Showing posts with label meerkapp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meerkapp. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Meerkapp v.1.2 Submitted For Review
Today I have submitted a new version of Meerkapp for review. That was pretty quick. I hope it would go live in the beginning of the next week.
Monday, 14 January 2013
Meerkapp Update
It's been about two weeks since Meerkapp has been featured in AppAdvice Best Apps Of The Day list. Things have slowed down quite a bit since then (I was seeing 100~150 downloads/day back then) and Meerkapp has slip out of the Free featured list in the Entertainment category.
Not something surprising here.
The thing is, the app really needs users to stay interesting. The built-in community is what Meerkapp is all about.
Currently I am trying to reach blogs / review outlets to get the app reviewed.
At the same time, on the technical front I am cooking a major usability update. It's not quite ready still, but I hope in a week or so I'll push it to the App Store for review. The thing is that currently it is really slow to load the picture stream. This is because it now works using a full-page synchronous model -- the app dials in the server and says something like: 'hey give me the second page of the newest pictures stream'. The server then goes to the database, does the various queries and fetches the requested page. With the page size being 20 pictures, this means that all twenty images are being taken out of the database, processes and sent down to the client. This takes time. Depending on the current load of the server, it could potentially take 15-20 seconds for a full refresh. Not a showstopper, but it gets really nasty if you scroll up and down a lot.
It just hurts usability. People (including myself, I know, it's a shame) are reluctant to start the app as they know they'll be faced with 20 seconds delay before actually seeing any doodle. Terrible.
What I am working on now is to make the server to fetch information about the pictures very fast, and then individual pictures are asynchronously requested by the app on demand. It works much in the same way as browsers work. Making it asynchronous means that the user would see almost an immediate feedback and pictures start to appear much quicker. There are still a thing or two I need to figure out, but as a whole the bulk of the work is already done.
Also, I am assessing how much it would take to make Meerkapp working on the iPhone. I'll obviously need to rework a lot of the UI storyboard but it shouldn't be a problem with the main bulk of the code.
Update: I am adding a link to AppScovery article I have posted about Meerkapp.
http://appscovery.com/article/meerkapp-ipad-drawing-doodling-app-deep-community-involvement-features
Not something surprising here.
The thing is, the app really needs users to stay interesting. The built-in community is what Meerkapp is all about.
Currently I am trying to reach blogs / review outlets to get the app reviewed.
At the same time, on the technical front I am cooking a major usability update. It's not quite ready still, but I hope in a week or so I'll push it to the App Store for review. The thing is that currently it is really slow to load the picture stream. This is because it now works using a full-page synchronous model -- the app dials in the server and says something like: 'hey give me the second page of the newest pictures stream'. The server then goes to the database, does the various queries and fetches the requested page. With the page size being 20 pictures, this means that all twenty images are being taken out of the database, processes and sent down to the client. This takes time. Depending on the current load of the server, it could potentially take 15-20 seconds for a full refresh. Not a showstopper, but it gets really nasty if you scroll up and down a lot.
It just hurts usability. People (including myself, I know, it's a shame) are reluctant to start the app as they know they'll be faced with 20 seconds delay before actually seeing any doodle. Terrible.
What I am working on now is to make the server to fetch information about the pictures very fast, and then individual pictures are asynchronously requested by the app on demand. It works much in the same way as browsers work. Making it asynchronous means that the user would see almost an immediate feedback and pictures start to appear much quicker. There are still a thing or two I need to figure out, but as a whole the bulk of the work is already done.
Also, I am assessing how much it would take to make Meerkapp working on the iPhone. I'll obviously need to rework a lot of the UI storyboard but it shouldn't be a problem with the main bulk of the code.
Update: I am adding a link to AppScovery article I have posted about Meerkapp.
http://appscovery.com/article/meerkapp-ipad-drawing-doodling-app-deep-community-involvement-features
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Monday, 17 December 2012
Meerkapp Submitted for Review
Well, 12 days and 15 git commits later, this milestone is already reached.
Yesterday, after some time spending scratching my head over how distribution certificates, app loaders and alike work, I have submitted Meerkapp for AppStore review.
And these were quite productive 12 days in terms of work done with a pretty good number of bugs fixed. Just take a look on the git log extract below.
All in all I am happy and hope it's all gonna be good and fine. Will see and let you know. Meerkapp has been taken quite a lot of my sleep recently. It turned to be quite a massive project for a single-person-that-works-in-his-spare-time type of developer. From icons to app art to client-side code to the protocol with the server, server scripts and database -- it's hell lot of a stuff to handle on your own. And not even working full time doesn't help.
--update: I have also reworked the front page of the Meerkapp website. Check it out here: http://meerkapp.com
Cheers.
--git log after 5th of Dec--
Date: Sun Dec 16 18:55:04 2012 +0200
Release 1.0
Date: Sun Dec 16 17:51:48 2012 +0200
Yet more fixes
Date: Sat Dec 15 15:35:33 2012 +0200
Fixes, fixes, fixes. Nasty issues arised -- and hopefully fixed. Still mem warning not clear -- tested for mem leaks and found none.
Date: Fri Dec 14 12:33:34 2012 +0200
Removed a hair in the wooden background
Date: Fri Dec 14 10:31:20 2012 +0200
Final fixes and polishments -- ui label texts etc.
Date: Thu Dec 13 11:30:12 2012 +0200
Polishments
Date: Thu Dec 13 11:23:28 2012 +0200
The first time app launches will display the featured page
Date: Thu Dec 13 10:55:02 2012 +0200
Final preparations and fixes before submitting the app
Date: Wed Dec 12 11:30:28 2012 +0200
Fixed the long-standing lurking problem of subtle resizeing
Date: Wed Dec 12 10:41:30 2012 +0200
Launch images
Date: Mon Dec 10 12:36:04 2012 +0200
Bug fixing of race conditions
Date: Mon Dec 10 11:24:48 2012 +0200
Brushes rendering made asynchronous for better performance.
Date: Fri Dec 7 10:28:43 2012 +0200
1. Another day -- another version of the glass shelf. 2. publish finished now makes a full refresh of the tableview as otherwise sometimes no refresh is done.
Date: Thu Dec 6 10:46:37 2012 +0200
1. UI polished -- the shelf drawn properly. 2. The view image screen shows number of likes
Date: Wed Dec 5 12:31:06 2012 +0200
UI polishments. Like count visible in the stream. Shelves.
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