bits of information.
I had a very simple design to get this going:
- Welcome page: to have basic instructions on creating bits, and a link that loads examples of bits you can keep
- Form: common layout to add/edit bits with validation on unique name, non-empty notes
- Bit list: expands an item on tapping (avoiding back-n-forth navigation) with an edit option
- Options sidebar: (although a bit sluggish) allows exporting/importing bits via XML so you could mail yourself a copy. Deleting bits requires confirmation of course.
While I plan to take this forward with an online backup capability, I’m thinking some bits are better off offline.
I’m not sure if the summary is exciting enough for you to go ahead and download a copy for your Android, Symbian, WebOS or Windows phone, but I’d love to hear from you on this:
Download BitStore*
*On Android, you will have to allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store (Settings > Security > Device administration > Unknown sources)
