Listening to others, or else.

When I was finished with My Animal Age, my wife mentioned to me that I should allow the user to input their age once and then show the animal ages for every animal. As it stands now, the app requires the user to put in their age for every animal.

After it was published, I was discussing apps with an Irish man who made something similar. He mentioned something very similar: allow the user to input their age once for all animals.

I chose not to update the app and change this.

I have a myriad of reasons. It would take time to change the user flow. I never intended to gain anything but education and fun from making it. I never expected any real money or notoriety. I could go on, but you get the point.

Obviously the app has never taken off. The paid version, so far, has only been purchased 15 times, including by myself. The number of trials are around 150-200. The free version is much larger but the ad network (Ad Duplex) isn't a revenue driven one but a discovery based one.

I find it interesting and fun to take a look at the statistics I built into the app to see how the trial version gets used SO MUCH, sometimes with people using the two trial animals upwards of 50-80 times. But those appear to not find it fun enough to purchase.

Then I met Terry Meyerson, head of Windows Phone division at Microsoft, at the Windows Phone 8 fan meetup before the release event on Oct. 29th. We talked and I mentioned my app. He asked to see it. And guess what he said?

"You should let the user enter their age once for all animals."

I never felt like running straight to my computer to write code as much as I did right then.

I am in the process of updating My Animal Age, mostly to understand the differences between 7 and 8, but I am taking the opportunity to incorporate this change in user interaction.

I also wonder, if I had listened to my wife and the Irish gentleman, would My Animal Age have received far greater purchases and prestige? Did my inclination to not listen to user advice possibly kill my app's chances? Is this the reason I received a 1 star review from Brazil?

I think this applies for everything we coders do. We always need to listen to our potential customers, fellow coders and, despite our best desire to believe we only know the best for our software, it's usually not.

So keep an ear out and be opened minded, OK?

My Lucky Morning.

I really haven't spoken of this yet, but yesterday (Oct 29th, 2012) I was invited to attend the launch event for Windows Phone 8 here in San Francisco as a "fan" (as opposed to press). From 8:15am to 9:45am, I got to mingle (as much as an introvert can) with many other "fans" (some, I discovered weren't so much fans but people interested to see what Microsoft had to say in person). There were lots of Microsoft employees who worked directly on the platform there to mingle and get feedback from us.

During this time, I had drinks, got a t-shirt and did some talking, including meeting and showing my app to the head of the entire Windows Phone division, Terry M. (can't remember how to spell his last name). Steve Ballmer addressed us in a great and jovial fashion. The alcohol was tasty and so were the mini pancakes.

We were then ushered into the events room and took our seats before the press showed up. We all sat behind the press, but it was still easy to see the stage. Joe Belfiore gave the presentation and it was exciting in person.

Jessica Alba came on stage for a bit to give it a bit of celebrity love. She seemed thoroughly happy to be there, though shy. It certainly gave the whole presentation a great extra love for the product.

Joe B.'s kids came on stage briefly to show the wonderful Kids Corner feature. That is the ability to bypass the locked screen to reach a special area that can have designated apps, games and features accessible to what you want your kids to reach. And in an extra fashion, security-wise, don't include email and other stuff and it can't be accessed either. I will be using this a lot.

Steve Ballmer came on last to give a good delivery (much, much more canned than the very personal and funny speech he gave to the fans before the presentation). Although his presence wasn't diminished in the least.

And then we got our surprise. At the end, after Steve, Joe and Jessica gathered on stage to do a quick end photo-op together, Steve says, "Oh, and I forgot to mention. Everyone here gets one of these phones." The sliding video columns slide away, the back wall pulls up and behind it is revealed to be a full back lounge area with all of the Microsoft employees hanging out and girls with trays full of HTC Windows Phone 8X's walking onto stage.

Needless to say, the fan part of the audience erupted in major applause and yelling.

I spent the next half-hour breaking open my new deep blue 8X, getting it running on a temporary sim card (it's a micro sim, compared to my full size one in the Focus), and then walking around, hitting NFC markers for apps that they had placed on tables all over the venue.

I talked to the woman who emailed me the invite. She helped me get some things set up. I held a Nokia 822 briefly. I seriously considered grabbing a drink and some of the delicious lunch they had put out for us. It included Ahi Tuna sandwiches and a rainbow of cookies and cakes arrayed on a table. I don't know what else there was to eat.

Unfortunately, I had to get back to my children who were being watched by a hotel sitter. So I made my way back through a not-so-great part of San Francisco (which reminded me how much it's suffering from this economy downturn) and relieved the sitter of her duties. Fortunately for my children, she was lovely and they took to her wonderfully.

Regarding the phone, I won't lie. I was hoping to get a Nokia 920. The low-light images and exclusive apps are something to desire. Considering how much I spent on the sitter, I won't be getting one for some time (although I still have a discount upgrade waiting). That said, this phone is, pardon my language, fucking awesome.

The pictures I took have been fantastic. Never perfect, that would be a miracle of any phone, but significantly better than anything I've used EVER. Below is an image of San Francisco City Hall.

Especially compared to my old Samsung Focus, this thing is a polished piece of work. It feels better. It looks better. It performs better. Windows Phone 8 OS is a vast improvement over 7.5. The added features of Kids Corner (already used) is phenomenal. The multiple sized tiles are going to be a good headache trying to figure out how I want it to look. And the OS isn't technically the final product either, since it hasn't been officially released yet.

All in all, the event was a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me. I will probably not ever be able to attend such a spectacle ever again and consider myself exceptionally lucky for doing so. I don't say this thinking it was necessarily better than attending an iOS launch event or anything. But I can say that I can imagine what it would feel like to be an iOS fan attending one of those.

Don't get me wrong. It is just a phone. But in this day and age, it can also be an extension of who you are. It can be an extension of accessing those things that are going on around you and staying connected to it all. And frankly, with experience with iPhone and extremely little experience with Android, I think Microsoft's Windows Phone fulfills that want.

To Tweet or not to Tweet

On October 29th, 2012, in sunny San Francisco, Microsoft will be holding an event for the latest Windows Phone version, Windows Phone 8

I was lucky enough to win a ticket from a contest that Ben Rudolph (of Smoked By Windows Phone fame) and other Microsofties held to allow some Windows Phone fans a seat at the event. I am really, truly excited about this.

So here is my question, provided I get told not to divulge anything I see at the event, would my twitter followers like to see me live tweet from the event? And not just speaking of items that will be replicated across the techno-journalism sphere, but from a fans perspective? Maybe include a hashtag like #wp8fan

I love Windows Phone 7. I think the whole new UI interface (Modern? Microsoft Design Style? or the old Metro?) is a bold risk that I happen to enjoy over others. It's certainly not without its faults, but the few of those are almost entirely in the app ecosystem which is slowly but surely being whittled away as more appear. So what they are doing with Windows Phone 8 is taking that a step further and going all out on this design choice that could be a part of the make-or-break future of Microsoft.

Let me know if people will enjoy this live tweet from a fans perspective. Thanks!

Soooooo...what is wrong with My Animal Age?

I was thinking about the performance of my only app on Windows Phone 7 and why it doesn't seem to have gained any traction whatsoever. It is sitting just under 180 downloads (including trials) with 15 users actually purchasing it.

Couple that with some analytics that I put in, I see some users have used the Dog and Mouse over 50+ times on the same device. The majority are down around 1-2, and that is fine. But there are a large amount that have 10-20+ uses of the trial animals. And only 15 purchases?

What is wrong with it?

I can only speculate until the end of time. On top of a couple of 5 star reviews, it's received one 3 star review that simply said, "Too few" and another I just found from Brazil, translated from...Portugeuse(?) that...well, translated says "A drug is not worth" but I'm thinking that means it's not worth the $.99.

WHY?

I get "Too few" and it's something I would rectify if I knew it was worth the time and effort. But without any additional reviews or more in depth feedback, I'm not sure if its simply worth it.

If you've used my app and enjoyed it or hated it, why not review it with maybe more that 3-5 words? How about hitting the email link in the app and sending me something more substantial? I would love to make this fun for kids and maybe even adults...but I need to know HOW it can be better.

Images of the app are in the link here. Is it not pretty enough? Does it not jump and dance around like the others? How about the top animal noises app that has about 3X as many animals but does nothing else?

I get the feeling I'll never know. But if you do, I would appreciate being told!

MVC3, ActionLinks and Virtual Directories

In my day job, my team has been slowly transitioning to MVC3 from Webforms. With some of the normal transitions of learning the nuances of MVC3 (strict mapping of parameter variable names on posts and gets for one) there have been others that I have come to learn even over a year later after starting.
In particular, I am going to point out extensionless URL's and virtual directories in IIS 5.1. And yes, I said IIS 5.1. Unfortunately our servers are running 2003.
Something that had been bothing me for some time was the problem that when you had a site in a virtual directory, none of the links worked with a simple @HTML.ActionLink(...) call. In general, within a View, if you wanted a simple url link you could do "@Html.ActionLink("LinkName","ControllerName","ActionName") and it would automatically map the URL relatively. The above would turn into "/ControllerName/ActionName".

If the site was hosted in a virtual directory (call it "testSite"), then the above ActionLink would resolve to "/testSite/ControllerName/ActionName".

But after publishing to it, even after adding the Extensionless effect, it would always fail on me. And I always had to resort to other means.

Until today.

Note the Checkbox on the bottom left "Check if file exists". Admittedly I don't know why, but having that checked will create 404 Not Found errors on ActionLinks within virtual directories. Unchecked that and BAM! They are found now!

Changing focus

My current app in progress was moving along just fine for Windows Phone, but I came to a realization. Windows 8 is right around the corner. I need to focus on the Windows 8 version!

So consider this my official change. Windows 8 app development in full swing!

Barely a conversion to be had.

Been watching my downloads on My Animal Age and Free and have noticed that I have not had a single person pay for My Animal Age since the 16th of July. And before that? 19th of June.

So one has to wonder a few things. Is it the app? Is it the marketplace and lack of desire to pay for apps? Is it just not that kind of app that receives tons of attention? What could it be?

Paying attention to the twitter stream, I see plenty of people talking of thousands of downloads, a good conversion rate and really decent money being made. Nothing spectacular, but the returns they receive would have paid for my tools and time investment.

I think it's time I take a look at the trial and see if something is wrong but nobody wants to tell me. And if you happen to be one of those that have tried my app's trial and would like to let me in on a secret I don't know, drop a comment. :)

Integrating with Facebook.

Well, I'm happy with my first app (and it's free version) and now it's time to officially move on.

Actually, I already did, I just haven't said it yet. :)

So, no reveal yet but I am working pretty heavily on it's Facebook integration. In particular, getting the users name and stuff and to access their photos for the apps primary usage.

I am using the not-so-well-documented Facebook C# SDK and so far, so good. The really hard part right now is deserializing teh JSON. This is all new to me, so I'm having fun here.

Some fixes incoming!

Well, as I mentioned before My Animal Age Free was doing terribly. I really didn't pay attention to details as I should have. So, I fixed it!

I tightened up the UI so text isn't overlapping. I fixed the Dog and Mouse calculations. And I did a little housekeeping on the back-end of the code.

I took the opportunity to do the same with my paid version of My Animal Age.

OK, I actually did buy the Telerik Rad Controls and used them to do that tightening of the UI. And wow. I didn't really do that much with them but after taking a moment and practicing with the DockPanel control, it really made the textbox, button and image seem a little tighter and cohesive.

Oh, and got my first earnings check from Microsoft for the paid apps. I won't spill the exact amount, but suffice to say I think I might be able to afford a McDonalds Happy Meal with it. :D

Never really was in it for the money. At least, that would have just been icing on the cake. I'm just happy to do this in general.

My Animal Age Free woes

Note to self:

Be more aware of the changes you make when converting an app from one user flow to another.

Based on reviews so far of My Animal Age Free, which is essentially the paid version but with ads, it is fun for kids and interesting, but the dog and mouse do not work and the text is hard to read over the animals.

I fully admit I felt it was readable *enough* but that is obviously not the case so I will make some changes to get that text more readable. Can't have the text that is the POINT of the app unreadable.

Dog and Mouse do not work? How did I not notice that? Will fix right away.

Good for kids???? WHAT?!?! thats awesome and essentially my goal of these apps.

If any of the reviewers read this blog post, Thank You for your feedback. It's important to me and I will jump on fixes right away. I just wish there was a quicker way to communicate with my users to solicite and discuss the feedback as some reviews sometimes end up being a little too vague to act on.

Totally don't understand the metrics...

As of yesterday, My Animal Age had 98 downloads total. Whether that includes conversions or not, I am not sure. Today, it says 103. So, if I understand that right, in one day it got 5 downloads?

I also released an update that probably is hitting current owners (even trial owners) so I wonder if that increase is includes conversions?

Top that with the fact that the data in the charting and details with actual trials vs. paid and on what day is about 5 days old at any time, and I don't really know what is happening on a day to day basis.

I understand it has to deal with ensuring that paid apps are actually paid for and credit cards are not rejected, but still, would be cool to have more immediate info. Even if only a day old.

Just trying to make sense of it all, you know?

On a side note: My Animal Age Free (now w/ ads!) has been certified! It has not been published and pushed to the marketplace yet, but that's incoming. I will post when it's available.

A couple of bits and bytes

Well, I added some nice background analytics so I can understand the usage of My Animal Age and accidently left in the test key for the analytics. So that update that changes that and only that is submitted. Expect to recieve and then wonder if there is more but feel comfortable knowing there isn't.

Also of more importance is that I submitted an ad-drive FREE version of My Animal Age! Hit the submit button about 10 minutes ago, so don't expect it until sometime later next week.

I am really curious to see how the two compete against each other and against all of the other great kids apps in the kids+family category.

My Animal Age v1.3 out!

New version of My Animal Age is now out! It's been certified and is now processing to have the changes available on the marketplace within the next 24 hours.

This version has much smaller changes to it, but the most notable change is the icon. My graphic designer (a.k.a. wife) and I decided that the previous icon was too basic and not colorful enough, especially for kids.

Old Image:

New Image:

Notice how there is no title and it's far more colorful? It should attract more attention. Let's see how it plays now.

Scraaaaatch that. Got pinged for a collaberation project.

Been talking to an Android dev friend of mine in NY who has been doing some apps for Android and starting to branch into IOS. He has asked if I would like to do Windows Phone version of one that he is about to finish.

Since this is a little more defined than anything I got going on I think I'll be taking him up on this offer and crank it out. It looks like a fun app. Not as kid friendly I was originally going for but not exactly bad for kids either.

Once I can share some details, I will. Until then, stay tuned!

New App in the werks (<-- see what I did there?)

Been a bit, so I thought I would update (for all 2 of you out there that probably check often). I am set to release a free version of my app My Animal Age. It's become apparent that not too many people want to pay for a silly little app that plays sounds and lets you determine your age as an animal. This, despite seeing an app in the marketplace that does less than this but with twice as many animals and has been persistantly in the top 5. Need to understand the magic in that.

So I figure a free version will give a little more notice and a little more visibility overall. It will be ad'd at the bottom and have full functionality.

There will also be some back-end improvements to allow me to track usage so that I will understand which animals are used the most, how often it's used in used in general and so on and so forth. Think I'll add an opt-in messagebox.

That said, I am also working on a new app on the side. It utilizes the XNA framework, for now, to be a little gamelike. Keeping the theme of kid friendly and educational, this will fit right in.

Don't want to spoil anything yet, so stay tuned. But since I have never done anything revolving around collision detection and such, this will be a big step and change for me, who is currently used to more mark-up and binding with background code with static UI.

I'm looking forward to this challenge.

Update is out!

The update for My Animal Age is now out. Some minor improvements in some places but most notably the animals now make noises when an age is found, or when tapping the animal itself.

Come and get it!

Note, I have not received the notice to download the update, might take a day or two. But the new version is available on the marketplace and can be forced updated by using the above links.

Within the top 50 apps for Kids+Family

Not that it means a lot, but whatever the algorithm that Microsoft uses for determining the popularity of apps for, I believe the last week, it has placed My Animal Age within the top 50 apps for the category Kids+Family. Actually, number 45. It's not exactly super high on the list, but the Web Marketplace shows in groups of 50 per page, so My Animal Age is on the front...once you scroll down some. :)

Still, pretty darn cool! Also, the link I have above may not have it at that spot anymore depending on when you clicked it. Things change week to week.

50 and counting!

My Animal Age has officially broken the 50 downloads mark. Unfortunately, 90% of them are still trials. But hopefully with the coming update *cough*still-waiting-on-Microsoft*cough* those trials will start turning into more paid.

With that 50, however, came another review. 3 stars with the only comment being "Too few". This is great feedback but I was hoping that more detail could be given. How much is just right? How much is too many? Given that some of my competitor apps out currently have less than mine (somewhere in the 6-10 range) while mine has 12, including a mythical beast, how many more would be a better count of animals?

Continuing that train of thought, if I compared against the animal sounds apps which mine will now compete against since I've included that feature, My Animal Age will have either the same amount or a lot less. One of the top ten kids+family apps has 30+ animals and sounds, but that's the sole functionality of the app.

So my question to all who may actually read my blog: how many animals are just right for an app like My Animal Age?

Seriously, not trying to be facetious here. Give me some good feedback. Give me details. I would like this to be the best app it can be.

Thank you, whoever you are, for your feedback and if you happen to read this, drop a comment. Let's talk. I would definitely like to make this better.

Mooo! Oink! SSSSSSSssssss!

Major update posted for My Animal Age!

Here are the changes, but note: ANIMAL SOUNDS!

v1.2

• Now plays animal sounds when an age is calculated, or when the animal is tapped.
• Trial mode now shows animals that can be accessed in full version.
• Buy button (trial) or Rate/Review button (purchased) in Settings now available.
• Blog and Email in Settings are now tappable to view the blog or to send email feedback.

Really, the biggest items on that list are the animal sounds and the revamped trial mode.

I had been wondering why I wasn't having much of a trial to purchase conversation rate then a week or two ago I realized I had no button within the app itself to buy immediately, nor even any teasing of what is available in the full version. So that is a big change.

The animal sounds was always something I wanted to do in the original release, but due to time constraints and, well, I just wanted to get my app out, I held it back. Then, lo and behold, I get a 5 star review but it asks for animal noises. Well, they are on their way!

Thanks for everyone checking out the app and hopefully this will be a lot more fun and entertaining for you and your children.

Expect the update to be streamed to your phones by end of week (hopefully) or early next week. It's all up to Microsoft on when it gets pushed out at this point.

Highlighted on Metro Developer Show

There is a really good and genuinely funny podcast aimed at "Metro developers and enthusiasts" that I listen to every week. It's called The Metro Developer Show. They highlight news and info on anything Metro based, from Windows Phone to Windows 8 (actually, what is in-between?).

Anyways, great podcast and I try to contribute with info I find to share. Well, since I finally finished my app, My Animal Age, I decided to share and they were kind enough to plug the hell out of it. :)

That episode can be found here. Also, I shared an e-book over twitter to them and they discuss it briefly as well. I'll discuss that in a separate blog post.

Even before they gave me such an ego boost, I've always found their show to be sincerely wonderful to listen to and will continue to as this developer ecosystem gains more and more ground.

Downloads slowly climbing

I'm up to 33 downloads, with 2 purchases! It's obviously a very slow start but I never expected this to make any real money. more for fun and for experience. If I hit paydirt, then that's just icing on the cake!

I think it's also going to really help that I started advertising on a site called Windows Phone Parent on the side bar and I guess they get pretty good traffic. My downloads trickled away until I did the advertising and then it started up again. So I think it's helping.

No where to go but up from here!

My Animal Age catalog update

Wow that was nice and quick!

Got my catalog update already certified and published. This includes new marketplace iconography and a far better description. However, it hasn't migrated to the marketplace yet so it still looks terrible. That can't happen soon enough. So embarressed.

You can find it here.

Up to 22!

Hit 22 downloads sometime recently. Unfortunately, all trials. However, that's great that people are trying it out. Since there is a lag on the time downloaded to when reported, it's entirely possible that some of those have been converted to paying customers.

That said, I'm sending a metadata update to the marketplace to fix some description errors (and make it snappier. Thanks Wife!) and change the artwork so it does not have a transparent background.

Look for that update to come soon.

3 downloads!

So far, 3 other people have tried my app.  No reviews yet though.

 

Still, pretty exciting!

Posted from UpdateMyFeed for Windows Phone

Learning Experience

Once you submit an app update, you cannot make changes to the catalog text or image. Once you submit an app update, you cannot submit another.

While I knew the latter, I was unaware of the former. What does this mean? The most crushing item I want to fix right now is the marketplace icon. While the art itself is just fine, I want to add text to the bottom with the name of the app My Animal Age. Also? if the background is white, you won't see the art at all!

So in certain places that categorize and display new apps, my icon/tile is simply...white. It looks like nothing.

sigh...

This update cannot complete certification soon enough. But here is how it should look:

The beautiful wife, being the graphic designer she is, immediately had contention with the comic sans font. I'll change it once she comes up with something better. :)

v1.1 of My Animal Age has been submitted. This covers the following:

• Keyboard persistence issue where if you opened the keyboard by touching the textbox, then swiping away, the keyboard stays and the focus stays on the same animal's textbox
• The trial purchase reminder and rating reminder popups originally asked after the 3rd app start. Now they ask after every 3rd app start.
• App description changes to fix missing words and a description of the Live Tile feature.

Should be out by end of next week, at the rate apps are being certified.

Here is the link to My Animal Age.

If you do not have a windows phone, you can still see the app but obviously cannot purchase it.

For those that do, you can download it now. It appears to not be searchable yet, but that's a matter of time. It should show up on the New list shortly as well.

I'm officially a published Windows Phone app developer!

CERTIFIED!

For sure this time! Got the email and everything! Now I just have to wait the roughly 24 hours or so for the publishing process to move the app to the marketplace. I'll post a link once this is complete!

Fantastic!

So, whilst I wait for My Animal Age to finally publish, I have been thinking of my next app. Talked it over with my beautiful wife and came to the conclusion that while I really want to do a game, I should get another smallish app out first. Especially considering that I am enjoying the educational side of things. After all, a game I'd like to build would be a full-blown, RPG-ish educational game.

That said, I have decided that my next app will be an XNA framework title, so I can learn to understand it for the game I will want to eventually build.

This will be an educational game, a puzzle like app that puts together the letters and numbers. I have it all in my head right now but I've seen my son play these kinds of apps on his mom's iPhone and he loved them, so I figure since I haven't seen one on Windows Phone yet, I'll build it!

More to come. Stay tuned.

Weeeell, fixed a couple bugs in My Animal Age but I cannot submit those fixes until my initial submission gets finally published. So if you came to here to give me feedback on the keyboard persistence issue or that my ratings requests pops up every time after the third start of the application, then know it'll get fixed when I am allowed to.

In the meantime, I guess I'm going to have to wait until sometime next week (hopefully within the first couple days) to see my app published. It's taking at least 7 days lately because of high volume of app submissions. Oh well, I'll just start on a new app in the meantime. :)

Bug Found

Well, darn it. Already found a bug before My Animal Age was published. Handed my phone to my sister-in-law to show off the app and almost immediately she does something unexpected and finds a bug.

If you press on the text box to enter a number and get the numeric keyboard to appear, then swipe left or right away from that animal, the keyboard persists and the focus disappears from that text box...however, if you press any numbers, it will enter in that animals text box anyways. Going to fix that and submit the update soon.

I am totally watching this pot of water, waiting for it to boil and it's taking forever!

My app is in the certification process. What I thought was it being certified only means it is in progress of being certified. I guess this is the longest part where they test the app and do content checking. I have a little longer to wait now. It will be published and it will be cool and people will like it. Just keep thinking positive!

In the meantime, time to start thinking about next steps. Does that mean the patch to add facts to My Animal Age? Does that mean design work on a new app? Hmm, so many choices to go with here.

Its certified!

it is!  All that is left is for it to be published!

Posted from UpdateMyFeed for Windows Phone

NEVERMIND!

My Animal Age for Windows Phone has been submitted! I'll let you know when it's certified and in the marketplace!

SO EXCITING!

Getting really close to releasing my first Windows Phone app. Just cleaning it up, testing some functionality (trial version) and getting my settings/about page looking good.

Probably should it have it out next week at the latest. Pretty exciting!

On a different note: today I learned something very interesting about LINQ To SQL (a C# .NET framework).

Given a database table

In some code at work I wanted to first run through some data extractions, calculate final statistics and then populate this table. But before the insert, I want to find all rows that currently exist that match the same Date and delete.

So what I did was as I create each new row to insert, I make a new object of that Table's type: Daily_Total.

Daily_Total dt = new Daily_Total{ ...,...,...,...};

Then I add it to a generic list of type Daily_Total

List<Daily_Total> dailyList = new List<Daily_Total>();

...(gathering data)...

dailyList.Add(dt); (repeated for every new row)

Once this is all collected, I then do a query on the table to gather those items to delete and do the deletion like such:

dbContext.Daily_Totals.DeleteAllOnSubmit(toDelete);

dbContext.SubmitChanges();

And then the weirdest thing happens that I haven't experienced yet. Not only do the rows I want to delete get deleted, but the generic list of objects of that tables type are INSERTED. No InsertAllOnSubmit(dailyList) or anything. Just simply having a generic collection of those new rows gets itself submitted.

This took me a bit to figure out why my code was throwing a "Cannot insert entry that already exists" exception. I'm going to have to research why this happens. It seems incorrect to me since I may not want a temporary, local version of my new rows to be submitted yet. Of course, I could also be doing something wrong.

It was decided, some time ago, that the app "My Animal Age" was a rather short-lived app. As in, little time will be spent actually using the app on a per session basis. Thus, in order to generate revenue, it would be nearly impossible to do a free-with-ads realistically.

Thus I removed the ad space at the bottom and will replace it with what I originally wanted to add to this app: animals facts!

So last night, I removed that ad space, integrated the new iconography for tiles and added trial logic to support a trial version. Once I get the logic in place to remind the user that they should buy it if they want access to more than 2 animals and a reminder for ratings, I will add in the facts area to populate once the age calculator is clicked.

It is some serious feature creep. That is for sure. And I do need to get this app out ASAP.

Hmm...maybe I'll wait on the animal facts until a post-release patch.

Here are a couple of shots from my upcoming app, My Animal Age:

After much deliberation (a.k.a. discussing with my wife) I came to the conclusion that it would be good to have both a means to show the age of the animal in human years (what would a 34 year old dog be in human years?) and the opposite (what would a 34 year old human be in dog years?).

So I will be putting in some extra effort to provide the means to choose which way you want to have it work. I think this is a good idea.

My first Wolke Werks blog post here on blogspot. Yeah! Go me...

Anyways, the purpose I will hope to accomplish here on this blog is to document my side projects under the moniker of Wolke Werks. I am currently nearing completion of my first Windows Phone app called My Animal Age. I will share details with you later on that, but for now you can see some old posts on Facebook about what I've been doing.

While I do enjoy Facebook, I wanted to wrench away my blogging of my projects to be someplace more devoted to the content. Plus I can eventually customize my theme here to be more personal and appropriate to the branding I hope to accomplish.

You understand. I can tell.

So, there you go. Hope to see you in the future on more blog posts under my grand adventure of Wolke Werks.