Sound Apps Updates
A bug was found wherein ringtones would disappear from their respective lists after the SD card was unmounted and remounted. While the ringtones remained on the SD card, they were removed from the ringtone lists and could not be chosen as ringtones without re-installing from the app. After researching the issue I'm not entirely certain whether this is a bug or by design in Android but regardless, an alternate way to manage the ringtones was determined which does not exhibit the same behavior. You will have to re-install the ringtones from the app but this time, they should stick around after you unmount/remount your SD card.
Currently only 3 of the apps have been updated: Star Trek, Christmas, and Angry Birds. I began with those since I received input from users of those apps regarding the issue. The changes will be rolled into the other soundboard apps within the next couple of days but I want to give users a bit of time to test those apps a bit to ensure other problems were not created since the storage mechanisms were nearly entirely rewritten.
You'll note that the menus have changed a bit. Now when you long-click a sound, the menu will prompt you to install as one of the three ringtone types. After choosing that type, another pop-up will appear that will ask if you want to set as the default. If you come back to a ringtone that is already installed, the menu will change to "Manage" rather than "Install". Choosing this option will allow you to set it as a default ringtone or uninstall the ringtone. This mechanism is more appropriate for the way ringtones are stored currently.
Nearly all Free Android Apps Updated
Nearly all of the free apps we provide were updated today primarily to live up to our promise of removing location from security permissions on ad supported apps. With the exception of Mario Sounds, which will take a touch more work than the others, none of the apps should require security permissions for location any more. Work on Mario Sounds will begin next.
In addition to the security changes, all of the Soundboard Apps now have an "Email Support" button added to the menu. Please use it if you have any issues or suggestions.
Other minor changes include
- Easy Points Free now supports App 2 SD
- Horror Movie Sounds includes one additional sound per user request: Theme to Saw
Harry Potter Soundboard Added
In our ever growing collection of soundboards , we've added yet another. This one for the Harry Potter fans.
Android Market Downloading Issues
Have you ever tried downloading an app that just seems to hang while downloading? The status goes to "authorizing" or "installing" yet never goes further? This is actually by far the most common support question I receive on a daily basis. What is normally the cause? Almost always it's an issue with Google Checkout authorization.
As odd as it may seem, rather than simply telling you that there is a billing issue within the Market app, the download simply never completes. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do on my end.
Google manages both downloads and financial transactions. The up side of this for the end user is that there should be no concern of a small developer playing games with your credit cards or their file server going down, cancelling your download. On the other hand, you'd likely get a much faster response to the problem from the developer than by contacting Google. Regardless, there is little to nothing the developer can do to actually help in such a case.
What do you do then when you have download errors? Since the majority of the issues are related to billing, verify your Google Checkout account. Did one of your credit cards expire? Did you input the wrong billing info? Google should email you notifying you of any issues, but it is possible that you weren't contacted.
Though the vast majority of the issues related to bad downloads is due to billing, there is a small chance something else occurred. Especially recently, where Android user forums are full with reports of Market issues. After verifying your billing issues, here are a few more steps you can attempt:
- Stop/restart the install. Note that there may be potential problem if this is the first time you've downloaded a paid application as there is a chance you will cancel out of your 24 hour trial period so do this at your own risk. However, if the app was free or you've already paid for it in the past, this is a very easy step to try.
- Reboot your phone. You can never really hurt anything by following the 3 Rs of computing: Reboot, Re-seat, Relax (ok, you probably don't want to re-seat anything in your Android phone but you get the point)
- Clear the Market cache. From the home screen, Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage Applications->All Tab->Market (NOTE: Notice choose "Market" application as stated, not the app you are trying to stall) and click "Clear cache". Reboot your phone and try to download again.
- If step 3 still didn't help, do the same thing again but now instead of "Clear cache", click "Clear Data"
If you are having issues downloading apps from the Android Market, hopefully some of these suggestions will help. Unfortunately, other than providing suggestions based on personal experience, there's little else the developer can do to help since downloading and financial transactions are fully managed by Google.
Android Permissions And You
Over the past few weeks, I've been creating a series of soundboard apps. Unlike most other apps I've posted on the market, I've decided to attempt to generate revenue via ads rather than direct sales. Soundboard apps, while popular, are generally not things people are willing to pay 99 cents for. In doing so, I seem to have raised some suspicion as evident by an email received and a couple of reviews due to the permissions these apps require. I'd like to explain just what permissions are being used by the soundboard apps and why.
The first two settings are used by the soundboard app itself in order to save sounds as ringtones
- android.permission.WRITE_SETTINGS: Allows me to set your ringtone
- android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE : Allows me to write the ringtone to your SD card so it can be associated as a ringtone.
The other settings are all used for serving ads. Currently I am employing the services of two separate ad companies. AdMob and Millenial Media. While I cannot tell you exactly what they are doing with the other permissions since I cannot speak for them, they are both large and well respected companies. If they were doing anything nefarious, we would have heard about it a long time ago. While I cannot explain exactly why they require the other permissions, I will attempt to explain why they are using them, and why their reasons are valid. Note that I have no need for using any of these permissions for the soundboard apps myself.
- android.permission.INTERNET: Obvious one. They need to be able to request ad content and deliver it to your phone.
- android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE: Unlike some believe, this does not allow someone to eavesdrop on your phone conversation. Frankly, it is probably the most easily abused of any of the permissions used however. It provides access to basic information about your phone such as model, screen resolution, O/S version, etc... Many ad companies gather this information not so much for targeting you directly but to know how to best present their ads across a variety of different devices. They also report such things in the news. If you've seen the charts of how Android is doing vs. the iPhone, or what versions of Android are most used, this is where the info comes from. Ad companies gather the data to aggregate for such reports.
- android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE : This allows the ads to know what type of network you are on (WiFi, 2G, 3G). The primary reason they do this is to not kill your battery if you don't have any connection to the internet anyway. They could also possibly present you with different ads based on how much bandwidth you have available.
Previously, there were two more permissions which I was accessing to serve ads. They are both accessing your location in order to serve you ads (no need to advertise Cats to you on Broadway if you're in Minnesota). I had initially enabled these to provide a wider variety of ads but at this point I don't think it's terribly helpful and since these two permissions are optional, I have recently decided to remove them. I still have a few soundboards using location but I will be removing it from those in the next few days and several others have already had the user location removed.
Aside from the user location permissions, which I am in the process of removing, All other settings are required to serve ads (or save ringtones of course). Without these settings, the apps would either force close or simply not serve ads at all.
It's up to you, the user, to determine if you'd rather pay for such apps directly or pay for them indirectly by having to see ads & open up your phone just a bit. That's your choice. If you do choose the free route, however, support your developer by clicking on the ads 
Sound Apps
Over the past couple of weeks I have released a number of soundboard apps for Android. This started after updating the Mario Sounds app to include ring tones and such. At that point, it was a a simple process of reusing the code for other similar apps so I built one for a number of different themes. Currently the Halloween Sounds has over 63k downloads in about the last two weeks!
These soundboard apps are all free (Ad supported) and if you have any more themes you'd like to see, drop me a line.
Truth or Dare App 2 SD Support
Over the weekend, I added in the App 2 SD support for the Truth or Dare apps. Hopefully before anyone upgraded, they heeded the warnings and backed up all user questions as there was some risk of loss during this transition. I have yet to hear any complaints over the process so I assume either the warnings were heeded or there was no real risk to begin with.
The App 2 SD support rounds out the changes that I had planned for the version 3. I have a few ideas on what to do next but I'm always looking for new ideas to add more to the app. If you have anything you'd like to see added, let me know.
Mario Sounds Re-Released
Mario Sounds was my first venture into Android programming. I placed the app on the market and it did reasonably well with decent ratings for a while as a free app. Eventually though as more sound boards came onto the market scene, it became outdated since it did nothing but play sounds while the newer ones all worked as ringtones. The ratings started to take a hit and I removed it from the market.
The app has been off the market for several months now, but as of today it is back, full of ringtone goodness. The app is still free (now ad supported) but you can save the sounds as your default ringtone or notification straight from the app. Alternately, just install it as a ringtone into your system so you can enable it later.
Truth or Dare Couple’s Edition Updated
The Couple's edition of Truth or Dare has been updated to fold in the changes in 3.0 as earlier described. In addition, one new feature was added specifically for the Couple's edition. There is a new question editing tag to designate your partner as the target of the question. This should eliminate the generic "your partner", "your mate" prevalent in the current set of questions in the Couple's edition. Instead, you should see your partner's name displayed. Currently, the partners are pared when there are exactly 2 players playing. The app assumes that the two are partners. If there are more than two players, a generic "your partner" type message will be displayed for the tag instead of your partner's name.
The regular edition was also updated to sync the two versions together, both now at 3.1. In addition to the previously listed changes, a few new questions were added to both versions for good measure.
Back up Your User Questions!!
I have had several requests to allow the Truth or Dare apps to be moved to SD card. This is something I'm happy to support and have done this already for most of my other apps. However, there's a technical issue involved. Currently, the ToD apps are protected by Google's old DRM scheme. In order to support moving the app to the SD card, I must abandon the old scheme. I have no problem with that personally, but on the technical side, there's a potential problem....
I have read several reports where after dropping the old DRM scheme, due to an Android Market bug, all app settings are lost and I cannot verify that this has been fixed. It shouldn't happen, but it might. Most of the settings in the app are easy enough to replace but what concerns me about the ToD apps is the user defined questions. I've had a couple of people send in extensive question lists that could take considerable work to recreate. I don't want you to loose those. One of the purposes of the new 3.0 release was to provide an export facility for these questions so you won't have to loose them. I'd suggest you take the opportunity to do this before the next update. For the alternate versions which aren't yet on 3.0, there will be a 3.0 for you under the old DRM and enough time for you to back up your questions. An alternate method of backup though is also hitting the 'share' questions button and changing the recipient from baylandblue to your own account.
In all likelihood, this market bug is fixed by now but since I haven't been able to verify this from any source, it's better to be safe. I'm not certain just when I'll remove the old DRM scheme, but it is likely to come within the next couple of weeks.