Tom Doyle

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BreakingNews.ie Android App Review

Jan 4

Posted by Tom Doyle in Android Apps, iPhone Apps, Mobile App Development, Mobile Phone

If you’re a smartphone user, you probably have your phone full of apps that enable easy and quick access to your most loved sources of information. I know I do and one that I was delighted to see released was BreakingNews.ie’s Android App.

Typically, I had my mobile phone’s internet browser set to my Google IG page which listed my favourite news feeds on the homescreen when I opened it. I found after much use, I noticed that out of all the feeds I had listed, the one I used most was the breaking news feed.

The only problem with this that was that the content wasn’t mobile friendly when you visited the BreakingNews.ie website and therefore it was a bit annoying trying to navigate and read content.

After checking out the news again last night on my mobile, I noticed that BreakingNews.ie had gone “mobile” with their website, which was excellent. And to make things even better, they were advertising the fact that they now had an Android and iPhone App to boot! So off I went to download and install!

After installing the app, I fired it up and instantly noticed that the app was most likely developed with Titanium’s Appcelerator Development Platform – the “Restart is Required” message was a dead giveaway as it is a major bug bear for many Titanium mobile app developers on Android.

This is where I began to get worried about this app. A quick search on Google would have given the developer some very easy solutions to implement that would remove this message, but it appears they didn’t even bother looking into resolving this. Once I see this sort of laziness, I expect their to be more issues to come within the app.

And as expected, when the app restarted, I was instantly shown a runtime error. I’m given two options, Kill or Continue. If I wasn’t familiar with this error (as it’s not a “force kill” error that you’d come to expect with Android) I probably would have chosen Kill. This would have left me in an endless loop as the application would repeatedly restart until I choose the other option. I knew that I should be safe enough to choose Continue, so I did and continued to play with the app.

Again, it becomes blatantly obvious that the developer was either purely lazy or just had no inclination at all as to what way a user expects from a mobile app.

They presumed that people just want to see the latest articles when they land on the homescreen of the app. I sincerely doubt they did any sort of user testing and just went with their gut on how it should be presented. For me, I would expect the app to allow me to view a choice of categories from the homescreen or even given the ability to choose the categories that I would like to appear on the homescreen. Instead, I just get all the latest news articles in a list.

There is a “menu” button at the top left of the screen which allows you to choose from a radio buttoned list of categories, I’m not sure if this is just to select your default category or just choose a category from which you wish to view articles from. Either way, when you select an option from this list, you get a runtime error.

After playing around with it a bit more, in the hope that the app would improve (in some way), I noticed that they had another menu from the “menu” button on Android. Typically I would associated this with either extra settings or a refresh. In this case, it’s being used as a navigational tool. When you click this, it allows you to choose “News Menu” which brings you to a page which I feel in this app’s case really should be the homescreen.

As I continued through the app I received a number of “Force Kills”, which I just couldn’t take anymore of. I had to uninstall it.

This app could have been very useful to me, but unfortunately it’s just not. Apart from the errors, the user interface leaves a lot to be desired. They could really do with adding a widget or notification system to notify you over your preferred latest stories and make it worthwhile installing on your phone.

Let’s face it, all it’s doing for me at the moment is giving me an alternative way of viewing their news articles other than my browser. That’s just not enough to warrant installing an app on my phone. The space and memory on my phone is just too precious for me to give up for a pointless app.

In fairness to BreakingNews.ie – most news apps in this space leave a lot to be desired. I could name a number of apps that just don’t get it right, even the mighty Sky leave a lot to be desired with their apps.

In BreakingNews.ie’s case it’s as if a web developer has just decided one day that they can develop mobile apps. They expect the user experience to be much like the web but it’s really not. Mobile is different, people engage differently and expect a lot more than a web page from their mobile app.

At the moment there is very little reason for me to move away from using my browser to access this site. Their app is pretty useless to me. In fact, I have more control with a browser and their RSS feeds!

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Don’t change the business model! Make it work!

Dec 13

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Web Design


I recently attended the Nielsen Norman Group Usability Week in London and although I took quite a bit from my time there, one episode left a bitter taste in my mouth. My core focus when I arrived at the Usability Week was on the one day event called “The Human Mind & Usability: How Your Customers Think”. This was something that I felt could be really beneficial to me and a number of clients and therefore was very much looking forward to it.

The day course was presented by Marieke McCloskey, a user experience specialist with Neilsen Norman Group. As the day started, I really felt it was a good decision to choose this presentation as Marieke came out with some really interesting facts and case studies on user tests she had run in the past. All was going really well. Of course a lot of what she had to say were things that I would have come across a before – but it was the little gems that I hadn’t that I really wanted to get from this.

Throughout the presentation, Marieke referred to a certain website quite a lot and in the afternoon session this website was going to be our focus of attention for discussing all we had learned throughout the day.

“Brilliant”, I thought. Finally we’ll get to see Marieke in action. We’d get to see what she would do when presented with a real world situation. I was looking forward to seeing how she would tackle issues that us web designers tackle on a daily basis with clients that come to you with a problem and want you to solve it.

So what was this website? Well the website in question was Ramenbox.com.

Ramenbox.com is a website that basically sells Ramen – Ramenbox.com’s unique selling point is that you can bulk order a custom selection of Ramen and have it delivered to your door. They are the world’s first sellers of customisable box of Ramen (according to their website).

Ok, so I hadn’t got a clue what Ramen was before I went to this event and I certainly couldn’t tell you if people would be interested in buying a full box of Ramen, but that shouldn’t be an issue. We’re here to discuss how we can build a website to help this company maximise its chances of success right? Well so you would think.

If you have a look at Ramenbox.com – you’ll see the process is quite complex, never mind the fact that the website designer clearly didn’t spend much time user testing the website before launching it. The website’s from page starts off well, with 1-4 step instructions on how it works. The problem is, they don’t really give you clear instructions on how to get started. The wording, the layout and the complexity of the choices to even get one item into your shopping cart is enough to turn you off filling in a complete box of Ramen. I would imagine that Ramenbox lose quite a lot people in the first one or two clicks. If you do have the time to play around with that website and figure out what you have to do – I think most people eventually get it – but it will still feel too cumbersome to continue with their order.

Anyway, this website to me was an absolutely brilliant case study – it has everything you could wish for. A totally complex business model, a website that had not taken the cumbersome process of ordering into account and we have a usability expert to tell us how we could solve it! Or so I thought…

After lunch Marieke split us all into groups so we could discuss among ourselves what we would do with the website and how it related to what we had discussed throughout the day. Brilliant I thought again – this is the type of stuff I love! Solving problems with a user centred and practical approach to design. I was part of a lovely group – we all agreed on a process and what we’d change to make this website work as best it can. I personally felt we had a solution.

So next step was opening it up to the floor to talk about what our groups had discussed. Straight away the guy that had been loudest all day (you know the ones, they’re always at these conferences) – we’d change the business model – it just doesn’t work. In fairness to him, he had a point. The whole process was just so difficult and complex that there were better ways of approaching the business model. But that’s not what we’re here to discuss right – we’re here to discuss how we can make a complex business model work online aren’t we?

To my dismay, Marieke agreed with him, but she opened it up to the floor for more ideas – I thought, “now’s our chance to show how we’d do it”. Again, another loud attendee is ushered to voice his opinion on what he’d do. Again, he comes back with another way to change the business model. Again, Marieke agreed. This then started the floodgates of how everyone in the room would change the business model. Even those in our group seemed to move with the idea that changing the business model was the best way to solve this problem. A classic example of the “Solomon Asch Conformity Study” that we’d spent sometime discussing earlier in the day.

I hoped against hope that Marieke would come back with how she would tackle the problem by changing things on the website – but no – she finished the session with how she would get the client to change their business model. I nearly cried. Why could she not see a solution to this problem – even one – other than redesigning the business model?

Can you imagine if we turned around to every company we deal with that has a complex way of doing business to change their business model? It just wouldn’t happen. We do of course suggest to clients how they can simplify their model to make it work online, but in some cases it’s just not possible – OR – the client is hell bent on doing it in that particular way.

If a company employs us to help them succeed online – we take their idea and present it as best we can to get a maximum return on their investment in time and money. We give them the very best advice and spend time figuring out how they can actually achieve their goal, but with realistic targets and constant suggestions on where they can improve.

Maybe I’m just being pedantic – but it really left a sour taste in mouth. Telling Ramenbox to change their business model is not a usability solution to this problem, it’s a cop out in my opinion.

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Google Suspended my Android Market Developer Account

Sep 12

Posted by Tom Doyle in Android Apps, iPhone Apps, Mobile App Development

Android Market

Image via Wikipedia

For the past month, I’ve been playing heavily with developing Android Apps to see if there is any opportunity for an Irish company to make a decent living by creating and selling apps through the Android Market.

After weeks of research, I opted to develop apps for the personalisation category of the market as it appeared that this area was the one that most people who used the Android market were likely to part with their cash. It took a couple of weeks to get going, but when it did, I was very impressed.

When I finally figured out what would sell, I was making over €100 per day. This run lasted for a solid 12 days. I was very content that there was a living to be made out of the market, but it was still such early days that I was still pretty much testing the water.

Unfortunately, my run ended late last night. I got an email from Google which said:

“Your Android Market developer account has been suspended due to prior developer account suspension violations of our developer agreement and policies. “

One of my strategies was to offer free apps, which I would use to cross sell my paid for apps. This was ultimately what I thought led to my account being suspended.

I had stupidly used a copyrighted image in one of my free apps. Thinking that because my free app was benefiting no-one monetarily, I thought it would be OK. But I was clearly wrong. My free apps were suspended.

Well that is my assumption of course. Because three of my free apps were suspended prior to me receiving the notification of the account suspension. When I received those suspensions, I spent hours making sure my other Apps were 100% compliant with the Android Market Developer agreement and policies.

However, it turns out that I was not in fact banned for this – but in fact, it was that Google believe I have had other accounts suspended in the past (which I don’t) and I was trying to beat the system by creating another account.

Looking around the web for others who were banned, it seems that Google have a very strict, no retribution policy. It appears that it’s a waste of time to even question the reason for this suspension as I’m unlikely to get a response. Of course, I have tried to get in touch, to no avail as of yet.

But what does that mean for anyone trying to make a serious go at becoming an Android Developer?

In one foul swoop your whole business could be taken from under you, without any explanation from Google. Google don’t seem to offer you the chance to prove your innocence, nor the opportunity to change anything that is against their  Android Market Developer agreement and policies.

The fact that they believe my account is another account by someone who was suspended before is quite frightening. I have an idea how they have come to that conclusion – but I will keep that to myself until I know they are not willing to discuss it with me.

The sad reality is that I had hoped to build a business in this area. Creating jobs and an export market for the haggered Irish economy.

I would be extremely worried and cautious as to how viable it actually would be when you take these actions into consideration. Can you imagine walking into your workforce following a suspension by Google and saying “You’ve lost your jobs, Google has suspended our account because they believe we had an account before… Oh and they won’t respond to our requests to reconsider.” ??

The initial attraction to the Android market for me was its openness. Unlike the Apple App Store, you didn’t have to go through an approval process before your app appeared on the market. This was appealing as it allowed you to test the market before putting a huge amount of effort into something that just isn’t going to work.

Of course, from a user experience, the Android Market process isn’t ideal. It means that there is a lot of low quality apps available on the market. But on the other hand, it also means there are a lot more free apps available.

I’m now at a cross roads. I’m half way through an app that I believe will do really well on the Android Market, but not sure if I should change my focus now to iOS. Obviously, I can’t open another Android Developer account so I will need to partner up with someone on that front – but it really has left me with a dilemma.

Another issue is the fact that they didn’t just ban apps they felt were in violation, but also apps that were perfectly legit. I had some basic apps outside the personalisation category that were doing quite well and now they too are not available.

How Google think this is a good way to treat their Android Market Developers is beyond me. They should at least offer an appeal process or change their terms and conditions to allow people open more than one account.

Maybe if they brought in an approval system similar to the Apple App Market it would prevent users uploading apps that they shouldn’t be.

Either way, I’m extremely dismayed by the whole episode. It would be really nice to get some feedback from Google and find out exactly where it all went wrong. We can only learn by our mistakes!

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MyP2P Gone – Where do I get Premiership football now?

Sep 6

Posted by Tom Doyle in Football (Soccer), Sports

A couple of weeks ago, the great MyP2P.eu website went down. I’m not entirely sure what happened with it, but no doubt it was because they were in breach of copyright law by streaming copyrighted content across the Internet for free.

MyP2P was by far the best website on the Internet to get easy access to online streaming sports content. You could go on to MyP2P and choose your sport and view a list of currently live broadcasting games with multiple links to various live streams. You could pretty much see any sport, live online within minutes.

MyP2P however, didn’t provide the streams, it was simply a facilitator to those who streamed the actual content. A bit like the whole PirateBay scenario.

Now that it’s gone, it’s not as easy to find these streams, so I’ve been looking around to try find the best sites that offer a similar service.

Of course – the crowd from MyP2P appear to have set up a new site www.myp2p.bz – although it’s nowhere near as good as the previous site.

Here’s another few worth looking at if you want to watch live streaming football or whatever sport you’d prefer to watch!

www.footballstreaming.info
www.freefootball.eu
www.lshunter.tv/football-live-streaming-video.html 

Of course, if you want to simply watch the goals the next day… don’t forget www.footytube.com

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Sencha Touch, Admob & Phonegap

Jul 27

Posted by Tom Doyle in Android Apps, Mobile App Development, Mobile Phone, Online Marketing

Android Market

Image via Wikipedia

I recently created a small Android mobile app using Sencha Touch & Phonegap. The app was always going to be free as it does  little more than give website owners the ability to check how their website is performing from a SEO and Social Media point of view.

I thought I might as well try and make a few bob from the app (oh the app is called My Web Performance and is available on Android Market) so the obvious option was sponsored adverts. And no place more obvious to use for sponsored ads, that Google. Google offer a program for mobile developers called Admob. Admob works pretty much along the same lines as Google Adsense in that you place Google Adsense on your website and you earn a % of the amount the advertiser is paying to place their ads on Google. Admob does this for mobile websites and applications etc.

The dilemma was that I couldn’t find out how to get this to work with Sencha Touch and Phonegap. I figured out a little hack in the end that seems to be working out for me so far. So for all you Sencha Touch users, here’s how I did it…

  1. Admob Set Up
    In Admob – when adding a site, choose “Smartphone Web App”. This will present you with Javascript that we can use later.
  2. Sencha Touch
    Ok, the idea is to basically create a new toolbar that uses an iFrame to pull in a separate html file that contains the Admob code. So firstly, create a new HTML file called adverts and paste your Admob code into it.Then in your Sencha Touch application js file add the iFrame code where-ever you think it will sit best. My panel looks like this:

            var content = new Ext.Panel({
            fullscreen: true,
            id: 'content',
            scroll: 'vertical',
            dockedItems: [{
                id: 'status',
                xtype: 'toolbar',
                dock: 'top',
                title: "My Web Performance"
            	},
				actionPanel,
				{
					title: 'The Latest',
					html: '<iframe src =\"adverts.html" width=\"100%\" height=\"48\" frameBorder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>',
					id: 'feedTab',
					border: false,
					dock: 'bottom',
				}
			]
        });


  3. Phonegap
    There’s really nothing out of the ordinary to do here – follow the usual steps and you should be laughing!

Enjoy!

 

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