WTF is WTF Ware?

James and I worked together for about 3 years at Emerald Software Group. James went off to ThoughtWorks and I stuck with Emerald. We've both spent most of our careers writing business applications.

While we love leaving a big project knowing we've made a difference, we got to wondering how we could write software that enriches the lives of more people. We decided we'd get together and start writing mobile apps that are entertaining, useful, funny, amusing, and enriching.

We started writing apps on our own and have had a lot of fun doing it. We decided that we ought to join our efforts and see what we came up with. Thus, WTF Ware was born.

I wish I could say we had a good story for how the name came to be or at least something clever WTF Ware could stand for. Unfortunately, no such story exists.

We were just about to start writing our first app and we realized we needed some sort of organization name. James asked, "WTF is our company name?"

"Beats me dude. Just make something up for now and we'll come up with something later."

Well, WTF Ware is what James made up and it stuck. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce ourselves. We're wtfware.com and thanks for checking out our applications.

Chuck Norris Facts Widget for Android

A few weeks ago, I decided I'd like to try my hand at writing an Android application. One of my favorite features of Android over iOS (other than the fact that I think Apple lacks any form of ethics or sense of social responsibility) is that Android allows you to add widgets to your home screens. Sure, you can still have the half dozen views full of rows of boring icons, but the widgets give you a great deal of functionality without ever having to launch an app.

I decided a good first shot at Android development would be to write a Chuck Norris Fact of the Day widget my family and friends could stick on their home screens and enjoy a little daily pick-me-up. I knew that adding customizability would let me work with preferences and the nature of a daily fact would give me some Android data management experience.

I released the Chuck Norris Fact Widget on the Android Market and several of my family and friends downloaded it the first day. Over the next few weeks, about 1,500 of their family and friends downloaded it, so I've been working to improve it ever since.

If you're on your Android device now, you can download the free version called, Chuck Norris Facts Free or for just a buck, you can get the paid version called, Chuck Norris Facts with Widget. The icon should look familiar from above and the publisher name is, of course, D. Patrick Caldwell.

I hope you check it out and I hope you enjoy a little bit of my sense of humor.

Sincerely,
Patrick Caldwell

For the programmers who read my blog, I'll be posting some technical information I learned while developing this application. Specifically, how I managed to change the background image of my widget with remote views.