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DailyHoroscope recent downtimes exlpanation

Max — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:53:16 +0000

It is true that we have experienced many issues lately with the content being unavailable. We got a lot of emails and comments on the market. Some comments claim that we are not listening and do not know what is happening. This is not true. We always listen and always answer the emails that we get from you.

We issued the following emails to everyone who wrote us about the problem as an explanation:

Hi and thanks for reporting this issue.

I already saw this issue and it has been taken care of. The application should function normally now.

We had problems lately with the content sometimes being unavailable. We actually had 2 separate problems:

1. T-Mobile’s servers did not want to “talk” to our hosting provider this is when we had continuous outage of almost 2 days trying to work it out with T-Mobile and our hosting provider.

2. At certain points our servers were just getting overloaded. We gradually upgraded our server but the problem kept coming back. Tonight we were supposed to be moved to a much better servers. The time that the server is inaccessible was supposed to be a few minutes, but the people that host our servers screwed up and it wasn’t until I saw the problem and let them know that it was fixed.

We are very dissatisfied with our hosting company due to those recent problems and will be looking to move our servers somewhere else in the near future. We do not want to do anything impulsive right now as to prevent any additional downtime but we promise we will work to prevent such issues in the future as much as possible.

We do our best to bring you the best horoscope app on the Android Market. I personally had many stressful days and sleepless nights during those past 2 weeks when we had this problem where our servers would overload. As a result of those recent problems, we have seen many negative ratings on the market. Of course it is completely users’ right to rate the application low, but many of the comments were “I love this application but it doesn’t work…” “My favorite app…” with 1 star rating. We are sad to see that trend. If you have ranked the application low due to those problem, please reconsider this. We really work hard to bring you this great content in a free application.

Luckily we seen complete opposite to that as well – people saying how much they love the application and wishing that it would be back soon with great ratings.

Anyhow, we thank you for your understanding and continuous support.

Regards,
Max.

Unfortunately application description space on the market is very limited in space so we can not use it to keep you updated and comments are not useful in particular since the are quickly pushed down for other people. We are now on twitter and you can follow us there @DHAndroid for Android or @DHBlackBerry for Blackberry updates.

Twitter links:

***NOTE the Android and BlackBerry logos are the property of their respective owners.

DailyHoroscope for BlackBerry officially worldwide

Max — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:19:08 +0000

It hasn’t even been a month since initial application release and already traffic is pouring from across the world. We’ve earned our bragging rights. DailyHoroscope is a really popular application. For a while it was in top #10 AppWorld downloaded applications and right now remains on #3 spot in Entertainment category. Exciting!

How do we know? In reality, RIM provides a minimal amount of information about your application installations. We had to resort to other solutions. Main lesson learnt: analytics tools like Flurry or Localitics are invaluable for tracking application usage and seeing how users actually use your application. Both are easy to integrate into your application. Heads up to those guys, keep up the good work!

Today Flurry is reporting a spike in sessions and finally we have at least one user on each continent. Most of the traffic, as expected, is from North America. It’s roughly 15:1 ratio of users in North America vs everywhere else. With the recent announcement of AppWorld deployment outside of United States we expect this ratio to be affected, but not by much.

Anxious to see what the next month will be like…

Also, exciting to hear some of the user feedback. Really cool suggestions coming in and frankly sometimes we can barely keep up with the emails. I guess that’s what you get with BlackBerry users: lots of emails. If you are a DailyHoroscope user and have something to say just post a comment here.

DailyHoroscope application is available on BlackBerry

Max — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:08:24 +0000

DailyHoroscope application that was available on Android platform as DailyHoroscope for Android, couple weeks after G1 hit the stores and was very well received by Android crowd, is now available for BlackBerry users. It has been available for download from GetJar and Mobihand for 2 weeks now while waiting for approval on App World. On Juen 30 the application was approved to App World and since then was downloaded by many many users.

The application is ranked #4 in Entertainment, just a few days after the launch out of 125 applications in the Entertainment category.

If you don’t have access to the App World, or for some reason don’t want’ to install it, you can download the latest version of the DailyHoroscope for Blackberry application.

Here are some highlights from comments we have received on the App World:

“I have been looking for an app like this forever and I finally found the perfect one! Download now if ur into astrology! : )”

“Outrageously accurate most parts…. Almost scary! If you’re into astrology, a must have app!”

“I love reading this app everyday. Very useful and pretty accurate.”

“If you’re really into keeping up with horoscopes then this app is just perfect. Fun icons, easy to use.”

“This is a great ap, at first I couldn’t figure out how to update daily. I sent a question to the help desk and got a response in 2 min. Now it works great, and their customer service is the best I’ve seen! Thanks Max. ” Jenn

“The reading was dead on. It works great with my storm but you have to follow the suggestions the application offers before download exactly and it will work great. Icon and all, I love it”

“Great app, same as on G1. Thank u.”

“This app is just awesome! When I read the reviews saying that it was really accurate I didn’t believe it.. But is really is! Its shocking! The best app in my phone!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Can’t wait to check it tomorrow!!”

And the application is of course FREE!

What it takes to become BlackBerry App World vendor

Max — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:52:57 +0000

I am not sure what is the policy of RIM about it, but I don’t think this is confidential, since pretty much everyone can access this information while trying to setup an App World account. So here, we go:

What does it take to become an App World vendor:

1. You have to sign up and pay $200. Moreover, they will charge you additional $200 for every 10 submissions of applications, either it is just an update, or whether it was rejected by RIM – it will still count against your 10 allocated submissions, you bought for $200 initially and will need to pay afterward again if you used all 10. And there are quite a few cases when you use those. One which is the most ridiculous is the update.

2. If you are either individual or a company, in either case you will have to provide a proof of identity.

So 2 is not so bad, and quite understandable and acceptable — RIM was always centered around security. But 1? RIM, WAKE UP! Other platforms are doing so great because they have all those cool applications that are made by all those independent developers. Ease of development is the key feature to draw developer’s attention. So you have lousy development tools, lousy SDK and now you are charging roughly 2 times more than Apple charges and 8 times more than Google charges . And remember this is just to start with, and depending on how many applications you are putting and how often you update those, it can easily add up. There is also $20 fee for getting signing keys to be able to access signed APIs.

So you might think – yeah right, but the minimum price for applications on App World is $2.99 which sets a legitimate reason for developers not to charge less than that and basically prevents competition. Right? WRONG! Paid applications on App World are complete failure so far. No one is buying those except very few exceptions, which by the way fall mostly into the “stupid apps” (fart apps etc..) that RIM tried to prevent from infiltrating to the market by setting the minimum price to $2.99. Another evidence of bad judgment from RIM.

I hope they will realize those problems and limitations sooner than later, or otherwise they just might have trouble staying in business in the long run and when I am saying long run, in mobile world this is 2-3 years.

OVI store to have 20.000 applications on day one?!

Max — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:07:41 +0000

Reportedly, the OVI store from Nokia, will have about 20.000 application on the day one launch. Although this number may seem overwhelming, this is only about 50% of the applications available from App Store – the iPhone marketplace. But the App Store was kicking for some time now, and it actually started with much less than 20.000 applications on day one.

Android market pales in comparison. It had only about 50 (!!!) applications on day one and about 100 after the first week when google were rapidly adding more and more. After they opened the gates for developers though, the flood of the applications followed almost immediately. Unfortunately, not necessarily quality ones. There are apparently not so many very quality applications on Android market, but fortunately this ration is rapidly changing with more and more talented developers flocking to the platform.

Ease of development is comparable to iPhone and there are many more Java developers that can easily leverage their existing skill than there are Objective C developers out there. However there are still much more developers for iPhone than there are for Android. This however will probably change when the platform will become “more sexy out of the box”. Support for multiple platforms will also contribute to popularity of developers. Surprisingly as it sounds, many developers just can’t afford a Mac to start develop for an iPhone.

I am advocating and will keep advocate that out of the box ease of development is a key factor in drawing more developers and creating a vibrant community of developers and enthusiasts around the platform, which is what eventually created the success of the platform as a whole. RIM – fails short both on ease of the development and support for multiple platforms, so no surprise there whatsoever. It is on the right track, but it keeps moving very slow and still has a lot to learn here.

Android development vs. Blackberry Development my personal take

Max — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:56:18 +0000

I just posted quite a lengthy post about Android development vs. Blackberry Development on my “Life by bits and numbers – a software developer blog”.

It should be an interesting read for developers planning to have the pain experience of developing for Blackberry. Coming from Android, it might feel a little “outdated”…

Blackbery StoreFront the present and the future!

Max — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:26:11 +0000

Very interesting and insightful interview with Mike Kirkup, RIM’s head of developer relations was posted today by ZDNet.

Q: Google is fairly relaxed about which applications can go into the Android Market, and Apple is quite strict about keeping out App Store submissions that replicate functionality already on the iPhone. What level of gate keeping does RIM want to exercise over the applications that go onto Storefront?
A: We have the ability today for people to write apps for our platform, and we put no restrictions on when where or how they can distribute those apps — it could be through the BlackBerry site, or something like Handango.

What we’re trying to do is build up a catalogue of apps that are easy for customers to find and use. If somebody builds a better calendar app than the one that’s natively on the device, we don’t have a problem with that, and they are welcome to sell it through existing channels. However, we want to make sure no-one is violating any agreements, and their applications don’t use excessive network bandwidth or lewd content.

What do you mean when you say you won’t allow apps that use ‘excessive bandwidth’?
That will differ across different carriers. We are definitely going to be sensitive to people moving a significant amount of traffic over the carrier’s network without an agreement with carrier. The BlackBerry is very focused on managing network performance — we compress a lot of traffic and encrypt, in the case of enterprise traffic. The ones that are going to be in that range [will involve] streaming scenarios, video and audio.

There is quite a shift going on towards open mobile platforms, particularly with Android. Why would a developer address the closed BlackBerry platform when they could develop for a platform that is free to put on a variety of phones?
Our big value proposition for developers centers around the features and functionality we can provide, and our strong leadership position in the market. We have 21 million active users, and the majority are likely to use their device for more than phone calls.

Will RIM ever move towards an open-platform strategy?
We’ll find a balance between what’s the easiest way to engage developers and create a platform. One of RIM’s key advantages is that we build everything from the bottom up in our platform, from the radio to the Java stack to APIs. We provide a consistent experience across all our devices and across the world; it is difficult to replicate the experience across all these different devices [with an open platform].

Eighty percent of the revenues from applications on Storefront will go the developers or vendors. What happens to the other 20 percent?
We have costs associated with that channel, such as our partnership with PayPal. Anything left over would be shared with carriers or kept by RIM.

Will PayPal be the only payment mechanism for Storefront?
At launch, that will be only mechanism that will be available. As for after that, we have plans as to how to evolve the Storefront, but we will see after the launch.

How far back in the BlackBerry range will the applications sold through Storefront work?
It will work back to version 4.2.1 — basically any trackball- or touch-based device. We will make sure we provide developers using the [Storefront] channel a very large user base to attract their application.

Is there anything you would like to add?
We’ve designed the Storefront from the very beginning to be used for this purpose. There is lots of functionality in it to make it easy for application developers to support it — free trials [of applications] and so on. We also want to make sure we’ve worked really hard on the rating system to ensure we can provide a lot of value back to the community when people are looking to purchase applications.

via: ZDnet

Blackbery soon to open appstore and is accepting application submissions

Max — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:05:12 +0000

There’s no doubt that Apple is definitely contributing BIG innovations. One of the recent ones which was not directly celebrated by the customers, but which opened a lot of new possibilities and directions is the appstore.The idea is simple and yet genius – let’s give people instant access to the content specialized for their OS and device with convenient method for finding just the right content and zero effort installation process. The result – great success.

The Android adopted the idea and has its own Android Market. Google have learned from some of the mistakes Apple did with its appstore and introduced some new ones. Microsoft is rumored to be developing its own version of the applications market.

But wait, let’s get back to the mobile world. RIM (the developers of Blackberry devices) has been long rumored to be also developing its own version of the market. It is hard to say what is exact market share of Blackberry/Apple/Android/Windows Mobile/Others, but most of the experts and sources agree that the Blackberry market share is very close to the Apple’s iPhone and some reports show slightly larger market share. Te real problem with the Blackberry is the lack of cool applications. There are obviously reasons for that – the business model of RIM is very different from the model Apple has for its phones and yet this is the cause of the “problem” but there ought to be a solution nevertheless. And it seems like finally there will be a solution to shortage from RIM’s side.

RIM called for participation in developing applications for its phones some time ago (official press release). Recently they have announced that they will start to receive applications for evaluation to appear on its storefront (that’s basically how they call their version of applications market).

That’s definitely great news for companies and developers alike who are developing for Blackberry . The competition will be tough . Let the best prevail!