• 1. Lets say we have a theoretical family: John and Jane Smith.  They each have a cell phone, but live together and therefore share a home phone number.  They each are added in Android with their mobile number as their primary number, and their home number as their secondary number.  Both can be called at either their home or mobile number from the contact list.  When a phone call is recieved from their home number, Jane Smith is displayed in the caller id and call logs because she is first alphabetically.
• 2. For this technique to work cleanly (without any additional clutter), you must have your Android contact manager set only to display “My Contacts” (this settings is under Contacts > Menu > Display Group > My Contacts)
• 3. Log into Gmail and switch the contacts view
• 4. Create a new group to put these combined “metacontacts” (I called the group “Metacontacts”)
• 5. Force your G1 to synchronize contacts (Home Screen > Menu > Settings > Data synchronization > Uncheck and then recheck “Contacts”)
• 6. Tell your G1 to synchronize this new “Metacontact” group (Contacts > Menu > Edit sync groups > Check “Metacontacts”)
• 7. On your Gmail Contact Manager, in the “Metacontact” group, press the new contact button (person with a +)
• 8. Enter the name you want to display when the number calls (ex: “The Smith Family” or “John and Jane Smith”)
• 9. Add some form of symbol in front of the contact’s name to cause it to be first alphabetically.  I used a period because it takes up the least space, and then put a period at the end as well for symmetry ( .The Smith Family. )
• 10. Add the shared home phone number to this new contact
• 11. Press the save button
• 12. Press the “Groups” button and then click “Remove from… My Contacts”.  This will prevent the contact from showing up in Android’s contact list, but because we chose to synchronize the “Metacontacts” group, it will still be in Android’s database when it does a caller ID lookup.
• 13. Repeat steps 7-12 for each custom home phone number contact
• 14. Force your G1 to synchronize contacts again (Home Screen > Menu > Settings > Data synchronization > Uncheck and then recheck “Contacts”)
• 15. The new custom contact name will now show up in the call logs and when the number calls, but each individual contact (ex: John and Jane) will still have the number stored, so you can call their home number by clicking their name in contacts.

It works almost perfectly for me, but there are few caveats to this method that you should be aware of:

• Every time you change the combined contact (“metacontact”), it automatically readded to the “My Contacts” group and you will have to remove it
• The combined contact (“metacontact”) will have the symbol you chose (in my case, a period) in front of their name, so if this bothers you, this isn’t the technique for you

Today’s One Liner:
Get the current “android:versionCode” from AndroidManifest.xml:
getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(), 0).versionCode

Problem/Solution:
Once a media file has been detected on the SD card by Android’s MediaScanner, it is automatically to the MediaStore.  The MediaStore is a SQL database used by all media-based applications instead of directly accessing the file system.  Unfortunately, once an item has been added to the MediaStore, it is not immediately automatically removed when you delete the original file off the file system.  This has to manually be done in the database.  The easiest way I could find to do this is to get access to the Content Provider with getContentResolver() and call the delete() method with the arguments MediaStore.Audio.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI (external because it is on the SD card) and a SQL WHERE clause indicating which file to remove. In my case, I needed the WHERE clause to find a specific file based on its path on the file system (since I had just deleted the original based on its path). The unix absolute path is stored in the MediaStore.Audio.Media.DATA (Note: this is a constant not a String–it must be concatenated into the SQL WHERE clause) column in the MediaStore database.

Hopefully these tips are helpful to some other Android developers, and as always, feel free to email me with any questions!

I did a bit of Googling, and apparently the issue occurs when you change the Copy Protection status on the application.  After reading how useless Android’s DRM was, I had decided to just disable with this update (particularily since it halves the size of the app too).  From what I can tell in the Google Developer Group, when you update to an application with a different DRM status, all WebViews cause Force Quit errors!  I can’t find any workaround and Google doesn’t appear to have even acknowledged the bug.

So, I have re-enabled DRM again on the application until I can find evidence that this issue is fixed, which will hopefully fix this problem.

All users who have updated OR bought the application between around 5pm and 11pm PST Sunday should uninstall and redownload Musical.  I am told that this will fix the problem (I would do this even if you aren’t having the problem, becasue if you just bought it, you will have this problem the next time I update).

And that my friends, is how I learned my lesson about DRM.  It’s a disaster.

There have already been a ton of reviews published online, so I’m not going to go into a ton of detail. Latitude is cool, but not useful yet since none of my friends use it. Voice Search is cool and works well, but I don’t know if I’ll ever actually use it. Nearly every app I had installed had updates available in the Market (since the Market now informs you), so I spent 15 minutes or so updating them all (I wish it had autoupdate).

However, there was one thing that wasn’t in any of the change logs and that I haven’t seen in any of the major reviews: the camera. The camera application seems to have improved tremendously. In the past, for me (perhaps this was an isolated issue, since I’ve never met anyone else with a G1), the camera had an absolutely awful refresh rate and updated very slowly (lagged, blurred, etc). Now, it looks beautifully smooth. It also seems to take less blurry and better pictures, but that could be a placebo after noticing the other change. Perhaps this is as a result of some changes being made to allow for Cupcake’s video recording (which I had wondered about due the remarkably bad frame-rate of previous versions).

The update process was easy and painless. The only hiccup I experienced was that the update froze on the Android boot screen (with the small logo and text) for about 5 minutes. I’m not sure if this was a glitch or part of the update procedure, but it seems to be running great now!

In the process I’ve learned quite a bit about how the Market operates and more importantly, about dealing with its users. The following is a collection of notes, helpful tips, and my thoughts on the Android Market…

Your download rate will drop off rapidly once you have fallen below the first few pages of recent application section. I’m not sure whether publishing early on helped or hurt me in this regard. On one hand, there were less users to notice it when it was there, but on the other hand, there were also less applications to push it out of the way. One thing is clear though: timing is everything. Watch the trends of the market and choose your release time wisely (think both about when users will be checking and when other apps will be released)

You will get some undeserved terrible reviews from people who didn’t even bother trying out your application. As your application falls from the front page, however, these will go WAY down, as the only users that will find your application are those who are searching for it. Be prepared for it and don’t take it personally. The following is an incomplete list of what to expect:

• “First!!!1″ There will inevitably be some clown who decides to post “first”. In fact, you will likely get many “first” comments (some of which are clearly much too late to the game). The commenters will not bother looking at your application (speed is the idea) and the rating will depend solely on where their finger smashed in their mad rush to be stupid.
• People who clearly have not read the description or any directions at all in your application (see bullet point further down for details)
• Completely irrelevant suggestions/questions for other applications. Examples:

  “When is someone gonna create Live SRIP [sic] POKER where women can use the G1 camera feature to play..I’m not the only 1 who thought of this come on”

  “Does anyone know where I can download a video player that plays avi mpeg and wmv files for the g1″

  Questions about when the flash player is coming out for Android

• Advertising for completely irrelevant websites… I’m not even going to bother posting any of them, for fear of promoting them in any way, but I’ve gotten quite a few idiots posting their website/product/service and talking about how great it is
• Useless broken-English comments

  “Im about to give up …. g1 sux big time”

  “This sucks ballz”

  “This is sum bullshit whom ever come up with this need to kill yourself” (I particularly like their incorrect and clearly futile attempt at grammar by hypercorrecting and using whom)

• Useless and unhelpful comments (one word adjectives, both good and bad) and some just plain bizarre stuff. One of my favorites: (regarding the metronome) “My stolen one from sam ash work way better”
• Useful comments! Yes, despite what seems like an endless supply of idiots, there really are a lot of intelligent and helpful users out there, posting both good and bad reviews.

People will not read the description, the on-screen directions, or the large popups that you force them to acknowledge (and some people just can’t understand them):

• I decided to release the keyboard early (based on all the emails I’d gotten about it–more on that later) but it wasn’t totally stable yet. Also, based on the comments I had seen on other applications, people were going to expect it to support multitouch (despite Android not currently supporting it)… so, I though, “aha! I’ll outsmart them and make this information extremely clear”. In the description, I included “G1 DOESN’T SUPPORT MULTITOUCH!!!”; in the application, I noted “Warning! Extremely unstable! Preliminary release–use at your own risk!” on the menu and “Warning, the keybaord is currently unstable!!! The G1 does no support multi-touch, therefore this keyboard does not either” in a full-screen popup that loads every time you open the keyboard. What’s the first comment I get? 1/5 stars:”We still need multi tap and why does it freeze your phone”
• I’ve gotten a lot of requests to add a tuner to the application. This is not currently possible, so I decided to just add that to the description to save me the time of responding to the emails. “Tuner not currently possible (Android doesn’t support live audio analysis)”. Yet I still get emails asking why there is no tuner.
• On the pitch pipe screen it says “Press and hold the center of the pitch pipe above to play a pitch.” There is also a checkbox labeled “Activate by blowing (into mic below)” (see previous post for screenshots). So… inevitably there will be comments from users asking how to use it (not understanding that I have no way to respond to comments): “How to make pitch pipe work? What do u mean by blowing into mic below?”

Users are extremely demanding and will start posting negative reviews if you do not release updates quickly enough (only some of which bother to remove it after you do finally update). I had a list of features I was planning on adding in the application and started getting negative reviews for not including them after only about a week.

Users expect you to be able to respond to comments (asking questions, etc). You can’t, and there is nothing you can do about this. You just have to hope they realize this (they won’t) and use the Email Developer button instead.

The 350 character description word limit is very difficult. It is impossible to include a description of the application, release notes, updates, and responses to common issues in 350 characters (and it is the only place you even have a chance of getting users to read). Be prepared to cut your message short and leave everything but the most important points. As a side note, the Market should provide some way to add screenshots of the application as well.

There is no PC/Desktop/Internet interface to the Market (besides the Developer backend–updates and download statistics). All comments/reviews must be read on the device. Hopefully this will be fixed, as it is irritating from the user perspective as well to browse applications on a small screen.

Responding to user emails is extremely helpful. I’ve tried to respond to every (intelligent) email I’ve gotten about the application. Unlike when people complain/comment/question in the reviews, I can respond and help them via email. It’s been very helpful for prioritizing features, and I feel like I’m establishing a relationship with the users. I keep track of every email I receive, and whenever I release a new feature, I send out a message to everyone who had asked about it (requested/suggested it, asked when it was coming out, etc). Although I get the occasional blank or useless (similar to comments) email, as a whole, the emailing system has been extremely fruitful.

This post may sound rather negative, but as a whole, the users of the Market really are nice, intelligent people. Unfortunately, there are just enough others to sour the developer experience…

Here are some screenshots of what I’ve got so far:

Not bad for the first 24 hours of my first Android app (and first Java app in a very long time)

In fact, in one day, this app has gotten more users than all my previous programming projects combined!  And its not even close to done yet!

I’ll continue to post updates on this and my (hopefully many) future apps.