Monday 18 November 2013

CleverDic Crossword Solver v1.15.02

Download CleverDic

The latest version of CleverDic has been released on Google Play. CleverDic is the essential Android App for anybody who loves crosswords and other word games.


Search+

The standard word list has 130,000 words, you can expand this to over 285,000 words via the settings menu.

The expanded word list has more obscure words which is ideal for the trickier broadsheet crosswords.


Shop Closed!

Access to the Shop has been disabled, previous purchases will still be honoured, so Remove Ads will still work.

The main reason for closing the shop is that Google do not handle the VAT/Tax for each purchase, its up to me. Since there are over 200 Countries and 50 US States, that is a lot of paperwork!

Thanks to people who have made purchases, a lot of programming and testing went into the shop so your purchases were much appreciated.



Free!

Since the Shop has closed access to the larger dictionary and background colour settings is now FREE of charge!



Happy Crosswording!
Pig Dog Bay

Download CleverDic

Thursday 7 November 2013

Weight Tracker v1.11.02

The latest version of Weight Tracker has been released, the essential dieting app for Android. The main focus for this release has been to make the app even more user friendly.

New Settings Screen

All new settings screen that allow you to easily enter you target weight and height. The measurement units are now linked with the weight/height setting.


New Quick Help

The help page has been improved and there is now a quick help guide to get you up to speed fast.


Name Change

Weight Recorder is now called Weight Tracker which is a much more common search term for such an app. Downloads have doubled since the name change.


Shop Closed!

Access to the Shop has been disabled, previous purchases will still be honoured, so Remove Ads will still work.

The main reason for closing the shop is that Google do not handle the VAT/Tax for each purchase, its up to me. Since there are over 200 Countries and 50 US States, that is a lot of paperwork!

Thanks to people who have made purchases, a lot of programming and testing went into the shop so your purchases were much appreciated.


PDB

Friday 11 October 2013

Breaking Bad Top Ten Best Moments

Breaking Bad went out with an amazing finale where Walter got back up on his horse to finish business. Here are my top ten best moments of Breaking Bad.

#1 This ain't meth!
Walter confronting the pyscho Tuco in his heavily guarded drugs den, what was he thinking? BOOM! The bag of meth was mercury fulminate. So typical of this well written show where clever thinking and science gets Walt and Jesse out of so much trouble.

#2 You need a 'Criminal' lawyer
The entire episode in season 2 where we first meet Saul.
"Which is which?" Saul asks Badger and the young cop as he barges in the the police interview room. Then Saul gets Badger mixed up with a guy on public masturbation charges.

#3 The Wendy Song
One of the charms of Breaking Bad was the shows quirkiness, particularly in the opening scenes. Also did you notice the nod to Airplane's 'The white zone is for loading and unloading' when Walt is being dropped off at the Airport?

[FREE][ANDROID] Crossword Solver

#4 El Paso by Marty Robbins
Out pops a Marty Robbins cassette as Walt steals a car to head back to the badlands of Albuquerque to see Skyler (Felina). The episode kinda follows plot in El Paso, Walt is even shot in his side.

#5 Walt lets Jane die
The scene where Walt watches Jane choke on her own vomit and does nothing to save her is shocking. Walt becomes eviller with each episode.

#6 The Tortoise
Danny Trejo didn't last long, his head soon found its way on top of a booby trapped tortoise.

[FREE][ANDROID][DIET] Weight Tracker App,

#7 F*** You and Your Eyebrows!
Walt losing it with his hirsute car wash boss in the first episode.

#8 Hank's Heart Palpitations
Hank appears to be having a heart attack in the lift but recovers when the doors open, out he comes with his usual smiling bravado, 'Lets get a beer Gomey!'

#9 Jesse falling into the Portaloo
Jesse was really having a bad day, to cap it off he crashes through the roof of a Portaloo and ends up covered in blue bleach.

#10 Gail's Klingon Song
Check out Youtube for marketing video's about the show such as Gail's camp Klingon song and Badger appearing in a Better Call Saul ad, 'Gonna burn one with my Homies yo!'

Thursday 12 September 2013

CleverDic v1.1400


A new version of CleverDic will be available from Tuesday 17th Sept 2013 from the Google Play Store.



Lots of new features have been added, the most notable is the new Shop allowing In App Purchases to be made. For a small fee you can now:

  • Upgrade the dictionary to over 285,000 words
  • Remove all banner ads from the App 
  • Choose new and exciting background colours

The In App Purchases are securely managed through Google Play. Once a purchase has been made, you can use it again on your other Android devices.

The standard dictionary has itself increased from 88,000 to over 130,000 words! You can now add in the Pro word list taking the total word count to over 285,000 words. The Pro word list is ideal for the trickier broadsheet crosswords as it contains more obscure words, words with alternate spellings and colloquialisms. 


You can now choose new and exciting background colours, the above image is showing Apple Blossom other backgrounds include Sunshine, Deep Pink, Sky Blue, Shades of Grey, Ocean and Simply White.

CleverDic is a free app that makes a little money from showing small ad banners at the bottom of the screen. These ads can now be removed completely with an In App Purchase, thus saving your battery and Data if you're on a mobile network. As an added bonus, everyone is now given a 7 day ad free period when you first install the app.

Finally I've added a share feature that allows you to send your search results to other apps such as Email or Evernote. This is great for sharing funny anagrams with friends.


CleverDic is available from Google Play


Happy Crosswording!
Pig Dog Bay


Friday 16 August 2013

Weight Recorder v1.1000

Weight Recorder v1.1000 is now available from Google Play.


Brand new Shop feature has been added:
  • Unlock exciting new background colours
  • Go Premium and remove all advertising
  • All purchases are managed securely via Google Play

Other changes:
  • Ad banners now removed from the main screen, now shown on chart, report, list and help screens
  • Seven days grace before ads are shown


Download from Google Play

Regards
Pig Dog Bay

Thursday 8 August 2013

Weight Recorder Beta Release 1.1000

Weight Recorder v1.1000 is ready for beta testing, you can download the APK from

http://sites.google.com/site/mpdbailey/downloads/WeightRecorder_11000.apk 


New features include In-App-Billing, unlock new exciting background colours and remove banner ads.





The In App Billing (IAB) is handled securely through Google Play using v3 of the IAB API. For Android where most apps are free, IAB is an good way to make money from your app. It means that you don't have to maintain Lite and Premium versions of the same app.

Weight Recorder v1.1000 will be ready for general release on 19th Aug 2013


Thankyou for shopping at Pig Dog Bay Mart,
Please call again!

Friday 28 June 2013

Weight Recorder Release 1.08

A new release of the diet app Weight Recorder is now available from Google Play.



The report screen has been completely revamped for a more professional look. The statistics section has been streamlined to give a more concise report.



The chart screen now sports zoom buttons to make it easier to zoom in or out of your data, a third button resets the zoom. I've increased the chart axes font sizes by 2 points, as requested by Geoff Francis.

Bug Fixes

Tammi Kirlew reported strange trend predictions, dates around 1910 were being predicted for her target weight. Turns out this is down to something called the Year 2038 Problem which is similar to Y2K or Millenium bug. I've changed the string formatter which I use and now dates well past the year 3000 are OK! Thanks for the feedback Tammi.

When adding your daily weight the previous weight is stored so that you only need to adjust your weight slightly day to day. This stored weight is now converted correctly when you change the weight units.

Testing

The code has been completely revamped or refactored as programmers say. I split the user interface, data and logic code into separate parts. This allows me to write automated tests called unit tests for each little chunk of code. I spent several weeks doing this but the pay off is that I now have over 80 automated tests and the code is now easier to maintain.


What Happend to v1.07?

This release I put a lot more effort into testing, even checking the upgrade from 1.06 to 1.07 in various locales. Obviously I put the mockers on myself and released a corrupted binary to the Market. I still don't know why I created a corrupted binary, you just click a button in Eclipse and out it pops, but I should have double checked it. I've now put a release procedure in place to prevent this sort of thing happening in the future.

Many thanks to Jacques Block, James Rendek, Julia Clark and Christian Niemietz for quickly alerting me to the faulty binary. Apologies for any data loss caused, please let me know if you need help with data recovery.

Whats Next

Facebook integration is still on the cards. I didn't realize that you can actually export to GDrive and Evernote already which makes sharing data and back-up a doddle.

Priority will be putting an automated back-up system in place to prevent data loss. I'm thinking that the database should be saved to a file on the sd-card every week.

Best Regards
Pig Dog Bay



Sunday 19 May 2013

Weight Recorder Release 1.06

Download Weight Recorder

A new version of Weight Recorder, the app that keeps track of your weight so you can keep an eye on your diet.


New Features


Target Weight, you can now set your weight goal via the settings screen. The chart and report have been updated to include your target weight. The chart shows your target weight as a horizontal line, the trend line now extends one year into the future so that you can see when you will hit your weight goal.



The report screen now shows the predictions when you will hit your target. These predictions are based on trends in your weight readings.






Many thanks to Nedim Abut, Pauline B and Adam Lawrence who requested this feature, your feed back and comments are much appreciated.

Navigation within the app has been improved, Home icon (menu option) is now displayed that takes you back to the main dashboard. You can also access the import / export features from the home screen via the menu.


Next Release

I'm going to look into Facebook integration, I would like the ability to post reports and charts to your Facebook page. 

New Import / Export options so you can write to and read from a file.


Good luck with the diet!
Pig Dog Bay

Download Weight Recorder

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Android Mohthly Report: March 2013


In this report I'll present the latest statistics and earnings of my Android apps.

Date: 3rd Apr 2013

Market Place Statistics for CleverDic


  • Total Downloads: 13534 (+3797) 
  • Active installs: 8147 (+2033) 
  • Retention Rate: 60.2% (-2.6%) 
  • Comments: Total: 56 (+17) 
  • Average Rating: 4.6 (-0.01) 
  • Google plus recommends: 69 (+15)
  • Errors: 5 (+1) 


  Market Place Statistics for Weight Recorder

  • Total Downloads: 2422 (+974) 
  • Active installs: 1058 (+396) 
  • Retention Rate: 43.7% (-2.0%) 
  • Comments: Total: 914(+4) 
  • Average Rating: 4.6 (-0.16) 
  • Google plus recommends: 28 (+14)
  • Errors: 4 (0) 


  Admob Earnings CleverDic

  • Revenue: $78.13 (+20.24) 
  • Total Requests: 47,367 (+10417) 
  • eCPM: $1.65 (+0.08)
  • Click Thru Rate: 2.16% (-0.81)


  Admob Earnings Weight Recorder

  • Revenue: $1.01 (-0.93) 
  • Total Requests: 2580 (-3793)
  • eCPM: $0.39 (+0.09) 
  • Click Thru Rate: 0.54% (-0.06)

Weight Recorder ran house ads most of March, however its low eCPM continues to disappoint. The number of daily downloads for Weight Recorder has begun to take off and has now reached 60 downloads per day, but the retention rate is less than 50%.

Downloads for CleverDic is around 150 per day and is earning on average $2.50 per day.


Links 

CleverDic on Play
Weight Recorder on Play
Facebook
Twitter

Friday 1 March 2013

Android Monthly Report: February 2013

In this report I'll present the latest statistics and earnings of my Android apps.

Date: 1st Mar 2013

Market Place Statistics for CleverDic


  • Total Downloads: 9737 (+2796) 
  • Active installs: 6114 (+1420) 
  • Retention Rate: 62.8% (-4.8%) 
  • Comments: Total: 39 (+16) 
  • Average Rating: 4.6 (-0.1) 
  • Google plus recommends: 54 (+19)
  • Errors: 4 (0) 


  Market Place Statistics for Weight Recorder

  • Total Downloads: 1448 (+699) 
  • Active installs: 662 (+248) 
  • Retention Rate: 45.7% (-9.55%) 
  • Comments: Total: 9 (+3) 
  • Average Rating: 4.8 (-0.2) 
  • Google plus recommends: 14 (+6)
  • Errors: 4 (+4) 


  Admob Earnings CleverDic

  • Revenue: $57.89 (+15.14) 
  • Total Requests: 36,950 (+11263) 
  • eCPM: $1.57 (-0.09)
  • Click Thru Rate: 2.97% (+0.16)


  Admob Earnings Weight Recorder

  • Revenue: $1.94 (+0.80) 
  • Total Requests: 6373 (+4660)
  • eCPM: $0.30 (-0.37) 
  • Click Thru Rate: 0.60% (-0.16)


CleverDic is earning on average $2 per day but no house ads were shown on CleverDic in February. From 23rd Feb to end of March Weight Recorder will be only showing house ads. Downloads for CleverDic are averaging about 100 per day, weight recorder downloads are disappointing so better marketing is required to increase the download rate.

Links 

CleverDic on Play
Weight Recorder on Play
Facebook
Twitter

Monday 25 February 2013

CleverDic Crossword Solver 1.12

CleverDic on Google Market

Wildcard Searches

Fantastic new feature added in this release, Wildcard Searches! Use the hash symbol, #, to represent 1 or more unknown letters, for example:

Enter #ace to find

  • aerospace
  • face
  • hyperspace
  • peace
  • And over 80 other matches
Wildcards are a great new feature if you are a Scrabble or Wordfeud player, for example you may need to find a work that fits across other letters, x and t:

Enter #x.t# to find

  • affixation
  • bauxite
  • exotic
  • flexitime
  • laxation
  • quixotic
  • vexatious
  • And over 70 other matches
Look at your letters to see which word fits.



Improved Search

Search results are now sent immediately to the screen without waiting for the search to complete. By using clever programming techniques (multi-threading) you can look through your results as they are coming. Most searches still take less than a few seconds to complete.


Latest Android

Jelly Bean 4.2.2 has just been released along with the latest programming SDK (v17). CleverDic has been updated to the latest code and thoroughly tested on a Google Nexus 7 and Galaxy Ace.


Hope you like the new features, please drop me an email or leave a comment with any feedback.




Happy Crosswording
Pig Dog Bay




Monday 11 February 2013

CleverDic Release 1.11

CleverDic on Google Market

The latest version of CleverDic has been released, the most versatile crossword solver and anagram finder for Android. Lots of new features have been added:


  • New setting to allow auto-rotation within the app.
  • Tip box now displays in landscape format for normal and small screens
  • Admob now appears behind the keyboard.
  • Removed ads from small screens
  • Added icons for the menu items
  • Allow installs to the SD Card
  • Change the text size on the help screen

Many thanks to Paul Nithsdale who suggested most of these new features and whom was kind enough to test a beta version of the release.

Further Details

The biggest change has been to support Android's auto-rotation feature as before CleverDic was fixed in portrait mode. I've had to re-design the hints and tips box so that it can be displayed on smaller screens both in portrait and landscape modes. If you do not like this feature you can disable auto-rotation from the settings menu and CleverDic will stay in portrait mode as in previous versions.

Admob banners are now removed for small screen devices and no adverts are shown when in landscape mode (except for extra large screen devices). I've tried to prevent ad banners appearing when the soft keyboard is showing, however this does not work 100% of the time.

The text size for the help screen can be set to small, medium or large from the menu on the help screen. To help with devices where memory is scarce I now allow the app to be moved/installed onto memory cards.

Responses To Comments

Lynn Miller has asked if the sub-anagram feature can search deeper, currently when you enter a nine letter word, CleverDic will search for 9 and 8 letter words. It takes about half a second on average to perform a search, so it takes about 5 seconds for a complete 9 letter search with sub-anagrams. To also search for 7 letter words would take over 30 seconds. In order to implement this feature I will need to boost the search algorithm performance, so it may appear!

Darcy Moore has asked for a bigger dictionary, currently CleverDic uses an open source dictionary with 88,000 words. The competitor app uses a dictionary of over 230,000 words. I'm planning to release a paid for / pro version of the app that uses a larger dictionary and is ad free.


Hope you like the new features, please drop me an email with any feedback.



Happy Crosswording

Pig Dog Bay


Friday 1 February 2013

Weight Recorder Release 1.04

Download Weight Recorder

A new version of Weight Recorder, the app that keeps track of your weight so you can keep an eye on your diet.

Many thanks again to James Rendek who has provided valuable feedback and support. 


Bug fixes in this release:


  • Readings are now displayed in reverse order, in other words most recent first.
  • When entering weight in pounds, the step increment is now 0.5lb
  • Fixed a layout issue on the import data screen.




Next Release


I looking into a new feature that allows you to export the chart as an image via an email attachment. I'm going to hold off making a Pro version of the App until Easter as I'll need a little time to put it together.

Android Monthly Report: January 2013


In this report I'll present the latest statistics and earnings of my Android apps.

Date: 1st Feb 2013

Market Place Statistics for CleverDic

Total Downloads: 6941 (+4571)
Active installs: 4694 (+3042)
Retention Rate: 67.6% (-2.1%) 

Comments: 
Total: 23 (+11)
Average Rating: 4.7 (-0.1)
Five Star: 20 (+10)
Four Star: 2 (no change)
One Star: 1 (+1)

Google plus recommends: 35 (+19)
Errors: 4 (+3)

Market Place Statistics for Weight Recorder

Total Downloads: 749
Active installs: 414
Retention Rate: 55.3%

Comments: 
Total: 6
Average Rating: 5.0
Five Star: 6

Google plus recommends: 8
Errors: 0

Admob Earnings

CleverDic:

Revenue: $43.04
Total Requests: 25,986
eCPM: $1.66
Click Thru Rate: 2.79%

Weight Recorder:

Revenue: $1.29
Total Requests: 1874
eCPM: $0.69
Click Thru Rate: 0.75%

House Ads
Weight Recorder 1, 10-17th Jan, 3500 impressions, 159 clicks, CTR 4.54%
Weight Recorder 2, 22 -31 Jan, 6000 impressions, 245 clicks, CTR 4.08%
CleverDic Banner ads, 22-31 Jan, 2712 impressions, 40 clicks, CTR 1.47%


January saw the release of Weight Recorder and is currently getting over 50 downloads per day. CleverDic reached an all time high of 242 downloads per day but has recently fell to below 100.


Links

Weight Recorder on Play

Monday 21 January 2013

Weight Recorder Release 1.03

Download Weight Recorder

A new version of Weight Recorder, the diet tracking app, has been released with new exciting features.

Import Data

James Rendek requested that the app should let you import data as well as exporting data. To implement this I decided to let the user copy and paste their data directly into the app. Example data here:

93.70,2012-12-23 11:00:00,"pigged out on hot dogs after the pub"
94.80,2012-12-24 11:00:00,""
94.40,2012-12-26 11:00:00,""



The idea is that you would open up the text file or email containing the data, select all, copy and then paste into the app:


Since this is raw data and I consider that it is important that data should be stored in a standard format so that it can be easily exchanged, there are several points to note.


  • Weights are expressed in kilograms, the international standard unit for mass. To convert to pounds multiply by 2.20462 in your spreadsheet.
  • The date / time has the following format: yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. Note that 24 hour clock is used. No time zone information is stored.
  • Comments are enclosed in quotation marks
  • Fields are separated by commas and each weight reading starts on a new line (\n).

If these restrictions are too inconvenient, please drop me an email and I'll try to accommodate extra settings such as expressing weight in pounds.


Stones and Pounds

Adrian Smith requested the British (and Irish) weight units Stones and Pounds. In Britain people quote their weight in stones,  for example 14 stone and 9 pounds which is same as 205lb.

The difficulty here is that I didn't want two text fields, one for stones the other for pounds. In the end I designed a custom number picker that displays the weight in the correct units and format. You can now adjust the weight by small amounts (1 pound or 0.1kg) or press the button showing the weight to enter it as a decimal number. I've removed the speech for text feature for entering numbers as I can't see it been particularly useful.


What's Next?

Kevin Diles has request a paid version of the app without any ads. After researching Android App development  I reckoned there was no hope for paid apps on Android, but it looks like I was wrong. 

In the next few weeks I'll put together a pro version of Weight Recorder with Admob removed. I'll also make the import and export features only available in the pro version so that users at least get some extra value for their money. Charges will be $0.99, £0.99 or €0.99 depending on country. The difficult part will be sorting out tax codes...



Hope the diet is going well, I've lost over 6 pounds since Christmas.

Pig Dog Bay





Tuesday 15 January 2013

Weight Recorder Release 1.02

Download Weight Recorder


New Features

An optional trend line is now shown on the chart so that you see how your diet is going over time. The line is drawn using the best line of fit over the selected range of data points.

The report screen now shows your ideal weight range based on the BMI Normal range.  The trend analysis also tells you whether you're gaining or losing weight.

Andreas Weichert (creator of the excellent Time Sheriff app) has suggested using Google's Speech to Text in the data entry screens. You can now speak your weight! To be honest I find it a little tricky to use, to enter 92.4 kg, you need to say nine - two - point - four. I found that when the units are in pounds, I struggled to say for example 202.7 lbs.

The data entry screen now shows the last weight reading entered (also Andreas' idea)  and returns you  to the dashboard when you press the add button.

Coming Soon

James Rendek has requested a feature to be able to import data into the application. This is a great idea and one that I want to be able to get implemented for the next release. Having considered several methods I propose to allow the user to cut and paste their data (in CSV format) into the application. This method avoids using the file system which has several pitfalls.


Good Luck With Your Diet
Pig Dog Bay


Links


Download Weight Recorder

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Weight Recorder Release 1.01




Just in time for all of those diets, Weight Recorder has been released! The app allows you to enter your daily weight measurements so that you can keep your diet on track. Your data can be viewed as a chart, a list of readings or a statistical / trend analysis report. Importantly your data is easily exported via email so that you can view it in Excel or any other spreadsheet.

The idea for the app came when I purchased a set of bathroom scales and I began entering my weight into a spreadsheet. There must be an app for that? There are several excellent apps already available on Android but there is room for improvement. Looking at the user ratings, several people asked to be able to write comments when entering their measurements. This is quite a good idea as you can make notes about any  dieting activities, eg 'I did an hour extra at the gym today'.

Weight Recorder has a dashboard design that allows you to navigate easily between activities. Other apps I noticed seem to cram to many features and buttons into one or two activities. My philosophy is to keep things simple and I did this by dedicating each activity to a single function, eg the chart activity just shows the chart.




The data is stored in an SQLite database which is part of the Android OS. This means that the data storage is more robust and secure than say simply storing it in a file. As mentioned above, it is important in my opinion to allow the user full access to their data so that they can make back ups and share with other applications. Currently weight recorder will allow the user to send their data via email, in a csv (comma separated values) text format which can be easily read by a spreadsheet and human alike. Also available are the standard CRUD functions that allow you to create, read, update and delete readings from the database.

Like CleverDic releases will come often with new exciting features and updates. Already in the pipeline are trend and BMI plot lines for the chart.


Happy Dieting for 2013
Pig Dog Bay



Download Weight Recorder
 

Saturday 5 January 2013

Boom!

CleverDic hit an all time high of 190 daily downloads yesterday and made it into the top 100 free apps (Books and Reference category)

CleverDic now hitting top 100 trends

Happy Crosswording
Pig Dog Bay

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Android Monthly Report

In this report I give the latest statistics and earnings on my Android apps.

Date: 1st Jan 2013

Market Place Statistics for CleverDic

Total Downloads: 2370
Active installs: 1652
Retention Rate: 69.7%

Comments: 12 (10 five stars, 2 four stars. Average rating 4.8)
Google plus recommends: 16
Errors: 1

Admob Earnings For CleverDic

Last Month:

Revenue: $21.75
Total Requests: 9579
eCPM: $2.27

All Time:

Revenue: $25.70
Total Requests: 10,847
eCPM: $2.37

Total Revenue for all apps: $26.84

Over Christmas CleverDic has been receiving more than 120 daily downloads. December was by far the most successful month which saw release 1.10 of the app and much more effort towards app store search optimization.

Happy New Year
Pig Dog Bay