I’ve just be browsing some of the reviews of Hangman on the US App Store and the outlook is not good.
People request a qwerty keyboard? I give it to them. But then I get a bunch of 1 star reviews saying that qwerty confuses them (Wow, how do you manage to type….?).
Main lesson learned though: ads are intrusive – regardless of how small they are. I guess the only good thing that came from this would be that some people have actually expressed a will to pay for the app rather than have ads (even if the ads are trying to bring some interesting apps to their attention…).
Today has been an interesting day. I received my first monthly report of how my apps on the App Store are doing. Would you believe that within the US, the EU and the UK alone Hangman has been downloaded over 560,000 times!? It’s true according to Apple’s stats! Not only that, but Hangman managed to stay at the number 1 spot on the Top Free Apps list in the UK and US App Stores. That’s just phenomenal news to me. And I have you guys to thank! I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.
Also, thank you everyone who has e-mailed me or left a review of Hangman on the App Store to tell me that you enjoyed it, or to point out a bug/error. The feedback has been tremendously helpful.
I’ve been working on the next update for Hangman and I’m pleased to say that it’s going well. 2-Player mode is well underway, and I’ve added a bit of a quirk when you get hanged:
Also if anyone has any comprehensive wordlists they think would be good for Hangman, please, do send them to me. I’ll credit you if you’d like that.
I apologise for the current set of words. One reviewer described them as “things around the programmer, IT jargon and the contents of his sandwich”. That description wouldn’t be entirely untruthful… heh. When I began Hangman, I just needed a set of words to work with, and so i just started typing into a text file and played a sort of word-association game with myself and ended up with about 230 words that have no real structure.
So to combat that, the wordlists will be revamped and will be categorised in the next release. The category title will also give you a slight hint as to what you’re trying to guess.
Again, thanks for all the support and attention, it has made my month!
Well, I did it. I published my first app to the App Store on iTunes! Hangman has been received extremely well, it seems. It managed to stay at number 1 in the Top Free applications (in the world) for more than a week and a half! That’s all thanks to you guys downloading it and reviewing it! THANKS!
It was even reviewed on a video podcast as part of a games review session! Unfortunately due to a technical mess up, the app didn’t really come across as nicely as I would have hoped in this review, but there’s always a second chance! No publicity is bad publicity!
Now I don’t know what the standards are, but in my mind that is incredible! I was not expecting that kind of response at all. All I saw was a silly Hangman game that I thought I’d give a shot at publishing. And what do you know? People seem to love it.
So I’ll continue updating it and see where it goes from there – hopefully it’ll become a favourite.
I just published a page on the writenum program I wrote for a job application.
The page contains a link to download the program and the source, so you can check it out and play with the code and such.
The job application included a task with the brief to write a program that took a number and printed out the textual representation of that number, eg. 1234 = One thousand, two hundred and thiry-four.
This was my implementation. I hope it’s handy to someone.
Just posted up the latest application I’ve written. Just a quick hangman game written on the spur of the moment. Source and download are available on the Hangman page.
I’m not normally one to cross post, but this sorta fits the genre of this blog, and I thought it was important enough to post it to my personal blog too.
There are screams echoing over the interwebs that Apple is mass-rejecting applications for the iPhone Developer Program.
However, this is a classic case of people overreacting or just being plain stupid. The e-mail people have receive goes a little something like this:
“Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.”
Now read that and explain to me why people are thinking this is an outright rejection… There are multiple parts of this text that indicate otherwise:
“We have received your enrollment request.” – Notice how they say that, and not “We have rejected your enrollment request.”
“At this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period.” – Remembering that the iPhone SDK and the Developer Program are still in beta stage, it should be obvious that not all applications will be accepted immediately. While the iPhone SDK is available in beta form to all those who sign up for, or already have a free Apple Developer Connection account, that doesn’t mean that the program is equally as open. Apple have been inundated with enrollment requests, and the letter clearly states that at this moment in time, they’re only accepting a small amount of developers, with intentions to increase the numbers throughout the beta period.
“We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.” – Notice again how they do not say they are rejecting the request, but rather the opposite. They’re telling you that they will have another look at the request when they decide to open the developer program a little wider.
I also applied for the iPhone Developer Program, and the response I received this morning was a little bit more of a let down than those who received the one above. The response I got was:
“Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. At this time, the iPhone Developer Program is only available in the US and will expand to other countries during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.”
My first response wasn’t to cry out that Apple had rejected me! In fact, it was pretty much just a “Humph, looks like I’m going to have to wait”.
So to all those whiners that think they’ve been rejected, suck it up. At least when the program opens up a little, you’ll probably get in there before Apple expand it outside of the US.
I’ve added up new pages for Timeout and IMDummy. Two pieces of software that were written as tests/simulations in order to help me learn in Cocoa. Go check them out.
I’ve also decided to change the theme for the site. It’s basically just the K2 Wordpress theme with a random header image. The images used in the header are from Interface Lift.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
So hello world! JamSoft sees the light of day – or rather the interweb. Things will be a bit busy around here at the moment, I need to upload a lot of stuff and sort some things out with the style of the page.
