Year 3: My NFL Score Prediction App on the Google Play Store

I'm about to kick off my third consecutive year as an app developer with my NFL Score Prediction app on the Google Play Store.

I started work on this application in January of 2016, over five years ago. Since then the web app has gone through various iterations, and over the past three years I've solidified some of design concepts.

One of the biggest design decisions for me was to make the application anonymous. To pay homage of the Internet of yesteryear, I only ask for a username and a password. I don't collect E-mail addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, ask you for your identity, or anything. Why not?

Let's face it. This is an application that collects score predictions for football games. Do I really need to know anything else from my users? Nope. It's just for fun. It's not that serious.

One of the new functionalities for this year (2021-22)

Some updates for this year include a page that tracks your accuracy with some "visual analytics" which are in fact, bar graphs. I've also included the ability to view any users progress, whereas in the past I limited the Leaderboard to the Top 25 users only.

Some features that I should probably include going forward are: Detailed tracking of wrong and inaccurate predictions, and the ability to share your prowess with a "Share" button social media, maybe a button to randomize picks for each week. Just some ideas.

To help promote this app, I've started filming some YouTube videos where I break down my predictions.

As the season progresses I will upload some more videos to showcase the application. - Mike

Rate My Swag (.app) is here!!!

A screenshot from http://www.RateMySwag.app

Over the past couple of weeks I developed a new web application, called "Rate My Swag." The concept is simple. You upload a photo, and users rate your swag from 1 to 100. The ratings are aggregated and the photos are ranked, from MOST to LEAST swag.

This is a similar design to such popular sites as "Hot or Not." I read a great article on that site here: https://blog.photofeeler.com/hot-or-not/.

I got the wheels running on Rate My Swag quickly. I wrote and rolled out a production version of this application within the month of July.

Anyway... check it out at http://www.RateMySwag.app or on the Google Play Store, here.

My NFL Score prediction app: Year 2 on the Google Play Store

I just updated my NFL Score Prediction game app. We are now entering Year #2 on the Google Play Store. You can download the application here (Android users, Google Play Store).
 
If you want to use the app, but do not have an Android phone, visit the direct URL: NFLScoreApp.com

The annual maintenance took me about 3-4 hours of work. This involved inputting the 2020 NFL schedule and resetting various internal knobs and levers. Not bad from a time standpoint... Although I will admit, I'm pretty lazy and I thought about just throwing my hands up and not renewing my server space about an hour in.

It was pretty nice out today, so I missed out on the great weather but instead was stuck inside staring at the computer screen, which is one reason I left the tech industry to begin with, but whatever.

The application costs $20 a year for the server space and it cost me a one-time fee of $25 to become a Google Developer, so from a money standpoint, it's not a huge waste of money. It amounts to a couple of magazine subscriptions, more or less.

This year (as opposed to 2019) I opened up the free app download to every single country that's available in the Google Play store. Last year I only had the application available to the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom.

Some improvements I made for the 2020 NFL Schedule: There is now a "My Stats" page that shows some bar graphs about your level of participation and gives your definitive ranking.

I redesigned the navigation to simplify it.

I limited the Leaderboard to the Top 25 users only.

I'm not sure how long I will continue to keep this app active, but I'm satisfied with how it's working as of now. I still believe in my concept, but I'd need major help to bring it to the next level.

If you are interested in working on or buying this application, i.e. purchasing the source code outright, shoot me an email. My address is listed on my "About Me" page on blogger. - Mike

I built my dream app, and this is what happened

It took me two years of work to create my dream app. It's on the Google Play Store here, for now at least. The vision was clear, as were the motivations. To create an app that allows a userbase to predict the final score of a sports game, on an active "leaderboard" type of "Buddy List." This way, you could interact with friends in a light-hearted way in terms of who really knows what they're talking about before Sunday's Bears-Packers game.

 

I completed all work by myself, without help from anyone else. The first step was to create an LLC, just incase I were to receive investor interest. Then I weighed options to host the web application.

Over the two years it took to complete the app, I used Bluehost and BuyVM. Bluehost is helpful for a beginner, because they lay out the backend architecture of your site with a friendly GUI and set of menus. BuyVM requires more know-how and I wouldn't have been able to complete the setup without the knowledge I gained over the course of my tenure as a sys admin/ web app dev at a University.

In terms of the actual code writing, the most difficult aspects were the front-end interface and UX, the Leaderboard, the login mechanisms, and the overall design. I went through several iterations of the forward-facing markup before I settled on the W3.css I used for the PWA version of the app.

The backend scripting was all just written freestyle. The Leaderboard was the most challenging aspect and I actually legitimately failed trying to write it once. After a took a couple of months off I returned with a clearer vision for the Leaderboard and was able to complete it.

The app is heavily automated and updates on a single script execution that I do manually. The app would be fully automated if I were to pay for a service to put the final scores into a text file for me, but for now I do it myself. Once the scores are in the text file I just execute a single script and that updates the Leaderboard. As for building the app, it's also just a single script that completes that based off of the NFL Schedule as stored in a CSV.

I guess this puts a nail in the coffin into any conversations about, "I will create an app and become a millionaire." Hardly. I lost money making this. This should also put nails into the coffin on "portability." I wrote this app and ported it everywhere, from Ubuntu to Mac to Windows 10 to CentOS, building on production servers, and local machines regularly.

The two years I spent building this free application wasn't a total waste of my time. Over the course of creating the pages I studied Linear Algebra by myself and came to understand n-dimensionality in a proper fashion. I used a book I'd highly recommend by I.M. Gel'fand called "Lectures on Linear Algebra" and found it was quite useful and relevant to the idea of manipulating a creative idea in hyperspace. Had I not challenged myself, I would be less enriched.