agitcraft

After weeks of wondering why my submission to the Amazon App Store was not yet publicly available, I finally received an e-mail from Amazon explaining that they were having a hard time installing the app.

Upon launching the application, the user is presented with a message reading “Complete action using” and is given the option to select either ‘Internet’ or ‘Market’; when the user selects ‘Market’, they are directed to the Android App Market, presumably to purchase the upgraded version of the application.

Now I’m sure there are some slimy developers, but to assume that I would insert code in a free app that forces users to purchase the full version *on launch* is a bit much. Would Amazon even allow that kind of behavior?

Anyway, I ended up republishing the app in Flash with it set to search for Adobe AIR in Amazon’s App Store, resubmitted the app, and waited.

Then I waited some more.

Then I waited even more.

Finally, today I was fed up. I decided I was going to go in and resubmit the app, again, to get their attention. That’s when I noticed one important detail. While I had updated the .apk associated with the app on Amazon, I hadn’t bothered to click the  submit button, so my app had effectively been in limbo for weeks for no reason except my own habit of overlooking small details.

Doh.

Anyway, hopefully Warhol Lite will be available soon on the Amazon app store, at which point I can submit the latest update and start all over again.

I’m announcing the release of my first AIR app, Launchpad. You may already be using it, or you may have located it lurking around the blog or my portfolio without my really saying anything about it, but that’s because I was still moving towards an official release.

Well, the time has come.

Launchpad is now available. You can learn more about it by visiting the project page for it, or if you’re already convinced (I’m sure you are) you could just install it now:

Hey readers. I haven’t been updating in the last few weeks for personal reasons. I’m back now.

I’m working on a release version for my first public AIR app, and on a redesign for this blog to match a little better with my new portfolio.

I spent a little bit of time developing the icon for my first publicly released AIR application. I’m not telling what it does yet, but hopefully I’ll be offering up the first version of it some time soon. What do you think?

I’ll be releasing the very earliest version of an AIR app I’m working on some time soon. I have a huge list of features that I want to provide for it, and the first release won’t get near accomplishing them, but thanks to a tutorial I checked out today I feel confident offering incremental upgrades.

What tutorial did I read? This tutorial on providing automatic update functionality to AIR apps! Many thanks to Greg Wilson for the super-easy tutorial and useful sample files.

I’d like to take a moment to draw special attention to an application that I’ve used extensively and found very useful, both in the past and presently.

For those of you working with the Flash Platform, you’re probably quite familiar by now with the FLV file format. At my company, we deploy a large majority of our video content in this format because of it’s high compression and support for embedded cuepoints.

Generally we create our FLVs and fine tune metadata as a project demands. In the past, anytime a change was made to the project that required editing video, we’d have to go through the process of cutting our source media and exporting to FLV all over again. Then I discovered Rich FLV.

Rich FLV

Rich FLV allows you to open and play FLV files, modify in and out points, and edit cuepoints and other metadata. You can then export your modified FLV in a matter of seconds, without having to rebuild the entire file.

This app has saved me hours of time and hopefully it will do the same for you.

You can find the latest version of Rich FLV here.

Rather than doing a “Top 50+ Adobe Air Apps for People Like You!” article, I figured I’d just highlight a few apps I’ve seen around in articles like these and express my interest in trying them. Screenshots and application descriptions were shamelessly jacked directly from the Adobe Marketplace because I can be lazy like that.

Random Patter

Easy app that renders paterns based on given parameters. Rendered image can be used as a base of a mosaic. Preset parameters can be saved and loaded (in xml file format) and output image can be saved as SVG document.

I <3 Generative Art. I can’t figure out for the life of me, though, why the letter “n” is excluded from the word “Pattern.” Maybe the author is just trying to distinguish his app? Maybe he doesn’t speak English?

Google Calendar Invoice Creator

This application reads an RSS feed from your Google Calendar in which every created appointment the number of hours worked for a project represents. Based on the title it filters the appointments, calculates the total of hours and creates your invoice in html or text version. Obviously you need a Google account to use this application.

This could be really useful, although I don’t currently use Google Calendar to keep track of meetings and project work. If there’s a convenient way to go about that, this could be quite useful.

Ora Time and Expense

Ora Time and Expense is a small easy-to-use application for tracking and generating timesheets, expense reports, and invoices. Use the task timer for tracking time sheet activities. Use your webcam to scan expense receipts, which automatically attach to expense reports. Customizable report templates generate time sheets, expense reports, and invoices for you to submit in HTML, Excel, CSV, or XML. Adobe® AIR™ Developer Derby Best Business HTML Application winner. Updated to AIR 1.5.1

I could really use more tools to keep track of both my time and expenses, and this one is consistently talked about.

Livebrush

Livebrush is a unique motion-based drawing tool. Use the power of motion to toss graphics around the screen or elegantly swing the brush around your cursor.

Over 100 styles and decorations.

Export lines you draw as vector files for use in other graphics applications.

Easily modify or create your styles while learning each setting using the convenient style preview.

Developers can also use Actionscript to dynamically control or augment brush movements.

This one could just be fun. I’m a photoshop junkie, but I am interested in new tools for generating interesting work.

That’s all for now!