Launching a Startup mobile App in Australia? How hard can it *really* be?? Day 6 Report
Today was mostly focused on back end developments but 2 key milestones were reached:
1. Our Launch page was made finally live (my own fault on that one as I corrupted the DNS completely! So after a 48 hour (self caused) delay we now have a launch page tied to MailChimp to allow us to recruit potential customers as the application is built. It also points users to these blog posts to see how we are progressing. I *may* add a blog link to the Wordpress site to allow the posts to be published there as well – but in line with keeping focused on application development this week, I decided to skip this for now too.
Be sure to check it out & sign up to hear updates as we release version of the application: www.picknic.com.au – Note that the screenshot is showing the site live on Google Chrome. It is really important that you test any web based application you deploy on multiple platforms. With Wordpress a lot of the complexity required to ensure things work and appear consistently on multiple platforms (including different browsers, mobile, tablet & iPad etc) is already covered so you don't have to worry about it. If you haven't chosen to use a cross platform CMS or blog tool – just keep in mind to test it as part of your release plans.
2. My data is finally all imported in Azure Table Storage & blob Storage. Again a call out to the Cerebrata Cloud Storage tool – which made the import process quick & simple. See the sample data excerpt here:
The thing that I am waiting on further to decide is how many copies of the data do I want in tables with different Partition keys. I am considering setting up tables for the key facilities or BBQ, Toilets & PetFriendly. This will ensure a quick return of data that is searched by facility. But at this stage, the main table is sufficient for us to search by location (the default) and display the related images & information for each park – our Version 1 requirements! 
Quick Thanks!
I also want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that has contributed to the project so far & provided help & suggestions along the way. I have to admit that I am really enjoying working on this project and am so grateful for the positive responses and interest on the project from so many people already.
Once again I thank all of you who have added comments or sent me messages about this project, and I look forward to keeping you updated as the idea progresses along its little journey. As always, feel free to post your ideas, thoughts suggestions & comments below