Edge of Tomorrow thoughts

Saw Edge of Tomorrow last night and had some thoughts.
A couple of positive things first.
1) I was never really sold on Emily Blunt in any movies for how much praise she was getting. She was good in Looper but didn't do anything for me. This, however, was my breaking point. She rocked. She did the tired, weary, bad-ass soldier wonderfully. I'm sold.
2) Special effects were roundly awesome.
3) Tom Cruise was cool.
4) so on and so forth.

The reason why I'm bothering to write this up, and big spoilers if you haven't seen it still or are waiting for home watching (don't, because its cool on the big screen), is the ending.
I didn't like the ending.
The wife and I talked about this on the drive home. We both didn't like it. It was too...nice. It was wrapped up all convenient. It was a big present at the end with a huge bow on top to say, "Yeah! Everybody lives and the world is saved!"
To be honest, we think a more grounding, more heroic ending should have been done and this is how my wife and I envisioned it:
Instead of Cruise falling in the water and killing the Omega then getting wrapped in it's time blood juice and resetting to just before the battle again (probably one last time since the Omega is now dead) and the Omega is still dead at the last reset with nobody but Cruise that knows (and Blunt and her scientist friend to believe)...the following (or something like it) should have happened.
Everything happens exactly like it did at the end. J-Squad gets picked off, they all have heroic ends. Blunt dies in a more noble fashion (although her death did have some nobility to it, maybe something more kickass like taking down a dozen drone mimics but avoiding the Alpha could have worked) then Cruise dies taking out the Omega.
Next day reports come from the other fronts that the Mimics are not resisting and are basically dead without the Omega. The French frontlines show the same; no resistance.
Flash to soldiers entering Paris. Someone finds a sole surviving member of J-Squad. Maybe Ford, the black dude who took his dead friend's name and place so that his dead friend's family back home was still getting the checks to survive. He recounts the tale of what they were doing and he has some undeniable evidence of some kind of what they did and how they did it. The scientist friend of Blunt can confirm it. Blunt, Cruise and the rest of J-Squad are hailed as heroes. Statues are erected to celebrate their sacrifice. The sole surviving member (whoever) is given some medal. Whatever.
Point is this would seem to us as being something of a greater, more realistic and yet still cool ending. It wouldn't have been your typical ending. It would still be a positive point to the sacrifice and enduring spirit of what the purpose was of having the reset power taken from Cruise near the end. The fact that with all of this training through countless deaths, here is one last final hurrah that paid off because he tried and tried. and even if he and the rest died, it was still worth it for the world to be saved.

just my opinion on it. it was still a great watch. and I'd totally watch it again.

Feedback requested

Been working on this project for my current employer (MV Transit...and its my last day as I write this) and I was hoping I could get some feedback on a particular page for a Windows Phone 8 app I have been trying to finish before I leave.

In the image, I am using a grouped LongListSelector. The groups are Stops that the shuttles, well, stop at. The items in each group are the shuttle route names. So, given this context, its a list of stops with the routes that stop there and the next time those routes do stop there.

But I don't think that is obvious. Its almost hard to explain as well.

Anybody got any good ideas or feedback on making this more obvious?

Thanks in advance!

Intuitive User Interfaces do not have to make sense

Disclaimer: This is not a defense of Windows 8. I am just using it as an example. I am not a Microsoft employee although I do use Microsoft technologies in my software development. I may be biased in some regard but I hope my views come out in an objective nature.

User interface and experience design is a tough and tricky situation these days. It seemed like everyone readily knew that in order to operate your desktop, laptop, smartphone and even refrigerator, all you had to do was use the obvious iconography along with menu systems arrayed across the edge of the display. And then Microsoft had to come along and screw it all up.
One of the biggest complaints Microsoft's Windows 8 receives is that it is "unintuitive". It is unintuitive because static icons are missing. It is unintuitive because the Start Menu is gone. And it is unintuitive because nobody would know, without some training of any kind, that the charms bar exists, or all installed applications can be found with 2-3 clicks, or any number of other little gripes one may have. And when asked why it's unintuitive, chances are its because it "doesn't make sense...".

Common Sense is limited by what the person knows
I could go on a large rant that would take up the rest of my day on what a fallacy the notion of Common Sense is. Common Sense said the Indians were just on the other side of that large ocean. Common Sense tells us all the time that the shorter line at the grocery store is the faster line (and we all know that isn't true). And Common Sense said that if this woman weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood and therefore...A WITCH!
The problem with it is that we don't know everything but accept the little that we do as being accepted and truth. This sort of notion plagues American politics and economics today. In our disastrous two-party system, both sides claim to have Common Sense while the other is stupid and uneducated. And yet neither have proven to actually have a positive affect. But this isn't a political rant.
The other major problem with Common Sense is that it's limited to what we're used to.

Intuitive User Interfaces do not have to make sense
Microsoft's Windows 8 has certainly had it's critics. And largely for good reason. As an owner of 3 PC's, all with Windows 8 and only one with a touch screen, I can say that I whole-heartedly prefer the touch screen over mouse and keyboard. And that was what it was made for. Swiping the edges with a mouse doesn't feel or work as well as intended. Navigating the "Metro" (and yes, I'm still calling it that as well) Start Screen doesn't work as well with a mouse and keyboard as it does with a simple swipe.
I use it well enough; hot keys and mouse wheels play heavily in my usage. The average user base, of which I am not, may not be that savvy though.
But one of the most interesting solutions to this is to put back the start menu from Windows 7 and older versions. Again, we are limited to what we know when it comes to Common Sense, but this doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm missing a piece of the puzzle as to why a small menu in the corner and a full screen menu that achieves the nearly exact functionality is so vastly different and inhibiting.
I get that there isn't a tutorial on right-clicking the start screen and then clicking the All Apps icon in the corner that achieves the same action as clicking the Start Menu and scrolling to the Programs tab from previous OS's. That's cool and I appreciate it. But once you learn that, and know its practically the same thing outside of presentation, does it still seem unintuitive?
Or how about no tacit knowledge that in the Start Screen, you can start typing and it automatically searches your installed applications? Such as "Ste" will display Steam for all the gamers out there. That is, if you hadn't already pinned the application executable to your Start Screen.

Time to bring it all in
Merely because it doesn't look like the user interface which we have learned to use doesn't mean it is "unintuitive". PC users using a Mac for the first time will complain of unintuitiveness and may be lost. No Windows key for hot keys? Where's the Start Menu...oh, its the Application drop down that takes you to a folder with all of your applications installed. But it takes some getting used to and education in order to become a productive user.
So why is Windows 8 so "unintuitive" then? And why doesn't it make sense? If we can learn to use an iPhone, switch from PC to Mac or vice versa, be enthralled with the Kinect, create the automobile and expand our society to fit roads, realize that yes we do revolve around the sun and generally accept that the morons on the other side of the aisle are bent on destroying the USA, why is it such a brain numbing, productivity destroying failure to change the game of OS design?


I wish I had more time to dive into this more as I know I left things out and wanted to expand on more. Would love to discuss it with anybody in the comments. Thanks!

Marketplace Screw up

I recently did some updates to My Animal Age Free which changes the ad network from AdDuplex to Pubcenter. I got issues resolved and a working copy published Feb 27th. I updated manually that day.
Feb 28th, I received an update along with the much discussed Twitter update that reverts it back from the recent major UI update. Intrigued and curious, I updated my app. It reverted back to a "broken" published version where the ad fails.
If you're one of my users and wondering what the most recent update was about, it is this revert update. If you care enough, you can uninstall and reinstall the app to get it back to the intended functionality, which will provide me the miniscule amount of revenue from the ad network.
If you're a Windows Phone Microsoft person that can report this as a problem, please do so. This is obviously affected a number of apps. And I'll be losing ad revenue because of it.

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.