There is the popular coding challenge whereby the developer/hacker/gunslinger/coder has to create a piece of usable software in less than N hours (usually 24). You may have heard about it, read about it or actually even done it. There’s usually pizza, coke, coffee, energy drink and loud music involved and also cleverly disguised as an all-night party for binary miners. Nonetheless, if hosted to your linking, the challenge is a great way to flex some brain and skill. And it’s exactly how >_catchit was born.
The mission: create a usable, as shelf-ready-as-possible BlackBerry application within one working day: typically 6-8 hours of productive coding. The only absolute minimum requirements are: source control and an automated build process. Mission accomplished.
Remember when cellphones first came out and they suffered multiple personality order? Couldn’t decide if it was a mobile phone for communicating, an anti-mugging personal protection unit or a military grade close-quarter offensive device (I’m referring of course to it’s 2 foot aerial and 4kg of rugged manufacture). Yes, they’ve come a long way since then. But the thing I most remember about the early days of mobile phones was how they nurtured and flourished your rudeness.
You’d be talking live, face-to-face, in person when all of a sudden a phone would ring. No matter how deep the conversation or how mid-sentence you were, that was it. Conversation abandoned. Code Red! Pick up the phone! Yes, we’ve come a long way too since then (well, some of us at least). So >_catchit has been designed to help you catch those badly-timed calls when you don’t have to leave your caller hanging and you also don’t want to interrupt the “now”.
When activated, if you choose to ignore an incoming call, a screen will present you with an option to send a pre-populated text back to the caller immediately. You can alter the standard text if you like, or just send as is. Neat. In automagic mode, it’s even less obtrusive. Your caller automatically gets a text. Deactivate it, and there’s no more >_catchit. It also works with missed calls, if you want it to.
And that’s >_catchit complete. One full working day, one working product including user documentation (this post). And yes, you can safely download it from here by pointing your BlackBerry at this link.