Thursday 30 December 2010

Video Poker Free and Pro now available on Ovi Store

I'm very pleased to announced that my video poker games, Video Poker Free and Video Poker Pro are now available on Ovi Store for S60 5th edition phones.

The Video Poker games are recreations of the video poker machines you get in casinos, you choose your bet size, play a hand of draw poker with one change of cards and then you win a multiple of your bet depending on how good your hand is.

The games come with 3 different play modes, allowing you to play either 20 hands, 100 hands or a game of unlimited hands. They also come with an online global scoreboard so you can compete with other players around the world for the top spot in each of the different game modes.

The difference between the Free and Pro versions is that the Free version contains adverts whereas the Pro version does not.

Video Poker Pro is available here for 1 Euro or equivalent, and Video Poker Free is available here.

Both games should soon be available for S^3 phones.

Friday 17 December 2010

Weekly download statistics

Firstly I will cover Kitchen Timer Free. In the past week it has had 120 more downloads compared to the previous weeks 419. This downturn in downloads is to be expected as it is now less likely to be found by someone clicking through all the "New" items. Unfortunately I cannot get a breakdown yet of which app is responsible for how much of the advertising revenue but the total for the past week was $1.69 compared to $1.47 from the previous week. Kitchen Timer Free has also recieved it's first review unfortunately this was a 1 star review in Turkish which seems to translate to something like "Tested in again. Oh, already cooked". I guess that one of the side effects of having such wide distribution with the Ovi Store is that sometimes you're going to have no idea why someone doesn't like your product.

Interval Time Free has been much more successful, in it's first week it managed to get 1579 downloads! Interval Timer Free also received a review from a Turkish person, this time, a 5 star review calling it "great". It was awesome to get some actualy feedback on my app and know that someone at least is enjoying it. I think this had a positive impact on sales, especially from Turkey as for Kitchen Timer Free, before it received it's review, Turkey was 5th place in terms of most downloaded from countries with about half of the downloads of the top country, whereas in Interval Timer Free, Turkey is the joint top country. Having seen how much a positive review can help sales/downloads it is quite frustrating when my apps have no reviews but I guess it's up to me to make my apps so good that  people feel inclined to leave reviews. 

Finally, a quick comment on MultiSMSPro which has now also been in the store for a week. Whilst the stats for free downloads update every 24 hours, Ovi Store was reporting that there has been no downloads of it for ages and then one night said there has been some and on looking at the detailed report, those sales had happened over a period of a few days, so i'm not sure how often the stats for paid downloads are updated and unfortunately, sales are at a low level so that I cannot tell whether a day with 0 sales is really a 0 or just a day that hasn't been updated  but by next week I should have a reliable count for this weeks sales. 

Lyrics Quiz Free now on Ovi Store

I am pleased to announce that Lyrics Quiz Free has been released onto Ovi Store for s60 5th edition devices.

Lyrics Quiz Free tests your knowledge of the lyrics of the music on your phone. It scans the music on your phone, looks up the lyrics online and then offers you multiple choice questions about which lyrics goes with which song. The Free version comes with two modes, 20 questions where you are asked which song do 20 lyrics belong to and Surival mode where you have 3 lives and lose one every time you get a question wrong. There are high score boards so you can keep track of how well you are doing compared to your past performance.

Lyrics Quiz Pro should shortly be available on the Ovi Store and includes a Speed mode where the number of points you get for a correct answer is based on how quickly you answer the question, there will be an announcement here when that goes live.

Lyrics Quiz Free is available here: http://store.ovi.com/content/75662?clickSource=blog for Free!

Work is under way to bring Lyrics Quiz both Free and Pro to S^3 devices such as the N8

Monday 13 December 2010

Pause On Disconnect now on Ovi Store

I'm pleased to annouce that Pause On Disconnect is now available on the Ovi Store for S60 5th Edition phones.

Pause On Disconnect detects when your headphones have been pulled out or if your bluetooth headphones run out of power and disconnect and then automatically pauses your music to save you the potential embarassment of playing your music out of the phone speakers to everyone around you.

I created this app because I was worred about what would happen when my bluetooth headphones ran out of power on a quiet train carriage or if I got my wired headphones in a tangle and accidentaly pulled them out. Pause On Disconnect solves these worries for me and hopefully for you too.

It currently only works with the default Nokia Music Player which is what I expect most people use to play music.

It will become available for S^3 phones like the N8 once I have one to test on.

Pause On Disconnect is available here http://store.ovi.com/content/63979?clickSource=blog  for just 1 Euro or equivalent.

Friday 10 December 2010

Kitchen Timer Free download statistics

In the spirit of openness and hopefully as helpful information for anyone else considering publishing things to the Ovi Store, I thought I'd share the statistics about the number of downloads my apps are getting.

Kitchen Timer Free has been out for about 7 days now and has totalled 419 downloads. Please bear in mind that this figure is rough as the Ovi Store statistics seem to update a little oddly. The application has only been available for the 5800, 5230, 5530, X6, N97 mini and C6-00. It should hopefully soon be available for more phones. It has been downloaded in 67 countries.

In it's week of being available, it has earned my a whopping $1.47 in advertising revenue, which is roughly equivalent to 1.1 Euro so I am now actually in profit as that has covered my 1 Euro registration fee!

Obviously these figures aren't very exciting yet I am not that disheartened as Kitchen Timer is quite a niche app. Also I was hoping that some of the value of Kitchen Timer Free would come from convincing people to buy Kitchen Timer Pro which has just been released to the Ovi Store, though currently there is not a direct link in the app to do this upsale.

It will be interesting to see how the trend of the number of downloads continues, obviously some of the downloads at the start are going to be because people are seeing the app on the "New" page of the store and also some people will download it just because it is free, after a while I imagine that the download rate will level out as people will only find it through searching, through this blog or from word of mouth and I expect this rate to be more contant.

It is nice to see that the adverts in my app are getting many "impressions" if not actually the clicks that mean I make money, as there are lots of impressions, I can tell that people are using the app and it is nice to know that people are gaining use from something I've made.

I will continue to post updates about the sales and downloads of my apps and I should have more to talk about next week as today, Kitchen Timer Pro, Interval Timer Free and Multi SMS Pro have all reached the Ovi Store.

Multi SMS now on Ovi Store

I am pleased to announce that Multi SMS Pro has now gone live on Ovi Store for S60 5th Edition phones.

Multi SMS is a intuitive application that lets you send a SMS to someone, many, many times. This is great for playing jokes on people or letting them know that you really mean your message. For example if it's one of your friends birthdays, then lots of people will send them a Happy Birthday SMS but if you sent them 10 then you'd really stand out and they'd know you really mean it.

You can choose who to send the message to by looking them up in your phonebook or also just by putting in their number.

Multi SMS Pro, is available here: http://store.ovi.com/content/65047?clickSource=blog with no adverts and which lets you send a message upto 50 times at once, priced at 1 Euro or equivalent.

Multi SMS Free, which contains adverts and limits messages to a max of 20 times at once should be on the store soon.

Both versions of MultiSMS should also soon be available on the store for S^3 phones such as the N8.

NB Sending a message 10 times will cost you the price of 10 messages or deduct 10 messages from your allowance and similarly for other amounts of messages.

Kitchen Timer Pro now on Ovi Store

PrI am pleased to annouce that Kitchen Timer Pro is now available on Ovi Store for S60 5th edition.

Kitcen Timer is an application that helps you keep track of time in the kitchen. Rather than keep having to check a watch for when to do different parts of the cooking, Kithen Timer rings an alarm when it is time to do something so you can relax whilst you are waiting, knowing that you won't miss anything.
Kitchen Timer includes a flexible alarm system that lets you set alarms relative to each other, for example if you needed to cook a chicken in the oven for 90 minutes but need to have the heat on high for the first 20 minutes of the 90 then in Kitchen Timer you would create one alarm for 90 minutes from the end of cooking called "Chicken" then create a second alarm to go off 20 minutes after the chicken alarm and Kitchen Timer makes this very easy to do.
Kitchen Timer also lets you save alarms to use again the next time you cook the same recipe.

Kitchen Timer Pro, http://store.ovi.com/content/62535?clickSource=blog does not have any adverts and also let you record you own voice as the sound of the alarm so you do not even need to look at your phone to know what the next step in your cooking is when the alarm goes off. Kitchen Timer Pro costs 1 Euro or equivalent.

Kitchen Timer Free is also available here:   http://store.ovi.com/content/63471?clickSource=blog which contains adverts and does not have the ability to record you own voice to use as an alarm

Interval Timer Free now available on Ovi Store

I am pleased to announce that Interval Timer Free is now available on Ovi Store for S60 5th Edition devices such as the 5800.

Interval Timer Free is an app for people who take their exercise seriously, it is made for people who do interval training where you perform an exercise for a length of time, then have a period of rest and repeat this a certain number of times.
Interval Timer Free lets you set the length of exercise time, the length of rest time and the number of repetitions. Once this easy setup has been completed, Interval Timer Free plays different alarms for the end of an exercise period, the end of a rest period and the end of all the repetitions so you know when to exercise, when to rest and when to stop completely without having to keep checking a watch.

Interval Timer Free is available from the Ovi Store here http://store.ovi.com/content/64809 for free.

It will soon be available for S^3 devices such as the N8.

Please find all my application available here: http://store.ovi.com/publisher/Grovr

Tuesday 7 December 2010

Kitchen Timer

Hi and welcome to this tutorial on Kitchen Timer.

In the following guide, the meal we're going to set up alarms for is cooking a roast chicken for 90 minutes where it will be on a high temperature for 20 of those minutes and we're also going to cook some potatoes that need roasting for 45 minutes after being boiled for 10.

This is the screen we're first greeted with when we start Kitchen Timer.


So first of all we're going to add an alarm and we do this by pressing "Options" and then "Alarms" and selecting the "Add alarm" option as shown below.


 We are then prompted for a name for the alarm and I have chosen Chicken in as the name for the first alarm by typing it in the box in the normal text entry way.


You then get to the alarm setting screen below which contains 3 important sections which will be explained below.


Firsty we want to set the time for this alarm, so we press the "Change" button from the image above and then use the appropriate + and - buttons shown to set the time. In this instance we have set a time of 1 hour and 30 minutes as that is how long we want to cook the chicken for.


After then pressing "Done", we have two more setting to set: firstly we have to say whether we want this alarm to be before or after the alarm we choose in the next step, in this instance we obviously want the chicken alarm to happen "Before" the Finished alarm; secondly we selected which alarm we want this alarm to be relative to, in this case the "Finished" alarm. (A quick note on the "Finished" alarm: This alarm is always last and signifies the end of cooking, you cannot set an alarm to be "After" the "Finished" alarm.


After then pressing the "Done" button we get back to the overview screen and can see that our new alarm has been added.


We then add another alarm, calling this one "Turn Heat Down" as as shown below, we set this alarm to go off 20 minutes "After" the "Chicken In" alarm because 20 minutes after putting the chicken in, we want to put the heat in the oven down.



Using the same process, we then add an alarm called "Roast Potatoes" and set it to occur 45 minutes before "Finished".


As mentioned at the start, we need to boil the potatoes for 10 minutes before roasting them so we can easily set that by creating a new "Boil Potatoes" alarm and setting it up as shown below.


We can now add an alarm for for turning the oven on as we need to wait for it to warm up before we put the chicken in so we can easily add that alarm for 10 minutes before the "Chicken In" alarm to give it plenty of time to get to the right temperature as shown below.


So now we have our final overview page showing all the alarms and how they are related to each other.


Once we have set all alarms, we go to "Option", "Finished Setup".


After doing that we are presented with the following screen which contains the countdowns for all the alarms, if we then press the "Start" button...


We are immediately given out first alarm, which is telling us to turn the oven on, so we do that. This screen will automatically dissapear after a few seconds.


Then all the alarms start counting down and we can tell at a glance how long it is until we need to do each of the steps of the cooking process.



I hope you have found this useful, if you have any queries, leave a comment or email me at kitchenTimer_at_grovr.co.uk

Kitchen Timer Free now on Ovi Store

I am pleased to annouce that Kitchen Timer Free is now available on Ovi Store for S60 5th edition.

Kitchen Timer is an application that helps you keep track of time in the kitchen. Rather than keep having to check a watch for when to do different parts of the cooking, Kithen Timer rings an alarm when it is time to do something so you can relax whilst you are waiting, knowing that you won't miss anything.
Kitchen Timer includes a flexible alarm system that lets you set alarms relative to each other, for example if you needed to cook a chicken in the oven for 90 minutes but need to have the heat on high for the first 20 minutes of the 90 then in Kitchen Timer you would create one alarm for 90 minutes from the end of cooking called "Chicken" then create a second alarm to go off 20 minutes after the chicken alarm and Kitchen Timer makes this very easy to do.
Kitchen Timer also lets you save alarms to use again the next time you cook the same recipe.

Currently, only the free version of Kitchen Timer is available on Ovi Store here:
http://store.ovi.com/content/63471.

Soon, Kitchen Timer Pro which has the ability to record you own voice for the alarm sound will be on Ovi Store and also Kitchen Timer Free will soon be released for S^3 phones such as the N8.

A user guide for Kitchen Timer will soon be posted.

Thursday 25 November 2010

Putting spaces in the name of a Qt for Symbian application

Just thought I'd share this solution for a problem that I came across, whilst writing a Qt app for Symbian devices.

The problem was that I was trying to give my app a name with spaces in, as it looks unprofessional having underscores or using CamelCase for the name that would appear below your application icon on a phone.
This cannot cimply be done by putting a name with spaces as the argument to the "TARGET = ..." line of your .pro file as Qt is not expecting this, nor does putting the name in quotation marks work.

The solution I used is from this bug report http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-14280?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Aall-tabpanel (whilst this blog entry doesn't really add much to the suggested work around in the bug report, i'm hoping that by writing it up in different words, someone may find the solution faster). As the bug report says, this problem is going to be fixed in Qt 4.7.2, but as of posting this you can only use Qt 4.6.3 to publish to Ovi Store so a workaround is currently required.

Firstly you should set the TARGET in your pro file to be a useful description without spaces but we are going to overwrite the application name everywhere it appears to the end user so it doesn't really matter what the TARGET name is.
Secondly you should add the following lines to the .pro file for your project:

customHeader.pkg_prerules = "$${LITERAL_HASH}{\"Your app name here\"},($$TARGET.UID3),$$replace(VERSION,"\.",",")"
DEPLOYMENT += customHeader

Replacing "Your app name here" with your app name but keeping the quotation marks as they are in the above code.
Secondly you should create a new file in your project directory with a name of your choosing, I call mine "forceName.loc" so it is clear what it's responsiblity is. Inside this file you should put the lines:

#ifdef LANGUAGE_SC
#define STRING_r_short_caption "Your app name"
#define STRING_r_caption "Your app name"
#else
#define STRING_r_short_caption "Your app name"
#define STRING_r_caption "Your app name"
#endif

Again replacing "Your app name" with the appropriate text, leaving the quotation marks as they are.
Finally in order to get your application to use this file whilst building, you should add the following lines to your .pro file:

fix_loc.commands = $${_PRO_FILE_PWD_}/forceName.loc $${_PRO_FILE_PWD_}/$$basename(TARGET).loc
symbian-abld: fix_loc.commands = $$replace(fix_loc.commands,/,\\)
fix_loc.commands = $$QMAKE_COPY $$fix_loc.commands
QMAKE_EXTRA_TARGETS += fix_loc
PRE_TARGETDEPS += fix_loc

where "forceName.loc" should be replaced by whatever name you used for the file and the rest should be left as it is.

I hope this manages to help someone.

Monday 15 November 2010

In praise of QTimer->start(0)

The situation: In Qt I have to get some data ready in an application but it doesn't all need to be ready at the start so I want to get some to begin with and then continue getting the rest in the background without freezing the UI. Also I need to be able to stop this data getting for when I want to run a high precision timer with high accuracy.

First attempted solution: Subclassing QThread (though this is not recommended, see http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/06/17/youre-doing-it-wrong/).
Basically in this case, i make the run method of a QThread subclass do a little piece of the data processing. There are 2 disadvantages to this method, firstly, it has a large overhead creating a whole thread and secondly you also have to implement your own pause and resume functions as QThread does not come with these.

The used solution: Write a slot that performs a single part of the data processing, connect it to the timeout() slot of a QTimer and then call QTimer->start(0) where the 0 is a special value to QTimer indicating that it should only fire when the application is idle (see http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/qtimer.html#interval-prop). This method also makes pausing and resuming very very simple as to pause you just need to call QTimer->stop() and then to start again call QTimer->start(0).

This solution works ridiculously well in my application and the ease of pausing and resuming really is a treat.