wroolie

Ear Spy

September 27, 2012 by wroolie Leave a Comment

For the past few months, so much has been going. “I should write about this on the blog,” I constantly seem to be saying to myself. But, my early (pre-contract) hours are full. There is only so much you can do between 4:30 and 6:30.

Probably the biggest new thing I’ve gotten into is App development. I’ve been very interested in it for a long time now, but finding the time to work on stuff has been difficult. So, I hired some developers.

I had a strange idea for an Android app. I sit is offices all the time—with headphones on if they don’t have a problem with it—and people are always murmuring to each other in gossipy ways. If only, I thought, I could amplify my laptop mic straight into my headphones—maybe I could hear them better. Sad, yes.

So, I had an app idea to create a phone app that would allow you to look like you are listening to music, but you are listening to the world around you. If you had an equalizer, maybe you could fine-tune it better. Creepy? Very. But I would use it. I sat on this idea for months—occasionally writing some code for it.

In a lunchtime conversation with some friends, I mentioned the idea. My friend Matt, who runs a site called Budding Marketer, encouraged me on and came up with a cool name: “Ear Spy”. I drew up a spec, designed a logo, and hired a very talented developer.

We released the app to the Google Market two weeks ago. It has been installed 3,086 times so far. It is currently ranked #12 in Top New Free apps in the Communication category.

We released two versions—a free version and a pro version. The pro version is ad-free and gives you the ability to record to MP3. Yesterday, released it with support for Chinese Mandarin and Hindi.

My goal is to experiment. I change the price of pro and see how that reacts. I write some stuff on Twitter, and see if that has an affect. I watch the Google Market each day to see the numbers get updated. An iPhone version is in development. I will see how that performs and how different that is.

The biggest problem with Android has been the multiple devices. It pains me to see that someone has had trouble with it or a crash on some device I never heard of. I’m taking the one star ratings too personal too. However, we’ve got quite a few 5 stars.

Anyway. I’ve got 4 dedicated developers working on the next apps, so things are busy. It’s very exciting, but very fun. We should be up to 10,000 installs in a few weeks. It is making money, but a very small amount.

Here is the link to the Ear Spy on the Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microphone.earspy

Android for the Visual Studio C# developer

June 27, 2012 by wroolie Leave a Comment

Last year, I started looking into learning Android development. I’m a C# developer who spends most of his time in Visual Studio, so I had some trouble getting accustomed to it. I’ve looked at a lot of ways to ease the transition into Android. Here are some of my thoughts:

Mono For Android or Proper Android Java

After struggling with Eclipse, I started looking into Mono for Android. I’m a C# developer, and I have to say that I felt a lot more at home in Visual Studio. I’ve also done very little Java development over the years. I took a week-long course in 1999—but mostly don’t use it.

I found Mono For Android to be decent, but it’s not easy. You still have to have learn how to use intents and activities and use the xml layouts that are expected. I found myself trying to learn the Android architecture and how the Mono libraries work with it.

Here are my problems with Mono for Android:

1. There is far less documentation than you would need. If you get in a bind, not many people would be able to help you.

2. It’s like learning VB.Net instead of C#. At some point, you have to take the hit and relearn a few things. Almost all of the example code you look at will be in Java.

3. I can’t be 100% that it will perform well enough on the device. There could be a performance hit. And you need to include the mono runtime, so it would bloat the size of your apk.

4. It costs $400. This is fine if I’m asked to create an app by the end of the week by an employer. But when learning for fun, it’s too high a price to pay. Besides, compared to “free”, it’s too expensive.

So, I prefer to native.

PhoneGap

I did a lot of stuff with PhoneGap too. I love coding in javascript and there is so much that can be done with HTML5. I was able to quickly code a little app that fed off data from Toodledo. For cross platform, I think this is ideal. But if I want to take full advantage of the Android platform, I would need to do native.

Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA

So, I struggled with Eclipse. Even things like autocomplete were throwing me because I was hitting TAB instead of ENTER to accept the autocomplete suggestions. It was messing me up. When I went back to Visual Studio, it was messing that up too. I hate having my flow upset like that.

The majority of tutorials for Android development are using Eclipse. All of the Android tools are well integrated into it.

However, JetBrains has a Java IDE called IntelliJ Idea which is soooo much better for a Visual Studio user than Eclipse is. Jetbrains also develop Resharper, so their shortcuts are very similar. There is a community edition (free) available here. I highly recommend it for Visual Studio developers moving to Android.

The only downside I see with IntelliJ Idea is that some tools like DDMS viewer are not integrated into the IDE. To use them, you have to go to the tools folder of your Android sdk folder and start them manually. But everything is there.

Windows Phone 7

I did some WP7 work last year. It’s a nice platform and I loved writing code for it. But the market share is too small. I know one person who has a Windows phone. I upgraded my phone this weekend, I looked at the Lumia—but went with the Galaxy S3. Maybe one day Microsoft will advance in the phone arena, but I have sincere doubts.

Some thoughts on Microsoft Surface

June 18, 2012 by wroolie Leave a Comment

So I woke up this morning t to see the Microsoft announced its Surface tablet. Since I was burned by Vista a few years ago, I decided I wasn’t going to be an early adopter of Windows 8. But the tablet looks interesting.

But I still think they will drop the ball.

What bothered me the most was the pictures from the announcement. Steve Ballmer standing in front of a cheering crowd in smart casual clothing showing off what the “kids” would love. This is how you do things these days—you try to be the rock star. That’s how Apple does it, so that’s how everyone does it. But Microsoft isn’t Apple. Everything Apple does is not great.

I would like Microsoft to do what they do best—take an existing idea (copy) and make it available to everyone. They copied Windows, but they made it available to everyone. They made it easier for software developers to code on, so millions of apps were built. They put it in people’s offices. They let manufacturers build new specs of hardware. They made the special things about Apple boring and mainstream.

I looked at the Microsoft Surface “About” page on Microsoft.com and see things like “Now you can chat with friends and respond to emails comfortably”. I love it when their marketing people try to sell it by making assumptions about what the mindless masses would do with it. I don’t want to see any pictures of people on skateboards or young people with perfect teeth excitedly pointing at a tablet. I don’t like the assumption that all anyone does these days is chat with friends and update Facebook. Windows succeeds because people use what they make as a tool—and not as a toy.

I use Windows because I like it better than I like the Mac. I stopped using an iPhone because I liked the freedom you get from Android.

The Surface marketing looks like the marketing for the Zune.

I don’t want Microsoft to try to join the cool kids table. I want them to make something I can use. They could really hit this one out of the park. But they have to stop trying to be Apple.

I hope they don’t blow it.