It's been a while since my last article, so I thought I'd take a moment to share a few things I've been working on. None of these are particularly groundbreaking, but they've each scratched an itch and kept me busy.

Collection Keeper Pro on the Web

The biggest update is that Collection Keeper Pro now has a web-based version. For those unfamiliar, Collection Keeper Pro is a free app I've maintained for several years that helps you catalog physical media collections -- CDs, DVDs, video games, books, and the like. It started life as native apps for Android, Windows, and iOS, but the app store situation has become increasingly frustrating. Apple wants $99 a year to list an app, even a free one, and requires you to build on Apple hardware. Google now requires developers to display their full home address in the store listing. I'm not willing to do either of these things, so I've pulled the app from both stores. The Windows version remains available in the Microsoft Store, at least for now.

The web version is the path forward. It works on any device with a browser, no app store needed, and it doubles as a Progressive Web App so you can install it on your phone's home screen if you prefer an app-like experience. New features will be focused here going forward. Building for the web also means I don't have to deal with the headaches of keeping up with multiple platform-specific codebases and the whims of app store gatekeepers. It's a win all around.

Splitonomy

Splitonomy is a new project born out of annoyance. I had been using Splitwise for years to split expenses with family and friends, and it worked great -- until they decided to start charging for basic features. I wasn't about to pay a monthly subscription for what amounts to a shared calculator, so I built my own.

The goal was simplicity. Create a group, add expenses, see who owes what. That's it. Most expense-splitting apps seem to be in an arms race to add features that nobody asked for, and I wanted to go in the opposite direction. Like the new Collection Keeper Pro, it's a web app that also works as a Progressive Web App, keeping things simple and app-store-free.

Google Voice Image Paste

This one is small but has been surprisingly satisfying. Google Voice Image Paste is a Chrome extension that does exactly what the name suggests -- it lets you paste images directly into Google Voice conversations. For whatever reason, Google Voice doesn't support this natively, which has been a minor annoyance for years. You'd think a simple Ctrl+V with an image in the clipboard would just work, but instead you have to save the image to a file and use the attachment button. The extension fixes this.

It's a tiny project -- just a content script and a manifest file -- but it's open source and available in the Chrome Web Store. This was my first Chrome extension and the process of publishing was refreshingly straightforward compared to the mobile app stores.

A Common Theme

Looking at these three projects together, there's a recurring theme: I keep building things because existing solutions either started charging for them, made them unnecessarily complicated, or simply don't exist. I suppose that's the beauty of being a software developer -- when something bugs you enough, you can just go build it yourself. And if someone else finds it useful along the way, even better.