New Version 1.20

New version 1.20 is live on the Android Market now. 

Just two things new in this version, a fix for a very rare bug when choosing a background colour, and a fix for a more common issue on some 3rd party Home Screen launchers, such as the Go Launcher, where changing device orientation would on occasion cause the cube to "freak out", as one user delightfully put it, spinning madly fast until you swiped the screen to stop it.

After some investigation I really cant see why Go Launcher is causing it to freak out to start with, but at least I can treat the symptom and simply stop the mad spin as soon as it is about to start, before the user will notice anything untoward.

In other news, working hard on my next project, it is coming on so well I really wanted to get that out by the end of the year then I can concentrate back on Photo Cube and finally get to all the new features I have been planning. The new Widget really is a thing of beauty... and the top secret killer feature works wonderfully...

Photo Cube Version 1.19 Released

Due to the usual Market incompetency, I had to skip some version numbers. Anyway, version 1.19 is on the Market now. It fixes a couple of minor yet annoying issues, and paves the way for some forthcoming goodness.

Firstly, there was an annoying situation where when you double tap on the Wallpaper to launch the Quick Size and Position screen, it would instead bring up the main Photo Cube Settings screen. That is now fixed, it always brings up the Quick Size and Position.

I added a bit of animation to that screen also, the top and bottom control bars now slide in nicely.

More importantly, there had been a number of reports of users who couldnt get the Background Colour Picker to work because they didnt see how to select the final colour. In some cases that was because it was just a bad design, it uses two coloured rectangles showing the old and new colours, which you had to tap on, which was not obvious. In other cases, it was because in Landscape more, those rectangles didnt appear at all, they were hidden off screen.

So now I changed it to use proper OK and Cancel buttons, and made sure they are visible in both Portrait and Landscape mode:

So what is in Development?

I had a nice request for a screenshot capability and being able to upload the image to Facebook. This is now working, it can capture and share the image to Facebook, WhatsApp, Email, MMS, in fact anything on your phone which handles an image. But I need a better interface to be able to launch the capture, so I want to add more features to the Quick Settings, instead of just having Size and Position I want to add options for Screenshot, Frames, Effects and Rotation, all shown as an overlay above the wallpaper so you can see the changes in real time. Working on that at the moment.

After that: 

• Maybe a new rotation mode, perhaps something more random.
• Then the long awaited Presets enhancement.
• Finally the Album mode, where you choose an album and it will automatically show pictures from that directory with no further action required from the user. A bit of clever cropping and maybe face detection will be required for that.
• The ability to browse a picture in your Gallery or anywhere and then automatically add it to a Photocube side, via a Send To long press command. Very slick..

And of course I am still doing work on the Weather Widget, which is coming on well.. maybe early next year for an initial release.

Photo Cube 1.16 Released

New version finally released. Just a few bug fixes, there was a very annoying issue for some users when the pictures selected didnt cover the entire face of the cubes, just sat in the corner.

I changed the method of selecting and cropping the pictures to that used by the Background Image selector, which is less pretty but a lot more reliable. That seems to have fixed the issue for the users reporting the issue.

I also changed the boring default abstract background to a nice natural scene, a bit more restful on the eyes. 

Then need to do some promo images for launching Photo Cube on the Vodafone App Shop in Europe.

I'm still working hard on the Weather Widget which will be totally unique, literally like nothing else on the market. Watch this space..

Sneak peak..

...as they say, of my forthcoming new app. Still in the early stages yet.  But very happy with the progress...

Yes, its weather. Yes, its a widget. But does it have a killer feature?

Oh yes. Yes, indeed it does.

Market Issues Sorted..

So I am very happy to say that the Android Market team responded very quickly to my complaint, and a day or two later the search is working correctly again, and a search for "photo cube" now finds my apps.

Sales have unsurprisingly risen once again, almost to pre-July levels, so things are looking up. I know can stop worrying and concentrate on new features for Photo Cube and my top secret next project, which should be, how you say, a doozy. :o)

Name Change..

Well, it seems that I was not alone in seeing a drop in sales. Around 4th July weekend, my sales suddenly tanked. From 12-15 a day and a high of 19 on one day, it just dropped to 3 or 4 a day.

I just assumed it was a summer slump, or because of the holiday. Didn't seem like I could do much about it, so I concentrated on adding new features, trying to make it better and working on other apps.

Then I finally found this:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=1e575cf9e437736c&hl=en

So everyone else is having the same problem, all from around the same time.

And it seems to be tied into Search Terms. In my case, if people are looking for a cube that shows photos or pictures, they are most likely to search for "photo cube". Despite me having that exact text in my description, searching for "photo cube" doesn't bring up my app.

Searching for "photocube", "photo kube" and "photokube" are all fine, and return my app in the listing, but they are all less likely than the simple "photo cube" which doesn't work. So I think what happened is that Google changed the Search algorithm at the start of July, and my app suffered. Everyone else is reporting the same problems. In many cases even searching for the exact name of their app is failing to return results. There is also a significant difference between searching on the Market App and on the Market web portal.

Frankly, the Google Market is laughably poor, and breaks at the slightest opportunity, with little redress for developers. Almost every bug report or comment is ignored or answered with standardised replies that don't respond to the issue concerned.

Just this morning, my app ratings have been halved in the Market, I went from 22 to 10 for no apparent reason. That is just completely shit.

So in an attempt to resolve my search issue I have renamed to Photo Cube Live Wallpaper. This now at least returns my app when I search for "photo cube" on the Market Web, but still returns nothing on the Market App on my phone.

So will see what happens over the next few days.

Google Market, not impressed! 2/10, must try harder!

New Version 1.14

Thanks to a kind customer who emailed me I was able to fix a very annoying yet rare bug, and uploaded version 1.14 last night.

When running Photokube the code draws the background with the OpenGL command glDrawTexiOES, then draws the cube and panels. However on the Android emulator on my pc, the background has always been displayed in front, obscuring the cube and the floating panels, despite me asking it to be drawn behind the kube.

Since it has always appeared correctly on all the phones I have tested, I assumed that it was some sort of bug with the emulator and Open GL. As no one mentioned the problem in the market, and after searching for similar issues on Google I found a few similar complaints about the emulator I came to the conclusion that it was the emulator at fault.

However, Tim emailed me to let me know he had been having the same issue on his phone, so I was forced to revisit it. Thinking about it again, it was really pretty unlikely that if it was an emulator issue, I would only have found a few references to it, it would have been a known issue.

Anyway, more Googling of glDrawTexiOES and z-order depth brought up quite a few people having issues in general, so I was able to narrow it down to Depth Testing in OpenGL, specifically the GL_DEPTH_TEST.

Previously I had depth testing enabled all the time, which seemed sensible, but what seems to fix the issue on the emulator and also work on phones is disabling Depth Testing when drawing the background, then immediately enabling it again before I draw the cube and panels. This doesn't seem logical to me to be honest, I can see why it is needed for drawing the cube, so the panels appear behind the cube, but I don't see why leaving it enabled also doesn't work for the background. Still, now it works for Tim and hopefully any others who had similar issues.

I don't really have the time at the moment but if I get the chance I will research it in more detail so I can really understand why it behaves this way.

Anyway, hope that solves the issue for anyone else. New version on the Market now.