ANDAPPSTORE TO BLACKBERRY STORE
Some of you may remember that, back at the end of 2010 I decided to sell AndAppStore to the Seavus group who, in turn, launched a “beyond apps” Android store called Soc.io Mall in 2011. In the last couple of days emails have started to go out informing folk that Seavus and Blackberry have established strategic cooperation arrangement to support the Soc.io Mall developers in side Blackberry App World. I’m really happy with the way Seavus have been able to take the project I started and build upon it to help Android developers reach wider and wider audiences, and I hope that the developers who’ve helped to make the continued growth possible understand what they’ve helped build.
GOOGLE ORDERING PROCESS FAILS
Looks like Google have done it again; Completely f’ed up when writing a simple order management system. I’m seeing numerous reports from people who ordered #Nexus4 ’s after me and were told it would arrive in “4-5 weeks” that they’ve received their ‘phones, which my order (made about 3 minutes after the 4th of Dec restock, with a “1-2 week” estimate) is still sitting in “Pending”. Every #IO ticket ordering session for the past couple of years has been a disaster, the initial #Nexus4 seemed to be a road crash, and this time, although you could order, the order execution process seems to be completely screwed, and in traditional Google style, all you have is an email address to get an answer from and, if they deem you worthy, you might actually get a reply.
THE REASON YOU NEED A "CLOSE ACCOUNT" BUTTON IN YOUR WEB APP FOR USERS
“Close Account” buttons are unpopular mainly for marketing reasons; They give users an easy way to leave your site, and so your user count goes down and your site looks less popular, but, in many countries, not allowing users to close their account can get you into deep water with privicy issues as well as severely damaging your user count credibility ( no-one trusts user counts at a Hotel California - http://en.
CHARGING THE NEXUS 10
It charges from a Micro-USB connector which is, for Samsung, a huge step in the right direction. The feel of the device reminds me very much of a Xoom. The rubber back is a good touch (I can’t count how many samsung tablets I’ve had slip around in my hands). In terms of setup, it still disappoints me that Android doesn’t show the MAC address when you set up WiFi for the first time.
FOCUSING ON MY ROLE AT OUYA
Closing down my other projects. My role at OUYA is going to be full time so there’ll be little to no time to do anything else.
UPDATES TO ANDROID DEVICES
At #io12 Hugo Barra announced the new Android Platform Development Kit. The PDK was described as helping hardware developers port Jelly Bean to their devices and was said to be available “two to three months before the platform release date”, and that selected hardware partners had been given access to the JB PDK a few weeks before #io12 (around the 30min mark in the video below). Personally I felt it was this years attempt to reassure users their devices would get updates after last years attempt (The 18 month update guarantee) failed so miserably.
ANDROID TABLETS
One phrase from last nights Amazon.com Kindle launch makes me think they’re going to take over the #Android tablet space and have big consumer support; “…people don’t want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month.” This has been true for a long time. Consumers buy devices from washing machines to TVs because they want it to do something, not because it has the lastest bit of technology from the manufacturer.
CROWD FUNDING
This is the P&L; for Diaspora, a project which raised two hundred thousand dollars on Kickstarter (http://goo.gl/Yf3Pi) and has now decided to turn it over “to the community” (http://goo.gl/yH9W9) (read; all the money has gone, they’ve not managed to create any revenue streams, and they’re not putting any money in to keep it going). Looking over the figures a couple of things jump out at me; The only income is the Kickstarter money.
ICS SMS RATE LIMIT
One of the changes in #IceCreamSandwich was the introduction of a lower SMS usage monitor rate which restricts how many SMSes can be sent by any application in a given time. My guess would be that the aim is to prevent malicious apps sending huge amounts of SMSes to premium rate numbers, but unfortunately some users seem to be hitting the limit with the default SMS messaging app (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-discuss/bsDO0jQVdTI/Ns7oaTCcIa8J), and it’s possible developers may see users complaining about this if their apps rely on SMS usage and are heavily used, so I thought it’s worth letting people what the limits are in case people ask them.
THE GALAXY S3 HAS MULTI-WINDOW MANAGEMENT CODE ON IT
TL;DR: Implementing it in your apps is more hassle than it’s worth. To answer the most common question; Yes, the two apps on one screen functionality of the Galaxy Note 10.1 is limited to a few apps. All of them ship with the device. The code to support multi-window mode is baked into the core Android framework on the device (so much so that the classes are in the framework library odex), which means that it could be submitted to the #AOSP to become part of Androids core functionality.