I have and idea: a mobile app helping to search for people in the crowd

If you wanted to dive into the world of development, but for some reason you still don’t have enough simple ideas that you could implement, I have something for you. Something really simple, something that seems as useless as possible, but something potentially wildly convenient… or not. The simplest thing to develop and distribute, which you will certainly drop to your smartphone. Who knows what awaits you tonight?

So, just imagine: you are in a huge crowd of people, in which you have to find your friends. You have a rough idea to look for them, but it’s still like looking for a needle in a haystack. You call them to get new landmarks, but it doesn’t help. And then one of your friends informs you that you can just navigate by the green flashing light and just lifts his smartphone over his head. A little easier, right?

I began by explaining why, not what, because nobody needs an app that just flashes some color. It sounds useless, stupid, and hopeless. But now you know that even so a primitive tool has its own scope. Situations where you really need something like this are very rare, but why not prepare for this?

How to do this? Well, I would like to start with HTML. Let it works like a simple mobile website: 1) we don’t need a lot of effort to port this to other platforms; 2) people are more willing to open a website than install an app. And we can just drop the HTML-file to the smartphone and open it with a browser.

How does it work? Easy: you just choose the color and intensity of the blinking. If you want to prove that you are a serious developer (and you have enough time for optional steps), you can add some pro-features: for example, switching from one color to another one. In theory, we can also use the flash, and let it blink in time. If you’re worried about privacy issues, the only permission we need is backlight control, because we need maximum screen brightness.

Well, that’s all. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but I never got around to it. If you want to make it, you’re welcome. If this makes anyone’s life a little easier, I’ll be glad.

June 25, 2022

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