bgies Enterprises

If you've been keeping up with the Android World, you know that Android has been a tremendously successful cell phone platform. It's good to see.... I decided to concentrate on programming for Android over two years ago, and at the time I was fairly sure in my own mind that Android would do well... but it was certainly not guaranteed. I was working on my first Android App BEFORE there was even one cell phone running Android. I then pre-ordered and bought one of the first Android phones (the original T-Mobile G1) and received it on the first day on the first release.

Fast forward to today, and Android powered cell phones are being activated at the rate of over 300,000 a day. There are so many cell phone running Android that I've lost track of how many they are, and there are well over 140,000 Android programs available for download. Android has truly been the most successful launch of a new cell phone operating system EVER.

Of course, things haven't been quite as smooth for many Android Developers. The Google Android Market is a black hole of despair for most Android Developers. When I release a new Android App, I'm lucky if the app stays on the first page of the "Just-in" list for more than a couple of hours. Sometimes not even that long. And with over 140,000 apps and only 32 categories it's almost impossible for a new app to get noticed at all, even if it's a very good app. When I released my first "PriceBunny" app (a barcode scanner that parsed Amazon and eBay for prices), it stayed on the "Just-In" first page for a couple of days and could be easily found for over a week. In addition it showed up in the "Most Popular" in it's category almost right away. Now... when I release a new App I'm lucky if it ever shows up in the "Most Popular" because there are an average of over 4,000 apps in every category and some have over 7,000 apps, and most of them are terrible quality and it makes it hard to find the good apps.

Well.. about 2 months ago, I set out to cure the problem. I started my own Android Market called "No Crappy Apps" (for Android). All the way I developed some sophisticated software algorithms to detect SPAM apps and SPAM comments. Of course... as I am an Android Programmer I also developed a cell phone application, so users can now find good apps for their cell phone FROM their cell phone :). No Crappy Apps™ also developed a "Developer Support" index to help weed out those developers that release a crappy app, and then don't bother to support it and make it better. And we built ways to feature better quality apps and make them known to Android users.

Check out No Crappy Apps

I think you will agree that it's MUCH better than the Android Market... Let me know.

Android App Share is currently in BETA testing. We've heard the complaints of hundreds of Android developers complaining about the Android Market, and it's total lack of normal functions for developers. Simple things like being able to respond to user comments, one star ratings that make no sense, and other developers or pirate sites using the comments for spamming. We shared those sentiments, and we've decided to do something about it. The result is Android App Share.

Android App Share was built from the simple idea that ratings and comments are much more useful for users if the people rating the apps actually know what they are talking about. We also built Android App Share to empower developers to present their applications to users in the way they want to do it.

Here are the main functions of Android App Share:

The Android Exception Logger is a free tool for Android developers to log exceptions in their apps, and get a detailed list of the unhandled exceptions their app is generating.

Here a list of the current and planned features for it:

• Log all unhandled exceptions.
• Exception entries can include the name of the last function called in your code, a stacktrace, the user SDK version, your software version, and the Android Id.
• The Test Developer key is limited to a few hundred log entries a day.
• The Prod Developer key is unlimited
• The basic report will show all fields logged and allow you to view the last 100 entries in chronological descending order
• (Planned) Allow sorting and grouping of the errors by exception type, SDK version etc.
• (Planned) For non-internet enabled apps build a system to allow logging via email (will require the user to approve).
• (Planned) Allow developers to get an email listing their latest exceptions
• (Planned) Figure out how to pay for this ;)
• (Planned) Figure out even better methods to get approval from the user for the developer to contact them

The BETA version of the Exception Logger is available by clicking on the "Developer/Exception Logger Manager" Link in the main menu (to the left).

I am currently developing a Joomla! 1.6 extension to check your Joomla! site and installed extensions for basic security.

As of now, this is the list of security checks it will make:

• Joomla! site check for an index.html file in every directory under the Joomla! root path.
• Joomla! site check for ownership and permissions for every directory and file under the Joomla! root path.
• Joomla! site check for the existence of JExec or die in every .php file under the Joomla! root path.
• Extension check for an index.html file in every directory under both the site and admin extension path.
• Extension check for ownership and permissions for every directory and file under both the site and admin extension path.
• Extension check for the existence of JExec or die in every .php file under both the site and admin extension path.

The extension will keep a record of every test it makes and you will be able to view the history of each test to make it easy to see if you are making progress or not.

Also, planned for this extension in the future is:

• A directory of Joomla! extensions and a rating of how well they perform on each test.
• Publicly available user comments and critiques
• A desktop application that connects to JCheckSecurity and runs tests from outside Joomla!

I will have version 1 of this extension available by the end of August (2010).