Posted February 21st, 2010 by Umesh
I must say, day 2 for Stack ‘em Up looks a lot more promising than day 1. In all I sold 31 units for net revenue of $21.13. That is large improvement over yesterday. However, the revenue always goes down after initial up, and yesterday was a Saturday. I still think the numbers don’t look all that good. I have started posting announcements on forums. I don’t know if they help. At present all my announcements include a few Promo Codes for the forum members. I am more focused on getting word of mount buzz going rather than earning money from forum posts. I don’t know if forum posts ever earn any money anyway.
Also, I think at some point I will try increasing game price to $1.99 to see how that goes.
On AdMob front, they had 614 impressions and 6 clicks for the Stack ‘em up. There is no way to know conversion rate there though.
Will keep you guys updated.
iphone appstore apple StackThemUp StackEmUp
Posted February 20th, 2010 by Umesh
Yesterday was the first full day of Stack ‘em Up on AppStore. The day was rather disappointing. I sold 12 copies with a net revenue of $8.37. The only review I have received so far is mine own. I have received several review comments in private from my friends who tried the game. So far private reviews are positive. Let us see if this can translate to real revenue.
Yesterday was also the day when Nukkad multi lingual Twitter client) went ad supported. I am using AdMob for the ads. They allow me to run house ads. Nukkad is configured to serve 30% “Stack ‘em Up”. That means so far 624 “Stack ‘em Up” ads have been served. AdMob is reporting 11 clicks. Out of the 11, a couple of probably me clicking when experimenting.
In all I am disappointed overall. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
iphone appstore game StackEmUp
Posted February 14th, 2010 by Umesh
For the last several days I have been working on an iPhone application. I am excited to announce that the application is ready. Here is the description of the application:
In a nearby land not so far away, citizens have been drinking lots of fun drinks without worrying about health. This has brought the civilization to brink of extinction. You have been sent to bring balance and to save the civilization. Powerful interest are against you. A single sound of dropping can will alert them. So be careful.
Stack up the cans of different types of drinks mixing fun, style, while still being healthy. If you are able to do this, citizens will follow and you the civilization will be saved.
You are the only hope. So Hurry!
The video is @ youtube.
Some screenshots:
and:
iphone StackThemUp game
Posted July 9th, 2009 by Umesh
I have seen some comments that people are having difficulty finding refresh button and new message indicator. The refresh button may not be at the most obvious location but it exists. Select a message and the bottom panel shows up. Touching the refresh button will refresh tweets.
The new message indicator exists on the top right on the message.
iphone appstore TwitterWorld Twitter
Posted July 2nd, 2009 by Umesh
Update: The updated with fix has now been accepted by Apple is now @ AppStore. Get it
My previous release of Twitter World application had a nasty bug which made it unusable for lots of “Twitter World” users and completely killed the reputation. I owe these users an explanation of what happened.
As you know, Twitter World uses Google API to translate Tweets. In version 1.0, the Twitter World translated one tweet at a time. This was slow and resulted in significantly slow initial load time. So I decided to use the newly available Google batch translation API. The batch feature of the API allows me to submit multiple translation requests at once. Google also has a limit of maximum 2000 encoded characters in the URL. A given batch could have at most 7 tweets. Any given tweet cannot be more than 140 characters long. So in theory this should always have been safe.
The part I missed was UTF8. In UTF8 (which is the most used character encoding), every character can be encoded in 1-4 byte. Now if you take 140 characters/tweet and mutliply it with 4, you get up to 560 characters in the URL per tweet. That implies even 4 tweets can take up to 2000 URL character limit Google requires. This results in URL too long error from Google.
This along with some lousy error handling caused the crash which a lot of users saw with the version 2.0 of the Twitter World. The fix was uploaded to Apple yesterday. It is frustrating that I cannot push the fix out faster and am @ Apple’s mercy when it comes to pushing update to this critical issue. In the middle if somebody needs an update, I can provide them with ad-hoc release.
iphone appstore apple TwitterWorld Twitter
Posted June 27th, 2009 by Umesh
iSmashPhone.com
“Twitter World has one spectacular function: it allows you to read Tweets written in foreign languages by automatically translating them.”
http://www.ismashphone.com/2009/06/todays-notable-iphone-apps-friday-june-26th-edition.html
iphone appstore TwitterWorld Twitter
Posted June 20th, 2009 by Umesh
The tweeter has been a great force behind Iranian revolution. Google did a great job by quickly providing translation service for Farsi.
I am getting lots of tweets from people using my Application Twitter World - Breaking Borders to connect and read Farsi Tweets in English. I can easily include English to Farsi support as well but that will take more than 2 weeks to get through Apple’s bureaucracy 
In any case I am happy to support Iranian people.
iphone appstore TwitterWorld Twitter
Posted May 27th, 2009 by Umesh
I will like to announce availability of Twitter World: Breaking Borders for iPhone and tocuh. You can get it @ http://tinyurl.com/getTwitterWorld. I have seen explosion of Twitter Clients @ App store. However the TwitterWorld is different. It can translate tweets in to your language. No other Twitter application can do it. You can also use Twitter World to retweet in other language and reach larger user base.
iphone appstore TwitterWorld Twitter
Posted April 12th, 2009 by Umesh
It was late February when I eventually gave in to continuous persuasion of my friend and colleague Cole Harris and decided to start experimenting with iPhone applications. He had been on the AppStore for some time and has several successful applications and had given me some tips. Man what a month of March it turned out to be.
The first question was what to develop and my first answer was to develop an April Fool day application. Which I developed but never uploaded. This application provided me with significant insight in to iPhone capabilities.
I had rich embedded devlopment background (how rich :)). I knew C/C++/Java rather well but had never done any ObjC or GUI related development. One and half month later my first application has been uploaded for Apple’s review and I am nervously waiting to see what happens to it.
As soon as Apple approves the application, I will use this space to discuss design and tools used to create the application.
iphone appstore Avatar Avatar Studio iphone touch
Posted February 24th, 2009 by Umesh
Arcade bowling’s description says: “Stuck in another meeting with the “Bobs”? Tired of filing out endless TPS Report Cover Sheets? blah blah Then look no further. I did not know that 3 year old kids had to file TPS report. At least not in my household. This game seems to be just appropriate for 3 yr old kids. (more…)
iphone appstore iphone app review apple
Posted February 21st, 2009 by Umesh
Bounce On which is in top 25 free apps category. It is graphics rich game which uses accelerometer smartly. The goal is the same old get the ball to its destination.
(more…)
iphone appstore iphone app review apple
Posted February 21st, 2009 by Umesh
Can you add 2+2 or 5+3? Wait till you try BrainTuner from http://gengarstudios.com/. It is an absolutely addictive application where you continuously challenge yourself in game of maths trying to beat your previous time and in rush to beat timing you make mistakes answering these simple questions.
(more…)
iphone appstore iphone app review
Posted February 6th, 2009 by Umesh
You may be interested in iPhone App Reviews.
Recent rumour has it that Apple and AT&T are working on offering iPhone tethering plan. iPhone is based on BSD which means tethering is rather trivial. It is the cozy phone vendor and operator relationship which makes it difficult. It is like iPhone lives in a jail with AT&T and Apple as gatekeepers. Welcome to the world of jailbroken iPhone where every thing is possible and free/inexpensive. And no you don’t brick your phone, you don’t loose synchronization with iTunes. Sweet.
Here are the steps involved.
Step 1: Jail Break your phone. The best way to Jail Break is to use QuickPwn. The Jail Break removes Apple’s monopoly over the applications which can be installed on the device you paid for. It also installs Cydia and Installer the two leading independent software managers on your device. Before you worry about abuse, Installer and Cydia both are based on open source well proven tools. I have never seen any instability because of Jail Break. The guys who did QuickPwn have been good with quickly supporting new version of iPhone firmware.
Step 2: Start Cydia. Search for PdaNet from inside Cydia. PdaNet turns your iPhone in to a WiFi to Cellular router. They can also connect your PC and iPhone using USB cable. Let Cydia install it. PdaNet comes in two versions: Full and Free. The free version restricts you to web only contents while free version allows you to use other applications like e-mail. At one time $29 cost per license, this is no-brainer in my opinion. And no PdaNet guys don’t pay me for saying so. Once installed you need to set Ad-Hoc network between your laptop and iPhone. PdaNet guys have good instructions on how to do this. I think their site can use some redesign.
In fact I wrote part of this post using tethered connection. Look at the Speed Test result on the tethered connection:
iPhone Tethered Connection Speed
That is 2.3Mbps sweet. Compare that to 960Kbps I gets from iPhone browser based speed test. Is Apple artificially limiting download speed? Running iPhone 3G connection at this speed created large drain on battery. So, if you decided to tether, keep charger handy.
iphone mobile iphone tethering iphone jailbreak iphone 3g
