Look at the Time….

Wow. I have absolutely no idea how it’s June already. And not the beginning either. I promised myself that I’d keep this blog more up to date, and post more regularly but alas; working in my 9-5 (plus overtime of course), working on SimpleGlucose v2.0 (just you wait!) and being a single dad takes its toll on the time I have available to keep everything up to date. Its a bit like juggling chainsaws. I imagine.

So what has been happening since I set SimpleGlucose free? I have been working on a completely new version of SimpleGlucose that will make organising Blood Glucose readings and examining the results even easier and a more smooth experience. Not that this current version is hard to use of course, but everything can be polished in the world of web development and I wanted to upgrade the overall experience and also provide the user with more access to their readings outside of SimpleGlucose. I want users to have complete access to their data in spreadsheet form so that they can download it and do what they like with it – it is the user’s data after all.

The new release will not be launched until the fourth quarter of this year so if you have any ideas or things you would really like to see in SimpleGlucose then drop me a line and I will see what I can do. No promises of course

Setting SimpleGlucose Free….

I am changing the business model of SimpleGlucose – from now on the site is FREE to join and use. No catches, no trials. It’s free.

The membership area now has adverts, displayed as unobtrusively as possible, in order to bring in revenue to cover the running costs. In addition to this there may be some premium features and extras in the future but the site as it is now with its easy blood record management, charts and statistics is free and will stay that way!

Enjoy

HTML 5 and the Markup War

Wow… while this is undoubtedly an impressive display of the whizbang things you can do with HTML 5, I have to wonder… what does this mean for us web developers? I already need to scrutinise my CSS and Javascript to make sure it plays nice across all the major browsers, have headaches caused by support for older versions of Internet Explorer (around 25% of visitors to the SimpleGlucose landing page last month use Internet Explorer 6!!!) and now it seems like the Markup War between XHTML / HTML5 and all the big browsers is about to start.

The first thing I found when I clicked the link above using IE7 at work was that my browser didn’t support HTML5.

Sigh.

KillerStartups.com

SimpleGlucose got reviewed by KillerStartups.com, and a very good review it was too! Thanks guys, you really are too kind

Find out what they think of SimpleGlucose here.

Diabetic Tattoos!?

Wow, this is impressive. Really very clever scientist types at Draper Laboratories have invented a diabetic tattoo that changes colour to indicate the state of the users blood sugar levels!

The ink is injected subcutaneously and changes colour in response to glucose. Each ink nano particle is made of three parts: a glucose detecting molecule, a dye molecule and a molecule mimicking glucose.

As they move around inside the nano particle, the glucose detecting molecule either latches on to the mimicking molecule or real glucose, and changes the colour of the dye accordingly. So when more glucose is present in the blood, the colour changes as the detecting molecules all change their colour. Very cool.

Hmm.. does this mean I have to change the SimpleGlucose interface to accept colours now, instead of traditional numeric readings?

Hypos Linked to Cognitive Decline

Well as if any of us diabetics needed another reason to control our blood sugar levels tightly, recent research has shown that hypos in type 2 diabetics can lead to significantly reduced cognitive functions such as memory, attention, vocabulary and planning (there is a very unkind joke to be made at my expense here for those who know me).

I know that its great to have the knowledge and thus prevent it, but it makes diabetes that bit more scary every time I read a new way that it can ‘get’ me.

That said, I am obviously a huge supporter of research into the effects and treatment of diabetes. Just don’t blame me if I find the results a bit scary

Link: Original Diabetes UK article

HbA1c results are changing in the UK

It seems that the way that HbA1c results are reported here in the UK is changing. The traditional method has been a percentage (such as the coveted 6.5%), but this will now be replaced in favour of a measurement of millimoles per mol ( or mmol/mol) from June 1st 2009.

The new target will be 48 mmol/mol, which is the equivalent of the old 6.5% reading.

I have been planning to add HbA1c result support to SimpleGlucose as soon as the mobile site is complete (April is a loose estimate) – I will keep you posted on this new feature.

New Statistics Display

Hey – remember what I said a few days ago about not messing with SimpleGlucose and leaving it be for a while? Well I have just updated the statistics

Your past seven days are broken down and an average glucose reading for each day is presented along with the percentage of readings for each day that were in your target range.

Now I will stop messing with it. Honest.

Letting Go

Since my lovely web application launched a few days ago, I have been completely unable to stop faffing round with it and uploading the changes. This has to stop, because it is driving me up the wall! I have tweaked the css files so many times I’ve lost count completely. And I’ve been changing wording, changing positioning of elements ever so subtly and I just have to stop so I can crank up the old marketing machine properly and not worry about what shade of grey the sidebar is today

George Lucas is quoted as saying that he felt his films were never finished, but kind of abandoned. That’s how I feel I suppose.

Fortunately, I want to add to SimpleGlucose regularly; I am planning a mobile version of the site for next month for example, but I think I need to stop the whole messing thing and leave it till each major update of the site. Probably. Now… about that shade of grey…..

SimpleGlucose is Go!

Wow what a day! I have slaved over a hot laptop most of the day; tweaking, testing, fussing and correcting and my work is done. Well, at least for today. Which started out as yesterday. Hmmmm maybe writing blog posts at 2am isn’t a good idea.

Anyway, SimpleGlucose is live! It’s in beta test for a week until the 15th March and if you sign up during this beta test you get a free month of SimpleGlucose. The trial period will normally be 7 days so take advantage of this bargain today!

This blog of mine has been very quiet for the past month as my attention has been on getting SimpleGlucose up and running nicely, but I intend to liven up the blog once more. In the coming weeks I will be sharing my experiences of beta testing, thoughts of web app pricing and generally letting you know how its all going.

Thanks for reading this far, if you have See you all soon. I’m going to bed.