The story began about a month ago, it was right after Chinese New Year in 2013, which for some meant that it is time for a diet because they ate too much during the holiday season; for others, it was a time to readjust themselves to the work environment after the triple-combo celebrations of Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year.

For me though, it was a time to prepare for the rest of 2013 and Q1 2014.

I have always been fascinated by stories about how this is now the age of the mobile devices and how it would change our lives. As someone who loves gadgets, I am on my 2nd smartphone and 3rd tablet; and as such, I have experienced first-hand the usefulness of mobile apps on as well as how they can potentially change people’s lives.

Why not get someone to develop a mobile app then? Having used third-party developers for my website twice before, I can safely say that is out of the question as they never actually produced anything that is up to my expectation. The alternative would be to the application myself but I haven’t done software development for nearly 10-years now.I was from the world of C, C++ and Assembly; had zero experience in doing anything involving a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and not to mention Java or stuff that ran on-top of a Unix-like operating system like Android or iOS. So the plan for a mobile app was put on hold until I could find a better solution.

There are things in life however that is somehow fated or is meant to be done… as it turns out getting a mobile app was one of those things for me.

One fateful day, a month ago… after I played with a sub-standard Android app made for one of my industry partners which was written by “professional” app developers, I got the final push to develop an app myself. “After all, I can’t do any worse than those “professionals”, right?” I told myself.

The following day, I sat beside my laptop and Googled, “How to develop an Android application”. And the rest as as they say, is history.

For those who are wondering why I didn’t start with a iOS app, it is simple, Android is a platform that I am more familiar with.

Google to its credit, have made it incredibly easy to develop apps for the platform; providing a very good and free development environment and built-in debugging on any Android device via USB or network. In all honesty, Java though initially seems quite foreign to me, it is still C or rather C++ based; and writing stuff in XML is so much like HTML and CSS.

Yes, software development have evolved so much over the last 10 years; not in the sense that new programming languages are developed but in the way of the tools to improve the efficiency of the developer, in the usage as well as quality of API (Application Programming Interface) and the wealth of information on the Web. I can imagine myself enjoying software development a lot more these days than I did those years ago.

After much researching, learning, hacking and rewriting code, the app is finally ready. As of last night, an app called “Steven Leong Photography” is on Google Play Store. I hope it will provide a good enough an experience to everyone.

And if you are in possession of an Android device running Android 4.0 or higher, hop over to the Play Store HERE.