Lifespan is our latest app. It is the only app that we have released so far that is only available for Windows 8.1. Although Windows 8.0 apps still account for nearly 70% of our download for our other apps, we decided to narrow our market for Lifespan so that we could better serve the customer. From now on, we plan only to develop for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone (for apps consistently performing well on Windows 8). Unless major bugs are found, we will also halt updates for Windows 8.
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Save the World has been our fastest growing app that we have ever had. Due to this, we have had to make some adjustments to out scheduled releases in order to properly support Save the World. We are also proud to say that our next app will be launching towards the end of summer. Add us to you RSS feed to stay updated
In Save the World, we made the decision to go ad free. In this decision, we decided that we did not want the clutter that ads tend to bring. However, with the ridding of ads, we had to make another decision, that being, how to actually make revenue to compensate for the amount of time we put into this program (several hours of coding and many more debugging). The answer: in app purchases. Currently, we have one in app purchase, which allows the user to switch between difficulty levels. In all actuality, the code to add this feature took less than an hour, most of which was spent enabling the purchase. This may seem unfair, but we like to think of this as a way for die hard users to show their support. Rather than make the entire app paid for, the in-app route seemed best so that those who could not afford the $.99 could also have the experience of Saving the World.
Would you have preferred to have ads instead of in-app purchases? If so, comment below With the recent announcements from Microsoft regarding the Windows 8.1 Phone update and the Windows 8.1 Update 1, we have created a publication plan. Please note that these are only predicted dates for release and that unexpected predicaments may cause delay.
All companies and organizations must rebrand here and there. We are no different. We have decided to adopt the name EDB Dev on all of our social media outlets. While we will keep EDBrunton Development as our official name, we decided the we needed something catchier. Considering our profile pictures have had EDB Dev, we figure it will be a smooth transition. In about a weeks time, we will officially show our new profile picture as a completion our rebranding.
Sometimes the best place to get ideas is from those who use your products. That is why we decided to open up an original design contest for the next logo of our app. While it would be easy to make the logo ourselves, we desired to involve the valuable opinions of our fans. The premise of this contest is simple. Design a logo for "Save the World" in a square format at least 100x100 pixels and send us an email (use the email logo in the upper right hand corner if you are on a desktop or in the sidebar is you are on mobile). Make sure that you submit it by Sunday, when the contest ends. Good luck!
For complete rules: http://1drv.ms/1g74ucy As an app developers, some of the worst news we can receive is a one star rating. Typically, this means that we did not come through on our promise. When presented with a one star rating, it is more helpful to us if the reviewer can write exactly what made them dissatisfied. Did they not like our shade of blue? Perhaps we overwhelmed them it the charms bar? By giving us feedback, we can figure out exactly where we went wrong.
However, sometimes written reviews can befuddle us. Resently, we received feedback on "Thinking of a Number". We were told: "I think that this software is not for xbox games". Confused, we went back and checked how we worded our description in the Windows 8 app store. Not once did we find the word "game." "Thinking of a Number" is categorized in the tool category for a reason; we felt it was not meant for amusement and was more useful as a tool to settle disputes. Even if this were a game, we do not know how it could even get onto an Xbox. If this reviewer knew of how to get Windows 8 apps onto the Xbox, we would love to hear about how to do that. Nevertheless, we thank this reviewer for expressing why they disliked our app rather than simply giving it a one star rating. This way, people can decide whether or not a rating applies to their views. If you always wanted to know what is a program or app actually is, here is a reference to go off:
In the modern world, technology is becoming more and more intertwined with society. However, oftentimes, the ideas behind what computers and programs are lost through changing language and terminology. During the rise of the personal computer during the 90’s, computers would run “programs,” which were specialized to one's purpose and would often times lack a user friendly interface (Salt 2013). Then, as technology advanced and those programs became larger, they became known as “applications,” which would solve multiple solutions and have robust algorithms. With the coming of the mobile platforms, the short term of “app” became popular, largely due to Apple’s rise to fame with the iPhone. Despite the name changes, programs, applications, and apps all have underlining code behind them. Even video games, cars, and common household phones have code behind them. Therefore, one can claim that programming relates to most fields, not just computers, and is thusly important. The code is effectively the language that computers understand. When humans communicate, they must use common structures and words that everyone understands. Communicating with a phrase like “million master circle posing” (Word n.d.) would confuse the everyday Joe. Likewise, a programmer must communicate with a widely known syntax, a language. Like human languages, there are different computer languages. If an individual came up to the American and started rambling in Korean, most Americans would simply stare at that person with no idea of what is going on. Computers and other devices act in the same way. For instance, a computer aboard a car will reject a program written in COBOL (a popular programming language in the 80’s) (Adams and Charles 1999). Just like human language, computers (more accurately the compilers) will only understand a language if it is written in a form that they will understand, use the proper grammar, or syntax that they have been programmed to understand. Bibliography Adams, Scott, and Larry Charles. Dilbert | Y2K. Columbia TriStar Television, Inc. 03 05, 1999. http://www.hulu.com/watch/25138#i0,p8,d0 (accessed March 3, 2014). Salt, Charles. computer science. stack excahnge inc. December 11, 2013. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4431819/what-are-the-differences-between-a-program-and-an-application (accessed March 3, 2014). Word. n.d. http://www.watchout4snakes.com/wo4snakes/Random/RandomWord (accessed March 03, 2014). Report errors in comments below After much consideration, our programmers have voted to port our Windows 8 Store Apps over to Windows Phone. As of right now, we will only support Windows Phone 8 unless we hear a desire for Windows Phone 7 support (comment if you want that).
About our upgrade: Currently, we have transferred our Completely Random Passwords app over to windows phone. Due to the length of the name, we decided to list it as RandomPasswords, although we may change the list name in the future. This process went smoothly other than a few hiccups. Having passwords up to 128 characters worked fine for Windows 8 apps with larger screens, but was impractical on the Windows Phone. Thus, we cut it down to 64 characters. So far, we have found this app to be working fine, although it tends to make passwords one character too long. This will be fixed in our next series of updates after we look up the proper shortening code. Nevertheless, our programmers have deemed this app fit for release and we look forward to hearing feedback. If you want one of our other apps moved to the Windows Phone, comment below! Before, when programming our apps, we locked our resolution in at 16:9 aspect ratio. While this made a app look fantastic when presented in full screen on a 27" monitor or a 10" monitor, but multitasking was difficult on smaller screens. Now, we are converting all of our apps over to a more multitasking friendly format using the scaling tools of XAML. The first of these user friendly updates came to Thinking of a Number earlier today. It is a major UI overall and we invite you to look at it and provide feedback on how we can further improve before we roll out updates for the rest of our applications. (Currently a UI update for Completely Random Passwords is waiting for release. We will keep you updated). Comment below
.. . It is the weekend, is it not? Therefore, all of our programmers are hard at work. The only trouble is that we are waiting for Microsoft to certify our apps. Currently, five of our six published apps are in the process of having updates published. Our general philosophy is that we should wait for our previous apps to be published before working on new updates. However, let it be known that our updates will be rolling out soon. Chemistry Reference is getting a Thermodynamics solving feature (this update got pushed ahead of testing a bit so we are crossing our fingers that bugs will be seldom). Risk Odds is finally getting a update to Windows 8.1 and is now designed to prevent crashing. Thinking of a number got a small update with a new help feature in the sidebar. Random Walk is getting this same help feature. Finally, we updated Completely Random Passwords because our Windows 8.0 Edition was still experience crashes.
In the future, we will try to get all apps submitted by Thursday night to ensure the updates are out for the weekend. In the meantime, check our any of these apps that you have not yet and give us your feedback in the comments below. In the past, we have stayed around statistical and productivity apps. However, in this ever changing world, we have decided it may be an interesting experience for our developers to create a game. Currently, we are proposing a simple, yet potentially addictive idea: Saving the World. This idea was inspired from the best written television show of all times, Lost. (That is not debatable; it was an incredible show. If you have not seen it, check it out on Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime.) This app would consist of a very simple task: pushing a button every so often to save the world. Instead of waiting for a 108 minutes like Desmond did in Lost, users would wait for about 5-10 seconds and only get about half a second to press it compared to the three minutes in Lost. To increase the competition in this game, we would create leaderboards, saying how many times one saved the world. Give us your thoughts in the comments or take the quick survey below. Or both. Getting insider information can be fun. Getting input on what happens can be rewarding. Make sure to subscribe to our blog if you want to be in the moment it what is happening in our firm. We will write from topics ranging from new features and apps to the process of submission. We may even review other's apps if requested.
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