Technology

CountView – Part 3 – CountView on the Android Market

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CountView has now reached the pinnacle that an Android application can reach – it’s made it to the Android Marketplace! Okay, well, that might not quite be the pinnacle. Angry Birds has probably taken that with the number of downloads and popular references. Getting on the market is still pretty cool though even if it cost me
US$25 to get a developer account.

So there’s new steps now and it’s not much easier really although they are a little more standard since nearly everyone has installed an app from the market.

Steps:

  1. Open the market
  2. Press the search button
  3. Type in CountView
  4. Press Enter
  5. Click on the CountView application
  6. Select Install
  7. Select the very minimal permissions
  8. Done!

And how’s the app doing? I’ve had fourteen people install it and nine are still using it. Here’s my favourite graph that Google provides:

Active installs of CounView by country

Technology

CountView – Part 2

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I’ve finally convinced some people (poor suckers!) that my app has some relevance and they are keen to install it. Unfortunately the first person I tried to help install CountView it ran into a big fat error that I had never seen before. So, one day later I’ve actually tested the install myself (which I probably should have done in the first place) and I can now give you the full instructions on how to download and install the application.

1. Allow unknown source (ie. other than the Android Market to be installed):
First step is to let installation happen straight from your SD card. To do this from your home screen click then options/settings button, select Settings, select Applications and tick the Unknown sources check box accepting any warnings that it gives. You can uncheck this after you finish installing if you’re worried about security.

2. Download the CountView installer:
The installer is called AndroidCountViews.apk
and you’ll need to get this onto your phone so that it can be installed. The easiest way to do this is to probably open up your browser in your phone and find this blog page, click the link:  AndroidCountViews.apk
and whallah! you’re done. Downloaded and ready for install. If that’s no good then you can download it to your PC and transfer it using the USB cord.

3. Download a file manager application:
I’ve tried a couple of these and they’ve both seemed good. First on the list is Adao File Manager. The second is Android File Manager. You can find both of them on the market – just search by name.

4. Install the application:
Now that you’ve installed your file manager you’ll be able to install the CountView APK. To do this open up your file manager of choice, navigate to the Download (could be in lower case – download) folder. This is where all your downloaded files from your browser go. Then just click on the AndroidCountViews.apk file that we downloaded in step 1, and install it. You can then open the application up and away you go.

You might want to add the icon do your desktop area so you can quickly retrieve it and see your stats but that’s about it. The application will launch itself if you ever restart your phone and it should just sit away in the background checking when ever your screen comes on.

If you still find these steps a bit confronting and you don’t want to help me beta test the application, then hold on a bit longer while I work on getting my Android Market page up. Aim is to have it up and running by the end of June. And here’s some screen shots that you’ll be seeing shortly:

Application in motionIcon on my desktop

Edit: You can now get this off the Android Play store.

Technology

CountView – Part 1

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Long time between posts but never fear, I have been busy! My latest project is called CountView and it’s my second substantial android project. The idea came from a random article I read that gave some figures on how often people look at their mobile phone. I’ve spent some time looking for the initial research with no luck but as far as I know it was done by Nokia, found that people look at their phones on average once every 6.5 minutes and up to 150 times a day. If you now of the actual study then please let me know as I’d love a read.

CountView is my effort to reproduce and verify that study. It’s a fairly simple app that keeps track of how many times you look at your phone each day. At the moment it’s not recording the time, just the number per day. This is then used to provide a count per week and a total count of views and how many days you’ve used your phone.

The application is definitely a work in progress at the moment. I’ve got it up to a point where I’m happy to share it but there’s definitely a lot more to be done before I move it to the android market. Those things include

  • Being able to submit your usage data
  • Being able to set your age and sex and submit that to
  • Making it look a bit nicer, and
  • Figuring out the rest of the Android market place process

So, you’d like to try it? You can download the APK and give it a shot.

Hopefully it will self install and you’ll be hot to trot. All feedback appreciated!

Social

Twitter: Like Facebook But You Choose Your Friends!

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It’s the age old question: If you could have any five people over for dinner, who would they be? For me the answer is:

  • My favourite philosopher (or interpreter of philosophy): Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton)
  • My favourite porn star: Sophie Moone (@SophieMoone)
  • The president of The United States of America: Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
  • Universal man of controversy and sheikh of tweak: Shane Warne (@warne888), and
  • Lead singer from one of my favourite bands: Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against The Machine) (@ZackdelaRocha – this one is unconfirmed though as he’s never tweeted.)

That’s some list of people in my opinion. And you know what? I get to hear from most of them every day. The power of Twitter is that I can connect with some of the most prominent people in the world on the topics that I care about. What I left out above includes the subject matter experts from the technologies I work with (Enterprise Content Management and Android), my favourite journalists and people involved in defending Australia and the world from censorship.

I’m sorry real friends but you really need to pick your game up. We’re reaching our quarter life crisis and what have we got to show? A sports presenter, a PhD candidate scientist, content management specialist at the United Nations, and a model. I know this is harsh as many of you are world specialists in your chosen fields but I think we can do better!

So the real power of twitter is that it lets us connect straight to the people we are interested in. Facebook is sort of trialing this – you can like our favourite bands and brands but I don’t think it’s really the same. I don’t feel the same connection. Let’s face it, Facebook is for friends and should keep trying to improve on that market. It’s probably a pretty good market too as most people I’ve met have friends.

And Twitter? Is it going to take off because we can choose friends so much better than our own? Maybe not. Twitters big problem is that you can choose your friends, but not what they talk about. And most people talk a fair bit of garbage. I think Twitter might have a chance of fixing this though. I’d love to see a channel feature where you could just connect to the relevant material until you think you want to know more about a person. I know I already post a fair bit more to Twitter than I do to Facebook and if they can get some focus on relevancy they might become
a real power.

Either way happy communicating!

P.S. If any of the people on my dinner wish list can make dinner some time then just drop me a line. My calendar is always open.

Technology

The Rise of New Technologies and Expert Opinion

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The Conversation was recently launched. While it sounds a little too much like the circle in name the concept behind it is really great. It’s a site for people in the education industry (university and research predominately) to post expert media styled articles. Instead of listening to a journalist rehash some concept – why not take it directly from the experts. Generally expert opinions fall down why it comes to covering the complexities of the field. I’ve found that the writing so far has been highly accessible and topic to date though.

I actually hope the site can take the next step and start doing two things.

  1. Driving public opinion towards rational analysis of topics rather than the emotive approach that comes from the broadsheets and our politicians.
  2. That the articles can in effect become peer reviewed by having other experts in the field as the main people who are able to comment. They definitely need some way of differentiating between regular comments and other expert commentary.

The biggest problems I see with this form of new media is funding. At some point the general populace is going to catch on that you can just block adds. Without ads the marketing people are going to start to question the worth of paying money to have their blocked add shown. What we need is direct funding for what we like. And the solution could be flattr. Flattr is a micro-payment system. You choose a broad amount that you want to spend a month and flatter all the things that you’ve enjoyed that month. Those could be charities, musicians, blogs, media articles or tutorials. At the end of the month your money gets split up and a portion sent to each of your likes. The payment per like might end up being really small. But thats the idea – with the internet comes the ability to show your work to a much larger number of people. If 200 people read my blog and leave me 1c each I’ll at least make $2. That goes a lot further towards meeting the costs than the current model where I would make nothing.

So where do micro-payments need to go to make this truly viable.

  1. Critical mass. Everyone needs to have an account and everyone needs to start having this on their website. That’s the only way people will start feeling they have to give.
  2. A way of differentiating, even in a small way, of how much you liked something. For this I’m thinking a star solution. One star and you were informative. Five stars and five times the payment. When you’ve saved me four hours in a blog post that I would have had to nut out myself I’m very appreciative.

So good luck to both of these new services to the world and let’s hope they both succeed. Expect to see a flattr button appear on my site in the not to distant future.

Edit: might write something worth paying for first!

Posted by Michael at 8:55PM 31-Mar-2011