Life In 19x19

shimari wrote:Just experimented with recording again, and I am not sure you really need a separate "record mode" with fewer options. Now that I understand how to use the options, I am able to fix moves and undos without any difficulty. So again it goes back to the help file. Specific directions on how to do things might solve this issue equally well. Feel free to bounce any such directions off of me by e-mail, before making an update ^_~ I think the fact that you need to select "replace one move" twice is likely to confuse people. If you explained this in the help file, that would help. Alternately, it could pull up a dialogue asking you to confirm the move: "Selecting confirm will move the stone at J13 to J12, without disrupting any later moves." Don't know if that is hard to do or not, just mentioning it as an option.

This is not hard to do, the hard part is trying to balance training someone how to do it the first time versus annoying them every time after the first time with unneeded clutter (how often have you cursed windows for being excessively chatty while you were doing real work.).

How helpful is it to tell a user the coordinates of a move asking for a confirmation vs just doing it so he can see it graphically, after all he just touched the point with his finger.

What might be interesting is an undo option for these types of updates, especially the destructive ones. That is a little more difficult.

It is these design decisions and the fact that I don't have unlimited ways of customizing the interface for each user that are the challenge. I already have an enormous number of options throughout the app.

Yeah, I think just explaining it clearly in the help file would be sufficient. Certainly easier than making a new mode.

I thought the malware was installing the ads (which don't go anywhere). Didn't realize you had advertising in the program. Doesn't particularly bother me, it is totally unobtrusive on the main screen and doesn't appear on the others. Hope it gets you some revenue from this project at least.

First of all: Thanks Michael, this is a very useful app.

What made me smile was that the German translation sounds a lot like Google Translate to me
"Management coordinates sth." What??? Oh, must have been "Board coordinates" originally...
I'm tempted to try a German translation myself. PM me if you're interested.

shimari wrote:Yeah, I think just explaining it clearly in the help file would be sufficient. Certainly easier than making a new mode.

I thought the malware was installing the ads (which don't go anywhere). Didn't realize you had advertising in the program. Doesn't particularly bother me, it is totally unobtrusive on the main screen and doesn't appear on the others. Hope it gets you some revenue from this project at least.

Sorry for being so short, I was in a hurry to get to work this morning. Thanks for your kind words.

But, I still mean what I said, If the ads offend your principles or cause a negative effect of your data plan, please turn them off. I am more interested in having happy users than making any money.

As far a making money from this app let me be transparent. After about a month and a half, it looks like this app takes in about $4.00 per month. It costs me $12.00 per month for the in the cloud repository I set up so that if my computer crashes I can recover or if I die or become mentally disabled and unable to program, someone else can easily continue support of this app. So a net loss of $8.00 per month, not a money maker only a relatively inexpensive hobby.

What is of interest to me are some of the statistics collected by AdMob. anDGS gets about 400 impressions a day at about a 40% fill rate, so that looks to me that the app gets used on the order of 1000 times a day from people who have left ads turned on, with I don't know how many more with it turned off. I love knowing that it is being used so much.

Honestly I have enjoyed working on it. I have learned a lot about Android. I have a useful tool I use every day. And I feel happy that I have helped other Go players in our common obsession.

So $.00033 per impression?

hyperpape wrote:So $.00033 per impression?

400 impressions/day * 1% hit rate = 4 hits per day = 120 hits/month, so $0.033 per hit.

Sounds about right to me. My hit rates are between 1% and 4%, and income per hit of a few pennies isn't unusual.

hyperpape wrote:So $.00033 per impression?

Sounds about right, I was estimating about 1000 impressions to get one cent. The real money comes from a click through which is up into the 1 to 3 cents each range. So all of that would be in the range you calculated. Which really makes the $1m per month that Angry Birds draws from ad revenue impressive.

mdobbins wrote:
But, I still mean what I said, If the ads offend your principles or cause a negative effect of your data plan, please turn them off. I am more interested in having happy users than making any money.

As far a making money from this app let me be transparent. After about a month and a half, it looks like this app takes in about $4.00 per month. It costs me $12.00 per month for the in the cloud repository I set up so that if my computer crashes I can recover or if I die or become mentally disabled and unable to program, someone else can easily continue support of this app. So a net loss of $8.00 per month, not a money maker only a relatively inexpensive hobby.

I wasn't objecting to the ads at all actually. I was concerned because I read that the DroidDreams malware program, which has been in the headlines for several days, functions by installing fake ads on your device. When you click on one of these ads, it takes you to a 404 site not found page, but actually installs malware on the root of your device. Once it has access, it can do whatever it wants with your device, and can access all of your passwords, etc...

I clicked on an ad on anDGS, and it went to a 404 page, so I assumed I had been infected. Looks like it was a legitimate 404 page though, and not a malware one. Since my device is not a phone, it relies on wireless access at a given location. I have this about 50% of the time, which is why the KGS app for Android wouldn't work for me. Since I have wireless only part of the time I use the device, I didn't even realize anDGS had ads in it. Now that I know, I will click on them when I see them. That way I can give you my two cents worth, lol.

shimari wrote:I wasn't objecting to the ads at all actually. I was concerned because I read that the DroidDreams malware program, which has been in the headlines for several days, functions by installing fake ads on your device. When you click on one of these ads, it takes you to a 404 site not found page, but actually installs malware on the root of your device. Once it has access, it can do whatever it wants with your device, and can access all of your passwords, etc...

I clicked on an ad on anDGS, and it went to a 404 page, so I assumed I had been infected. Looks like it was a legitimate 404 page though, and not a malware one. Since my device is not a phone, it relies on wireless access at a given location. I have this about 50% of the time, which is why the KGS app for Android wouldn't work for me. Since I have wireless only part of the time I use the device, I didn't even realize anDGS had ads in it. Now that I know, I will click on them when I see them. That way I can give you my two cents worth, lol.

I am concerned about those things as well. I did what I could to filter anything questionable in the AdMob filters, did not enable any location information, etc. Still I would urge caution on clicking on suspicious ads just like you would use caution on ads on a google search page in any browser. I follow the Android scene daily so I am concerned about some of the emerging trends. If I see that AdMob is not protecting us from malware ads I will hard disable ads. In the mean time lets all be careful out there.

GoGrinder is now available for Android.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.gogrinder&feature=search_result

anDGS version 1.32 is available on the Android Market, Handster, or my website

Android Market Place:
https://market.android.com/search?q=anDGS&c=apps

Handster:
http://android.handster.com/andgs.html?dm=1&multi=1

My Download page:
http://www.hellogovernance.com/android-apps/andgs/apps

This release has minor bug fixes, including a fix to remove the need to restart on adding user/password the first time. It also has a much better German translation.

One issue is that the app displays non-latin characters as a diamond-? character. This shows up mostly in user names. I am using UTF-8 from the server, but anyone have a clue as to how to get a proper character display in Android? All the online examples and help are not helpful.

Well, after all this time tinkering with my Archos to get it to do what I wanted it to, I left it in a taxicab in New York City, lol. It must have fallen out of my pocket. However, I decided I really like Android now. So I got the updated Archos 43. It has a smaller screen, but runs Android 2.2 Froyo, which is a huge improvement. So I was able to get Wegoigo, and the new Gogrinder too, and I am having fun playing with all these new apps. Don't try to load Kogo's Joseki Dictionary on GoGrinder though. It will freeze it, and the only way to get it to recover is to delete the dictionary from the file manager. Kogo's works great on Wegoigo though. The screen is so small though, I really wish it had an enlarged mode like anDGS and Gobandroid do. The circle thing is okay, but it is still really hard to see. Joseki are mainly in the corner anyway, so a zoomed board display would be really useful.

A note on Gobandroid: It can actually replace a wrongly recorded move, and quite nicely. Just scroll back to where the mis-recorded stone is, and click on it. It turns transparent. Click on the intersection it is supposed to be on, and the stone will appear there. Now scroll forward and all of the rest of the game is exactly the way you recorded it. This is very handy, and works very simply without any confusion.

Hey, recently got a tablet, so I'm starting to fiddle with gobandroid, andgs, and KGS. Each seems to have its own appeals, so I intend to use each for slightly different things.

A few questions:

Andgs: Is there an option to enable coordinates? I'd like to have them when reviewing games, and I'm spoiled by the forum. Second, I was setting up some of my games from OGS for autoplay in their own folder, but the 'browse' dialogue doesn't seem to let me actually change directories. Am I doing something wrong?

Gobandroid: Was going to ask about coordinates here, but I think I just found the option! Additionally, the SGF of my Malkovich with Fwiffo seems to crash it, but there may be weird characters, or too many.

I'll post any other questions I have, as I delve deeper.

Chew Terr wrote:Gobandroid: Was going to ask about coordinates here, but I think I just found the option! Additionally, the SGF of my Malkovich with Fwiffo seems to crash it, but there may be weird characters, or too many.

Can you post it here or send it to me. I'll check it out. Kogo's also make it freeze, and I do want to fix that. I have a couple of other projects first for when I get the time.

There are a lot of options with gobandroid which can make it confusing. A lot of people think it looks awful until you notice you can download skins. The one place I disagree with the main author is we really should have a default skin there.

oren wrote:

Chew Terr wrote:Gobandroid: Was going to ask about coordinates here, but I think I just found the option! Additionally, the SGF of my Malkovich with Fwiffo seems to crash it, but there may be weird characters, or too many.

Can you post it here or send it to me. I'll check it out. Kogo's also make it freeze, and I do want to fix that. I have a couple of other projects first for when I get the time.

The SGF is posted here:
viewtopic.php?p=22417#p22417
I'm not that worried about it, because I'm not really trying to study that game, I just was going to use it as a sample to test the coordinate option. I'll lte you know if I come up with any real questions, I'm still too novice to know what to ask. =D Still figuring out what the tablet itself can do. =)