

Show HN: My first project – Football voting app built in RubyMotion - bg23
http://footpoll.com

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waterside81
As a football fan, this looks like it can be fun. Especially as you're
watching the game live, create a poll to see the opinion of people in real-
time during a controversial play e.g. "Was Rooney tripped or did he dive?".
Good stuff bg23.

One small nitpick: on your demo screen shots, you have "Which is the best
player?". It should be "Who" not "Which".

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bg23
Thanks waterside, and thanks for picking that error up.

Completely envision the app working in real-time too. Also for man of the
match voting etc.

Future versions will also include a breakdown of the votes by supporters as
Football is a tribal sport and opinions are biased towards your club.

Thanks for the feedback

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rkuykendall-com
I agree with the "event" polls aspect. There should be a way to say that you
are live-watching a specific event and get/create realtime polls.

Microsoft did this with the presidential debates and it was a blast. I'm not a
sports guy, but once this app is more developed you may consider forking it to
politics or TV shows or maybe just generic mass events.

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wlj
Impressive. Really like the design.

A quick note...on your Twitter auth page it's not possible to paste usernames
and passwords into the fields. Probably not a huge problem for most but my
passwords are at the long and un-typeable end of the spectrum and I normally
paste these in from a separate password manager app.

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bg23
Thanks for the heads up. I will look into improving that!

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knes
Really great idea and looks like it it well executed.

On a side note, I really enjoy the new turn of HN moderation which let a lot
more of cool project / show HN rise to the front page.

Good job bg23!

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ppanagi
Or google, intitle:show hn site:news.ycombinator.com

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almata
There's one thing I totally disliked: I hate when I need to login as the very
first required step. I (may) still don't know what the app does and I already
have to login or create an account. To me, that's a bad user experience and in
general I uninstall apps that do that. Very few apps really need the user to
be logged in from moment zero. I would suggest to let the user see what the
app is for, so he feels by himself how cool it'd be to have an account to use
the app at its 100%.

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wuliwong
I understand this argument but I don't believe it is a slam dunk. On the web,
a user has invested nothing other than a click or possibly typing a url. On
mobile, a user has already downloaded and installed the app. They have more
invested, so you would think, are more likely to create an account.

That being said, you are certainly making the "funnel" smaller at the top but
possibly the slope of the edges are more forgiving to the app developer as the
user progresses down the conversion funnel?

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almata
I don't know. I know apps requiring login as step zero have a higher rate of
"installdeletes" (I myself do that usually). Not sure if the users who
actually decide to stay (so, to login) are then "better users". It could be.
It actually makes sense. But I have no data about that tbf.

~~~
wuliwong
Hah, I don't have any data either. This was a debate at the last startup I
worked.

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livestyle
Really clean design.

This reminds me of the Heineken Star Player app from a couple of years ago.

[http://www.akqa.com/approach/social/case-studies/heineken-
st...](http://www.akqa.com/approach/social/case-studies/heineken-star-player)

I work for a pro sporting league and have need for the same experience.

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nowlnowl
Thinking about an Android version?

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mwcampbell
Is there any good way to port a RubyMotion app to Android? Or would you have
to rewrite it?

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wuliwong
I don't believe that is possible. I think the closest thing would be
[http://ruboto.org/](http://ruboto.org/) which allows you to code native
Android apps in ruby.

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joshdance
For a first project, design looks pretty great. It it works like it looks,
nice work!

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dan1234
Here's a bug:

I signed up via email, I was told my username had already been taken but then
it let me go to the next screen and create polls with that username.

I like it though, nice design & well executed.

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wuliwong
Just installed it, seems to run great and it looks good too. Selfishly, I
would LOVE if you wrote an article about implementing signup with
facebook/twitter via rubymotion. What did you write your server using?

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bg23
Happy to write an article on that. I initially built the website using Ruby on
Rails and had twitter/facebook omniauth implemented.

It was then a simple case of displaying a web view in the app with login
similar to how you would on the web, then diverting back to the app upon
login.

~~~
wuliwong
awesome, what's your twitter handle or website? I was thinking the webview
might be the simplest way to go. I wonder if you get any extra functionality
by tying into iOS's facebook/twitter stuff? Might be easier for things like
"post to facebook" and the like.

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bg23
Yeh I think it would be easier eventually. I struggled trying to implement it
though looking at objective-c. Its on my to-do list

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wuliwong
I've found stuff like this [https://github.com/aaronfeng/facebook-auth-ruby-
motion-examp...](https://github.com/aaronfeng/facebook-auth-ruby-motion-
example) but I haven't actually tried implementing anything yet.

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m4tthumphrey
Looks awesome man. I presume there are no plans for Android at this time? :)

~~~
bg23
There are definitely plans, I would like to get round to it asap really....

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anupshinde
This question might be a bit naive. I'm developing a similar app and I have
not developed full mobile apps earlier - I started with Phonegap. Was there a
reason why you did not consider that?

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bg23
I came from a zero programming background and built the website in Ruby on
Rails whilst learning Ruby.

I wanted to build a fully native app for the best user experience and really
enjoyed learning ruby, Rubymotion seemed like the perfect fit and it didn't
disappoint.

I still have the limitation with Android of course...

~~~
anupshinde
Great work! Where/How did you learn Ruby (and programming)?

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Omnipresent
This looks great! I'm in the process of building my first iOS app with
Rubymotion. May I ask where you got all the awesome looking icons and whether
you used RMQ? Awesome work!

~~~
bg23
Thanks! I'm using RMQ for the front end and CDQ (also created from
infinitered) for the Models and backend syncing.

The icons are from [https://flaticons.co/](https://flaticons.co/)

~~~
Omnipresent
awesome. I loved RMQ. I can't imagine the level of detail in your cell
stylesheets though :) looks fantastic.

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twerth
Offtopic question: I created RMQ, what specifically do you love, what do you
think needs improvement?

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wuliwong
Just to chime in, I've been using rubymotion for a couple weeks and used RMQ
for some toy apps. I now have switched to Promotion. I may come back to RMQ
but my goal is the quickest path to an MVP on iOS. It seems Promotion is a bit
easier (as I have no prior iOS experience) but I could be wrong.

I think RMQ seemed really great, and I do think I could get where I'm going
using it (but maybe a little slower). If I recall, working with tableviews is
where I switched to Promotion. Tableviews are dead simple for Promotion. I saw
your video on the more complex view (the name is escaping me at the moment)
but I am generally going to be using the tableview.

At the end of the day, none of the offerings have solid documentation (with
examples!). For my needs, Promotion (so far) happened to have the
documentation and examples in the places I needed it. I would definitely
switch to a framework if it had easier to use docs and examples, but that's
just me. I'm not a typical developer (computational physicist and musician
turned web/mobile dev).

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JSno
Great app. I have tried. Registred as MANUTD fan. your app gives me some
Norwich polls I don't care. Maybe that is something this fabulous app can
improve. thanks!

~~~
bg23
When you log in initially you are following 'Footpoll'. The main page is
similar to twitter dependent on who you are following. You can go to the
categories section to view Man Utd polls.

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netskrill
I'm learning Rubymotion myself. Can you list out the different
technologies/gems used in this? RMQ, teacup, etc...?

This looks really nice, btw.

~~~
bg23
Thank you.

I bought Rubymotion in November and it took me a month or two testing out
different gems etc.

I ended up using RMQ, CDQ, Restkit, formotion, bits of bubblewrap

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wuliwong
Did you try promotion at all? I've made a few toy apps with RMQ and now have
been trying Promotion. I think I'm going to stick with Promotion but would
love to hear anyone's experience with the various frameworks.

~~~
bg23
I've not got round to Promotion yet. I'm really enjoying RMQ though and would
be hard to move away from it!

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wuliwong
Definitely stay with what works and obviously RMQ is working for you!

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tejaswiy
I feel there needs to be an expiry date on polls. I'm still getting questions
on who's going to win in past football games.

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logikblok
Hey this looks impressive. Something I can use to end arguments as well where
can I deliver feedback once I start using it? Cheers

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bg23
Yes thanks, any feedback is very much welcome!

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zscho97
I've been debating about learning code for a while. Really like what you did.
How long did it take you to learn and develop?

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goshx
Did you find help to translate it to portuguese yet? Brazil will love this.

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dvcc
Does this exist for general opinions? Looks awesome overall.

~~~
bg23
I think a few have tried but nothing major I don't think. I recall a site
called Opinsy a year or so back.

My initial thoughts we're creating it on a subject I was passionate about, as
I personally wouldn't go on a generalist site to argue my opinion's about
chalk then about cheese.

But the concept can be applied to anything of course.

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wingerlang
Is that a volleyball in the logo though?

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bg23
Still trying to figure out how to add a piechart/barchart into the logo...

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wingerlang
You could have a line-chart with the ball at the end? Like this(ish)
[http://imgur.com/FGFGjI8](http://imgur.com/FGFGjI8)

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finalight
too bad only for ios, furthermore the SDK that you use can only be deployed to
ios as well

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bg23
Well if the app is successful I plan on releasing it for Android and on the
web

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leemcalilly
Just in time for the world cup!

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markcrazyhorse
Love the site design too

