This made me think

Somebody very kind just left a complimentary comment on my other Blog ( http://dizzydeveloper.wordpress.com ) which made me take a look at the stuff he had written, which was also pretty good. Anyway, I browsed around a bit more from his site and found this article: “The evloution of a developer” . In my current state of mind, I found his conclusion quite profound, although I’m not sure I think he’s correct.

Status Update: Gemini4Smartphone release 1.0.0.1 has actually been installed and run by someone in the wild (ie Not a tester, and not one of my friends who downloaded it), and has connected to the license server. This is a major breakthrough. The next exciting thing will be to see if the same device ever runs the synchronisation process again. It will take at least 24 hours to find out. If the rate of clicks to downloads is the same as the rate of download to sales, I just need another 40,000 of these to break even

Google Adwords and More Slow Progress

Intraweb Software has its first advertising campaign. We have bought up a range of google adwords to try and promote Gemini4Smartphone. So far we have had more than 45,000 impressions of our advertisement, but as yet only 9 click-thrus. So far, presenting the advert in front of 45,000 web-surfers has cost us a total of 37 UK pence. For anybody reading this outside the UK and not familiar with our currency, that’s about 20 us-cents.

I suspect that it will all get a bit more exciting today. So far, the advert has mostly been running over the weekend and our experience with the website and previous attempts to build traffic to the site has resulted in very negative responses

The effect on downloads is that finally we have a couple of people downloading the product. But according to the stats on my license server nobody has yet used the product. That’s got to be a bad thing, but as yet I have know idea why it is. Testing shows that the downloads are working fine, but the last downloader went to the download page three times. Testing shows that the installation works fine.

I’m really hopeful that someone will tell me why they are not using the product after they downloaded. Then I will be able to help with whatever the problem is. For example, maybe the website is not clear enough about which Smartphone can be used, and people are downloading it for their Symbian phones. Who knows.

If you are reading this, maybe you could go and download the free trial and see how it goes… PLEASE.

http://www.gemini4smartphone.com

 I’m currently using a trial version of Blogjet 1.6 to write this site. I like it a lot:

DOPOD Release Windows Mobile with 256Mb of Memory

If this is what it sounds like (That is, that the M700 Artemis has 256MB of internal static memory, not a packaged SD card or similar)  then its very good news for us software developers. One of the big improvements (In my mind) that Microsoft made with Windows Mobile 5 was to make the internal storage memory static. With the previous version, the dynamic memory required so much power to keep it refreshed that 128MB was pretty much the limit. This is because Microsoft specifies that the device must automatically power down and save state when there is 72 hours of battery left for standby (In other words, it should always keep your data for at least 3 days). The trouble is that 128MB of dynamic memory takes approximately 50% of a standard ish sort of battery to keep it refreshed for 72 hours. Go up to 256MB and the device can only turn on for a few seconds (Or you need a much bigger battery).

Now that Pocket PCs have the same static memory as Smartphones, the storage memory is retained without power so the devices can have a lot more memory. This gives developers far more space to put their applications and daya into. Cool.

http://www.gemini4smartphone.com – RSS Feedreader and Netcast client for Windows Smartphone.

CrunchGear over-simplify Windows CE/Windows Mobile OS relationship ?

CrunchGear are running a series of articles on the current models in the Smartphone market. This article is good, but the description of the relationship between Windows CE and Windows Mobile is that Windows Mobile is a subset of Windows CE. Strictly speaking Windows Mobile 5 is an operating system which is built from Windows CE. Windows CE 5.0 is a product which allows manufacturers of various types of devices to build operating systems for their products. Microsoft have at least 3 internal customers who use it in this way. There’s Windows Mobile for Automotive (Operating system for Cars and the like), an OS for Portable Media Centers (I think its called Windows Mobile for Portable Media Center) and finally there is Windows Mobile 5.0 which is currently a pair of operating systems for handheld devices. When the Windows Mobile 5.0 team build their operating system, they start by selecting a set of functionality from Windows CE which they want to include, then they add Windows Mobile specific drivers and a whole load of additional functionality like the Pocket Office applications and such.

This is the base OS which is then sent to OEMs to build into their phone and PDA equipment. In most cases, they will add other additional drivers and make other changes to the OS. There are quite a lot of requirements on the OEMs to keep functionality, in order to be able to use the various Microsoft trademarks. There is also some latitude for the OEMs to modify the operating system to better suit their devices. In the past some OEMs have even introduced platform specific bugs into some of the generally available functionality. Oops.

The Pocket PC operating system and the Smartphone operating system. Both of these OSs are built by a different team within Microsoft from the team who build Windows CE. In fact, the Windows CE team have just released a new version of their OS (Version 6.0), but it looks as though the next version of Windows Mobile (Whatever its called and numbered) will still be based around version 5 of Windows CE.

Its not entirely clear to me when, but “a future” version of Windows Mobile will see the Pocket PC and Smartphone OSs merge into a single entity. The functional similarities were more pronounced in version 5 than the 2003 version (For example using additional buttons from the Smartphone on the Pocket PC and the fact that both Pocket PC and Smartphone now use static memory), but the codebases will finally merge and mean that developers like me can distribute a single binary which supports both Pocket PC and Smartphone (Presumably this distinction will disappear).

http://www.gemini4smartphone.com – Windows Mobile Smartphone based RSS Feed reader and Netcasting client.

Business Intelligence – Microsoft Windows Live for Mobile

I’m not getting too worried about this particular release, but Microsoft have finally released a Windows Live for mobile platforms. I’m not entirely clear whether this works just with Windows Mobile platforms or whether it plays nicely with other people’s browsers too. The competitive aspect is that the platform apparently gives access to RSS Feeds, although I’m not sure I’ve found that bit yet. Go over there and have a play  http://mobile.live.com  (With you phone browser, it redirects to the main windows live if you hit the url with a desktop).

Gemin4Smartphone

Another Windows Mobile Smartphone

Excellent, another platform for me to target and it sounds as though its going to be pretty small which is good for this market.

 Gemin4Smartphone

T-Mobile Dash – Available in the US apparently.

I wish that the “global” players in the cellphone industry could get there processes optimised to a point where they can release hardware all over the world at the same time. I need to get my hands on one of these for testing, but they are apparently only available in the US so far. Looking forward to a UK release…

Intraweb Software Homepage

First browser results are in.

OK, I really didn’t expect this. The first 3 browsers that hit the download page after I changed the stats code where Netscape Version 2.0. I guess I really need to re-think my ideas. Gonna start by adding a load of extra platform and IP info to try to get more useful information… At the moment, the website is predicated on a couple of probably dodgy suppositions.

 

1. Most people with Smartphones are up to date with technology, so a desktop installer that requires Windows XP is OK
2. Most people with WINDOWS Smartphones are Microsoft kinda people, if you have a Mac, you probably don’t buy Microsoft Windows based phones. Lets see how true that is…

Progress So Far – Slow

I said we would try to be as open as possible on the day to day running of the company, so …

Statement of Problem:

Take up of Gemini4Smartphone has been very low in the first 24 hours of release. The hits on the download page are into double figures but so far only one person has actually downloaded the product. Clearly this is not a happy situation.

Because I thought that this would be an important statistic to keep track of, I currently record every hit on the download page and the completed download page but no more detail about the hits. I think there are two possible reasons that I am getting the current pattern of hits on the page but no follow through.

1. The hits are mostly coming from ‘bots searching the web, which are not pressing the download button.
2. Users see the page and are scared away for some reason. I think this probably converts into 3 possibilities.
1. The user-agreement is scarey.
2. The choice between versions of the installer is somehow putting people off.
3. The page does not look professional enough or the layout is bad, making people think that the site is un-trustworthy.
4. EDITED: Just thought of another possible reason, people are arriving at the download page with no interest in the product. Not sure what I can do about this really.

Action Plan:

In order to try to increase the number of people downloading the product, I have come up with the following action plan:

1. Improve the information that I get about hits on the download page. I have modified the stats so that in addition to the time and date of the hit, I also get a browser type. Hopefully this will show me whether the hits are coming from bots or real people. If mostly the former, then my biggest problem is driving people to the site, if the latter then I have to really worry about the download page.
2. Review the user-agreement to see if it can be simplified, or completely removed, or moved somewhere less obtrusive/scarey, without risking that people miss it. I don’t wish to hide or confuse people, but the agreement itself is pretty standard stuff.
3. Review the user interface of the page, especially the selection of installer types. Consider adding some help text to the page or other ways to improve the usability.
4. Review the overall design.

I will let you all know how we get on.

 

Tim Bartle

Managing Director

Intraweb Software Homepage

First Post

Hello. Welcome to the Intraweb Software Limited Company Blog. This is where we are going to post as much information as possible about what we are doing and why. We’ll keep this blog up to date with the day to day progress of Gemini4Smartphone, and we are also hoping for loads of feedback from everybody who reads it, whether it be requests for new features, bug reports, comments on our style or corrections of our grammar. We want as much input into our company from everybody outside as we can get.

From our side, as much as possible we want to be completely open with the internal workings of our company. Our open bug list will always be publicly available and our future plans will be available as soon as they have been made concrete so that you can tell what will be available from us, as soon as we think we know.

Intraweb Software Homepage