How to Make an Android App by Mobile App Software

AppMakr Method

With more than 1.5 million new Android devices being activated every day, and almost a billion already in use, the chances are pretty good that at least some of your customers, fans or friends are using one. Creating a custom Android app for your small business, sports team, music band or community group can be a great way to keep in touch with those people and deepen your relationship by interacting with them where and when they are looking for information.  In the past you needed to spend money hiring a mobile agency to create you a mobile app, or you had to have a deep level of technical and programming skills to do it yourself. Today though, any small business operator, one-man-show entrepreneur, charity organisation or even a sports association; can create a mobile app for the Android platform without learning how to program. There are many easy-to-use tools that enable you to build an Android app in a short period of time. Here’s how you can start.

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Steps

1. 
   1
   Have a clear picture of your app in mind. Decide on what type of app will you be making. What is it for? Who is your target audience? These are just a couple of questions that you need to decide what mobile app you’ll be creating. Let this plan be a flexible one, just in case you need to change it later on while you’re making the app.
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2. 
   2
   Search the internet for mobile app software. As mentioned earlier, there are tons of software on the internet that you can use to create your own Android app. Among those choices, we recommend these three free-to-download programs that can help you create apps for your Android phone.
   • Appcelerator Titanium –
     This user-friendly platform allows you to build cross-platform applications that will run on Android, iPhone and Windows devices by using the same Javascript coding that is normally used for web development. Because of that, Titanium is an easy way for web developers to transition to mobile. However, you do need some background knowledge on Java. If you don’t have those skills, but are a keen learner, check out some of the Java tutorials out there, such as: http://www.w3schools.com/js/
   • MIT App Inventor – Yes, you read that right: MIT as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s top notch schools has their own free tool with a drag-and-drop interface, straight-forward instructions and step-by-step tutorials. The App Inventor was a gift to MIT from Google who developed it originally. The platform uses the Open Blocks interface for building logic, similar to the programming educational tool Scratch, also run by MIT. However, App Inventor involves a mid-level learning curve and is limited to producing apps only for the Android platform.
   • AppMakr’s The Machine – The Machine is a web-based tool and is the easiest to use amongst the three suggested options. It also uses a simple drag-and-drop interface, however the elements dragged here are the actual icons used in your app, rather than symbolic blocks. The Machine creates cross-platform mobile apps that run natively on Android, iPhones and in the mobile web browser of any other HTML5 enabled smartphone. Apps built are automatically uploaded for free to the AppMakr’s app store and the web, and can be published to commercial markets including iTunes and Google Play for a fee. This app is what we’ll use for the rest of the article, since it’s the easiest to use among the three.

AppMakr Method

1. 
   1
   Go to http://www.appmakr.com, enter a name for your app and click “Get Started”. Once you’re on the site, you’ll need to sign in with via one of your existing accounts on the web. You can either use your Gmail, Google account, Facebook, Twitter account, or your Yahoo ID to log in. You never need to tell AppMakr  your password, or register again with them, so you don’t have to worry about remembering another set of login details.
2. 
   2
   Fill in the details on the first page. Step one is where you’re asked to include basic information about your mobile app, which covers Contact Information, Name of the App, Overall Colors & Design (Colors of background, title and text), Background Image of the app interface, and Splash-screen image (this image will appear when the app is loading). You can upload your own design or image; or select from The Machine’s library of free images. Do note that the image uploaded should have recommended dimensions of 768 pixels wide X 1024 pixels high. Finally, you’ll provide information of App Demographics where you to select the region, country or state that your app is targeting.
3. 
   3
   Click the “Next” button and proceed with app creation. Step Two, is where the real app creation begins. In this step, you’ll find out that the app you’ll be creating for your Android phone is actually a collection of customised and pre-made functions. Here are a few examples of the functions you can include in your app:
   a. Calendar – A function that lets you share schedules and events with others.
4. 
   4
   Check the calendar on your phone and find the Settings or Preferences page.
   
   • Set the calendar settings to public.
   • Find the iCal link, which ends in “.ics”, and copy this link. In most phone calendars, it can be found near the bottom of the settings page.
   • Go back to the Machine and click the Events drop down menu.
   • Drag the Calendar icon to the phone interface area (the middle of the screen).
   • Paste the iCal link in the URL field on the lower right part of the page.
   • Save your work.
     b. Community – A function that resembles the Facebook Wall or Timeline feature. This is where users of the same app can post shout outs and leave messages for everyone involved using the Community feature.
     
   • Find the User Interactions drop-down menu at the left side.
   • Click and drag the Community icon into the center screen.
   • You can personalize this app with your own icon, page background, and even your own welcome message.
   • Save your work.
     c. Docs – Need to share forms, documents with the parents?
     #*Click on the “Custom Content” category on the left panel and select the “Docs” icon.
     
     
   • Drag the “Docs” icon and drop it anywhere into the centre panel of the interface.
   • At the bottom of the right panel, under Specs/Info; click on Add/Edit Files.
   • A pop-up window will appear, and this is where you can upload your document, along with title and description text. It take take files such as Word reader or PDF files.
   • You can also upload multiple file formats into the folder.
   • You can preview the mobile website as much as you want by clicking on the “Live Preview”. (Then click on the individual icon to preview the details).
5. 
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   Publish your App. Once you’re done with the app’s customization details, you can finally publish and download your app. This last step is where you will choose an icon for your app, which is displayed in the markets and on your users’ phones. You will need to create a detailed description text about your app and attach keyword tags to your app. By making your description text and tags relevant to your app, it will help to make your app more “discoverable” / easier to find in the app marketplaces. You have the options of publishing it on Android and HTML5 platforms for free or $1/month without ads on Appmakr’s mobile market. If you want to publish on all platforms (Android, iPhone and HTML5), in other external commercial markets; $9/month is a pretty reasonable fee. The $99/one time fee lets you sell your newly-created app for a price you set, but you will need to do all the publishing yourself.
6. 
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   Lastly, simply download the app from the URL or QR Code provided, and you’re done.

How to book tatkal tickets faster (Tips)

In India, trains are one of the easiest and cheapest modes of transport. Over the years, booking train tickets has become convenient using the IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation) website. In fact, according to the comScore and ASSOCHAM India report, IRCTC is the leading travel e- commerce site in the country with the highest transaction share in the travel category. One out of five online users in India visits the Indian Railways site, with almost 12 million unique visitors monthly and majority of the traffic is seen between 10 am to 12 pm. It is during this time that IRCTC allows booking Tatkal tickets, which means tickets that are reserved for people with last minute travel plans, travel emergencies and so on.
IRCTC receives a lot of flak for its slow, sluggish performance and had become a laughing stock when the site crashed (server inability, low bandwidth) during the festivities last year, just minutes after Tatkal bookings began. Currently, it is said to sell about 40-45,000 Tatkal railway tickets between 10 am and 11 am (its 10 and 11, because all tickets are sold in one hour – in fact, 45 mins), which it plans to spruce up to 60-65,000 with the help of its new Rs. 10 crore drive for better, upgraded servers to 64GB RAM. This will allow 80 lakh concurrent connections compared to the current 10 lakh. The Tatkal online booking window opens a day in advance before the date of your journey just for an hour and tens of thousands of people try to log into the Tatkal booking system, which makes it as tough as getting into an overcrowded Mumbai local train during the peak office hours. If you’ve ever tried booking a Tatkal ticket, you will know how important each minute is and how annoying IRCTC’s online passenger reservation system can get. You have to make optimum use of each second as soon as the online booking counter opens, and those 5 to 10 minutes before the counter opens are also very crucial. We’ve laid out a guide to help you book a Tatkal ticket, along with a set of handy tech tools and tips and tricks that will help you bag a confirmed Tatkal ticket faster.
First, the Tatkal or last minute online booking window opens only a day in advance of your journey between 10 am and 12 am. A person can book only two Tatkal tickets on one user id, so for any more tickets you will need to login using other IRCTC user ids. Now, you need to successfully log into the IRCTC reservation system at exactly 10 a.m., but remember, there are tens of thousands of other people trying to log into the site, so one needs to be really quick. Try to login using multiple accounts on different browsers such as Mozilla, Chrome, Opera or take a hand from your pals 10 minutes before. For this, ensure that your time is synced with the IRCTC server time, so that there are no issues due to difference in time as a delay in a minute means lesser chances of getting a ticket.
Once you log in with the IRCTC account, the key is to keep the session active. Those who have tried booking a Tatkal ticket may have often faced the error which says “Session expired”, which means you have to start logging in again, and this delay can cost you your ticket. To keep the session alive, ensure that the screen doesn't go idle for more than 3 minutes, because as soon as it does, the session will expire. So do not spend time thinking which ticket to choose or go hunting for your debit/credit card details at the last minute; keep everything handy so that the screen doesn't go idle.
As the only way to avoid the session from
expiring is keeping the page active, here are
two handy tricks. You can use this link. All you
need to do is make a note of the Session ID
and the Engine ID (from the address bar),
replace it with your session and engine IDs and
use the URL in another browser (For instance,
if you are using Chrome, then use it in Firefox)
and keep doing it till you complete your
booking process. If you think this is a
complicated method, then the other trick to
keep your session active is by going to the
IRCTC website > Login > General > Terms &
Conditions. All you need to do is copy the
“Terms and Conditions” URL in another
browser and keep pinging it every 2-3 minutes.
As soon as you successfully log into IRCTC, choose the starting point and destination, then a list of trains will appear and you can choose the train and the ticket type – Sleeper, 3-tier AC, 2-tier AC and so on. You will then have to key in all the necessary details including an identity proof. One has to be really quick in filling these details and don't forget to keep your identity proof handy. For instance, if you plan to choose the PAN card, then make a note of the PAN number. As you have to be very quick and can't keep typing in details for minutes, here’s what you can do – keep all the information like name of the passengers, age, PAN number handy in a notepad and just copy paste the information while booking the ticket.
Another alternative is an extremely handy tech tool called Autofill that can be used on Firefox as well as Chrome . Using the autofill add-on or extension, you need to visit IRCTC, say, about half an hour or so before the Tatkal bookings begin. Just go to the usual ticket booking page and fill in your details. Simply follow the booking procedure till you reach the payment gateway and then go no further. The add-ons will ensure that the browser remembers these details and you will not have to spend a lot of time typing them while booking the Tatkal ticket. Another tool you can use is the Magic Autofill . To use this tool, fill in all your details and click on “I’m feeling lucky”, a “Magic Autofill” blue button will appear and you have to drag it into your bookmarks. While booking the Tatkal ticket, once you are done finalising the train and berth, click on the Magic autofill and it will do the rest and you can quickly proceed to payment.
The IRCTC website is jam packed and quite slow during Tatkal booking, so ensure that you are patient and do not double click on anything or hit the backspace button as this will log you off and you will need to start the complete procedure again. You will even come across a message that reads “Service Unavailable”; in this case, just keep refreshing the page. Once you are done with the payment, wait until it takes you back to the IRCTC page (unless the transaction fails).     
     These tech tools and simple tips and tricks will definitely increase the chances of bagging a confirmed ticket. Do share with us your experience of booking a Tatkal ticket.