When the going gets tough...rake the leaves...

So, over here at Green Lite we're getting pretty desperate. While I think our Smart phone app is really awesome and can make the money we need, we are running out of time. So, when I got home for Thanksgiving break I threw an add up on Craig's List to do some leaf removal. My dad already has a leaf blower and this cool thing called a Billy-Goat, basically a leaf vacuum. It wasn't hard either to get much business either, seeing how much leaves are lying around. So as unfortunate as it is that the App is struggling, its nice to have a little revenue.

I will say i'm fairly disappointed with how the revenue stream for our app has turned out. I really think it is a good product and its viable, I think we were really unprepared with the time constraints for R&D and getting the product to market. I think if we did some partly parallel development we would be in better shape.

Heads moving faster than our feet

So,

Chris and I were really excited about this week. We did a lot of work with data collection the week before and had big plans for the prototype to be ready for the market this week. Unfortunately, its taking our programmers a little longer to get our data loaded and clean up the app. That being said Chris and I are going to be finalizing the advertising contracts this weekend and should be able to get the app to market by next week.

Get your Party Hats Ready!

We're on the final stretch!  We've compiled enough restuarants and specials for Harrisonburg and we plan to (hopefully) have our app on the market by the end of this weekend.  As we explained before, the app will be free to all android phones once it's available.  Once we get the app on the market, our next step is to go around harrisonburg to any business that may be interested in advertising on our app.


Here's how we plan to make money. We will have several "Options" for businesses to advertise on our app.  For a business that wants more ad coverage on the app, they can pay more for a higher probability of their ad showing up on the app.  For those that want to pay less, they can get an option for less coverage probability.

Once we get the app up and running on the market, we hope to finally start making some revenue in the next week or two by the latest.  So be sure to check back soon!

p.s. we're still trying to think of ideas for a name!  if you have any ideas, post in the comments.

Prototype!

We now finally have a working prototype of the app up and running!  The prototype just consists of the basic functionality of the app and doesn't have any of the added features yet (color, etc), but it's really cool to see how it's going to work.  Here are a couple of pictures:

Here, on the left, you can see what the app will look like on your phone.  This menu will have a list of restaurants that you will be able to choose from.  So, for example, if you wanted to see what Dave's Taverna has to offer in terms  of drink specials, you can select Dave's on the menu...

Next, by selecting Dave's in the above menu, a window will pop up with all of the drink specials that Dave's offers during the week!

So as I mentioned before, this is just a prototype.  We will be adding many more restaurants over the next few days, and then we will be adding some color and tweaking out some bugs.  If you have any suggestions you'd like to offer, be sure to comment!

GreenLiteInnovations

direction

So this week we were anticipating the prototype of our App. However, it looks like we wont have it until this weekend or early next week. We've been diligently scouring restaurants for their food and drink specials, and plan to go out next week and pitch our app to get some advertising. On the whole, things are looking good, we're moving more than we were and we finally have some direction.

We're Back on Track!

So after we did some research, it turns out that it's not illegal for us to create our app!  We quickly scrambled a meeting together with 2 CIS students from the mobile app class, and after some discussion they're on board 100%.  We actually plan to have a prototype put together by early next week, which is a lot sooner than we expected. 

We certainly have our work cut out for us for the next couple of weeks.  We plan to go around to most of the bars and restaurants in Harrisonburg to collect all the info we need for the app, we have to find some local businesses who want to advertise on our app, then we have to promote and market!  On another note, we're still looking into another idea as an additional source of income over the next couple of weeks while the app is being made.  We'll keep you updated when we have a solid plan.

So for all you people with Android phones, keep on the look out over the next couple of weeks for our app!

What do we do!?!

SOO.. this we some questions were raised about the legality of our project....WHAT!?!? I never thought those were the words I would hear. Maybe, "Man, your product sucks" or or something like that; not, "You have the right to rem..."

With that being said, I think we're going to try an launch a few multiple ventures to really see what we can run with. We're still worried that a smart phone app wont give us enough time to make revenue, or that its illegal..