One of the motivations for launching Lex On Tech was a Mastodon post I read that bemoaned the lack of websites highlighting indie apps. I love the idea of celebrating more independent developers — and indeed, I launched this site with Apps I Love as a core category.
Today, I want to celebrate a trio of apps from developer Colin Weir.
His site showcases three apps: Away Message, Wheelie, and Based.
First of all, points for naming. All three apps are named smartly, with lovely icons, to boot; if you see the app icons and names, you already have a sense of what the apps are.
Away Message aims to recapture the joy of AOL Instant Messenger away messages, and perhaps even early Twitter (may it rest in peace). Weir went out of his way to emphasize a lack of a feed or a network, so the flip side is that Away Message requires that you exchange codes with friends; the app isn’t going to suck in your contacts list. That means that for real traction with you and your friends, you’ll need a bunch of them to sign up and swap codes with you. But the app is built with joy and sweetness and aptly captures AIM away message nostalgia, if you can build a network.
Wheelie tracks your bike rides. Note I say your; I still haven’t learned to ride a bike. I’m thinking about it. Wheelie tracks your speed, elevation, and route, and keeps an iCloud-syncable, user-exportable log of all your rides. Were Strava built just for cycling, this is what it would be.
And finally, there’s Based. I was in my late 20s when I learned that some folks keep their own scorecards while watching baseball games, tracking pitches, at-bats, and plays. Based does it live for you, filling in the card as the game unfolds. It looks insanely well done, and the damn thing is free. Bonkers.
Check out Colin’s apps.