Listing Carousel, our example application for this book, is a real-life online application that provides realtors (that is, professional real-estate salespeople) with an opportunity to share their listings to their contacts on social media in an engaging and informative way. One of my companies owns and operates it.

The reason I chose this application is not so you can steal my code and try to compete with me (which would be totally uncool and not recommended), but rather because with some tweaks here and there, you can turn the application into your very own online service if you wanted to. For example, you can easily turn this application into a classified application (such as Craigslist, or Kijiji) by just adding search capability, or even into a dating/matchmaking site by adding search, and just a bit more code. Or, if you love food, how about turning it into a restaurant site? Sign up restaurants to list their menus in the carousel—one meal or appetizer per slide—and then the restaurant owners can share their menus with their social media circles. Or, if you like having new ways to share photo albums, you can turn the application into something like that. One idea I had a while ago was to create a site where people can showcase their portfolios (such as for artists, architects, and photographers)—feel free to build something like that and run with it. The options are truly endless. The point is, I wanted to come up with a fun application for the book—one that would give you some motivation to work through the entire book. Why? Simple—because I know that this book would not be as valuable as it can be to you if all you were to do is to read it. So, commit to dive into the code with me and build something that you would enjoy. Who knows, maybe you will come up with a great idea for a profitable online business! My goal is to make the time you invest in working through this book as time well spent and, if I succeed, you can then give this book a five-star review (wink). Does this sound good?