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.

So I was browsing around the android marketplace today and I came across something baffling:

This screenshot is taken from the Mangobile homepage.

First of all, why on earth would the developer abbreviate the name of the game as “Sw&Ear?” While glancing up and down the page, I kept reading that as “Swear.” Is that supposed to get my attention?

Second of all, although I now realize the developer’s name is meant to be an amalgamation of “Mango” and “mobile,” I can’t help but continue to read it as “Mango Bile.” That doesn’t sound very nice.

Don’t let these criticisms fool you. Go ahead and watch the trailer for the game. It looks quite competent.

Why, in the Android SDK, does onCreateOptionsMenu return a boolean while onCreateContextMenu returns void? Why oh why?

This is my question of the day. This is also one of the most direct things I’ve posted about Android. I may have mentioned before that I’m getting into it. I’m actually working on a long article describing my first app (not released) as a learning experience.

There will likely be more of this stuff in the future.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical when I first heard about Google’s Android App Inventor, but I must say that this video is pretty compelling, if not a bit silly.

I just thought I’d announce that I’m formally taking the plunge into mobile application development. It seems more and more (though I should have figured this out by now) that mobile is the future, and I hope to get on board.

As you know if you read this blog, I have extensive experience with ActionScript and the Flash Platform. You may also know that Apple recently lifted the ban on applications developed with Flash (and other platforms) for its iPhone. You may know (furthermore) that Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) has support for running applications targeting Adobe AIR.

You might naturally assume, then, that I’ll simply be developing the way I always have and porting to both platforms.

Nope. Not right now at least.

If you knew me personally, you’d know that I take a comprehensive approach to life. I like to do things from start to finish in their entirety. When I pick up a book or film, I finish it (whether I like it or not). I do perhaps 90% of my cooking from scratch (including growing my own herbs at this point).

We all know what happens when you take shortcuts. Sometimes it’s fine, but other times what you get is cheapened, incomplete, or unsatisfying. In other words you get what you pay for.

I’m currently studying the android platform and learning how to write applications for it in Java. I already have a little bit of experience with Java, and this is as good a reason as any to pick it back up.

I have no intention of developing for the iPhone (at least for the time being). Their behavior towards consumers and developers, frankly, frightens me at times.

Because this is a new journey for me I’m digging up as many resources as I can to help me learn this stuff. Here are a few that I can point to right now:

1. The Android Developer Page: This should definitely be your first stop if you want to develop for Android. Everything you need to begin can be found here. I particularly recommend the Quick Start Guide and the various tutorials available in the Resources section.
2. My first android app: I just found this blog post today, and it applies more to people with a background in Java, but it’s nice when somebody takes the time to make notes about bugs, quirks, and other potholes on the road to developer nirvana.

This is just a start, but I’ll definitely post more resources in the future as I stumble upon and use them.

I’ve just begun using WordPress for android and I must say I’m very impressed. That is all.

For those of you carrying Android phones that spend far too much time thinking about flash/flex development, I’ve found a very handy little app.

From the publisher’s website:

After seeing that someone wrote an ActionScript reference application for the iPhone called ActionScript 3 API Reference for iPhone, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make the same application for the Android platform which the t-mobile G1 works on.

Erick Schonfeld recently wrote an interesting article on TechCrunch discussing the ramifications of Adobe Flash CS5′s “publish for iphone” functionality.

In a nutshell, the next version of Flash will allow you to develop applications that will run on an iPhone using nothing but your existing skill set in ActionScript 3. Initially I objected on the grounds that I feel that good developers should be willing to learn a new language if that language is best suited to accomplish the goals they’ve set for a project. On the other hand, this new functionality will provide an immediate window for me to get involved in iPhone development without having to invest any time learning a new language.

More importantly though, Schonfeld points out that the iPhone developer community is about 125,000 strong, while the Flash development community numbers over 2 million. When these tools debut, what will that mean for Apple’s figures on the number of apps available in the app store? We can probably anticipate an explosion.

Furthermore, what will this mean for other mobile platforms? In the past, choosing whether to develop for the iPhone or for Android would have meant, at least, choosing which language I wanted to devote the next few weeks to studying. Now it seems obvious to develop for the iPhone over Android.

The full article is available here: This Will Be The Year Adobe’s 2 Million Flash Developers Come To The iPhone.

Yesterday Adobe released a video demonstrating FlashPlayer 10.1 running on the recently announced Google Nexus One phone, and the results are impressive. Check it out!