Monday, January 3, 2011

Six-Pack Equivalent Android App

Despite the fact that I make a living writing electrical engineering software, I am not a gadget guy or early adopter of technology. Thus, when a commenter on the Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator post requested an Android phone version of the SPE tool, I filed it away as something I might pursue sometime, but since I don't have a smart phone myself, it never got very high on my list of priorities.

As luck would have it, my neighbor Lindsey -- who is a gadget guy, but a fellow cheapskate -- was recently gifted an old Android by a merciful friend. So he took it upon himself to create an Android Beer Cost Calculator that gives you the SPE of any quantity of beer. Right now the app is free and shows an advertisement; later Lindsey may offer a 99-cent ad-free version. Under the terms of our agreement, I'll get 10% of any money over $50,000 that he makes off of this. (For those of you with limited sarcasm-detection or math skills, that means that Lindsey will make a few dollars more than the $0 I will make. Which is fitting, since he actually inspired the SPE idea in the first place, as a way to understand growler prices.)

In case you're unfamiliar with the SPE, it is the legal tender of It's Pub Night. When trying to compare the relative price of differently-sized bottles, kegs, or glasses of beer, it helps to convert them into a unit we're all familiar with -- the beloved six-pack. Before anyone goes on a rant, let me clarify that I wouldn't expect snifters of rare Belgian monk nectar to cost the same as a six-pack of Miller High Life. This is just a tool for normalizing prices so you can understand what kind of value you're getting for your money, or compare two similar beers of unequal volume.

Of course an iPhone SPE App would be more popular. If someone has an idea of how to develop iPhone apps without an iPhone or a Mac, let me know.  [Update: you now have a choice of two iPhone SPE apps.]

6 comments:

  1. Will be downloading this on my Tablet tonight.

    Cheers!
    Kevin
    Beer and Coding

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  2. An app that simple would probably take me an afternoon to write. It's super easy.

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  3. @Shawn: Yep, nothing to it. All I ask is 10% of everything over 50K.

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  4. Hmm...looks like the "gMarket" on my GTablet is not the real android market, and the browser does not understand "market:" links.

    Thank you for the motivation to root my new toy and install a custom rom.

    Cheers!
    Kevin
    Beer and Coding

    ReplyDelete
  5. Downloaded and used. I am a little embarrassed at some of the ways that I purchase beer, but
    happy to have a home system.

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  6. Wow, cool! Of course, you're right--as an iPhone guy, I'd like to see this cross platforms...

    ReplyDelete