Syntactically Correct

Here are some pictures from the latest trip to see The Prodigy in Prague. Until next time… :)

I came back this morning so still haven’t uploaded pictures from Prague. There are quite a few thanks to my friend that went with me. What I already have to show for this trip, though, is a cool clip from the amazing Prodigy show we’ve been to 2 days ago.

It’s the first time I’ve heard this live and it’s a very cool and fun bit of the show, unofficially called Jaws Fill:

This video is from The Prodigy’s show in Brussels. I just love hearing the crowd shout the words at the beginning and at 4:07 it’s absolute mayhem when everyone jumps (it all starts at 3:30.)

My life hasn’t been great lately but excitement is growing towards a week from now, when I will go to see The Prodigy for the 6th time this year, 9th time total.

There’s no better way to fuel my excitement than to report that during The Prodigy’s show in Brussels a few days ago a scientific observatory of sorts, located near the venue, registered a minor earthquake. At least that’s what I could figure out from this translated news item.

I’m going to be inside the best earthquake ever :)

I pondered using “personal turmoils” as a post’s title. After all, how many personal turmoils can a soon-to-be-33 year old bachelor can have? But I do have them and the title certainly describes my life lately.

Unfortunately I can’t go into details because I can’t imply other people on this blog. So that’s pretty much all I can say. It just needs to get out there so I can continue writing here without feeling as if I’m cheating by not writing that something has been bothering me lately.

One week to go for my next Prodigy show! This time one of my best friends is coming with me from Israel, which would be amazing. She’s the best choice for this as she’s been listening to The Prodigy for a month now and recently started learning Czech phrases for the single day we’ll be there.

Oh, and I got tickets for another show – Paris in April. Who’s coming? :)

I have some Google Wave invitations. Comment on this post if you want one. I will use the email you posted your comment with as the invitation address.

Dindy was released a month ago and now it’s time to review statistics, look back at my feeble “marketing” efforts and figure out how to continue. So far 17 people downloaded Dindy. Out of these 17:

• 3 people used the option to uninstall Dindy for a full refund (they’re allowed to do so during the 24 hour period that follows the purchase.) They all returned it a few minutes following the purchase, so I guess either it was unclear to them what Dindy does from the description or they simply looked at it and uninstalled.
• One person uninstalled Dindy after paying (so he didn’t get refunded.)
• One person’s payment was declined by the credit card company so the order was cancelled.
• I refunded one purchase to someone that gave Dindy its only review. He gave Dindy 5 stars, which is very nice of him, and immediately caused a “surge” in sales on the following day, when about 5 people bought it.

I concluded from the surge in sales that followed the review that I need to get Dindy reviewed more, so I sent the following email to some of the buyers a week following their purchase:

Hi,

My name is Amit and I’m the developer of Dindy for Android, an application you recently purchased for your Android-based phone.

As Dindy is relatively new it desperately needs ratings and comments in the App Market. If you have been using Dindy, I would appreciate it if you take a few minutes of your time to rate Dindy and/or write a comment about it in the App Market.

Thanks in advance,
Amit

Notice that I didn’t ask for positive reviews… just reviews. After all, I believe in my product.

Unfortunately, non of the receivers of this message reviewed Dindy. Additionally, my requests from several Android-related sites for a review have not been answered, so I decided to try something else: I developed another (small) application called Sleepless, which basically blinks the phone’s led to let you know the CPU is running and that it’s wasting battery. My intention was to give it for free and promote Dindy through it, but then it hit me – because Sleepless can be misunderstood (for example by thinking that it will always blink) it might have a negative effect on what potential buyers think about me or my apps.

I consider this my first lesson in marketing software: Once you start selling software, you have to make sure all your software products are top quality, both free and paid ones.

So right now I’m considering two options:

1. Offer a free, crippled “lite” version of Dindy. It’s basically a good idea but as a user I dislike “lite” versions of software so I’m not inclined to offer them to others.
2. Make something out of Sleepless, like maybe publish it in forums to get recognition.

Or I can just wait it out and see how Dindy does without my help. Maybe it’ll get enough “mouth to ear” publicity, now that there are so many Android phones out there.

On an Android based phone it happens sometimes that you unintentionally add a word to the dictionary (also called the “user dictionary”) that you didn’t mean to add. On the HTC Hero (or Eris, depends on where you bought it) there isn’t apparently a way to edit this dictionary – only delete it.

I’ll repeat the advice I found here, presumably based on an HTC support request:

Thank you for your questions about how to delete an entry in the dictionary. We are more than happy to help you with this situation. In order to clear out a misspelled word you accidentally saved you must clear out the entire dictionary. To clear the dictionary you press Menu then go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and find the “Touch Input” program. Tap on the Clear data button.

Shameless plug: If you’re an Android user, check out my app, Dindy.

My next Prodigy show will be in less than a month. The warm-up act will be Enter Shikari so I decided this time I’ll know the warm-up act’s music as well, which would make the show even more fun.

Enter Shikari are very good. My favorite song from their latest album, Common Dreads, is Zzzonked, which is embedded here. The song is very good in general, but gets really good around the 2-minute mark:

Luckily, we have fever pads :)

(Taken in an Israeli Super Pharm store. Click the image to see a larger version)