Sunday 16 December 2012

Port-a-thon 2 Roundup

Over the past two days, RIM held another Port-a-thon, this time for apps. I wasn't entirely clear on whether that included game apps, but it didn't really matter because I had no more games to port.

At any rate, Answer Ball, Awesome Strobe, Awesome Tips, GPS Data Master, and Psychic Test will be making their way to BB10 devices. I'm not sure I'll get the cash award for each of them, but because I'm insane, even though the PlayBook only comes in one screen size and resolution, I initially designed all of them to easily scale to different screen sizes, and I drew most of the graphical elements far larger than they needed to be, so it didn't take me very long to port them over.

I think I should also note that GPS Data Master will -at least initially- not be free for BB10 devices. Having a popular app is nice, but you know what's nicer? Not having to eat cat food.

Monday 19 November 2012

Port-a-thon Roundup

In an effort to have as many games as possible available at launch, this past weekend RIM ran what they called a Port-a-thon. For every game app ported over to the BB10 platform they gave away $100, and if you published multiple apps you could get things like a free Playbook or a BB10 Dev unit. It was an excellent idea, and I think if they scrapped their $10k guarantee and instead offered $100 for every app submission, I think they'd get a lot more developer interest.

My plan was to port a few apps over at some point just for curiosity's sake, but free money is a powerful motivator, so I wound up doing eight in two days. Awesome Sudoku, Awesome Word Search, Box Games, Completionist, MASH Deluxe, Scooter Wants Cheese, Scramble Master, and Word Scramble will all be available for BB10 when the devices launch at the end of January. Will they be as successful on the new OS as they have been on the Playbook? I can't see how they could be less successful. Perhaps RIM will send someone by to beat me up and steal my wallet, but that seems unlikely.

Thursday 1 November 2012

October Data

For a long time, I've been looking for a way to monetize my Playbook apps. It has not been going well. Anyway, since it's November, I thought I'd share my download and sales data for the month of October.

In short:
28646 downloads
142 sales
$0 in ad payouts

From October 1 to 31, my Playbook apps received a total of 28648 downloads, or around 924 per day. About 9000 came from Canada, 7000 from the UK, 3000 from the US, with the rest split amongst various other nations all over the world, including a single download in Brunei.

Mid-week days tended to produce about 30% more downloads than the ends of the week, with Thursday being the most popular day, averaging more than 1300.

My most popular app was GPS Data Master, and my least popular was Psychic Test.

On the sales front, I sold 140 apps and 2 in-app purchases. Purchases come in multiple currencies, so it's hard to figure things out exactly, but after fees I should net about $90. I sold at least one copy of 10 different apps. The top-seller this month was Awesome Sudoku, which moved 60 copies.

On the advertising front, the various ad networks I use on my blogs combined for around 10000 impressions, 100 clicks, and earnings of $1.88, which I will not receive because it's nowhere near the payment threshold. The ads on my Playbook apps had around 38000 impressions, 370 clicks, and earnings of $7.60, which I also will not receive. These amounts will roll over, and I should be eligible for some kind of payout in 4-5 months. Maybe.

Admittedly, the fill rates haven't been great, but based on the CTR and EPC I've been getting, to make a living on ad revenues, I would need every single Playbook owner out there to use one of my apps five times per month. And that's a bachelor apartment-style living, not champagne and caviar. Suffice it to say that I'm not second-guessing my decision to abandon development for RIM products.

Sunday 28 October 2012

Snippet.java

I had a problem that was causing me no end of trouble, and today I found the solution:

If, when you try to copy a project in Eclipse, pasting it creates a new file called Snippet.java, then try disabling Skype Click to Call in Chrome. I was going insane trying to figure out what was causing that behaviour.

stackoverflow is awesome.

Free Updates

Today, I logged into the App World Vendor Portal and saw the latest comment on GPS Data Master. I decided that I would share it with you:

free updates
0 Stars out of 5
Created Date: Oct 28, 2012 12:11:05 PM
Release: 1.1.102
Review Body:
what happened no free updates anymore?

This sort of thing does not encourage me to make any updates to free apps, and in fact it just outright pisses me off.

Here's a person who liked the app enough to continue using it through at least one update cycle, but didn't take the time to rate it. Then, when future updates weren't coming fast enough, they went ahead and gave it 0 stars. Why would you want any kind of update for an app that you'd rate a 0?

Incidentally, whoever this is hasn't updated to the latest version. They're using version 1.1.102 and the current version is 1.2.1. Regardless, 1.1.102 was released less than a month ago. How the hell often do you expect free apps to be updated?

Here's what you'll see when you start GPSDM:

See that white rectangle there on the right? That's where an ad should be. But no one wants to advertise on the Playbook, so the ad fill rate is so low that most users see it as blank space. While I appreciate what I get, my earnings this month from that ad slot will be less than $2. It's getting harder for me to justify making updates, and comments like that one aren't pushing me in that direction.

Friday 12 October 2012

I Hate Bugs!

I released an update for GPS Data Master yesterday, and it contained a bug that causes the app to lock on a black screen. Unfortunately, the problem only shows up when you upgrade a previously-installed version, so not only did I not catch it locally, RIM's quality control people didn't catch it, either. I've already uploaded a fix, but it'll take RIM a few days to approve the new version.

Meanwhile, there's a workaround that should fix the problem. Simply uninstall, then reinstall the app. If you can, that is. I removed it from App World temporarily so too many people wouldn't get the damaged version. You might still be able to get to it through the 'Uninstalled' tab of the 'My World' section, though.

Sorry for the inconvenience. If it's any consolation, the bug is related to a new feature I added.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Top Free

So, once again I made it into the Top Free section on the PlayBook portion of BlackBerry App World. Last time it was the games section, this time it was the apps section. Here's what I've learned:

People want things for free. Moreover, they explicitly do not want to pay for things. Getting into the Top-25 Free on the PlayBook seems to require around 1500 downloads per day. From what I can recall, eking your way into the Top-25 Paid requires only around 40, or 2.5% of what it takes to get onto the free list.

Lots of downloads does not translate into lots of money. Since GPS Data Master is free and wasn't ad-supported, it didn't generate any revenue directly. As far as I can tell, it didn't drive anyone to my other apps, and it most certainly didn't encourage anyone to make a donation. If I could make a single dollar per year off everyone who downloads GPSDM, I could become a full-time app developer and give away all my other apps for free. As it stands now, I'll be exceedingly lucky if I make a tenth of a cent per person per year.

There's no way of knowing what'll become popular. I banged out the original version of GPSDM in about a day if I remember correctly. I didn't think anyone would ever use it. I have other apps that I've put hundreds of hours of work into that get maybe 10% of the downloads it does.

Many users have no concept of how apps generate revenue. I've had complaints about some of the least-intrusive ads I could find. I've had people get angry and say they're going to delete one of my ad-free apps if I don't change it in some way. I've had requests for features that would require several days of work from people who say they wouldn't be willing to pay a dollar to upgrade. It takes some cojones to ask a guy who's giving you free stuff to work for a week so you can have more free stuff, so I have to assume that there are users out there who think developers get paid if they download something or keep it installed on their device.

Perhaps most importantly, I've learned that the PlayBook is a dying platform. It's a good device, but right now no one is making apps for it. Over the last week there have been about 25 new games released. I know this because I released a game a week ago and it's still on the Top-25 New Arrivals page. They're not quality games, either. I reviewed a few of them over on my reviews blog, and they were mainly worthless; not that anything I've ever made is spectacular, but some ugly, broken stuff has come out this week. Right now, the PlayBook isn't succeeding in either the quality or the quantity of apps, and that more or less spells the end for it.

I'll continue to make occasional updates to my current apps, but I don't think I'll be making any new ones. If anyone would like to hire me to do a little freelance work, I have some time, now. The stuff on this blog should serve as a fairly good indicator of what I can do. And, apparently, I'm one of the top PlayBook developers out there. Whatever that means.

Friday 5 October 2012

Please Bear With Me

I've had to switch ad providers recently, and it's going to take me a while to find a provider that suits both my needs and yours.

Let me know in the comments if you find any of the ads annoying. And please, please DO NOT click any ads just because you think I'll get money that way. Someone did that, and it cost me my AdSense account and all the money therein.

Friday 28 September 2012

Scramble Master


The best anagram game out there! Unscramble the letters as fast as you can! Earn stars! Win medals! Have fun!

Unlike some other anagram games, Scramble Master only uses words you might have heard of. No periblem, no ekpueles, and no murrhine. It's not about adding esoteric words to your vocabulary, it's about having fun!

With thousands of words to choose from, word lengths from three to eight letters, and four difficulty levels, you'll probably never see everything it has to offer.

Available for Android devices and on the BlackBerry PlayBook







Friday 21 September 2012

Can anyone tell me what happened?

As of yesterday, I'm suddenly getting four times as many visitors here as I have in the past. They're all coming from the usual places, though. So, was GPS Data Master featured somewhere or something? I know I released an update for it a couple days ago, but I've done that before, and it didn't provoke this kind of response.

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Review: Shaw Exo WiFi


Shaw Exo Wifi is a simple tool from Shaw Communications that will show you the locations of any Shaw Exo Wifi hotspots in your area, or anywhere else you might like to look for them. It has an online mode that will show you exact locations and give you directions courtesy of Google Maps, as well as an offline mode that will give you a city-by-city list of locations. You can search by city or by an exact address, and you can refine your search based on what type of building the hotspot is in, such as hotels, coffee shops, and Shaw stores.

UI
The UI is clean, and suitably coloured, but scrolling the list of locations can be a bit janky.

Usefulness:
If you're heading someplace new, or out on the town and carrying your tablet for some reason, and what to know where you can get online with Shaw, then this is the app for you. It's not quite as useful for people such as myself who aren't Shaw customers.

Reusability:
It's always good to know where a wifi hotspot is, so you could find yourself using this over and over again.

What I Liked
-The app notices when you lose your wifi connection and automatically switches to offline mode.

What I Hated
-Some Shaw Exo WiFi zones are accessible to the general public under certain conditions according to the help file, but it doesn't give any way of differentiating them.
-It takes a while to start. The first time I launched it, I thought it had locked up.
-Doesn't recognize that it has access to GPS if it can't get a signal right away.

Final Verdict:
Not particularly useful if you're not a Shaw customer, but if you are, and you're on the go a lot, you might find it helpful.







Shaw Exo WiFi is available for free from Shaw Communications on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: NBA Fantasy News


NBA Fantasy News is a news aggregator app. The news comes in four types RoloWorld Fantasy News, ESPN.com NBA News, NBA Highlights on Youtube and news from NBA.com. Each category gives you three pages of stories, and each page consists of five to seven stories, made up of a headline, a couple lines from the article, and, in the case of the Youtube section, the preview image from the video. Tapping a story brings up a screen that allows you to visit the originating website and read the full article, and lets you tweet the story or share it on Facebook if you so desire. That's the extent of what it does as far as I can tell.

UI
The user interface is clean, responsive, and highly intuitive.

Usefulness:
This is not a particularly useful app. It basically just gives you headlines, and you can more or less get those just by visiting the respective websites it culls information from.

Reusability:
It looks like the information will update throughout the day, so if you like getting your NBA news this way, you'll probably use it a lot.

What I Liked
-The UI design is well done.

What I Hated
-Some of the articles it lists require access to ESPN Insider. I assume that's probably free, but I don't have an account there.

Final Verdict:
A decent news aggregator, but a news aggregator nonetheless, so it's probably not worth the time to download it.




NBA Fantasy News is available for free from Bobby J. Saini on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: Chicky and the Cats: Dorobou Neko


Chicky and the Cats: Dorobou Neko is a puzzle game in the vein of ChuChu Rocket. The object of the game is to guide Chicky the chick around the game board to pick up packages while avoiding obstacles and dodging angry kittens. Chicky will walk in a single direction until he's incapacitated in some way, so it's up to you to place arrows to guide him around the level's obstacles. You place the arrows in advance, then tap the "Start" button and watch Chicky go. And watch you shall, since he's not exactly a fast walker, and you're probably not going to get the arrows right the first time.

Graphics:
Cartoony and reminiscent of old 16-bit era games. They're not flashy, but I found them well-done and suitable to the game's content. The isometric view when Chicky is walking around is a bit glitchy, but looks really nice.

Sound:
The one song is a bit slow, which made the game seem even slower than it already was. There's no option to turn it off, but I have volume controls, so it's not too bad. Sound effects are limited, but appropriate to the game style.

Gameplay:
You begin in an overhead puzzle view with the tile-based game board in the middle, and your various pieces off to the side. Arrows (and Chicky's airplane which allows him to fly over obstacles) are placed by tapping and dragging them onto the board. The pieces are a bit small for my fat fingers, but I managed okay. After you're happy with your placement, you hit the Start button, and the game switches to an isometric view where you watch Chicky walk around the board. It's head-poundingly slow. If Chicky makes it to the goal with all the packages, you win. If not, you lose and have to start over. Seeing Chicky devoured by a cat just as he's about to make it to the end, and realizing that you'll have to start all over again is heartbreaking.


What I Liked:
-The puzzles are reasonably well-designed, and the difficulty seems to scale relatively well as you progress.

What I Hated
-Tapping Chicky will make him change direction, but this change doesn't persist between run-throughs, meaning you have to redo it every time.
-It's slow. Incredibly slow. Watching Chicky walk around the level without having any input is really, really dull.
-Each time you launch, you're met with an unskippable intro scene.

Final Verdict:
A fine start, but needs a few tweaks to be really good.




Chicky and The Cats: Dorobou Neko is available for free from TriHam on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 0.3.1.

Review: Princess dress up

After discovering that nearly every app review site wants you to pay them for the honour of having your app reviewed, I decided that I would choose two apps and two games to review here. Choosing the two most recent arrivals on BlackBerry App World has produced some strange results.

Princess dress up is the latest in a long line of dress up games. Well, latest in the sense that it's new to the Playbook. It's an Android app that runs in the emulator. And I use the word "runs" fairly liberally since I was only able to get it to start once without having to reboot the device; after that it seemed to work fine. But, when it does actually work, it's a pretty generic "dress up" app.

I should also note that the listing on App World is "Dress up Princess" but the app description and icon refer to it as "Princess dress up", so that's what I'm going with.

Graphics:
Fairly simplistic, but good enough for what it's trying to accomplish. You're given a choice of seven girls to dress up, and each one comes with a variety of different clothing pieces. Some bits are generic across all the girls, but most are tailored individually, and fit with the style of the game.

Sound:
One short, annoying song playing on a loop. There's a control to turn it off, which is good. Very good.

Gameplay:
Practically non-existent. You drag and drop bits of clothing onto the girls, and that's it.

What I liked:
-The girls were a little ethnically diverse and of various ages, so there's something for all the girls out there.
-If you want fine movement, there are controls on the side that will allow you to move things on a pixel-by-pixel basis.

What I hated:
-The music was terrible and grating.
-The clothes only really seem to fit in one particular spot most of the time, and there's no option to get them to snap to it.
-Using it made me feel like a creepy pervert.

Final Verdict:
It's not really my bag, but if you're a young girl, this might be your thing.






Princess dress Up is ad-supported and available for free from kidgames on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0.1.5

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Alternate Means of Distribution

With Completionist now available on Google Play, I decided to try to boost awareness by releasing it on a few other app stores as well.

Right now, it's available on GetJar, and I've submitted it to SlideMe, but it hasn't been approved yet.

Meanwhile, I have to say that it's a bit of a pain to get your app up on either of those stores. At least it was for me.

GetJar has a funny requirement for multiple icon sizes. Strangely, it limits the maximum file size as well, so I had to spend a few minutes trying to optimize a 120x120 icon down under 10kb. Ultimately, it just wasn't possible, so I wound up having to upload something that was considerably less than ideal, all for want of 5000 bytes. With today's bandwidth and storage costs being so low, I can't imagine why they need to limit things so harshly.

The SlideMe site became unresponsive when I tried to complete the app upload process, so I wound up having to repeat it three times before it finally took. Additionally, the upload site has a bug where the tiny thumbnail it produces after you upload a screenshot will occasionally be for a different app entirely. The file still uploads properly, but it's a bit disconcerting.

That being said, there's at least one thing I like about SlideMe: The ability to respond to user comments. I can't do that on BlackBerry App World and it's been an unending source of frustration. Too many users leave questions in the comments, and there's just no way to reply.

Unfortunately, after two and a half weeks my app has yet to be approved on SlideMe, and GetJar has led to a mere 12 downloads. As it stands, I can't recommend either one.

Sunday 19 August 2012

Completionist

I have finally made an app specifically for Android devices. If it does well enough, I might port it over to other platforms.


Why not give it a try? It's free!

Get it on Google Play

Can you finish every song lyric?

Do you know the name of every movie?

Then prove it.

Completionist is the pop culture word game that challenges you to prove you know everything.

With hundreds of questions across more than a dozen categories, you might never finish it all.

Are you a completionist?

Categories include:
-cartoons of the 1980s
-hit songs of the 1970s
-reality shows
-box office hits
-and, of course... T






As you can see, I didn't fare so well when I was making the screenshots. I think you can probably do better.

Thursday 16 August 2012

Slow to Upgrade

For my latest app, I decided to try out Android. Unfortunately, the Android OS install base is fragmented quite severely. As such, I stuck with version 2.1 so I could reach the maximum number of users. A few days ago, I gave up on it. The market share for 2.1 has shrunk below 5%, and there was a feature in 2.2 that I needed to help handle the audio. I could've spent hours trying to figure out a decent workaround, but instead I decided that reaching 95% of the audience is good enough. Eventually those 2.1ers will upgrade to new phones. My sanity may not eventually return if I have to spend all day banging my head on the keyboard.

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Word Scramble


Word scramble brings the classic jumbled words puzzle to your BlackBerry PlayBook.

Unscramble the words, then letters from the words create a new, jumbled up solution. Unjumble the solution to find the answer to a riddle, a joke, or a truly terrible pun. It's fun for the whole family!

Two ways to play: Drag the letter tiles, or just tap.

With more 70+ puzzles, you get more than you'd get from your local newspaper in an entire year! All for one low price. How can you pass up that deal?





Word Scramble Landing Page

Hi, thanks for indulging me. Please leave a comment letting me know if there are any features you'd like added to the app. Maybe bookmark this page and come back to it later.

And, why not check out one of my other apps:

Completionist - A fast-paced pop culture trivia game.

Scooter Wants Cheese - A fun maze game where you help Scooter the mouse reach his cheese

Lapse Master - Time Lapse Photography

Awesome Word Search - Word search puzzles with over 12,000 words in more than 40 categories

GPS Data Master - Finally put your Playbook's GPS to good use.

Awesome Sudoku - The classic number game with nearly infinite puzzles and three kinds of hinting

Answer Ball - The answers to the mysteries of the universe are yours... in ball form

Only a Buck - Five apps in one, all for less than a dollar


Or, you could donate. I don't expect you to, but a buck or two would be most appreciated.



Tuesday 31 July 2012

Earnings

A lot of developers won't post their earnings for whatever reason. Maybe they're embarrassed by their success or lack thereof, or they're hiding money from the government, or who knows what. Because of that, it's very hard to figure out what you might be able to earn as an independent app developer. The upper limit is in the millions, while the lower limit is zero, but beyond that, there's no way to tell.

So, in an effort to help people out, I'm going to provide a bit of my Playbook app sales data for this past month.

Here are the sales numbers for five of my apps:
The exact total's a bit of a pain to calculate due to the different currencies involved, but the total looks like it comes to about $65 or an average of $13/app. Since I only get 70% of that, my personal profit on these five apps comes to $45.50 or $9.10/app. Which works out to just about 30 cents per app per day. Meaning that in order to make the equivalent of a $10 per hour job, I'd need to put out somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 apps.

Now, these are just my numbers, and they may be atypical, but even at 25x my earnings, the numbers aren't good.

Just for fun, here's the download data for five different apps:

Again, it's hard to tell what the totals are, but it looks to be around 5000 or so. If I could earn $1 per download, I'd be a reasonably happy guy.

Monday 9 July 2012

Android Versions

Google divides its various Android releases based on what they call API Levels. An API Level may contain multiple versions of the OS that implement minor bug fixes, or it may just be a single version. When you design an Android app, you choose an API Level to target, and every device running that level and above should be able to run your app. API Level 16 made its debut recently, so I thought I'd make a relevant post.

At the moment, there are about ten API Levels with a statistically significant share of the overall Android device market. Now, despite the fact that level 11 debuted about 16 months ago, devices running at that level and above currently only comprise a total of 13% of the Android market. Versions in the 2.x range, occupying API Levels 7-10 now hold a whopping 86% of the market. Which means, if you want to target the greatest number of people possible, your best bet is to go for API Level 7 or 8. Which sucks because version 3.0 introduced some really useful features. For instance, being able to use Property Animation would've saved me a load of time today. It's going to get better in the future, but right now, the version lag is really kind of a bummer.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

No More Try & Buy

As of a few weeks ago, RIM has deprecated the Try&Buy licence for the Playbook. Which means I can no longer make any updates to any of the apps I've listed in that fashion. I say good riddance. The whole thing never worked properly, and it was a total pain. From now on, it's in-app purchases for me.

Thursday 14 June 2012

Completionist for Playbook

Hi, thanks for indulging me. Please leave a comment letting me know if there are any features you'd like added to the app. Because I'm a swell guy, I made a Playbook version rather than just porting over the Android version, so any suggestions you make will come to the Playbook version first, but could end up in both. Maybe bookmark this page and come back to it later. While you're here, take a look around to see if there's anything you might like.

Visit my reviews blog to read reviews of some of the latest PlayBook apps and games.

And, why not check out one of my other apps:

Scooter Wants Cheese - A fun maze game where you help Scooter the mouse reach his cheese

Lapse Master - Time Lapse Photography

Awesome Word Search - Word search puzzles with over 12,000 words in more than 40 categories

Word Scramble - Word Jumble puzzles

Awesome Sudoku - The classic number game with nearly infinite puzzles and three kinds of hinting

Answer Ball - The answers to the mysteries of the universe are yours... in ball form

Only a Buck - Five apps in one, all for less than a dollar

GPS Data Master - Finally put your Playbook's GPS to good use.

Or, you could donate. I don't expect you to, but a buck or two would be most appreciated.



Completionist Landing Page

Completionist is my first Android app, so it's bound to have a few bugs and hiccups. Leave a comment letting me know what you'd like to see improved, or let me know if there are any categories you'd like me to add. And, take a look around the rest of the blog to see if there's anything that interests you. Maybe bookmark this page and come back to it later.

Or, you could donate. I don't expect you to, but a buck or two would be most appreciated.



Hope you're enjoying the app

Visit my reviews blog to read reviews of some of the latest PlayBook apps and games.

You've gotten a decent amount of use out of the app that brought you here, how about donating a little money as appreciation for my hard work?





Or, if you're not interested in donating, why not try one of my other apps:


Completionist - A fast-paced pop culture trivia game.



Scooter Wants Cheese - A fun maze game where you help Scooter the mouse reach his cheese



Lapse Master - Time Lapse Photography



Awesome Word Search - Word search puzzles with over 12,000 words in more than 40 categories



Word Scramble - Word Jumble puzzles



Awesome Sudoku - The classic number game with nearly infinite puzzles and three kinds of hinting



Answer Ball - The answers to the mysteries of the universe are yours... in ball form



Only a Buck - Five apps in one, all for less than a dollar