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Independent app developer Mindfsck Development announced today that the paid version of their android application “Positive affirmations” is on sale for half price (now 99cents – usd) until the end of January to help everyone with their 2012 goals.
Promote positive thinking, manifest change and reach your 2012 goals with the help of your android phone.
Use your phone to notify yourself of your 2012 resolutions and goals you wish to tell your self on a daily/weekly/etc basis.
Weather these be resolutions to loose weight / get fit, stop smoking / stop drinking, save more money or become more organised the application will help you reach your goals.
Enter the affirmation text or choose your affimation, the duration period (Eg, remind me 3 times a day), a background image associated with the affirmation for visualisation and the application will send a android notification to your phone every specified duration.
You can also use your phones Text-To-Speech engine to read the affirmation to you!
The application comes with a handy widget for even more positive re-enforcing reminders.
In our affirmation library we have hundreds of affirmations for users to choose from to help them reach their 2012 goals and resolutions. We want all android users to have a happy and prosperous new year.”
Allot of people who make resolutions give up on their resolution goals weeks if not days into the new year. Because our application reminds you constantly of your goals it is a great we to stay on track to success. – Says developer Jason Whatson
Positive affirmations Pro version – now 99cents until end of January
Positive affirmations Free (ad supported) version
So my first android application ‘positive affirmations‘ has been out for a little while now. Everything about this project has been a experiment from developing to monetizing.
Being some what inspired to publish my findings and help other by the blog makingmoneywithandroid.com I thought I would publish some results to a experiment I did.
I was wondering what would happen if I turned off the setting ‘Use Google AdSense to improve fill rate.’ in admob for my app.
The results below in purple are without adsense and in blue is with the adsense option.
So the first thing to note is that the week I tested this I had added a 30% in house ad campaign and this is why the impression count is down from the previous week. Regardless this is irrelevant to how we get the results.
Both result sets are for 7 days (1 week)
So the things to look at are firstly the fillrate’s. Without adsense my fill rate dropped slightly. If it had even dropped more than 10% I would start to be concerned. But a 1% drop is nothing to worry about when we factor in the things below.
Then the next thing is to look at the CTR (Click though rate) which has a absolutely huge difference ad’s are 5 times more likely to be clicked with adsense.
Now I have come to the conclusion with this that when I was testing there was really only a rotation of like 3-4 ad’s which weren’t adsense. These were the ebay app, hotels.com app and the Formula 1 app.
And I also found that these ad’s were also being displayed not only constantly in my app but other app’s like angry birds I use often on a daily basis.
The problem is with such a low rotation of ad’s is how many times does a user need to be shown the same ad for the ebay app before admob can conclude that they are not interested in the thing being advertised. I mean if I ask a girl out on a date 5,10,20 times and she dosnt say anything and walks away I dont think asking another time is going to change her mind.
Then theres the other thing, if she said yes (the user does take action on the ad) I dont need to ask her again and again.
I think Google need to be smarter with this or they need to get more ad’s in rotation so there is little overlap.
Finally I having looked at the eCPM (the amount being paid per click) I found there is little to no difference (possibly its worse hard to tell over a small sample) between adsence clicks and admob ad clicks.
Because there’s not much competition for eyeballs the advertises can get away with paying the minimum.
So in conclusion im going to turn and leave the ‘Use Google AdSense to improve fill rate’ option on until I see the above problems I outlined fixed.
If you have some insight or want to share your experience please leave a comment.
So a few months back I got a Android smart phone, Ive wanted one ever since there was vague details going around about it (possibly 2006).
I really love it allot and I think its better than the Iphone for 2 main reason; Its a open system and having multitasking.
Recently I finally got around to stop procrastinating (with good reason) about starting to learn development for it. I know Java but hadn’t written any Java code for 2-3 years so it didn’t take long (but longer than expected) to get proficient with it.
Problems I had were ultimately learning the how the Android system works, its a has some pretty unique concepts. I found the code examples written by Google to be lacking. I suggest you read as much as you can about the environment and concepts before you even write one line of code. Or even take a read over the tutorials at Sai Geetha’s Blog.
I wont go into detail but I now have a very good understanding of Android. You should really know what Views, Activity, Intents and Services are before you begin.
You should be also aware of the states your application can be in at any time.
So here it is ‘Positive affirmations’ the concept is simple. Enter a positive affirmation to remind yourself as well as a background image (which is good for visualization I think) and the application will notify you with a reminder so you read the affirmation to yourself. Sounds simple I kn0w but it took me ages to work out the above Android concepts as well as the notification system, user interface and database.
I plan to release to the Android market shortly. I will update with a link. I will be adding ad’d and selling it so stay tuned to see how that goes.
Today I was reading a blog post from Mike Caro who on top of other things is a professional poker player and computer programmer who’s achievements include writing a poker bot.
In this particular post Mike talks about a situation in poker that he calls Fancy Play Syndrome (FPS).
The problem is something I named Fancy Play Syndrome (FPS). It’s the disease that presents itself when you believe you’re so superior to your opponents that you need to prove it. So, you choose the fanciest and most unusual play, rather than the one that is apt to earn the biggest profit. Beware of FPS.
Upon reading this it become evident to myself that this phenomena not only exists with poker players but also programmers.
The problem with programmers is they have a insatiable need to have their intellect challenged and that vast majority of application programming jobs are repetitive and fall into boring domains (finance, logistics, retail, etc..).
In most of these positions it doesn’t take long to become unchallenging.
Only a few of the most adept and qualified get to work on the challenging and interesting problems such as Operating systems, Robotics, Search engines, 3d games and so forth.
If your not working on innovative world changing problems its likely your solving the same (or very similar) boring problems over and over again. I don’t know how many times in my career I’ve written a program to process a text file or written a login validation function but its probably more than the days of vacation I’ve taken in my lifetime.
This can lead to Fancy Programmer Syndrome where the actual task or problem is so unchallenging or mundane that you over complicate things to stimulate your brain.
I’ve seen Fancy Programmer Syndrome many a time and have almost caught it myself. Some times its more destructive than others.
So what are some of the signs of someone suffering from Fancy Programmer Syndrome?
In poker the goal is not to prove how great you are to your opponents and this can be impossible to do in the short term because of variance. But instead your goal is to make money.
In programming and engineering your goal is to finish the task in a optimal way in time and budget. That challenge should be rewarding enough as it is.
Have you seen cases of Fancy Programmer Syndrome? Leave a comment.
