Need reviews

To the (few) people who have downloaded my apps for the Playbook, please post some reviews, or send me email with feedback.

I actually had an uptick in sales over the holidays. Maybe some people got Playbooks as gifts. But I still have received no feedback, one way or the other. I really don't expect to get rich this way, but I'm hoping I can learn more about app design and development. Positive feedback could help raise the apps' profiles and bring in more users, and negative feedback would help me improve the apps.

ExerTrak 1.1 Released

Just released a new version of ExerTrak, for the BlackBerry Playbook. This one just had a few usability tweaks, including an integrated numeric keypad for entering exercise stats. Using the soft-keyboard proved to be a big pain, from the usability standpoint. You couldn't always see what field you were editing, and it always defaulted to the alpha keypad, so an extra button press was required to get to the numeric. Now entering this information with the integrated keypad is a breeze.

Next feature to work on will be to support portrait screen orientation, and get into the Nook store!

Sales are still pretty slow, but there are now some users out there. I really wish some would post reviews, or send me some feedback.

ExerTrak 1.0.1

Just pushed out the first update to the ExerTrak app for the Playbook in the Blackberry Appworld. I fixed a small bug where the Date selector lists were not scrolling properly to display the current date selected. I also updated the style of the UI. It's actually pretty amazing how much better you can make something look if you spend a little time.

So far, only one person has bought the app (hope you like it, whoever you are!), but I believe it can appeal to many users, and now with much nicer screenshots, it might see some growth soon.

Hopefully the updated screenshots get accepted. The AppWorld vendor site is not very robust when it comes to making these kinds of changes.

Still looking into a release for the Nook tablet. The Nook store seems focused on development companies, as opposed to individuals, so I'm not sure of my chances are there.

exertrak submitted

My first app attempt was a workout stat log, which I called exertrack. But it had some significant bugs that essentially made it unusable, and I felt compelled to remove it from the appworld while I fixed it. However, due to beta software that I had used, fixing it might entirely rewriting it, so I ended up starting over from scratch, and resubmitted it under the slightly new name of ExerTrak (it turns out there was already an ExerTrack out there).

It has been thoroughly tested, has quite a few new features, and of course, it actually works. I submitted it to the app world for approval today, and i'm looking forward to getting it out there. The original app, despite its flaws, actually garnered some positive feedback, and I've tried to incorporate some feature requests for the original in this new release.

So far, only released on PlayBook, but I have plans for other platforms as well. First up, Nook Color.

storc has a customer or two

I just learned that I finally have a couple paying customers for my labor contraction tracking app, storc for the playbook. Nobody has written a review yet, so I still don't know how it was received, but it is nice to know that someone out there might be using it. I look forward to the prospect of some feedback.

I hope that I can release it soon for some more platforms, and hopefully reach a wider audience.

The search continues...

I spent most of yesterday either changing diapers, or wrestling with Flash Develop (mentioned in my previous post). I followed some steps in various tutorials, but I couldn't get a simple project to compile, even when I used one of the out-of-the-box project templates. Probably with a little more time I could get it to work (after all, others use it), but I don't have the patience for it right now, so I've decided to pursue alternatives.

Not sure which I will ultimately choose, but I've identified two promising tools built on top of the MS Visual Studio IDE: CodeDrive and Amethyst . A third altenative is FDT , which is built on top of Eclipse, just like Flash Builder.

I hope I find something I like soon. I had hoped to spend my weekend working on apps, but this has been a setback for me.

Flash Develop

Up until now, I have exclusively used Adobe tools to make my apps. Considering this has all been a learning experience for me, it made sense to follow all the tutorials to the letter, and they all directed me to Flash Builder. However, my evaluation licenses have now expired, and before I drop the cash necessary to upgrade, I thought I would look around to see what else is out there...

First thing to try is Flash Develop (when I first searched for it I accidentally typed Flesh Develop, but that's not the kind of thing you want to google). A new beta version, 4.0, was just released, so that's where I'm going to start.

I'll post again with my experience, but you can find more info on the tool at http://www.FlashDevelop.org