Google Android

[radioman]

Just pondering a bit more...

Well, Im not much different when looking for applications - I usually search both the App Store, but also online since I believe that the App Store limits what you can search for - keywords, etc., and with most developers putting info on the net, it serves as a very good resource. In general, I can search around, and other computer-savvy people can as well. But for the less computer-savvy customer base, that approach (unlike Apple's) misses out.

I do not doubt their would be a number of stores. I have lived the old days of Palm (at least as a user) and worked the system reasonably well. And I've used Cydia to purchase apps jailbroken apps, and certainly buy various items on my computer from time to time. But its always a bit annoying, even when utilizing Paypal (which is the least annoying method I must say..). In many cases where I wanted to do a quick purchase on an impulse, I would run into issues with regard to the screen being too small and needing to resize the browser, this entry gets messed up, go back to purchase, reloading purchasing pages from scratch, or the ever-popular "oh-GREAT-your-all-set!!-but-first-dont-forget-to-enter-the-three-digit-code-on-the-back-of-your-credit-card-even-though-yes-we-know-you-already-have-placed-it-on-file-six-times-in-the-past" scenario... but I digress...

If there was a way to just put in a password, that to me would certainly be workable...

So maybe in the end, yes, it will be many marketplaces that is consolidated by folks just going to some "metasearch"... where they will be directed to a site where one is more convenient than the next, etc. - the way things are now with computers and online purchases. Can that compete? Dunno... But, there are other sales channels - corporate clients, etc., where purchasing in bulk would overcome a lot of any purchasing challenge, so the aspect of online purchases being easy or difficult does not constitute the entire equation.

Good point on Google and having EVERYTHING in the cloud. And, in fact, I very much support the notion that one day that is the way things will be. I use Google Apps extensively, as well as many other online applications. In general, I will always choose an online app if it serves my need and is not prohibitively expensive - and am willing to give up some features for convenience. So at some point, I figure someones going to figure that scheme out for the App purchase and get it workable (or at least more and more tolerable).

 

[ciaocibai]

That's what I'd been thinking, yes - not supporting the Market would cut off AT&T customers, but if you're OK with a phone that's a) locked-down and b) on AT&T you're not limited to Android

LMAO. Although the rumoured CDMA version is looking more likely...

 

[mikelove]

Well, Im not much different when looking for applications - I usually search both the App Store, but also online since I believe that the App Store limits what you can search for - keywords, etc., and with most developers putting info on the net, it serves as a very good resource. In general, I can search around, and other computer-savvy people can as well. But for the less computer-savvy customer base, that approach (unlike Apple's) misses out.

Very true, and especially in the last few months we've seen a lot more people discover us via an iTunes search for Chinese dictionaries (in spite of Apple's burying us in the search results and refusing to offer any explanation or help on that - that may have factored into the decision to support Android as well, we've got friendly dedicated support reps at companies that make far less money off of us than Apple does). I'm not sure if our actual sales would be 30% (= Apple's commission) lower without them, though, and we'd also get a bunch of additional sales by not relying solely on iTunes (e.g. from people who don't have any internet access whatsoever on their devices and hence are unable to purchase add-ons in-app).

So maybe in the end, yes, it will be many marketplaces that is consolidated by folks just going to some "metasearch"... where they will be directed to a site where one is more convenient than the next, etc. - the way things are now with computers and online purchases. Can that compete? Dunno... But, there are other sales channels - corporate clients, etc., where purchasing in bulk would overcome a lot of any purchasing challenge, so the aspect of online purchases being easy or difficult does not constitute the entire equation.

That's what I'd hope for at least - the problem is that Google seems to want to make more money off of Android than they're making now (there have been rumblings to that effect anyway), and in general, less control -> less money, so the big worry is that they might decide to follow up on their wussy stance on net neutrality by letting Verizon / Sprint / T-Mobile join AT&T in blocking non-Market apps (particularly if there's a Verizon iPhone); now that they seem to be luring people over from iPhone for reasons other than anti-Apple sentiment / "openness" they may just get cocky enough to give it a try.

Good point on Google and having EVERYTHING in the cloud. And, in fact, I very much support the notion that one day that is the way things will be. I use Google Apps extensively, as well as many other online applications. In general, I will always choose an online app if it serves my need and is not prohibitively expensive - and am willing to give up some features for convenience. So at some point, I figure someones going to figure that scheme out for the App purchase and get it workable (or at least more and more tolerable).

Availability of online apps is still a problem, especially for our geographically-dispersed customer base - every time I even mention an online app in an announcement email I probably get 50 replies saying how they really hope we don't go online-only because people don't always have reliable access to an internet connection. And the aforementioned people-with-no-internet-on-their-iPods bear that out. If we ever actually manage to achieve the sort of cheap ubiquitous cell phone coverage that people in Europe and Asia have been enjoying for years, that might make an online-only mobile Chinese dictionary an easier sell, but it's definitely a non-starter for now.

Online's great for some things, though, and I think some sort of Pleco online service may appear within the next year in the form of a basic flashcard sync / backup system - it's incredibly easy and cheap to roll out something like that now using Amazon EC2 / S3, and it makes much more sense to do it that way than via Bluetooth or local WiFi.

 

[KenEM]

I just got an email (forwarded, but from someone I trust) that there will, in fact, be an android version of Pleco, though without OCR. If that's true, it might be worth posting in this thread, for those of us who have subscribed in order to monitor the open/closed state of affairs. (I'm here because I'm on WinMo 6.1 and waiting to upgrade, which I imagine isn't uncommon, but I don't want to assume.)

 

[mikelove]

It was mentioned in another thread in this forum but I completely forgot to post about it here - sorry about that.

 

[gato]

This lawsuit bears watching.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news ... bility.ars
Oracle's Java lawsuit undermines its open source credibility

It's important to remember, however, that the GPLv2 doesn't include an explicit patent grant—it only includes a very loosely worded statement in the preamble calling for free patent licensing. It's generally assumed that this language isn't legally binding. As some might remember, that is the very same loophole in the GPL that Microsoft and Novell exploited when they established their controversial patent agreement in 2006. The loophole was later closed in GPLv3, which made the patent grant explicit. Because Sun used GPLv2 as the basis for its OpenJDK license, it means that there is no explicit GPL-based patent grant for OpenJDK and implementors must rely on Sun's own separate patent license, which only covers complete implementations.

In addition to impairing Oracle's open source credibility, the lawsuit could also have a detrimental impact on the adoption of the Android platform. It's obvious that Oracle wants to extract licensing fees from Google for its use of Java, but it's unclear what form the license will take and whether it will be possible for Google to obtain a license that provides blanket protection to downstream distributors, such as mobile carriers and handset manufacturers that ship the operating system.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20013549-264.html
August 13, 2010 1:42 PM PDT
Why Oracle, not Sun, sued Google over Java
by Stephen Shankland

Although Android's success is new, its software components aren't. Google announced Android in 2007 and released the Android project source code in 2008. As far back as 2007, Sun objected to Google's use of Java technology in a way that bypassed Sun, sidestepped the Java Community Process that oversaw Java, and contributed nothing to the mobile Java license payments that one source told CNET had reached more than a billion dollars a year for Sun. By the time Android arrived, though, Sun wasn't in a position of strength to sue.

Google reimplemented some Java technology on its own, letting programmers essentially use Java to write their programs and including a key virtual machine component, called Dalvik, that translated those programs into the code that actually runs on Android devices. Technology cloning is a decades-old art in the computing industry, and it often relies on a "clean-room" approach in which engineers independently re-create how technology works to minimize legal risks.

 

[mikelove]

Well I'm no great fan of Android in spite of our newly-announced support for it, but I do think software patents are a terrible idea and lawsuits over them ultimately hurt the whole software industry. Ultimately, Oracle just wants money - they're not worried about the Java trademark or the "purity" of the language like Sun was - and Google has enough money to pay whatever is necessary to keep Android going; by the time this case is actually settled, mobile processors should be fast enough / memories capacious enough to largely eliminate the need for Dalvik, so they might end up fixing this by just going back to a regular Java VM. Though the ideal outcome as far as I'm concerned would be for Google to drop Java altogether and go back to nice native C code - I'd gladly throw out all of the work we've done on an Android version so far in exchange for being able to do everything in nice clean C instead of jumping back and forth between that and Java.

 

[gato]

Yes, the patent system is broken. Imagine if all those basic algorithm taught in computer science classes were patented. Development would have come to a standstill.

 

[radioman]

Maybe I'm living in a year 2049 dreamworld, but aren't things progressing where HTML5 programs would be able to be held resident after disconnecting from the internet? But I guess if we are talking about big databases, not sure the practicality of downloading a 2gig app onto the browser and just having it stay resident. By 2049, probably not a problem...

mikelove wrote:
Availability of online apps is still a problem, especially for our geographically-dispersed customer base - every time I even mention an online app in an announcement email I probably get 50 replies saying how they really hope we don't go online-only because people don't always have reliable access to an internet connection

 

[character]

The second-biggest Android news this week: PayPal is reportedly in talks with Google to add PayPal as a payment method to Android Market. Story on Gizmodo.

---

Maybe I'm living in a year 2049 dreamworld, but aren't things progressing where HTML5 programs would be able to be held resident after disconnecting from the internet?

It's getting there, esp. for browsers on 'desktop' OSes, but Mike would have to be OK with Pleco working if it couldn't phone home. And he might have to rewrite everything in JavaScript. If he thinks Java is a pain...

 

[mikelove]

The second-biggest Android news this week: PayPal is reportedly in talks with Google to add PayPal as a payment method to Android Market. Story on Gizmodo.

So Android developers will get to share in the joy we've experienced of having PayPal flag more or less every single order from China (at least every one with a Chinese IP and a US credit card) as "potentially fraudulent" and subsequently reject / refund it without even checking with the customer first.

Seriously, PayPal's attitude towards electronically-delivered goods is even more pirate-friendly than Android Market's; I had an email conversation with a web module developer a few weeks ago who leans on PayPal much more heavily than we do, and he loses a ton of money because users have figured out that if they simply claim they're not satisfied with an order / never received it / etc PayPal pretty much automatically rules in their favor.

So yeah, maybe it'll improve the "account barrier" situation a tad for customers, but overall I think PayPal support on Android Market isn't going to do much good for developers at all.

It's getting there, esp. for browsers on 'desktop' OSes, but Mike would have to be OK with Pleco working if it couldn't phone home. And he might have to rewrite everything in JavaScript. If he thinks Java is a pain...

JavaScript = open-source, more or less; you can try to obfuscate it but you're basically giving away the farm. No hope of anything involving DRM with your locally-stored databases, at least not unless they add a protocol for it in HTML6. And not really anything algorithmically-complicated either, so if you want to do something that isn't straightforward to implement in SQLite (handwriting, say) you pretty much have to rely on an external server for that.

 

[westmeadboy]

Agreed that Paypal support will not make much of a difference for paid-app devs. If someone wants to buy paid apps now, surely they would just set up a Google Checkout account? Its not that hard/bad. There are a couple of problems with some payment options (like Amex) not supporting non-US Dollar payments but its not a huge problem for devs. However, IF Google open up paid-apps to the wider world then maybe there are countries where Paypal is a much better option than Google Checkout?

I would expect the agreement between Google and Paypal to iron out those problem you mentioned, Mike. I know first hand the annoyance of having my Paypal account suspended simply because I was using it from China. Happened 3 times in a month (and its not trivial getting your account out of suspension). But certainly they would have an arrangement with regards to refunds. Surely!

Thing is, Paypal are not likely to listen to small-time software vendors or the odd disgruntled user, but they probably will listen to Google.

 

[ciaocibai]

Online's great for some things, though, and I think some sort of Pleco online service may appear within the next year in the form of a basic flashcard sync / backup system - it's incredibly easy and cheap to roll out something like that now using Amazon EC2 / S3, and it makes much more sense to do it that way than via Bluetooth or local WiFi.

Just wanted to say, we use Amazon for hosting a usability testing service we developed at work (http://IntuitionHQ.com), and we've always had great results, great uptime, and great speeds. As you say Mike, the costs are next to nothing these days for this kind of thing too. Actually, if you ever want to have a play with some usability/UI testing, I'd be more than happy to hook you up with some free tests - not that you really need it, Pleco is generally pretty sweet IMHO.

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to set something up sharing/backing up files with dropbox or the like? I use dropbox for keeping all my Anki flashcards in sync, and it works great for that. That said, I don't have AnkiMobile (the iPhone version) so not sure if it works in conjunction with that or not - it definitely works well across different desktops/laptops though.

 

[gato]

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to set something up sharing/backing up files with dropbox or the like?

FYI, the Chinese government is pretty keen on blocking the popular file-sharing services. Dropbox has been blocked in mainland China for about half a year now. There's been some apprehension about google docs being blocked, but so far, only the HTTPS version of Google Docs has been blocked, and not the non-HTTPS version. It's better to have one's own IP address to avoid being blocked together with a popular site.

 

[ciaocibai]

Dang, didn't hear about dropbox being blocked - must have been out of the country for too long (well, since January) - don't really get why they'd block them though... Any thoughts? I'm sure China gets far worse publicity out of blocking different sites than the negative impact they would get from letting a free flow of information.

When I'm in China, I'm connected to a VPN pretty much the entire time (except for browsing Chinese sites - mainly video, taobao and zol.com.cn) - so it doesn't really bother me, but you are right about hosting your own service, at least then you know what's going on with it. I've seen China block quite large IP ranges in the past as well though - if they get a grudge against someone they can be pretty harsh with the GFW. Hopefully Amazon, or whoever Pleco decided to host with won't do anything offensive to the wrong people then.

I know it's not quite the right thread for it, but I'd heard internet policies were getting a bit more liberal of late - friends had told me a number of western political blogs, porn sites, and just a random array of formerly blocked sites have been becoming available lately.

 

[mikelove]

I would expect the agreement between Google and Paypal to iron out those problem you mentioned, Mike. I know first hand the annoyance of having my Paypal account suspended simply because I was using it from China. Happened 3 times in a month (and its not trivial getting your account out of suspension). But certainly they would have an arrangement with regards to refunds. Surely!

Thing is, Paypal are not likely to listen to small-time software vendors or the odd disgruntled user, but they probably will listen to Google.

Maybe, but Google hasn't exactly gone out of their way to make things easier for paid app developers so far, and after all Android Market offers almost as generous a refund policy as PayPal does - on the China issue specifically, rather than fighting with PayPal's actuaries / lawyers I imagine they'd probably just sign a separate China-specific payment service for actual Chinese consumers and ignore the expat-American-in-China-with-a-US-credit-card market

Just wanted to say, we use Amazon for hosting a usability testing service we developed at work (http://IntuitionHQ.com), and we've always had great results, great uptime, and great speeds. As you say Mike, the costs are next to nothing these days for this kind of thing too. Actually, if you ever want to have a play with some usability/UI testing, I'd be more than happy to hook you up with some free tests - not that you really need it, Pleco is generally pretty sweet IMHO.

Neat-looking system - might take you up on that, actually, though now it seems like some of our UI redesign may have to get pushed back a bit since the level of interest in OCR is a bit overwhelming and we really need to get that out ASAP even if it means leaving the current UI largely intact. The main problem would be finding testers who aren't already familiar with Pleco but do know Chinese - if we had a good way to reach those people we'd already be using it for advertising

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to set something up sharing/backing up files with dropbox or the like? I use dropbox for keeping all my Anki flashcards in sync, and it works great for that. That said, I don't have AnkiMobile (the iPhone version) so not sure if it works in conjunction with that or not - it definitely works well across different desktops/laptops though.

I think we'd rather use our own system to avoid any Great Firewall concerns, as a few other people mention - also lets us do some processing on the server (and even perhaps offer some web-based card management) rather than having to do everything with file uploads.

 

[westmeadboy]

Check out the first comment to this post:

http://moconews.net/article/419-google- ... t-69221493

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, they've really alienated a lot of people, though I can't say I'd even heard of these credit card company services that post talks about.

 

[character]

Android 2.x now on 70 percent of all active Android phones That might be a better percentage than for iOS 4.x versus 3.x.

 

[mikelove]

Android 2.x now on 70 percent of all active Android phones That might be a better percentage than for iOS 4.x versus 3.x.

Yes, but time-wise iOS 4 is roughly contemporaneous with Android 2.2, not 2.1, so it's not really a fair comparison. 2.2's also at least a big a deal compatibility-wise as 2.1 given all of the performance improvements and the new apps they're supposed to enable.

And their "active" criteria seem somewhat questionable to me too - 2 months after our last update (really need to hurry up on that) we're still getting a significant number of update downloads per day, suggesting that a lot of Pleco iPhone users go at least that long between App Store logins; the most active users are naturally also going to be the most likely ones to upgrade to 2.2 / switch to a phone running 2.2.