Traffic Android Blog

I’ve had some new thoughts swimming around in my head for the last couple of days, so I thought I’d throw them out on the blog.

Currently Traffic Android runs purely from the desktop. Apart from some minor requests to the server for updates and whatnot, it’s a Windows desktop product. It uses a little local database and runs an internal engine with predefined scripts for each website that it supports posting to.

I have no major problem with the way it’s working other than this: the more sites I support, the more time and effort will be required to maintain it and the more support requests will come in from various people experiencing their own connectivity issues. As such, a recurring revenue stream would be handy to ensure that all the services stay properly maintained indefinitely. There’s also an issue that plenty of would-be users are mac users. This just seems to be an anomoly of this market. There are a greater than average number of people using Macs as their primary desktop. So I’m thinking of transitioning it to a hybrid client/server model.

Before you run for the hills screaming OMG ITZ GONNA BE A EXPENSIVE SERVER PRODUCTS!!! … that’s not what I have in mind.

I am thinking that storing the data on a server (as opposed to having it on your own machine) and processing tasks on a server, rather than locally, would make the whole system much more maintainable in the long term and make it more feasible to support large numbers of services. In addition, doing this would make it much simpler to have a Mac desktop version of the system.

I imagine doing this would introduce a small recurring monthly fee for new users, although people who have already paid for the system would be catered for as I have no interest in pulling the rug out from anyone’s feet.

So essentially, what we’d be looking at is Traffic Android on steroids, accessible from anywhere and running even if you turn off your computer. There’s some technical hurdles to address first, but overall it’s quite doable. And I’ll say it again, existing customers would be catered for.

Now remember; this is an idea, and a direction I’m interested in heading in. Updates for the Traffic Android you know and love are still in progress and will continue to be released until what I’ve suggested eventuates, at which point an update would integrate the desktop product you use into the client/server product seamlessly.