Apple’s iOS Subscription Policy

Posted on February 16th, 2011 by Ian G. Clifton

There has been quite a bit of news lately about Apple’s change regarding subscriptions available to apps on the iOS platform. Apple announced the subscription service and the overall message is essentially this: If you have a subscription available outside of the app, you must make that subscription available as an in-app purchase for the same price (or less) than it is currently offered outside the app. Apple takes 30% of the in-app purchase amount, and you cannot link to your site that sells the subscription from the app. Continue reading →

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Missing Device On Android Market

Posted on February 7th, 2011 by Ian G. Clifton

If you’re like me, you probably got excited about the web-based Android Market finally being unveiled. Right away, I wanted to try the awesome app installing feature where you simply click install on an app, select the phone to install to, and wah-lah, it’s on your device. Unfortunately, the Market was telling me that I didn’t have any devices associated with my account. I checked out the help post, which basically says, “Make sure you’re logged in with the account and that you actually use it to get on the Market from your device.” That didn’t help.

The problem was actually that I use my GAFYD email address on my Android devices; however, logging in with it would then show my older @gmail.com email address at the top. Continuing to search, I found that your Google Apps account has to be transitioned to the new system. Basically, Google Apps accounts used to be second class citizens, unable to use many of Google’s services. Unfortunately, I had tried to transition a couple of months ago and got this message: Continue reading →

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Hardware Buttons And Screen Size

Posted on February 7th, 2011 by Ian G. Clifton

An interesting trend with Android phones (at least, in the US) is that they’re mostly being built with larger and larger screens. The G1 (HTC Dream) has a 3.2″ screen, the Nexus One has a 3.7″ screen, and the Nexus S has a 4″ screen. The Android phones at CES were mostly in the 4-4.5″ range. I remember first hearing that the Evo 4G had a 4.3″ screen, and I thought that surely such a screen was too big. Then I used one in person and realized a larger touchscreen is a good thing and the slim bevels that Android phones typically feature now help keep the overall dimensions from significantly expanding. Continue reading →

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New Theme

Posted on January 16th, 2011 by Ian G. Clifton

Despite the appearance of this blog, I am actually rather picky about how it looks. I just don’t have enough free time to spend a day or two making a great WordPress theme. I looked at several different free themes and found too many issues with them, not to mention the problem that many themes were designed for old versions of WordPress. For the past month or two (or three or four?), I’ve had the blog switched back to the “Twenty Ten” theme, which is the default for WordPress 3.x. It’s a decent theme, but I noticed a lot of little things about it that bothered me (e.g., the visited link color).

I decided to make a child theme to Twenty Ten, allowing me to take advantage of a theme that supports widgets, customization, etc. without having to make significant changes. I slowly went through, making tweaks here and there until I decided that I need to work on some other things. There are still plenty of minor changes I’d like to make, but it’s already a lot better than it was. The biggest change is that I gave the blog a lot of the colors from my portfolio site. Rather than blacks and whites, the theme now has browns and blues throughout. I also updated the header image to a photo I took from Mt. Rainier, complete with a hint of lens flair, and put a 1px black border around it. Continue reading →

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Android Splash Screens Done Right

Posted on January 1st, 2011 by Ian G. Clifton

I’ve never been a big fan of splash screens, especially for mobile apps, because people often add them in as a means of throwing branding in your face. It’s like when you play a video game and you have to watch the 10 second video clip by the studio, and then the clip for the game engine, and then the clip for the producer, and then the clip for the lead designer’s dog, and then you finally get to the loading screen that you sit at before eventually being allowed the luxury of accessing the main menu. The point of a splash screen is to show something to the user while loading is in progress. The minimum amount of loading necessary to show a usable UI should be done, and then the splash screen should be gone. Rarely should this ever be more than a few seconds. I recently had to implement a splash screen and, after getting halfway through a solution, I decided to see how other people tackled the problem. Continue reading →

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