Making Money With Android

Steve Jobs is Dead

Wow. Today the technology industry farewells one of the greatest visionaries we’ve ever seen. Apple has confirmed that Steve Jobs, ex-CEO of Apple, passed away today: We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of … Read more

Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II

Ok, so maybe the title’s just a little bit of a linkbait. 😉 But I got a very strong sense of déjà vu when I woke up this morning and first read the specs for the new iPhone 4S. Dual-core processor, 8MP camera, world phone…. hang on a sec, that’s describing my phone! My Samsung Galaxy S II that is. The one I’ve had in my pocket for months already.

This feeling of “been there, done that” only increased when I read on further to the details of iOS 5 (A̶n̶d̶r̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶y̶l̶e̶ improved notifications, anyone?) When the iPhone 4 was announced, it seemed to blow away all the competition. It was simply better than anything else out there. But I can hardly say the same about yesterday’s announcement. In my opinion, it was the most unimpressive iPhone release yet. Sure, the iPhone 4S is obviously an incremental upgrade to the iPhone 4. And many of the improvements are welcome. But they’re also long overdue – and suspiciously familiar to long-time Android users.

Is User a Monkey?

One of the things I love about Google is that the company has a sense of humor. Just look at how seriously they take April Fools day, or the easter-egg built into Google Docs.

This sense of humor didn’t miss the Android team. Take a look at the official documentation for ActivityManager. What’s this I see?

This Week In Android: Galaxy S2, Amazon Tablet & Microsoft Patent Woes

Here’s some of the latest Android news, along with my take on what’s happening. I’ve missed this series for the past month or so, but so much has happened lately I thought it’s worth taking the time to write about some of the big things this week.

The Benefits of Positive Feedback

Have you ever downloaded an app from the Android Market, or App Store, and after using it for a few minutes thought “this is just awesome”? If you’re like me, the answer is yes. But was your first thought to contact the developer and tell him how happy you are? Or did you just keep using the app, happy to have something that works?

I was reading the comments on Tap That! Number the other day. Here’s the latest review by someone called Jake:

Android Income Report #4

At long last, here is my income report for the month of July. This is a very different story to previous reports, mainly thanks to my Google+ Invites app which made a few hundred dollars in one day. I also released a major update for Tap That! Number, and published a new app (CPU Usage Live Wallpaper) with both free and paid versions. It was a pretty hectic month! Read on for more details, and an overview of the month’s earnings.

Intent.ACTION_SEND Crashes Facebook App

I came across a rather obscure bug today, while trying to submit my app Tap That! Number to the Amazon Appstore. I received a rejection notice detailing several problems with my app, including this strange one:

Application’s “Feedback” functionality “Facebook” option is not working.

At first I had no idea what this meant. My app never mentions Facebook at all. The only “Feedback” option I have is a menu item designed to send an email to the developer.

After digging around a bit, I found that the code I was using to launch an email intent was also recognising Facebook and presenting it in the list of available apps. Here’s the code I was using:

How to make $250 a day (and get banned from the Android Market)

A few weeks ago I did something which, in retrospect, was probably rather stupid. But it was surprisingly successful while it lasted. As I wrote earlier, I’ve been using Google+ since the day after it was launched. I myself received an invite from a stranger who was offering invites publicly. For this reason, I’ve been keen to share invites with anyone else who’s looking for one. I put up a post on this blog offering free invites, and got a huge response from the Android community. In fact, there were so many responses that it overwhelmed my email after a few days. There’s no way I could have kept up with the demand.

Rather than stop accepting requests altogether, I wanted to make it easier to handle the load. (NB: At this stage there was no limit to the number of Google+ invites you could send.) My first thought, trying to work out a faster way to do things, was “hey, is there an Android app for this?” A quick search turned up a negative. No Android apps offering Google+ invites. So, why not make one? It seemed a pretty good idea, so I spent that afternoon writing a simple app that accepted an email address, and a description of the request. The data was sent to a PHP script on my server, so I could go through and invite the email addresses stored in a database.

Actually, it’s not that simple to write an Android app that POSTs data asynchronously to a server, checks the response, and handles errors gracefully. I re-used some classes from another unreleased project, but it was still a bigger job than I expected. But the actual coding is an issue for another day. The most interesting part came when I released the app on the Android Market.

Holidays

Some of you have been asking lately – where the heck has David gone? There have been no posts for over a month now, and I apologise for disappearing without warning. Where have I been? Travelling the world, actually. At the start of August I left for a pilgrimage to World Youth Day 2011 in … Read more