Posts with mood disappointed (7)

Windows Phone Ambassador program is no more
Mood: disappointed
Posted on 2014-08-26 22:41:00
Tags: windowsphone
Words: 178

In case you missed the news, the (formerly) Nokia Developer Ambassador program is ending at the end of August.

I'll still be involved in the community (like the Austin Windows Developers!), and I'll still be working on my Windows Phone apps and writing articles for developers. I won't have my @microsoft.com email address anymore, but feel free to contact me at greg@gregstoll.com. I will continue to send out monthly-or-so emails about Windows/Windows Phone development - sign up here if you're interested!

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, but I had a great almost 2 years with the program, and I really enjoyed getting to help developers out. Thanks as always to Rich Dunbar and all the other people at Nokia and Microsoft that made the program possible! (special shoutouts to my fellow ambassadors: what happens in Vegas...)

And lastly, thanks to all the developers I had the pleasure of working with. Y'all are what made the job worth doing :-)

PS I'm still bullish on Windows Phone long-term...this was sad, but it hurts way less than webOS!

0 comments

A little down about Windows Phone 7
Mood: disappointed
Posted on 2012-04-18 22:49:00
Tags: essay windowsphone projects
Words: 285

Been a little bummed out recently. Here's why:

- My brand new Lumia 900, while generally a pretty awesome phone, has a hardware problem that makes it shut off ~5 times a day. (and then it won't turn on for a few minutes) Hopefully I'll be able to exchange it tomorrow, but in the meantime it's been very irritating.

- FlightPredictor is not selling well, to put it mildly. Despite getting three 5 star reviews (yay!), being reviewed by wpcentral and AAWP, and being featured by AppDeals, so far it's sold a grand total of 14 copies over more than 3 weeks. And some of those were at a discount of 99 cents! Granted, over 100 trials have been downloaded, and it's possible those will convert to paid copies at some point since you get 6 flights for free, but I'm not holding my breath.

So, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Maybe $2.99 is too expensive? Maybe I just need to get the word out more. (i.e. spam Twitter :-) ) I've submitted FlightPredictor to a few promotional things, so we'll see if Microsoft or Nokia bite. (attention Microsoft and Nokia: it's a good app!)

- After being unsure last time, I started work on a Goodreads client and made a bit of progress until the developer of the original app (Bookly) said he was bringing it back. I don't have any unique ideas to add to a client, so I put it on hold while I wait to check out the app. I'm guessing I won't work on it again.

So now I'm working on a financial calculator-type app. (thanks for the idea, brittongregory!) Meanwhile I'm considering playing around with Windows 8 and porting FlightPredictor to it.

3 comments

FlightPredictor for Android sales: not good. Maybe Amazon App Store?
Mood: disappointed
Posted on 2011-11-23 14:54:00
Tags: projects android
Words: 228

I released FlightPredictor for Android on Saturday. Since then, I have sold a grand total of...6 copies. (although it did get a 5-star review!) This is *ahem* a bit disappointing, and I've been considering some options.

- Marketing: the Android market is such a big place I'm sure it's easy for apps to get lost. Android users: where do you go to hear about cool new apps?

- Free version: I've heard that Android users are much less likely to pay for apps than those on other platforms. Maybe I should make a free version that has ads. I'm not a huge fan of in-app ads, though, and I can't imagine they'd make that much money. Plus, that's potentially a bunch more users to support. And other flight-tracking apps aren't free...

- Amazon Market: I'm also deciding whether or not to submit to the Amazon App Store. The terms are not favorable to developers, as Amazon can set your app to be any price they want. (hopefully not less than 99 cents?) But it's the only way to get on the Kindle Fire, and while I didn't optimize FlightPredictor for that big a screen, a beta tester used it on a 7" tablet and said it worked fine.

Maybe part of the problem is neither Google nor Amazon care that much about app sales?

Anyway, I'm more than open to suggestions.

4 comments

Torchwood: is it sci-fi?
Mood: disappointed
Posted on 2011-08-03 22:15:00
Words: 90

We're fans of the new Doctor Who, so now that we're finally caught up, we thought we'd try Torchwood. After six episodes I'm very much not impressed.

What I like most about Doctor Who is the way it sets up interesting situations in different cultures in a way that good sci-fi writing is best at. But so far Torchwood has basically seemed like a standard action show with slightly more interesting characters and scenery.

So, those of you who have watched Torchwood - does it get better? Am I totally off-base?

3 comments

n00btastic
Mood: disappointed
Posted on 2006-10-17 08:41:00
Tags: netflixprize
Words: 189

So my new netflix entry finished overnight and I submitted it. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to use their format checker, and there was a problem (it predicted a rating greater than 5), so I fixed that in my prediction program and am rerunning it now. This means I can't submit again for another week, which is disappointing. Maybe I'll make some more progress with user-based correlation by then...

On the other hand, I lost 1.6 pounds this week!

On the way in this morning, WAMU (our local NPR station) was doing a fund drive and they had Diane Rehm (who does a local show) talking about stuff. She's old and her voice is kinda slow and irritates the heck out of me. I eventually had to change the station. Kojo Nnamdi (isn't that a great name?) is another guy who does a DC politics show, which is always interesting, but more importantly his voice makes me calm and happy. He sorta sounds like Morgan Freeman...

Also, apparently North Korea is taking the UN sanctions as a "declaration of war" which is both ridiculous and seems like really bad news.