Category: Software

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.

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 UK£ 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.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been programming for fun. I haven’t done this in a very long time and I’m very happy to find a worthy purpose for my free time. I started implementing my call-again-if-urgent cellphone mode, called Dindy now (DND… Dindy… get it? oh well) on the Android platform provided by Google.

Google provides an SDK and documentation that make it very easy to start working with Android – basically a very helpful Eclipse plugin with an emulator that actually runs the phone’s code, so you can test your application immediately. As for the specifics of my application – at first I had to find out the APIs for getting an incoming call’s state and how to realize a call was missed. Once I had that, the basic functionality was done after a few days.

However, I find myself agonizing over the creation of the preferences GUI. GUI programming has so many patterns for separating logic from presentation that it becomes a steeper curve to learn how to program for it than it is for the “low level” stuff. Preference objects, database helpers, view adapters, numerous factories – all needed just to let the user modify a not-so-large set of options. Granted, there is one complexity in Dindy’s preferences – the existence of dynamic profiles for which I had to create a small database. But still… it’s just too complicated.

I already demoed the basic implementation I currently have to a few people and got some positive and negative feedback. Once I have something complete with a polished UI I might post some screenshots here. I still don’t know if I want to charge money for it and whether I want to open the source (the two don’t contradict.) I might try charging a small amount at first (up to 2$ a pop) just to see what happens.

Oh… and eventually I’ll have to get myself an Android-based phone and see how the application works. It’s all nice and cosy in the emulator, but in real life things may get tough :)

Dropbox is one of the only file backup/sync services that works across Windows, Mac and Linux. I’ve had an unused free Dropbox account for a while now, but today I upgraded it to a 50GB account for 10$/month. I’ve been considering an online backup solution for a while now (even before the trip) but now that I have all this data from the trip (mainly pictures from the cameras but also music files and others) and considering that I will now have three computers (Linux desktop, work laptop and this Eee netbook) I can no longer pretend that my data is safe and organized. Even things that I have multiple copies of – I can’t control the last time I backed them up and where that backup is.

The only thing that’s really annoying about Dropbox is that it synchronizes and backs up only one folder. So if I want to backup/sync my pictures I have to move all of them into that folder. So I did that with my pictures and my music and now I have 8 more upload days until everything is backed up online. When I’m back home I’ll install Dropbox on my Linux machine and work laptop and everything will be synched automatically on them.

Dropbox gives you 2GB for a free account, which is perfect for storing configuration files (for example, Linux’s /etc folder.) I’m already know 50GB won’t be enough for me, but it’s enough for the duration of the trip.

Update: I spoke too soon. There is a way to sync files outside of the Dropbox folder. In Linux/Mac/Windows Vista (or later) it’s as simple as creating a link. In Windows XP you need to use a utility.

Skype’s service, not the actual software, sucks. It sucks so much that I’m wasting my time writing about it. Let me start from the beginning.

I was happily using Skype since I started the trip. I was using it to call both cellphones and landlines, mostly in Israel. Up until I reached a limit that can be charged on my credit card (Skype enforces this limit. This is not an actual limit I have on the card.) For Israelis, that limit is 30 US Dollars. Skype, being customer-friendly and all, advise you to add another payment method if you reached the limit on an existing one. So that’s exactly what I did – I have a PayPal account that I used. I managed to use it twice with Skype, but then my account was blocked without any given reason. At first I didn’t even know it was blocked – my calls were simply dropped as soon as I would make them.

When I realized that my account is blocked – I went to see my balance online and there Skype told me I can’t do anything and need to contact customer support – I followed dutifully and contacted customer support. That was last Wednesday. I haven’t heard from them since. I wrote them again two days ago. Nothing. Only the automated mails saying they got my complaint and will be back in 48 hours with a response. I still have 10 USD in that account that I bought and can’t use.

Luckily, I have another credit card. So I opened a new account and started using it for Skype calls. But today came the last straw. After billing it once, Skype’s “anti-fraud” measures reversed my second purchase of credit and now this account is blocked as well. They even admit that their anti-fraud system sometimes rejects legitimate purchases.

A friend offered that I use Gizmo5 instead, so I bought some credit there. The rates are just a few cents higher than Skype’s (per minute) and if the call quality is fairly good (haven’t tried calling with Gizmo5 yet) I’m never going back to Skype. This is proobably what I should have done in the first place. As the saying goes: “Fool me once – shame on you. Fool me twice – shame on me.” This time the shame is on me.