Amit Schreiber's Blog | ืืืืื ืฉื ืขืืืช ืฉืจืืืืจ
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:
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:
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 โTouch Inputโ 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)
Happy day today – the release of Dindy 1.0.0, my first mobile application ever, for the Android platform. I won’t repeat the specifics of what it does here because there’s a page for Dindy on this very site where you can read about it.
Dindy costs UKยฃ 0.75 (don’t ask why it’s in British Pounds. Really… don’t ask) but if I know you and you have an Android-based phone you can get it completely free of charge.
A lot of people ask me why I chose the Android platform. The initial reason was that it was the easiest platform to develop for. Google makes it really easy to install the SDK (on Windows, Linux or Mac) and test the applications to the fullest prior to moving them to the phone. Even debugging on the phone itself is a snap.
Publishing an application on the Android App Market is also a no brainer (except maybe for having to be an authorized merchant) and the initial fee is only USD 25, unlike the draconian rules of Apple with iPhone development.
Android is an emerging platform. Lately Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2012 the Android platform will be the number 2 OS in the global smartphone market. The thing is that the upcoming version of Android will support small and big screens as well, so it’s not just iPhone-like smartphones I’m aiming at with Dindy (e.g. the smaller HTC Tattoo.)
I’m at least hoping to get my money back for the HTC Hero I bought to test Dindy on, but as always my biggest ambition for software that I develop is that as many people as possible will find it useful.
Today I’m celebrating the 5th anniversary of my road to fitness. I’ve made many changes in my workout routine over the years. This last year, during my 3 months trip, I worked only on my aerobics and so the latest change I made to my gym workouts when I came back 6 months ago was to stop working on muscles (mostly weights) entirely and only run on the treadmill for one hour three times a week.
This change, which cut my net workout time from 6 hours a week to 3 hours a week, proved very positive. I lost 10 kg, which I can only guess is mostly muscle, and I get lots of compliments that I actually look better than I did when I bulked up. Since my initial goal of going to the gym was looking better, I embraced this new routine and I plan to keep on doing it until my body adjusts and starts gaining weight again.
Most of the time I enjoy running. I usually do nearly 12 km in one hour and I try to push myself harder but sometimes my knees start hurting so I pace myself.
As for nutrition, my response to the weight loss is different than most – when I lose weight I become more watchful of what I eat and try to keep it healthier, as if to not to ruin the new achievement. I hope I’ll be able to keep it up, as I do with the workouts.
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