Categorie: Android programming

CoronaChartApp

Last week I tried to publish my CoronaChartApp in google play. Unfortunately … the app was immediately suspended… I didn’t know that Google, Apple and Amazon banned everything about covid-19 and corona from their stores.

I looked for an alternative store. There are many alternatives… Aptoide is an alternative one and f-droid too. In order for Aptoide to work, an app must first be installed outside a store by the unknown sources method. The Aptoide app then serves as a marketplace where you can probably put your app. In my apps I normally put ads from google’s admob, I suspect this doesn’t work with non-google play repositories since you have to link to google play. I have looked at an alternative to admob for a while but decided to leave this alone for a while. Google uber alles…

An alternative is to make the app open source via f-droid. Unfortunately I think you have to install something again and I don’t like that at this moment…maybe tomorrow…. It is strange that you used to have much less problems with that, but now that you are used to installing everything from google play, everything is suspicious when installing your apk file direct on your phone. Maybe more of a psychological thing.

Maybe I should just slightly rebuild the CoronaChartApp … typhus might be allowed…. For people who are interested in corona apps outside of google play aptiode has them… but not my app at this moment…

…A note about the current covid-19 charts that I just refreshed, Brazil has a scary graph that is increasing and seems to get out of hand. Especially if you realize that these are the registered cases. In the graphs over the past 5 days, Canada has pushed my own Netherlands out of 10th place.

AlarmMeRSI version 17 ‘Happy New Year’ in production

Yesterday I published version 17 ‘Happy New Year’ on google play. In this version I added 2 more Alarm types:

-One time alarm for one alarm on a day

-Random alarm in the range of the chosen time interval.

In the old version when restarting the phone the alarm was lost. Now the alarm when active is loaded again. The only way to get rid of the alarm is by choosing the garbage can button in the app.

Happy New Year!

Staged rollout AlarmMeRSI

In my normal work as bi analist I have the experience of maintaining some databases with a userbase of 10 000 people. Disruptions are deadly for users’ confidence. With large user populations with a shocked trust you constantly receive questions and comments that can take up a large part of your daily working time if things go wrong. Of course I prefer not to have that at all in my private time. I do Android in my private time…and other things….

At work to reach a large group of users and know the wishes of the business is at least physically easy. It is clear who is approachable, you know where the management is and where your users are. With google play, that is of course impossible for a beginner to know. You know nothing at all outside your own circle.

Translated to the Android platform, I am assuming that a negative experience is far more important. After all, a user does not have to use your app, so negative experiences count more than positive ones. For the time being I opt for a staged rollout in the countries with a Dutch-speaking community plus Denmark because some old friends live there. In order to have room for handling issues and to see if there is any interest at all, I posted on Facebook and Linkedin that my app has been launched in recent days. At work, I also made this known to the group of close colleagues in a relatively small circle for now.

Android App in play!

Last week Archimedes launched his first app in Google play! AlarmMeRSI is an app which we use to prevent RSI from happening (repetive strain injury, for more information go here .)

It is a periodic alarm after which you can for instance stand up from behind your desk and do your exercises. (or get yourself some coffee)

This is the link to the app in google play store: Dutch version or the English version