Alarm Clock Paid / Free updated #wpdev

I messed up migration of single alarm to multi-alarm. I didn’t set the description field which meant that users to null reference exception and a crash when they tried to edit the migrated alarm.

I have fixed above error. Additionally Free version had failed last update. I was required to localise DayOfWeeks. Took me a while to figure out but the solution couldn’t have been simpler.

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.DateTimeFormat.DayNames

this is a localised Day Of Week names which can be consumed easily. Apps now with Marketplace
1) Wordastic
2) CVC Wods
3) Slydr
4) Alarm Clock Free
5) Alarm Clock

I have started working on a new app but its been a slow progress. Once i finish 3rd app, i might go back to Cool Camera as that would do with some patches based on stack traces.

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Wordastic, CVC Words and Slydr Update #wpdev

Last few weeks have been busy. I finally finished 1.0 of Wordastic. I still have to improve the overall experience but its not too bad. The idea is simple. take a word and randomise the characters. Give users a certain amout of time to correct the sequence. the faster they do it, the more points they get.

CVC Words is based on my discussions with my wife about education in early years. CVC words are simple words that start and end with consonant and have a vowel in between. They are frequently used easy to learn works like Cat, Bat, Bad, Mad etc

Lastly i added support for Lithuanian in Slydr based on user request.

Sldyr 3.3 contains a dirty hack #WP7 #windowsphone

Since i moved to new code, the reviews (apart from one word feedback like “crap, shit, worthless”) mentioned that its not acurate. well i now use similarity algorithm which means that user trace is compared against what apps database.
“tree” and “three” have very similar path. Infact half the time even i can’t do it perfectly. Similarly
“ciao” and “chiasso” have a very simiar path.
so I started by first doing a similarity match followed by a sort to reorder but that messes everything up.
“starts” always returns “states”

so what did i do ? well i said “if the word index of 2nd word is greater than 1st word and the difference is greater than 100, show second word before 1st. Thats it. doesn’t do anything elegant.

It solves all the issues i mentioned about but it still make me feel a bit dirty… yikkkkkkeeeeeeessssssss.

I have also tried to patch the runaway blank space bug 🙂 I doubt i’ll ever fully get rid of it.

Cool camera and Slydr 2.6 out now

Both cool camera and Slydr for NoDo have passed certification…

No localisation for Cool Camera 1.0

Having finished Cool Camera day before yesterday, I started localising it. Its a tedious process and here’s my take on it. Its not really worth it.

My personal experience is that sales of English app is about 10 times that of all non english apps combined.

Slydr English Downloads : 9163

Slydr Non-english Downloads: 1510

I am pretty sure others apps might have a slightly different ratio but its not going to be a massive difference. For that reason, v1.0 is not localised. Its English only.

I guess i will keep that model for all new apps and localise them as requested by users.

Looks like stats of other apps dont agree with Slydr stats.

Alarm clock: 727 – English 327

Alarm clock Free: 3247 – English 997

Okay i might have to go through Localisation after all for next version.

Slydr 2.6 resubmitted

I have finally installed and tested the 2.6 release on NoDo emulator. Its all working good now after my fix. I have resubmitted it to microsoft for testing. Another 5 days and NoDo users should get the update finally.

Windows Phone Dev in 2011

I think i got my HTC Mozart 7 some time in March 2011. After using it for a week or two, i registered myself as a Developer and started writing my first app Scribble in April. I think I spend 2 weeks writing it.

This was the first time i was coding Silverlight and its been fun.

Scribble: Initial effort – 2 weeks. It was my first try at Silverlight app and it was a simple drawing app – having used the word simple, it did a lot of things – use photochooser task, save to Photo Library etc. It even supported multi-touch – It was a great learning experience.

Alarm Clock: I spent a good 2 / 3 weeks writing this and yes i love this app – I use it as my Alarm clock – especially since Mango update as i can now have alarm without app running 🙂 –

LearnToWrite: 1 week – this was the simplest app i have written. Just features simple alphabets and numbers.

Sliding Keyboard: I wrote the above 3 apps trying not to write Sliding Keyboard. I just couldn’t get it out of my head and no matter how hard i thought, i wouldn’t figure out how i would achieve it. However I got it running in 2 weeks. And it went live in June 2011. Publishing v1.0 was a big mistake – it got slated on so many levels. Over the next couple of months, i cursed myself enough number of times. I have spend weeks and weeks since initial release – now it stands at version 3.2. It has taught me the most – it taught me humility – i am good at what i do and i realised that customer doesn’t care about how hard you are trying – they just want the product to work. I also learned that no one reads the description 🙂

The total downloads stand at 22,822 – Paid downloads are just over 1216. Here’s the download chart

I think it has been a very trying year – as a WP7 user I love the phone.

As a developer – I have mixed feelings – I love and hate the fact that API is restrictive. Microsoft have been fantastic in testing the apps – Everything has been as smooth – they test the apps better than i ever do. Thank you.

As of 2012, I am writing a couple of apps. Let’s see what this year holds.

What happened to Slydr 2.6 ?

I submitted Slydr 2.6 Friday the 6th Jan as i though i’d better update NoDo users with latest changes. I branched current Mango code base and made changes to revert the code to NoDo compatible code. I didn’t realise it but i left Mango version of Silverlight Toolkit and 2.6 didn’t pass certification as the app crashes when you navigate to Settings page. This is what consumes the Silverlight toolkit based controls.

So what did i do ? Well to start with I pushed 3.2 (which is update to 3.1 Mango version and contains some bug fixes) and its currently in testing. I have also downloaded NoDo sdk to get my hands on NoDo Emulator so i can thoroughly test 2.6 when i push it for certificaiton in coming week.

Apart from that Cool Cam is close to completion. I have the photo viewer working correctly and all i need to do is get effects application code working correctly. I plan to finish it tonight and then hopefully i will polish it a bit (for example displaying a count down when using timer mode). Then comes the annoying part of localisation. I am keeping the text very simple and so i hope localisation is easy / more accurate.

Last week i also published entire word lists i have generated. I have uploaded 50k zip, entire zip and log file which details file count / word count etc etc.

Slydr for Nodo WP7 updated to 2.6

I made substantial changes in word matching algorithm and the dictionaries i packaged with the app when i released Mango update. I finally thought i’d update the last NoDo version of Slydr (2.5) with most changes i could accomodate.

Well i actually started with Mango code base, I used svn to branch the current code and then i revereted the project from WP7.1 Mango to WP7.0 NoDo version.

Feature removed from Mango version for NoDo compatibility

1) ShareTask replace by SearchTask

2) Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew removed (NoDo did not support RTL)

3) Localisation reverted to only original 5 WP7 languages (English, German, Spanish, French and Italian).

I wanted to update both WP7 based Slydr 2.5 to 2.6 and Mango WP7.1 based Slydr 3.1 to 3.2 however Marketplace would allow me only one update – which makes sense so i’ve submitted the 2.6 version. Once that is through, i will upload 3.1 to 3.2.

I also joined Microsoft UKs dev promotion (2 months late but still)- meaning that i will try to publish a few apps before 1st Week of Feb and might get points from Microsoft. These points can be swapped for goodies 🙂

If you are a UK based WP7 developer… dont forget to sign up @ http://www.my-rewards.com/wp

As far as map downloads are concerned, i am finally done with Google maps for UK + Ireland and they are massive i tell you. I have to figure a way out to reduce the size. Maybe for the first version i will provide download and cache as you use. Camera app is going well, I have to add a couple of things, camera mode and photo viewer / editor etc.

I think for the sake of getting some goodies, i am going to submit the apps in following order

1) Cool Cam

2) Babel fish

3) Sat Nav

I dont have any other ideas and even if i did, i doubt i have enough time to finish the above. Keep you fingers crossed… Microsoft goodies here i come.

Slydr 3.1 submitted

I submitted Slydr 3.1 to microsoft. Now the users can easily switch between different languages (provided they selected multiple languages in settings to start with).

Wasn’t too bad… had to double the layouts with language button like in stock keyboard. Apart from that not much has changed. it you toggle the languages, it checks its cache to see if language is present. if its not, it will load the files otherwise it will load existing data.

also corrected some menu words for german and a setting’s button loading as requested by one of the users.

Now back to maps.