Android Design is a good thing

by Scott. 0 Comments

The big news this past week was Google’s launch of Android Design. It reminds me alot of Google’s recent GoMo site. Clearly, google sees itself as a “Mobile” company and is attempting to steer developers and business owners towards their vision of how Android devices will fit into all of our lives.

The fact that Android Design is giving developers and product managers some direction and understanding in User Interface and User Experience design is a good thing. In my experience in submitting apps to apple for the past three years, it has been an advantage to review and understand apple’s human interface guidelines. As more of my customer’s applications started being submitted and rejected by apple, I began to be able to see which ones were at risk of rejection, because something inside the app conflicted with apple’s general, but simple to understand “guidelines”.

What does this mean for people making google apps? If you expect any sort of major promotion of your app by google or their partners, if it doesn’t show respect to Android Design guidelines, it isn’t going to happen.

For product managers, make sure your Android and Apple developers have an understanding of their guidelines, and spend sometime reviewing them yourselves.

For developers, it is your job to understand these concepts clearly, and to communicate them with a product manager or business owner so neither of you are blindsided when the discussion comes up.

 

Windows App Hub has issues with publisher registration

by Scott. 0 Comments

The process of getting published with the Windows App Hub is terrible. I wanted to post here the best way to do this without getting frustrated.

A little background first. I tried registering as a publisher back in the first quarter of 2011, and couldn’t get past creating a Windows Live ID. The whole network of Windows authentication is complex and bloated, and one small bug blocked me from creating a Windows Live ID for a week.

1. If you don’t have access to a Windows test phone, you will need to acquire one. I was lucky that my current place of work has an account with ATT for dev phones to be delivered to us on a monthly basis.

2. Register the phone and your credit card at windowsphone.com. You can do this buy just jumping on wifi on the mobile, and trying to buy an app through the marketplace.

3. Once your CC info is windowsphone, it will be available to access as a payment option in the App Hub Registration process.

What happens if your CC is not registered at windowsphone.com? During the app hub registration process, you will be able to enter your CC info, but every time you try to submit it, you will get an error: “insert a valid credit card number”

Obviously you have entered a valid CC number, and what you don’t see is that Microsoft places a 1$ hold charge, very time you try it. I tried this 15 times, and had $15 in hold charges.

Once I registered the phone, only then was I able to continue.