Hmm... at last ADC2 is out of our way ... tell about your app and experience

[Lout]

While you developers relax... would you mind sharing what apps to
expect through this challenge.. and anything else you wish to share
about ADC2 submissions... well anything including the fact: 'thank
God, no more sleep less nights'!

Am collecting information about the challenge (ADC2) for a news
article as am with cnet (and AP). Pitch your app if you have already
published or would soon publish on the market too.

Your app name and description, web link if any, experience with
ADC2, ... anything would be useful for our article(s).

And do you feel that there would have been more submissions than in
ADC1?
Is the competition going to be tougher or less profound as you were
allowed to put up apps not published before 1st Aug only?

Do you think that all apps that didn't try for ADC1 should have had a
chance?

Congratulations on your submissions while you wait for the next
phase.
Thanks,
Lout Reilly
ps: Moderators we request you to let this through so that you too get
some feedback.

[Rud]

I actually submitted mine about 6 hours before the deadling. Amazing!
<g> Biggest hassle I had was fighting a cold/flu that started last
Tuesday. Fortunately I am retired so could work as I could and sleep
at odd hours.

My application is the arcade game "Galactic Guardian: Zap GPS". It
uses the sensors to target and shoot GPS satellites, i.e. Galactic
Patrol Sentinels. I challenge you to clean the sky when "Command and
Control" and "Cloaking" are both active.

See more at http://sites.google.com/site/mysticlakesoftware/. That is
just a quick and dirty page derived from the Info in the game. I'll
put more information in the next couple days. Also add some more code
and development discussion on my blog.

It has not been published. I think I'll wait for some ADC feedback and
work on additional features before publishing.

I really don't know how it will do in the ADC 2 and how the
competition will stack up. I think the game will be compelling to
some. Its main feature is the augmented reality aspect which includes
physically moving around to aim and shoot the Sentinels. There is a
keypad mode so someone could play it in a car or airplane. If you
can't get the GPS signals there is a "training" mode which simulates
satellite positions.

I don't have a problem with the rules, as given. They were published
early enough that developers knew the deadlines and restrictions.

Rud
http://mysticlakesoftware.blogspot.com/

[CraigsRace]

I decided to enter the competition 2 months ago. I started working on
my entry by reusing code from 3 other projects that I had done
before. I spent about 2 weeks putting it all together. Once I had
something up and running, a Graphic Artist (Liam Welford) from England
contacted me about one of my old projects. I told him about the new
ADC2 project, and we spent the next 4 weeks working together via e-
mail (I have never met Liam as I live in Australia). The project was
pretty much done 2 weeks early, so I then started adding new features
to it, which, I believe, turned out to be the coolest features of the
game. I worked full time on it, while Liam worked part time.

The thing I found most challenging was getting steady performance out
of the Android phone. It is very tricky, as the phone can be running
a bunch of stuff in the background (receiving emails, weather widgets
updates, ...) and your game has to allow the phone to process these
requests while still maintaining a smooth gaming experience.

App: Head To Head Racing
Description: Multi-player Car Racing Game
Website: http://headtoheadracing.appspot.com/
Code: Craig Mitchell
Art: Liam Welford

I think a lot of people entered the ADC2 because it will be great
exposure for their apps. Your don't need to win for people to notice,
just place above the average, and you'll be noticed.

Cheers.

[-v-]

I uploaded an app called TennisNow! Sleepless night, you bet! We were
a team of 3 ..me and 2 more from India (freind and his wife). We
started just 1 month back..I work in Java so I thought writing apps in
Android SDK will be a cake walk :). Couldnt be more wrong.
What I didnt like is this redefiniton of concepts like events etc. I
wonder why they keep reinventing the wheel. Which also makes me wonder
why Android why not just improve J2ME.
Yes I do feel there will be many many more submissions this time.
Competition is going to be much tougher..I suspect lot of apps related
to blogging, facebook twitter etc..
About the time limit, I had to remove almost 70% of the orignal
feature set that I had in mind to make the deadline. I had in mind a
BMW 7 but I think I just managed to squeeze in a toyota corolla with a
dirty paint job ;)

Thanks,
Vishal

[Chi Kit Leung]

The games only?

Did any person submit any business type apps?

 

--
Regards,
Michael Leung
http://www.itblogs.info
http://www.michaelleung.info

[Rud]

Just wait until next year. I'm going to do something that will use as
much of the Google web structure as possible. Just didn't have enough
time this year to learn all of it and do an Android app.

Rud <laffin'>

> Michael Leunghttp://www.itblogs.infohttp://www.michaelleung.info- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[JP]

Augmented Reality. I've got a comp ed of AugmentThis! in the running.

This round I didn't stress over the ADC, for a number of reasons, not
the least that PURE LUCK will play a big role again. So I got the
release candidate ready about a week before deadline. Of course
there's always room to squeeze in new features and apply more polish.
Like all dedicated devs I will remain eternally unhappy with the
product, but assuming that the evaluators will not sniff out all the
corners anyway, I spent the rest of the time testing, which turned out
to be a good use of the remaining time.


Two remarks:
As -v- has found, it takes a long time to get Android dialed and is
decidedly challenging, in spite of the cheerful assurances in the
various videos on Android's Google Code page. Seemingly trivial things
can consume huge amounts of effort. Which isn't a problem, Android is
powerful, with broad and deep access to the devices' capabilities (in
case you haven't noticed).

Re: CraigsRace's comment: If the ADC1 is any indication, placing above
average won't get any exposure whatsoever.

On Sep 1, 7:41 am, Lout <lout.r...@googlemail.com> wrote:

[sleith]

Hi
It's the first time i release application in Android. My app is
ClapCard (in market i submit it as Clap Card, because when using
ClapCard title it said the app has already exist, maybe they compared
to the app in adc2 too....)

I started 3 months ago, doing the app in my free time (i have full
time job and part time job).
it's a 3 months with less sleep (averagely 5 hours sleep)
Glady i made it in time to submit my app.

My app is a social type. It's about creating and sharing animated
card. It's not like cards in web site tough, because it uses phones
cappabilities like web, map, vibration, sms, email, etc.
Because this is my first release, this morning i submitted it to the
market hoping that people like it and can create and posting cards to
make it more crowded in community. I myself posted 2 cards only, still
has a lot of works to do the tutorial page in website
(www.clapcard.com)

It's a real fun experience to do all the stuff since this is my first
app available for public ^^
I'm planning to make a puzzle like game after completing the website.
(will be my first experience creating game too...)

[CraigsRace]

Sleith: Sounds cool. Although, not sure if you are aware, Gonorrhea
is also known as The Clap...but maybe it's just my warped mind that
put those things together. ;)

JP: Yes, you're right. I was trying to be a little too positive.
However, I do think, at least the top 200 apps will get a lot of
attention.

[Anton Pirker]

Hi!

I also submitted a little app to the android developer challenge 2. I am
from Austria and we started working on our app about two and a half
months ago. I did the main development one of my apartment mates did
also some coding and a friend from Brazil did the artwork.

It's a golf game called "UrbanGolf" where your phone is your golf club
and your city is the golf course. It is played on a Google map and uses
all the Sensors on your phone and GPS for the location and the swing.

With the deadline coming closer and closer we got more an more problems.
First my friend from Brazil is moving right now to Germany and was
unable to complete the artwork. So we developers had to become designers
and make the best of what we had. (Three days before deadline)

The second bad thing that was happening was, that i found a pretty nasty
bug on midnight the night before the deadline (due to my different
timezone my deadline was 1th Sept, 9:00am) So i tried to fix the bug. It
took me until 2:30am. I checked everything in, tested it a little and
thought. Ok, lets upload it. After a little hassle with the signing (at
that time i was very hungry and tired and my brain was just a bowl of
soaked cornflakes) i managed to upload my app.

After submitting we went out for a Kebab and a celebration beer. The
next day i woke up after the submission deadline and tried some stuff on
my app and discovered a big bug i must have introduced the night before!
So if you end up judging "UrbanGolf light" _please_ ignore the fact,
that if you try to find your golf ball the player-icon and the accuracy
circle is painted several times on the map and not just once.

Does anyone know if there is the possibility to upload a newer versions
between the two judging rounds? (like it was in ADC1)
Please, just ignore this bug. If we win some money we can implement all
the features we had to cut out for the sake of making the deadline!

Cheers,
Anton

[Pieter]

We developed an augmented reality ghost-hunting fitness game: SpecTrek
(out in the shop right now, we are working on a 'light' version). We
finished comfortably about two weeks ago, but about 16 hours before
the deadline a friend of ours called. He bought the new Samsung Galaxy
(just out over here), and our app didn't work correctly on it! It
turned out the current compass firmware is broken on the Galaxy. Other
applications (like Google's sky map) didn't work either.

Some searching on the internet revealed that the folks from Wikitude
have developed a fix so we knew it could be done. We had to drive
about 100 km and back to collect the galaxy from our friend so we
could use it to determine what the fix could be.

About 2 a.m. local time (+- 9 hours before the deadline) we finished
implementing the fix, but major performance problems remained on the
Galaxy. We then took a couple of hours of sleep, and started working
on the performance problems again. 60 minutes before the deadline we
had a version that worked fine on the Galaxy. After 30 minutes of
frantic testing (both on the Galaxy and on the other two phones we
have access to, the G1 and the Hero), we found no problems and
resubmitted our app.

Whether it was a wise decision or not to resubmit, only time can
tell....

[Lee]

Here's my submission blurb, any chance for self-promotion :-)

----------------------------
Tasker let's you link any Task (action set) to the Contexts
(application, time, day, location, event, widget press) where it
should run.

Send an SMS at 3:15 Monday, make per-app settings or locks, map camera
button to a menu, launch music app on headphone insert, timelapse
photos, encrypt on-the-fly, the list is endless!
-----------------------------

Glad I didn't make a game now, seems to be a crowded category!

I'm grateful to Google for organising a fun competition but was a
little dissatisfied with not having enough time to develop and well-
test a non-trivial application from scratch. It's also not possible to
submit bugfixes after the deadline, and of course I'm discovering
hundreds every day now...

I had some test code for the location context which vibrates the phone
every time the coordinates change: forgot to take it out of course.

With 5 hours to go (2am in Europe) I found my widget icons were
disappearing after a few minutes for no apparent reason: it was comic
at first but became less so as time wore on and I couldn't fix it
(never did find it...)

Rud: bad luck, I was also worried about catching something in the last
few weeks, would have been a nightmare!

Lee

[sleith]

CraigsRace: what is Gonorrhea? i googled it and in wiki said its
bacteria?
hehe i choose that name because clapcard.com domain is available and
the names resembles to the game i played when i was a kid. (dunno if
in your country has it's game, it's by tossing card with friend, who
got upside front win the game).

[siliconeagle]

I started learning android about 3 months ago - initially i found it
hard as it quite a different but i think i have gotten the swing of it
lately and my app is coiming along - it still isn't finished (and i
just found another bug last night :( - anyone know if i can post
updates?) but it getting there. I am interested in building music/
video apps and controllers with android and am starting a master in
signal processing in Sept where i will specialise on it. Now that i
have gotten used to the API I should be able to work faster though.
The last 3 week have beenquite light on sleep.

My app (MyPOD - http://www.my-pod.org) is an music internet/podcast
manager and player. I started building it for myself as i didnt really
like the other stuff out there. It's all subjective though.

I'm pretty sure there will be more submissions this time, there must
be loads more people into it since the phones are out.

cheers
rm

[Cédric Berger]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 09:58, Anton Pirker<an...@ignaz.at> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know if there is the possibility to upload a newer versions
> between the two judging rounds? (like it was in ADC1)
> Please, just ignore this bug. If we win some money we can implement all
> the features we had to cut out for the sake of making the deadline!
>

Updates are not allowed, but I would think that also publishing a
corrected/enhanced version (free) on the market can help even for
votes in ADC2.
As a voter, if I see some bugs / missing features but I also can test
the up-to-date version and see that these problems are quickly and
correctly addressed, no doubt I will tend to rate the app better.

Anyway, I am sure you will have more luck saying "there still have
some known bad bugs : [...] but note that they are already corrected
in latest version as you can check from Market" instead of only
"Please, just ignore this bug"
(of course market version has to be free, even if limited version)

[longhairedsi]

Hi,

I got my app 'MicroJam' finished with 24 hours to spare but with a
hugley reduced feature set to my original plan. I've been working on
the app on and off in my spare time since january so I deceided to
make the ADC my deadline.

MicroJam is a simple loop based muic sequencer/remixer and my
experience of developing the app for the challange has been mixture of
happiness and pain. The main point of pain for me has been the time
taken to debug anything, even trivial changes to the code have to be
uploaded onto the device/emulator and then tested. This leads to a
very disjointed dev workflow(but I guess this must be the same for any
mobile develeopment). This problem was amplified by the fact I had
lots of audio files in my app. I got around this by adding my audio to
the sdcard and taking it out of the app but this then lead to big
problems down the line in the eleventh hour when i tried to bring them
back in again, see here http://dixonof.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/android-debuggerd-zombie/
.

But on the whole I've got a great sense of calm and happiness now I
got the thing submitted. I'm now gearing up for my next app which will
build on the foundations i've made with MicroJam.

I think i may be alone in this.... but I like the fact that I can't
make any more changes to the app now it's submitted. I can move on and
view any mods as the next version of my app which the maket users can
appreciate.

MicroJam will apear on the market sometime soon.

Simon

> > Lee- Hide quoted text -

[Lout]

Thanks a lot for the replies. Though many on this thread expect more
(thousands of) submissions this year, only eight of you have given
feedback. Would love to hear from many more out there before formally
publishing anything. Of the 20 thousand developers on this group, less
than 20 have replied but am sure there are hundreds if not thousands
who submitted for ADC2.

*Here is the interpretation so far:*
Many game apps have shown up till now.
Many developers are enthusiastically happy about ADC2 but seemingly
the time provided was insufficient.
Many would like to provide fixes to last minute bugs.

*Summary of feedback to google:*
Google could possibly allow one chance to update a sub-set of
'potential' apps though buggy after a few weeks; may be individually
over mail or the submission site.
Looks like, very few, those who almost had their apps ready around May
27th (the date of announcement) might have benifitted.
Few might have managed to reuse code from their existing apps. But for
new ideas, time provided is a matter of dismay.

*Information shared by developers:*

Game arcade/action: Galactic Guardian: Zap GPS
http://sites.google.com/site/mysticlakesoftware/
Description: "Use sensors to target and shoot satellites"
By: Rud
Feedback: Happy with the ADC2 rules. But needs more time to implement
better ideas.

Game arcade/action: Head To Head Racing
http://headtoheadracing.appspot.com/
"Racing game with augmented reality features"
Craig Mitchel (& Liam Welford)
Feedback: Smooth performance in spite of background processes was the
challenge. Using ADC2 as exposure platform.

Lifestyle?: TennisNow
www.activitywatchservice.com
Description: "Share tennis court booking and other time-bound
information"
By: Vishal and team
Feedback: Android learning curve is steep. Only 30% features pushed
in due to time limit. Expects more submissions than for ADC1.

Category?: AugmentThis
By: JP
Feedback: Android is quite powerful but learning curve is steep.

Social: ClapCard
http://www.clapcard.com
Description: "creating and sharing animated card"
By: sleith
Feedback: Fun working on Android for ADC2.

Game: UrbanGolf
Description: "Play golf in real world with phone as the golf club"
By: Anton Pirker and friends.
Feedback: Not enough time for a fully featured app. Would like to
submit fixes.

Game arcade/action: SpecTrek
Description: "Augmented reality ghost hunting fitness game"
By: Pieter
Feedback: Faced specific android hardware bugs (on Samsung Galaxy)
and had tough time testing.

Productivity/Tools?: Tasker
Description: "Link any (action set) to contexts. Eg. Send SMS every x
O'clock..."
By: Lee
Feedback: Happy about ADC2 but dissatisfied with time provided. Need
lot more for a tested non-trivial app.

Media: MyPOD
http://www.my-pod.org
Description: "Music internet/podcast manager and player"
By: SiliconEagle/rm
Feedback: Steep learning curve. Insufficient time. Expects more apps
on ADC2. Need to update.

Media: MicroJam
Description: "simple loop based muic sequencer/remixer"
By: Simon
Feedback: Reduced feature set (working spare time on it since Jan
'09). Happy on the whole though debugging was painful.

[Lout]

Got another from Chris over mail

Productivity/Tools: MyMarket
http:mymarket.cc
Description: "MyMarket is a customizable overlay for the Android
market with many features"
By: Chris and team
Feedback: Detailed in his mail below:


> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Christian Hager wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've written the post again, but it's not showing up. I send it to you below:
>
> - Chris
>
> I gave it a shot with MyMarket [1][2], a customizable overlay for the Android
> market, where users can bookmark, recommend, remove and filter as well as
> preview apps and games.
>
> I was thinking about the ADC2 since spring, waiting for a good enough idea to
> come up (and if at all). Four weeks ago my flatmate and I were talking about
> the Android market, and how boring it usually is to browse the apps and games
> listings (mainly because the popularity listings doesn't change a lot, and the
> by date listings are spammed by low-quality apps). We figured it would be a
> real improvement if users could simply remove items they don't want to see in
> the list anymore.
>
> We started working on the project and released the first version on 8. of
> August, followed by a ton of user feedback and great ideas which we had never
> thought about in first place. The next weeks have been a constant cycle of
> iterations, considering each and every feedback we received (we don't know
> what's best -- our users do!). Because of all those supporters we were able
> to integrate many new and anticipated features such as recommendations, "my
> downloads" with updates, quick filtering, etc. and have fixed a wide range of
> bugs which were detected in the first weeks.
>
> The last days we worked towards version 1.0, which we got finished a day
> before the ADC2 submission deadline. We released it on the Android market
> again and asked many users which sent us feedback previously for a quick test.
> We were able to fix 2 important bugs, and by now we are quite confident that
> MyMarket works as expected. We never could have come this far without all the
> help from our users -- credits go to them for thinking of many of the
> implemented ideas in first place!
>
> The last hours before the deadline we luckily had enough time to add one more
> (great) feature: displaying the number of user-votes in the recommendations.
> As most developers at this point we have been quite tired (no sleepless nights
> though) and hope not to have introduced no new bugs :P. I think our project
> works quite well -- we haven't received any feedback about new problems since
> we pushed the same version to the normal Android market.
>
> The ADC2 really pushed us to try to deliver a high-quality application, which
> works with all oddities (eg. screen rotations on the G1, etc.). We also asked
> the designers at glyfx to enhance our 2d icon to a 3d version, according to
> the (not really trivial) "Android Icon Design Guidelines" (great company btw.).
>
> It was a fun thought knowing that hundreds (if not thousands) of other teams
> were simultaneously working on their ADC-projects during the last days with
> the same pace as we did. Good luck to all the teams which submitted an entry!
>
> - Chris
>
> [1] http://mymarket.cc
> [2] http://www.4feets.com/2009/09/mymarket-v10-submitted-to-the-adc2
>

[Ramani Arunachalam]

Just to make your job easy, I am using the same format you have used.

LifeStyle: NetDroid
Description: "Revolutionary motion-sensing browser with which you can
scroll webpages by just tilting the phone. It also supports
asynchronously loading tabs and full screen browsing."
By: Ramani
Feedback: Android being open source was very helpful for me to look up
the original source code for solving my unanswered questions. Having
developed for iPhone earlier, I see this as a major difference.

On Sep 2, 4:42 pm, Lout <lout.r...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Got another from Chris over mail
>
> Productivity/Tools: MyMarket
> http:mymarket.cc
> Description: "MyMarket is a customizable overlay for the Android
> market with many features"
> By: Chris and team
> Feedback: Detailed in his mail below:
>
> > On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Christian Hager wrote:
>
> > Hi,
>
> > I've written the post again, but it's not showing up. I send it to you below:
>
> > - Chris
>
> > I gave it a shot with MyMarket [1][2], a customizable overlay for the Android
> > market, where users can bookmark, recommend, remove and filter as well as
> > preview apps and games.
>

> > I was thinking about theADC2since spring, waiting for a good enough idea to

> > come up (and if at all). Four weeks ago my flatmate and I were talking about
> > the Android market, and how boring it usually is to browse the apps and games
> > listings (mainly because the popularity listings doesn't change a lot, and the
> > by date listings are spammed by low-quality apps). We figured it would be a
> > real improvement if users could simply remove items they don't want to see in
> > the list anymore.
>
> > We started working on the project and released the first version on 8. of
> > August, followed by a ton of user feedback and great ideas which we had never
> > thought about in first place. The next weeks have been a constant cycle of
> > iterations, considering each and every feedback we received (we don't know
> > what's best -- our users do!). Because of all those supporters we were able
> > to integrate many new and anticipated features such as recommendations, "my
> > downloads" with updates, quick filtering, etc. and have fixed a wide range of
> > bugs which were detected in the first weeks.
>
> > The last days we worked towards version 1.0, which we got finished a day

> > before theADC2submission deadline. We released it on the Android market

> > again and asked many users which sent us feedback previously for a quick test.
> > We were able to fix 2 important bugs, and by now we are quite confident that
> > MyMarket works as expected. We never could have come this far without all the
> > help from our users -- credits go to them for thinking of many of the
> > implemented ideas in first place!
>
> > The last hours before the deadline we luckily had enough time to add one more
> > (great) feature: displaying the number of user-votes in the recommendations.
> > As most developers at this point we have been quite tired (no sleepless nights
> > though) and hope not to have introduced no new bugs :P. I think our project
> > works quite well -- we haven't received any feedback about new problems since
> > we pushed the same version to the normal Android market.
>

> > TheADC2really pushed us to try to deliver a high-quality application, which

[Pieter]

A small correction: we thought long and hard in which category to
submit SpecTrek. We finally decided on "Lifestyle" because our app
starts off as a game but soon turns into a fitness tool, especially
when you play it intensely.

On Sep 2, 12:50 pm, Lout <lout.r...@googlemail.com> wrote:
...

> *Here is the interpretation so far:*

...

>  Game arcade/action: SpecTrek
>  Description: "Augmented reality ghost hunting fitness game"
>  By: Pieter
>  Feedback: Faced specific android hardware bugs (on Samsung Galaxy)
> and had tough time testing.

...

[jsdf]

Media: Mediafly Mobile Audio Podcast Client (now available in the
Android Market as well).
Description: "Mediafly Mobile is your way to organize your podcasts
and discover new podcasts, right from your Android device.
- Full offline support
- Intelligent podcast search
- Personalize your channels on device or at Mediafly.com for free
- Lots of Popular Channels to get started
- Sync across many devices (e.g. iPhone)
- No ads!"

By: Mediafly, Inc. and jsdf, LLC
Feedback: This is our (jsdf, LLC's) third app in the market, and while
the transition from traditional Java to Android was not as seamless as
originally expected, things went much more smoothly this time. That,
and the Android development environment is leaps and bounds better
than the BlackBerry development environment.
Plug: we (Mediafly and jsdf) are being interviewed by MOTODEV today:
http://is.gd/2NGsp

jsdf

[kabir]

I wrote something I myself would find useful - a maths app,
'mobilematics.' (I am a university student of this subject.)

Basically my intention was to replace the need for a graphical
calculator (those can be £50+!), with some nice features such as a
'Teacher' mode, matrices, statistics and interpolation, etc.
Submitted to education/reference, though I'm a bit annoyed because
I've just noticed a small (superficial) mistake!

Good luck to everyone
Kabir

[Cédric Berger]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 06:03, CraigsRace<crai...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I decided to enter the competition 2 months ago.  I started working on
> my entry by reusing code from 3 other projects that I had done
> before.

I just hope your application won't be rejected as just an upgrade of
the existing one...

[Sebastian]

I was going crazy with the quality of Twitter apps for android to the
point of thinking about writting my own. And then ADC2 came and if was
the small nudge I needed to shut up and trey to prove I could do it
better.

Two and a half months later (which seems to be a common theme) I
submitted "Swift Twitter App" on the Social category.

It has also been available on the market for a little over two weeks,
and that was an inmense help in ironing the last few kinks (who knew
that twitter doesn't mind an extra space in login names when
authenticating, but fails miserably in other calls?) And in figuring
out which additional features people wanted.

The last week before the deadline was a little hectic, dealing with my
regular job and two kids, and on Monday, a fractured arm. But in the
end I managed to add a decent set of features (some a first for
twitter clients, like save for later and retweetability counter) and
even leave for vacation on sunday. So now I'm by the beach, writting
this on my android phone, nursing my broken arm, and keeping track of
how my app is doing using twitter itself.

Oh, and website is at http://www.swift-app.com/

Good luck to all!

[Warren]

Game Casual: Goobers Vs. Boogers
http://goobersvsboogers.blogspot.com/
"A Cartoon Styled Turn based Artillery Game"
Developer: Warren Baltz

ADC2 Feedback: Making a fast game on a phone running a virtual machine
was the challenge! I spent more time on performance than on features.

I did not find the August 1st constraint to be a problem. I am
continually adding features to my game, and will be for some time. So
when the deadline came, I submitted what I had, fully intending to
continue developing.

There is a sense of relief when you submit your game... followed by a
mild sense of panic: "Did I submit it correctly? Did I get the right
file? Did I forget anything?"

I am expecting stiff competition. But the whole process is enjoyable.
It's great to hear from people who enjoy the application you wrote.
Stiff competition means better apps for our phones. And we all want
better apps for our phones.

[Che]

Hi,

In late January I began working on my game 'What the Doodle!?', an
online multiplayer drawing game that could almost be considered 'real-
time'. Built from the ground up for performance, I made sure that
every single byte that was transmitted and received was necessary and
processed in an optimal manner. Just imagine the sensation you'll feel
when you see someone drawing smoothly on your screen from the other
side of the world!

I had to really study android and the way it works, especially the
life-cycle of activities, being able to press the HOME button in-game
then go about checking your e-mail or browsing the web returning to
the game via a notification - only to find no loss of online game
state seemed like quite an achievement for me (other devs would
probably think bah noob). Being solo developed this had taken a heavy
toll on me mentally and physically and strained my personal
relationships. Fortunately I did have some help from a friend who does
professional artwork and she did a splash screen and buttons for only
a mention in the credits.

I only graduated a year ago and should probably have a job somewhere
'gaining experience' but Android's flexibility, ease of use, and
promising success made it all too tempting.

I stayed up all night and submitted my application 5 hours before the
deadline (I'm currently at PT+15) caffeinated on 2 red bulls and 4
black coffees. There probably are bugs I've overlooked but they're
more likely to be on the server than the client which I can freely
change muahhah. All in all if WTD!? doesn't win a prize I still
believe that it is not only a drawing game but a new form of
communication between people globally and should be something that is
hopefully marketable. Don't sms or mms, just doodle it!

Oh and I submitted it to the Games(Casual/Puzzle) category.

Cheers,

Che

[JP]

On Sep 2, 3:50 am, Lout <lout.r...@googlemail.com> wrote:
 Category?: AugmentThis

Travel.

[mgpc]

We submitted an app called PlinkArt - it's a visual search engine that
allows you to identify any famous artwork by just taking a photo of
it. It also has some neat features for browsing through the history of
art, sharing your favourites and ordering prints of paintings you
like. (I already splashed out on a nice print I came across while
browsing. Might become an occupational hazard)

We coded the entire app from start to finish in three weeks (not
including our visual search engine, which took years). Two developers
and one part-time UI designer.

We haven't released on the Market yet, will wait for some ADC feedback
and fix the inevitable few bugs that come with such a compressed dev
schedule.

Website is www.plinkart.com , still pretty basic, will update with
some screenshots and a demo tomorrow. But now, some seriously needed
sleep. We were still adding features three hours before the deadline.

Re:Android feedback, on the whole it's pretty nice to work with. The
dev tools are excellent, but there are some real gaps in the
documentation. The development schedule was very short, but in some
ways that's not so bad - it pushed us to develop this app much faster
than we would have done otherwise.

[dka]

Hi everyone,

here's some short data on my app:

Travel: Transport Finder
Description: Displays bus stops, tram stops and stations around you
and shows their upcoming schedule (works for Germany and Switzerland).
Also has a widget for the homescreen.
By: Daniel Kleine-Albers
Published on the market: No, waiting for ADC2 feedback
Website: http://www.dka-edv.net/android/ (empty now, will be setup in
the next couple of days)

Androidwise the greatest challenge was the control of the service
lifetime (starting / stopping / power saving) - it's kind of tricky
when you have a widget as well as an application that access the same
backend service. Also, the emulator seems to behave different than a
real device in this regard in some cases.

Contentwise the greatest challenge was to get the schedule data. The
stops are retrieved from OpenStreetMap (same for everywhere), but
their XAPI servers are not reliable, so I had to setup my own one
(with reduced dataset because of space limitations). For schedule data
it is more difficult, as at least each country has a different place
to get them from and these places are usually not offering a stable
API. This is also the reason why the app only works for Switzerland
and Germany (which might be a big disadvantage in ADC2) - in the app
there is basically support for a different provider per country (which
again is difficult for, e.g., the US).

I have not been involved with ADC1 but I read that there were around
1700 entries. I guess it will be more this year as the Android
platform has gained a lot in popularity. Anyway I think there will be
a lot of nice contributions and that it will be a pretty tough
competition. For me personally this was already a great learning
opportunity.

Cheers
Daniel

[Moto]

All this apps sound very nice! :) I wish the ADC2 was advertised few
weeks earlier... :( I submitted my app to the market so I could no
longer submit it into the competition :(

Would there be a possible ADC3?

Better luck next time! :)

On Sep 2, 9:23 am, Warren <warrenba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Game Casual: Goobers Vs. Boogershttp://goobersvsboogers.blogspot.com/

[Rud]

Simon,

No, I agree with you about the calm. My game is into ADC2 and I'll see
what happens with it. I do look forward to hearing people's reactions
and what they find. I will put it on the market Real Soon Now. I'm a
pro-developer having started in 1968 but since I am retired there is
not a lot of pressure behind this effort. I was able to have fun doing
the work. If more comes then so be it.

Rud


On Sep 2, 5:26 am, longhairedsi <longhaire...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,

[henderson.justin]

I am an embedded C developer by trade and never really developed a
full application on Java (or "Java") before. I didn't even know about
ADC2 until I stumbled upon the main android page post about it by
accident on July 28th. So in a month of developing in between kids'
bed times and sleep, I learned Android from scratch and put out a
decent app. Regardless of what happens I am happy with myself for
setting a goal and meeting it. But I sure do wish I heard about it a
month sooner.

Personally I hope they don't allow updates, because I just want to
take a break from it for a while. I'm having trouble getting my brain
to function at my day job again!

[GregM]

My app is Digital Recipe Sidekick. www.digitalrecipesidekick.com It's
free.

Here's a quick description:
The DRS is a practical kitchen gadget that helps you collect and
follow recipes. It has a cookbook that you can edit directly and
easily expand. It also has an interactive recipe reader, which you
control with voice commands so that you can remain focused on cooking
and don’t have to awkwardly stop to look at a recipe.

I developed it because there are many cooking apps in the world, but
none are really useful. My complains about the other cooking app are:
Who wants to meticulously track the inventory of your pantry? or why
be limited to a hand full of recipes someone picked out? or do I
really want my nice expensive G-phone to get all sticky as I try to
scroll while cooking some cookies? My app attempts to solve all these
problems by being voice controlled and editable.

As for App development. My experience can be summed up as: Overjoyed
when Google made something incredibly easy, and frustrated at all the
many Android APIs and methods I had to learn.
For example, Preferences: really easy, Starting the Speech
Recognition: easy, Deploying/debugging/emulating: easy and quite
helpful, properties and raw files: easy, Setting up a database: easy,
using clipboard: easy, activities and intents, no issues really
Hard: Making the UI look the way I want: For example, if you have one
button that has "fill_parent" and a second button that is in the same
layout, but has the "min_width" field set, how come the Android UI
never shows the second button. There were many, many instances, where
I had to do trial and error to get the UI to look good. Oh and there
is XML vs Code configuration where you can't do the all the operations
in code that you can in xml.
Making the Speech work well: Google let me down, you really can't
control the speech Recognition very well.
Database: No support for Object to Relational Mapping, so I had to
code all that myself, which was painful.

ADC experience: great! They gave me plenty of time. I had time to test
but only on my phone. It greatly altered my development cycle though.
Normally, I would have released early and then gotten feedback, but
instead since I was developing for the challenge, I had to hold back
my work for months and just imagine what the users will say. I'm
curious to see how my app will be liked by users, so far only a
handful have seen it.

I look forward to seeing and testing everyone else's apps. I'm excited
to see all the games and augmented reality stuff everyone is doing.

Cheers

Greg

[cpick]

Hi, we submitted a game called "CowPotato 3D". As the name suggests,
it's a 3D game where the user shoots cows with a potato gun. We
already have two applications in the market, "Key Ring Reward Cards"
and "a2b", so going into ADC we had a little bit of experience on our
side.

The game took about 3 months to build (building a 3D game is no walk
in the park!). The team consisted of 4 people: front-end GUI and back-
end data services developer (Chris Pick), 3D game engine development
(Jeremy Slade), graphics and 3D animations (Mark Reisch) and game
functional design / project management (Chris Fagan). We had a solid
team but unfortunately we all have full-time jobs/families thus we
could only dedicate our evenings and weekends to design/development.
Nonetheless, in our humble opinions we think the game turned out quite
well and we're actively working on new features/enhancements (even
though you can't update your app after submission).

We have a beta version available in the market for free so feel free
to give it a spin!

I've blogged about our CowPotato submission here:
http://www.froogloid.com/froogloid/wish-us-luck-adc-2-cowpotato%e2%84%a2-has-been-submitted

CowPotato Product Page: http://www.froogloid.com/cowpotato

Please feel free to send feedback to in...@froogloid.com

[Roland]

Productivity/Tools: aList
Description: aList is a list making application for the compulsive
list maker. Add lists and list items using the voice recognizer.
Import ready-made lists and saved list, export and share lists. Set
reminders for lists and/or items in your calendar. Keep lists in the
archive and quickly use old lists and list items.
By: Weathertop Consulting, LLC
Feedback: Of course, I would love the chance to fix a couple of little
annoying bugs I've found since I submitted the app if I happen to make
it into the top 200. I developed iMap Weather which was a top-50
winner in ADC1. I spend a lot of time working on and promoting that
app with my partners Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. I also have
a regular full time job, so aList is really job 3. I plan to release
aList (with all known stupid and annoying bugs fixed) on the Market
and charge a couple of bucks for it when the contest is over.

For aList I spent a lot of time getting the interaction with the list
items to work exactly like I wanted. I wanted you to be able to tap
the list item instead of checking the little tiny check box and I
wanted some visual cues to the status of the list item. In the end I
was able to do everything I wanted with a couple of custom adapters,
but it took me longer than I wanted to figure it all out. There are a
number of features that are in the skeleton of the app that I did not
have time to expose before the contest deadline, but I cut off the
features and spent most of the last week testing. I found and fixed a
bunch of bugs and really polished up a lot of the details of the user
experience in that last week.

I also went through a last second name change when I found Mr. Lister
on the Market. I was calling my app Lister for most of it's life.

I started working on aList at the end of June. I spent the first
three weeks of June working on an app to control the phone via voice
commands, but I completely abandoned that idea. I started thinking
about ADC 2 as soon as ADC 1 finished, but only really got motivated
after the announcement at Google I/O.

Web: androidalist.blogspot.com

Cheers,
Roland

[Fallen Leaf]

I made a game for action/arcade category called X-Disc. The game is
based in Neo Geo game Windjammers -I have uploaded a video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EkH-b15fPY , sorry for the poor
quality, it was recorded with a PDA camera-.

About ADC2, since it was the first time I was making a game for
Android I found a lot of problems, Android isn't the perfect platform
for fast action games with the garbage collector around there, so I
had to code forgetting all the standard recommendations and focusing
on performance. As many other people I submitted the last version 30
minutes before the deadline -8:30 a.m. in my local time, I was coding
and making assets all day and night- and I have found some bugs. I
hope to submit a lite version to the market in a week with all those
problems fixed.

[polyclefsoftware]

I submitted Relativia, an augmented reality RPG/Puzzle hybrid in the
Games: Casual/Puzzle. Sounds like that category is going to be
crowded. :)

In Relativia, you create a character from one of four species (Human,
Elf, Lepus, or Lupus) and one of four classes (Mystic, Monk, Merc, or
Mech). You play be entering the map view and searching for points of
interest (e.g. dungeons and markets) near you. Dungeons are mapped
onto local coffee shops and hotels, while markets are mapped onto
local groceries. To enter a point of interest, you must physically
travel to within 100m of the location, at which point a splash screen
notifies you that you're near enough, and may enter the dungeon/
market. Combat is in the form of a turn-based game similar to Connect
Four. You and your opponent take turns dropping tokens into a grid. If
you match 3 or more in a row you either collect mana (used to cast
spells in combat), gem dust (used to buy stuff in markets), or skulls
(which cause direct damage). Combat ends when one player's HP fall
below zero. If you've ever played Puzzle Quest or its variants, the
concept is somewhat similar. You must physically travel to markets to
buy items such as weapons and armor.

While searching for points of interest, the map view overlays dungeon
and market icons on their physical locations. When you touch an icon,
it tells you the name of the location (e.g. Starbucks), address, and
distance in mi/km. There are only five quests, 12 items, 3 spells for
each class, and 8 kinds of enemies, but I did the bulk of the work
myself, and it was a slog, let me tell you.

I got into Android app development about 6 months ago when a friend
who works at Google gave me the the G1 dev phone he'd gotten as a
holiday bonus. He didn't want it (he was already an avid iPhone user).
I loved the phone, and after poking around I found the SDK. I have
experience with Java, though no formal training. I'm a grad student
who does computational modeling. I thought writing apps would be a
nice way to supplement my meager assistantship income. I formed
Polyclef Software and started churning out apps. My first game was
Spades and an ad-supported version, Spades Free. I've since put out a
number of simple card games.

When I heard about the ADC II, I had a folder full of ideas. My top
two candidates were an inventory app and Relativia. I figured there
would be steep competition in the games categories, but it seemed a
lot more fun, and a sexier idea. I found an artist in an independent
game developers forum and commissioned him for the artwork. I had
commissioned music for a previous game, and ended up using some of
that in Relativia.

I wanted to try to develop a game that wasn't just a smaller version
of a game that could run on a PC, but a truly mobile game. I wasn't
aware that the idea of mobile RPGs had already been implemented on
Android (Parallel Kingdoms), but I thought my particular take might
have some advantages. I thought the puzzle approach to combat would
work well (Puzzle Quest was extremely popular). Originally I had
envisioned a free-range approach, where every element of the game
landscape would overlap the real world, but I worried about legal and
logistical issues (what if a node of iron ore was in the middle of a
highway, or someone's back yard?). So I restricted the augmented
reality aspect to searchable commercial locations. This potentially
has a unique monetization potential, i.e., businesses that want to
drive customers to their physical locations could pay a fee to have
their business name generated as a search term for points of interest.
Right now the search terms are generic, but could easily be replaced
with specific business names.

Anyway, I don't know if that will pan out, or if the game will even be
fun to play. At least a few friends have reacted negatively to the
idea of compelling people to physically travel to other locations to
unlock game elements (e.g., it's environmentally unsound). But I hoped
it would add the feeling of actually questing. We'll see.

I don't have a website up (I'm still exhausted from the development
this summer), but I will soon. I did 90% of the programming, though I
used some open-source resources for some of the map stuff, and
outsourced much of the art and all of the music.

As for the way the challenge has been administrated? I wish there were
more communication from Google. We didn't hear a peep out of them
until the last week in August, and many devs were beginning to wonder
if the challenge was still on, or would be delayed. I'm still not sure
how the user voting will work. What will they do if the voter sample
is extremely small? It's going to skew the results badly.

I'm just happy to have completed the app on time (I submitted it
Saturday). I learned an awful lot, and completed the most complex app
I'd done by far (which also means there's a lot more potential for
things to go wrong, but I'll try not to think about that.

Anyway, good luck to all the entrants. Hopefully I'll see you at the
finish line.

[bboyes]

> What I didnt like is this redefiniton of concepts like events etc. I
> wonder why they keep reinventing the wheel. Which also makes me wonder
> why Android why not just improve J2ME.

I have wondered the same thing since all my experience to date is with
J2ME on industrial embedded systems (not phone aps). Phone apps use
PhoneME which is much more restricted than the embedded Java systems
we use. We must have access to the hardware, file system, low level
event and interrupt access, etc to support I/O devices which vary from
application to application.

What strikes me is that phoneME is stuck in the past, whereas Android
assumes some current hardware base. phoneME lets you run one app at a
time with strong sandbox restrictions, no data sharing, no built in
database, and you need a dozen JSRs to support everything (ref the
high end Sony phones like K850 which still has no keyboard, dinky
screen, no touch support). It's a painful environment in which to make
something useful. Plus if you want to license phoneME you must shell
out around US$100K to Sun for a full JME license. You can't just get
part for less (say you just want the Squawk VM to build SunSPOTS).
It's all or nothing. So clearly Sun does not want every small company
in the world deploying JME commercially. Check out the headache Bug
Labs had with that.

I blogged a bit about this: http://techbleat.blogspot.com/2009/07/using-small-java-commercially-bring.html.

So it is fascinating that Eric Schmidt (once the manager of Java
development at Sun!) chose to NOT license JME from Sun (http://
techbleat.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-happened-to-love.html) but to roll
Dalvik instead. I can see why Google chose to step into the present
instead of suffering with limits that made sense 10+ years ago...
still, it's a valid question, and a real shame that Sun could not work
together with Google, IBM, and others to make Squawk or JME much more
like what Android is now. Perhaps that is part of why they got snapped
up by Oracle at a bargain-basement price, and why my Sun stock is
worth 10% of what I paid.

[Peter Jeffe]

Our app details:

Name: SocialMuse
Category: Social
By: MixZing
URL: http://www.mixzing.com (info on this app not yet posted there,
will be soon)

Description: A map-based app that lets you browse or search for other
users on the map. You can restrict your search to users with similar
musical tastes or desired age/gender/location. You can browse users'
music libraries, listen to previews of their songs and (in the US) buy
them, and check out their profiles on MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm,
etc., as well as view travel guides and other information for their
location.

Feedback: Definitely a bit of a death-march to the deadline, but in 25
years in the software biz I've never seen it be otherwise. :-) There
are some features and polish that we couldn't get into the ADC app, so
the version we publish to the market in a week or so will have some
improvements, and significant new features going forward. Overall the
ADC is a great opportunity to get more exposure for your efforts,
possibly win some cash, and probably most important it's a forcing
function to extract (or should I say wring?) some great ideas and
efforts out of the developer community. I just hope a bit of money is
also put into the marketing effort to help increase the Android
mindshare.

[pmilosev]

Hi everyone


Social: A-GLOBAL-MIND
http://a-global-mind.blogspot.com/
Description: "Q/A social network"
By: AGM Team
Feedback: Many sleepless nights

[cindy]

I have submitted my application one day before the final date. Since
Augest 31st is Monday, with a busy job at silicon valley, it would be
too much pressure for me to do it on working day.

Finally, our team did it. I have asked a lot of question here. Thanks
for all the people replied to me.

Phone has very limited resource to run a speech recognition engine.
Most of our application's task is running on server. Phone is just a
interface for use to access the service.We are still working on refine
the server.

Still a lot of work to do. No rest yet.

[Nitin67]

App details:

Name: MobileWrite
Category: Tools
By: Inkmark Software

Description: MobileWrite is a handwriting recognition input method.
Text can be entered by handwriting either printed or Graffiti letters.
Fingers or a stylus can be used. On handhelds which support a stylus,
text can be entered faster than typing on the on-screen keyboard.
This is the only handwriting recognition application in the Android
App store. The General Mobile's DSTL1, with a stylus is available
now, and others that are capable of stylus support like the HTC Click
are coming soon.

Feedback: Rules were not clear when the announcement was made, so
there was some confusion about submitting to the Android Market at the
same time as submitting to ADC2. But later it was cleared up. For me,
the deadline was a positive thing, it motivated me and it forced me to
finish it by a set date.

[Berge]

We decided to submit for ADC2 after Google IO '09 -though
unfortunately we couldn't make it out there... Our small team of 4
developers (two core) (only one programmer) decided to make a stab at
producing our 1st good idea for Android -& we don't think the iPhone
OS will allow us to do what we need. We decided to make a game but
enter it into the 'Lifestyles' category for this competition as we use
game mechanics & a game engine to make non-game activities
interesting. What we ended up with was an an alpha version of our
software product Rhythmatics™ - not yet suitable for the Android
Market (but will be during beta).

What I learned as a new Manager/Producer/Content Pipeline Funnel/
Tester/etc.. was just how much work goes into game development. Had I
envisioned spending hours upon hours per day working on this, I may
have backed out -but instead we have an alpha. Coming from the POV of
a everything but a coder I can truly say that the process & scope
involved is huge. The biggest challenge for me was managing everything
including art assets & design process. While Android 1.5 + G1 posed
quite a few limitations on us from a game perspective, it did allow us
to realize our ideas in a suitable manner. Android 1.5 has a (err..)
workable media framework, but we think we can work with it -though we
hope 2.0 improves things dramatically.

Application Synopsis:
"Like Guitar Hero® for running!"
Rhythmatics™ Alpha - An athletic rhythm game. Walk, jog, or run in
pace with the beat of the music, matching each step on time. Match the
rhythm to affect the music and earn high scores. Lose the rhythm to
negatively affect the music and lose the game.

You can hear us gripe & moan on our twitter page (website coming
soonish): www.twitter.com/brownbaggames

Best Regards,

[skyred]

I released Beer Cloud, which uses Drupal as the back-end (MySQL+APC
+Memcache caching for the scalability). I have also written some
classes on Android (not a library yet) for communicating with Drupal
Services (JSON server). I plan to share those files once they are in
the good shape. On the android side, it uses the GPS data and send it
to Drupal.Location for proximity search. and it scan UPC-A barcode,
and send it to match nodes via Drupal.Barcode .

Android + Drupal + Beer = Beer Cloud
Media release: http://greatbrewers.com/story/beercloud-mobile-app
Tech release: http://insready.com/node/49

[Traksewt]

Hi,
We did a budgetting app that learns and predicts what you are buying
based on historical data from location, time, and quantity of previous
purchases.
We're a team of 3 dev workmates, who did this project at nights and
lunchtimes. We wanted a nice UI so we pitched in and paid for a good
designer.

The App is called Tracklet, and will soon go to market in a free form.
It will also have a webpage here soon (tracklet.appspot.com) though
don't go looking today.
The app has a scoring system which is how it rates what items to
predict. It also has graphs, categories sumaries, budgets, a
transaction map (showing everything you've bought and where),

We thought we originally read that we could make changes after the
first round, but isn't the case in the current rules. It was our first
android app. It is good to get it out there, and I'm excited by the
coming influx of new apps that I get to play with.

[Chris Hager]

We gave it a shot with MyMarket [1][2], a customizable overlay for the
Android market, where users can bookmark, recommend, remove, filter
and preview applications and games.

I was thinking about a possible ADC2 submission since spring (without
stress), just waiting if a good idea would come up. Around four weeks
ago my flatmate and I were talking about the Android market and how
boring it is to browse the listings, just to always find the same
apps. We started with the thought that it would be an improvement to
be able to "clean up" the lists by removing items.

We've released the first version at 8. of August on the Android market
and received a ton of user feedback with ideas we never thought about.
The last weeks we constantly iterated, implementing filters,
recommendations, my downloads (with updates) and many other
improvements to the base idea, reaching version 1.0 about a day before
the ADC2 deadline. We submitted the final version to the Android
market and asked the users which sent us feedback for a quick test and
feedback of it, with 2 bugs coming up to be fixed. The last hours
before the deadline we had enough time to implemented one more
feature: displaying the number of votes in the recommended listings.
We submitted this version a couple of hours before the final deadline,
at which point we have been very tired as most other Android
developers submitting to the ADC (we had no sleepless nights though).

It was fun knowing that hundreds if not thousands of other devs are
intensively working on their submission at the very same moment. :)
And as most other teams, we hope not to have included a bug in the
last version (but currently everything seems to be working just fine)!
The ADC2 really pushed us to deliver a quality app, and we hope to
have delivered one.

Good luck to all teams and their projects!

- Chris

[1] http://www.mymarket.cc
[2] http://www.4feets.com/2009/09/mymarket-v10-submitted-to-the-adc2/

[Alex]

A bit more then a year ago I had developed a simple image recognition
library for j2me (after reading Rainbows End). It could do trackerless
camera parameters extraction and very basic recognition. I wanted to
do augmented MTG-like tabletop game playable with my Symbian
smartphone, but choosen j2me for portability. Unfortunately the
performance was dismal, so I've abandoned it. When I heard about ADC2
in late June I decided that this lib could work faster on Android, but
I did not have enough time to participate, so asked if my wife could.
She does not have a full time job right now so has plenty of time.
I've only promised to support and extend the library if she asks. She
had ordered a Google Dev Phone in July and started designing the app.

She used to work with 4-5 year old kids in a kindergarden, so she had
decided to develop an augmented reality app for education, not a
tabletop game I was thinking about. Her submission is "Vivify picture:
math" in Education/Reference category. The application is also
available in Android Market. English is not our first language, I hope
the app name she had picked does not sound weird for native
speakers :).

Most of Augmented Reality applications appearing in recent months are
about large scale augmented reality. They are used mostly outdors and
rely heavily on GPS support. Our entry (and my library which I am
considering releasing open source) focuses on smaller scale - table
top mobile augmented reality http://vivifypicture.com. It is trying to
keep track of a sheet of paper (game board), and recognize figures
user is drawing on it: simple arythmetic operations and geometry
shapes. Then it draws 3D scene explaining basic math concepts it
recognized, and user is able to zoom in/out and explore from different
angles by moving a device around. There is also a simple 3D mini game
in. It's like pong but you control it by drawing on paper in front of
a camera. Unfortunately we were not able to implement all features
planned, and some of the patterns that should be recognizable are not
recognized reliably yet. The APK size is below 80Kb. Here is the video
demo where my wife shows how it works: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC2AMzdSg9s

We were only able to test it on Google Developers Phone, so not quite
sure if it would work on anything else. Hopefully it works at least on
G1 :). We had submitted few upgrades (4) during last 2 days. The
latest one was just 10 minutes before submission site was closed.

Anyone else submitted to Education/Reference category?

[Chris Hager]

I gave it a shot with MyMarket [1][2], a customizable overlay for the

Android market, where users can bookmark, recommend, remove and filter
as well as preview apps and games.

I was thinking about the ADC2 since spring, waiting for a good enough
idea to come up (and if at all). Four weeks ago my flatmate and I were
talking about the Android market, and how boring it usually is to
browse the apps and games listings (mainly because the popularity
listings doesn't change a lot, and the by date listings are spammed by
low-quality apps). We figured it would be a real improvement if users
could simply remove items they don't want to see in the list anymore.

We started working on the project and released the first version on 8.
of August, followed by a ton of user feedback and great ideas which we
had never thought about in first place. The next weeks have been a
constant cycle of iterations, considering each and every feedback we
received (we don't know what's best -- our users do!). Because of all
those supporters we were able to integrate many new and anticipated
features such as recommendations, "my downloads" with updates, quick
filtering, etc. and have fixed a wide range of bugs which were
detected in the first weeks.

The last days we worked towards version 1.0, which we got finished a
day before the ADC2 submission deadline. We released it on the Android
market again and asked many users which sent us feedback previously
for a quick test. We were able to fix 2 important bugs, and by now we
are quite confident that MyMarket works as expected. We never could
have come this far without all the help from our users -- credits go
to them for thinking of many of the implemented ideas in first place!

The last hours before the deadline we luckily had enough time to add
one more (great) feature: displaying the number of user-votes in the
recommendations. As most developers at this point we have been quite
tired (no sleepless nights though) and hope not to have introduced no
new bugs :P. I think our project works quite well -- we haven't
received any feedback about new problems since we pushed the same
version to the normal Android market.

The ADC2 really pushed us to try to deliver a high-quality
application, which works with all oddities (eg. screen rotations on
the G1, etc.). We also asked the designers at glyfx to enhance our 2d
icon to a 3d version, according to the (not really trivial) "Android
Icon Design Guidelines" (great company btw.).

It was a fun thought knowing that hundreds (if not thousands) of other
teams were simultaneously working on their ADC-projects during the
last days. Good luck to all the teams which submitted an entry!

- Chris

[1] http://mymarket.cc
[2] http://www.4feets.com/2009/09/mymarket-v10-submitted-to-the-adc2

[ande...@phdgaming.com]

http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss/browse_thread/thread/da5e30f4476e2681
is my application thread (a few posted in that group as well).

Contact me if via the email in the above link if you want to ask me
anything specifically, and good luck with the article.

[Alex]

Now there are more replies, but I think there are some with apps
descriptions that were not allowed by moderators, like it was the case
with mine. So I've re-sent you the post privately using "reply to
author" option. Writing this just to see if something will get to the
group from me or will disappear like a short description of our entry
I've made few hours ago.

Alex

On Sep 2, 12:50 pm, Lout <lout.r...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Thanks a lot for the replies. Though many on this thread expect more
> (thousands of) submissions this year, only eight of you have given
> feedback. Would love to hear from many more out there before formally
> publishing anything. Of the 20 thousand developers on this group, less
> than 20 have replied but am sure there are hundreds if not thousands
> who submitted for ADC2.

[Chris Hager]

PS: I'm seriously looking forward to an announcement of Google, and
hope they publish a list of all submissions. I find it a bit sad that
the google-dev blog is not mentioning that the deadline is over, nor
that the ADC2 site was updated (still says "submit your apps today").
Google could easily generate a bit more emotions and buzz in the whole
Android community.

[Berge]

App Name: Rhythmatics™ Alpha
Submission Category: Lifestyle
Application Synopsis: "It's Guitar Hero® for running!" Rhythmatics™ -

An athletic rhythm game. Walk, jog, or run in pace with the beat of
the music, matching each step on time. Match the rhythm to affect the
music and earn high scores. Lose the rhythm to negatively affect the
music and lose the game.

Had a successful submission to ADC2. We decided to enter the challenge
after Google IO '09 -though we could not attend. What we ended up with
is an alpha-level software that gets across our concept & tests our
technologies. We entered into the 'Lifestyle' category, as our 'game'
is really an application of game mechanics to a non-game activity.
We're tailoring the app to be for men and women, ages 15-25, and are
planing on making the beta available on the Android Market this fall.

We had a team of 4 people (two core) (only one programmer) to
construct what we have now. What I learned personally from a
production/management/content pipeline-funnel/etc.. perspective is
that making games is hard. Making games involving real-time audio,
motion analysis, and graphics is really hard! This is especially true
on Android 1.5 where the media framework is (ehh..) doable for games,
but the only platform that we can actually do it w/out starting from
scratch.

All in all, it was a rewarding experience, and one that I would do
again if given the opportunity. I think Android has great potential, &
I'm hoping that 2.0 brings a lot to resolve issues concerning media
handling, and game programming. If so, I believe that we've got good
times ahead.

Check us out on twitter to hear us gripe about our process (and talk
about our product): www.twitter.com/brownbaggames

Best Regards,

[Jeremiah]

Digital Dandelion entered two apps, both developed in under 6 weeks.

Math Jungle (Educational/Reference) takes you on a safari to
strengthen critical math skills. It has gorgeous graphics, fun
animation, and a unique touch input for answering problems. It's
targeted at ages 6-9. We think it's a great app for parents with kids
who want to play with their phones.

Bottle Buzz (Lifestyle) is a social wine recommendation app that
extends our fbFund winning Facebook application for mobile use.

More time would have been useful. The initial blog about what types of
apps could be entered (only original apps, no web apps or anything
public) was later changed to allow any app that wasn't already on the
Android Market. It was a good change, but not announced soon enough.

I'm a little concerned about apps that are clearly games being allowed
into nongaming categories, but I think our apps will hold their own
during the competition. This is our first time participating in ADC
and we had fun doing an app we might not have otherwise developed.

Our website, http://digitaldandelion.net will be updated once the
voting is live.

[Dan Sherman]

Our app details:

Name: ProjectINF
Category: Action/Arcade
By: ChickenBrick Studios (Not a full time studios, really just a team of 3 people who enjoy Android development in their spare time around full-time jobs, school, and family engagements)
URL: http://www.chickenbrickstudios.com (not much info on our site yet, but check out Taylor Wimberly's article on androidandme at:http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/adc2-preview-projectinf/)

Description:
ProjectINF is, as far as we know, <shameless promotion> the first true real-time (i.e. not turn-based) </shameless promotion> game on Android.  The game plays similar to a top-down Halo / Unreal Tournament / Half-Life.  The game is free and currently available on the Android Market.  Also, note that the version submitted to ADC2 is cross compatible with the one in the Android Market.  This means that those who download it from the Market will be able to compete with those who download it via the ADC2 Judging application.

App Features:
-- True real-time gameplay
-- Up to 24 players in a single game
-- Multiple character types
-- Customizable character stats
-- Multiple maps and game modes
-- Music and sound effects
-- Friends list and chatroom
-- Over 25 items and abilities
-- Lots more

Team:
The team (and the entirety of ChickenBrick Studios for that matter) consists of three people: a coder, a graphic designer, and a tester / QA.   App development for us is a fun activity that we do in our spare time to promote gaming on Android, and many of us come from a bit of a gaming background.


Feedback:
Working to a deadline forced us to make decisions about what made the cut and what was left out, but that's the way things work when you're targetting a deadline :).  While it would be nice to be able to continue updating the app during the voting period, its understandable that Google chose to force a code freeze for developers.  All in all, we're really excited for ADC2 and to see what apps come out of the development community.


- Dan

[Paul Drummond]

Hi all,

Here's some information about our app that was submitted to the ADC2
last week:

Productivity/Tools: OpenLoopz
Website: http://sites.iode.co.uk/openloopz/
Description: OpenLoopz is a GTD-inspired task management app with
strong integration with android (location-aware, contacts, and more!).
By: Iode Software

Please checkout the website for more information and let us know what
you think!

Thanks,
Paul Drummond
--
Iode Software Ltd, registered in England No. 6299803.

Registered Office Address: 12 Sancroft Drive, Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne
& Wear, DH5 8NE.

This message is intended only for the use of the person(s) ("the
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information which is privileged and confidential within the meaning of
applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact
the sender as soon as possible. The views expressed in this
communication may not necessarily be the views held by The Company.

[Chris Hager]

Sorry that my posts are shown three times! I submitted them via the
web interface with "reply" but it didn't show up. Then I typed it
again with my other email address -- still didn't show up. Now like 8
hours later all are displayed :( If a mod reads that: please delete my
posts in this thread but the first one.

[jgilfelt]

My ADC2 entry:

App: Location Scout
Category: Travel
Website: http://getlocationscout.com
Description: A location based application that helps you discover
nearby movie filming locations.
Developer: Jeff Gilfelt

I use IMDb as the data source and the Google Maps API geocoding
service + a custom JSON REST API which I have built on Google App
Engine. This was my first experience developing for Android. The app
was built in my spare time over the course of a few weeks. It is now
available free on the Android Market. I am currently porting it to
iPhone.

[GodsMoon]

Tools: Smart Lock
Description: Smart Lock increases the usability and security of your
phone. It allows you to instantly and securely use the last
application you opened after your phone goes to sleep.
Smart Lock is perfect for:
*Listening to Music while Running
*Using Google Maps on the Go
*"Child Locking" any Application.

By:David Shellabarger
Published on the market: No, I'll release a fancy version and a free
version sometime soon
Website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipue9Yhi5VA

Feedback:
I wasn't going to submit anything this time around. I submitted a
partially working large application last time and didn't score very
good.
However, I just bought my first android phone (MyTouch) and was
annoyed that I could change which song I was listening to without
putting in my unlock pattern (without turning it off entirely, of
course). This annoyed me greatly so I wrote this app in about a week,
submitted right before the deadline. Mostly bug free, it crashed in
the video demo, but its been pretty stable for me since.