Posts tagged with Android
Find out which of your Facebook friends use iPhones, iPads and Android devices
So you've made a great iPad app, and you want to tell your friends about it. However, you can't remember which of your friends have iPhones, iPads, or Android devices. It's annoying to send your friend a link to an app which they can't run!
Facebook recently announced that the Graph API now includes a new field for users called "devices". This looks something like this:
"devices": [
{
"os": "iOS",
"hardware": "iPhone"
},
{
"os": "iOS",
"hardware": "iPad"
}]
It's an array of objects, each with a "os" (iOS or Android) and optional "hardware" (iPhone or iPad, for now).
I threw together a quick Facebook app called "Friends With Devices" using the Facebook Javascript SDK which will scan through your list of friends and sort them into three lists: iPhone users, iPad users and Android users.
Check it out: http://apps.facebook.com/friendswithdevices/
Archos Child Pad: a tablet for kids, pre-installed with everybody’s favorite pig
Attention parents! Tablet maker Archos might have exactly what you're looking for to stop the little ones from monopolizing your iPad or Android device. Their new aptly named "Child Pad" is a 7-inch tablet that will be running a customized version of Android 4.0, 1GHZ CPU, 1GB of RAM, and comes with a micro SD slot.
While its focus will be online safety for kids, you can rest assured that the fun won't be compromised. With access to a library of over 10,000 apps, and coming pre-installed with addictive game like Angry Birds and our very own Pig Rush, the kids will not be bored!
The Child Pad will retail for around $129.00, and should be available in April.
For more info. on the Child Pad, check out this review on Engadget.
Andy Pad coming in less than a week – with Pig Rush pre-installed!
There's been a lot of buzz lately about a new Android tablet hitting the scene: Andy Pad. Coming out in less than a week, this cool little tablet aims to fill a gap in the Android scene by providing both a superb out-of-the-box user experience, along with a great price. The Andy Pad will come in a standard and pro flavour (£129 standard and £179 pro), and feature a ton of great games pre-installed... including our very own Pig Rush! Check it out!
Extracting download numbers from Android Market’s statistics page
The Android Market recently added a new statistics page for app developers, giving useful information about each app such as downloads, which devices and languages are the most popular for your app and so on.
Unfortunately the download numbers are embedded into a Flash chart, with no easy way to extract the raw data for further analysis.
I whipped up a quick bookmarklet to fix that. Drag this to your bookmarks bar, then run this on the stats page, and you'll get a simple tab-separated list. The first column is a timestamp, the second column is the cumulative number of downloads. You can paste this into a spreadsheet easily.
Here's the bookmarklet: Extract data
(I used the Bookmarkleter to convert the simple JS code into a bookmarklet)
Of course there are third party services who will grab the data for you, but if you just want access to some quick data, this should do the trick.
How Android app stores fail to attract developers
If you've been developing apps for Android, such as ReignDesign's Pig Rush and Bible Promises, you'll know that there's a large number of competing App Stores for Android. Barely a week goes by without another email inviting us to submit our apps to a new store. As well as the Google-backed Android Marketplace, there's Amazon's new store, GetJar, Verizon, Pdassi, Appoke, Handster, AndSpot, Lenovo ...
Going through the application processes can be very time-consuming. Most developers would rather spend their time on developing cool new features than filling out long forms! So, how can app stores be more developer-friendly, and hence attract more developers with top apps.
1. Provide case-studies of successful apps
Unless you're a familiar brand like Amazon, you need to work for developer's mindshare. Provide case studies of apps which have been successful on your store. Saying "Game X has been on the store for 3 months and has had over 300,000 downloads" is compelling.
2. Display any restrictions at the start of the application process
If you only accept free apps, or paid apps, or developers based in the United States, or APKs less than 10MB, say so at the beginning; not after a lengthy signup process.
3. Make an intuitive developer site
If the first experience a user has with your app store is a confusing mass of links and poorly designed forms, they probably won't make it through the application process. Ensure that you can accept uploads of binaries, screenshots, etc via the web. Don't use an FTP site, or expect people to attach large files to email.
4. Pre-fill what you can
If you can already pull in the title, description and screenshots for the app from the Android Marketplace, do so. Typing in an app description for the tenth time is frustrating. Be flexible about the lengths of fields, and don't make every field compulsory.
5. Simplify financial and tax requirements
Verizon have an incredibly convoluted process for completing tax and financial forms to appear on their app store. There's no doubt that paying developers in various countries is a challenging problem. But it's a problem other companies have solved. Consider only requiring financial forms to be filled in after the initial signup process.
6. Show developers how their app appears on your store
On many app stores, after an app is submitted, it can be very hard to actually locate the app on the store. Simplify this by providing an easy link to see the "public" view of an app. Often, we'll want to refine the images/text after seeing the live app in context.
7. Reporting, reporting, reporting
Provide as much data as you can to developers about how people are discovering their app, and who is downloading. Basic download numbers by date - ok. Device/OS version data - good. Search terms used to find your app, demographic data, retention rates - great.
This man is tired of submitting to App Stores.