Awesomnia

New experiences with the 'Google Android Market'

2011-03-08T00:36:00.000-08:00

Over a week has passed since I released 'Growing Mosaic Lite' in the market and it has been a success so far. Almost 10,000 people have downloaded the app and this mark will probably passed soon.
With an average rating of ~4.5 and 69 votes right now it can be considered as a good app I think.

But..

The market is really bad! I was expecting higher quality from 'Google'. It's a nightmare for developers. Data is updated sporadically every 1 or 2 days. There are no timestamps for your data, so it's hard to know how current the numbers are.
The rating system is kind of a joke. People give you good/bad rates for the most obscure reasons.. or for no reason. After having some success with the app, the 1 star ratings without a reason were increasing every day.
I suspect some kind of trolling and/or downvoting on purpose there.

Whatever.. yesterday I released the Donation version of 'Growing Mosaic'. Setting the price was another joke. Google's 'auto fill' button didn't work, so i had to calculate the prices for all countries myself.

Now it becomes exciting. How many people will buy the donation version? Time will show.
It features:
+ An integrated image album which allows to automatically cycle different images.
+ Parallax background support. The mosaic will be larger than the screen and you scroll over it when changing screens.
+ Additional tile shapes.
+ A touch effect. (more will follow)
+ All features of the Lite version.

For now I just want to thank all of those, that rate my app with their honest opinion and of course those who buy my app.

Growing Mosaic Donation -- Market Link:

Some first experiences and a second app

2011-02-21T15:16:00.000-08:00

So more than a week has passed since i released my first app 'Latrunculi' which currently is at 444 downloads. This doesn't seem so much but i didn't expect a large audience.

My second app should target a broader audience. It's a live wallpaper.
It uses an image the user defines to create a mosaic. This all happens in the background, so one can watch it.

There are 3 modes you can choose from:
'Automatic': Builds a mosaic and after it finished restarts the building process.
'Never': Builds the mosaic and then goes to 'sleep'. So the finished mosaic is set as background and the app doesn't consume battery(almost).
'On touch': Everytime one touches the screen, the mosaic is rebuild from scratch.

Also you can choose the roughness of the mosaic.

Overall I think it looks pretty decent and I will publish a donation version soon.
Hope some folks will buy it.

Download Growing Mosaic Lite

Here are some results:

Entering the Android Market

2011-02-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

Some weeks ago i finally bought an Android phone.

Studying computer science the time had come to get hold of a smartphone. Being a developer i was mainly interested in creating apps.

So what app should be my entry to the Android Market? I decided to write a board game since this was something i wanted to do for a long time anyways.

Browsing the market I recognized that there were enough checkers and chess apps around. Then i remembered an ancient Roman board game that i came across some years ago.

Latrunculi

It has some similarities with checkers and chess and can offer interesting strategic battles.

Today I've finished the first releasable version of Latrunculi. It's now in the market and depending on its popularity and the feedback users give i will further enhance the program.

Link to Latrunculi

or the QR image:

I hope you will post some feedback and ideas here.

Dave