July 2011

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Installing an Android app from a web page link

July 29, 2011 in Android development, Android HowTos by ag | No comments

For Sheridan Programmers Guild apps: 

We occasionally want to give one of our Android apps to a tester or reviewer without going through the Android Marketplace.  These can be alpha or beta copies of new apps or preview copies of updates.  There are several ways to distribute such apps.  The instructions here apply to our preferred technique of providing a download url that navigates to a copy of the app sitting on our own website. If you are looking for more general instructions, you may want to check out one of the links at the bottom of this post.

To install an app from a link on our web page, Read the rest of this entry »

Kudos, regrets, apologies, and lessons learned

July 24, 2011 in microISV startup by ag | No comments

Please note that this post will make no sense at all if you haven’t looked at my original piece on Noah Kagan’s talk at MicroConf 2011.

Kudos

Let’s get one thing out on the table right now: Frank Denbow is a kind, thoughtful, and gracious man. I didn’t identify him in my original piece but
since he self-identified over on the Hacker News thread about it, I’ll just quote him here:

(I was the guy in front scraping hot sauce off my computer/bag/clothes after you threw the bottle up front) Read the rest of this entry »

New SnapTo’s published today

July 21, 2011 in Android development by ag | No comments

Scott HiningerToday was a fun day.  Matt published version 1.2.6 of both SnapToMe and SnapToMe Plus — details below.  And he published the very first of our private label apps:  SnapTo Scott Hininger.

Scott’s the Sheridan County Extension Agent with responsibility for agriculture and horticulture.   People are always trying to describe pests and plants and plant diseases to him over the phone so he can help them figure out what to do. Now that his app is in the Android store, Read the rest of this entry »

SnapToMe Plus Published

July 12, 2011 in Android development by ag | No comments

Porcupine quills in tire (cropped)

I tested the newest version of SnapToMe Plus all weekend while I was out of town and, mostly, out of cell phone range.   I captured a bunch of pictures and transmitted them as we drove home once we got cell phone service back.  I had a couple of usability tweaks that Hokan implemented today and then he republished the app.  Huzzah.

If you, or someone you know, just needs a super simple way to snap a photo and get it off the phone and share it via email, try one of the SnapToMe‘s in the Android Marketplace.  The free version sends the email in the foreground.   The paid version has a background service to do the Send, which allows you to quickly take another picture or close the app without waiting.  The same background service gives you the option of capturing pictures when you don’t have cell phone service at all and having them queue up till connectivity is restored.

Both versions include the date, time, and location when the picture was taken in the email so you have tracking info if you need a record of when/where you saw or did something.

Noah Kagan and the Faceless Bitch slide

July 10, 2011 in microISV startup by ag | 87 comments

A month ago, I attended MicroConf2011, a great little conference for self-funded software startups.  I got a lot out of the conference and have already written positively about the experience.  One big change in my own behavior since coming home has been to work harder at connecting with customers and prospects and getting real, honest feedback from them.  It’s relatively hard to do this when selling through the quite anonymous app marketplaces but I’ve already had one eye-opening success at engaging with a user community and am laying the groundwork now for another.

It is in that spirit of getting and giving honest feedback that I’ve finally decided to write about the one really negative experience I had at MicroConf:  a talk given by Noah Kagan.  Read the rest of this entry »

SnapToMe progress

July 8, 2011 in Android development by ag | 2 comments

We published a quick update to the free SnapToMe today after fixing a crash reported by user Lnand — thank you!

We’re also making good progress on the paid version, SnapToMe Plus.  It made a brief preview appearance in the marketplace last week.  But when we found out that the background email sending technique we were using wasn’t really ready for primetime, we unpublished and went back to work on it.  I thought I had lost a couple of photos of my own (I didn’t — they were still safely on the phone but had to be harvested by hand) and wasn’t willing to risk that experience for users.  I’m testing the new version this weekend when I’ll have plenty of time out in the country with no cell service, so I should be able to give the background/queued-send feature a pretty good workout.