Released Zendesk Notifier on Android Market Place

jTribe has released an Android app for Zendesk.

The Zendesk notifier allows agents to quickly see how many tickets that have assigned, and how many new unassigned tickets exist in their help desk system. It also serves as a short cut for logging into your Help Desk 2.0 from the Android G1 phone.

It is pretty much the same as the iPhone Zendesk Notifier app and uses the same look and feel.

How to see what's popular on Android

We setup androidstats.com so we could see what cool new apps were popular in the Android Market. However the apps in the top 20 seemed to have cemented their place there and are hard to shift. What we really needed to see was which apps were moving up (and down) the rankings the fastest. 

So today I've pushed out several changes to androidstats.com that support this way of looking for popular apps and the results are looking good. The front page now contains the top 5 applications and top 5 games that are moving the fastest up the charts. We also show the top 5 apps and games that are dropping down the charts. The end result is a much better look at movement within the Android market place. 

We've made several other changes including displaying the app's description, category and movement (from last week and the previous day). The movements are updated daily, so come back and check often. 

See Android market movements online

The Android market place has been up until recently, a very closed place. Users (and developers) could only see the apps from the phone itself. Before the developer version of the phone was released, developers had no way of seeing the market place at all. We couldn't see if an app already existed or had the same name, then once released we couldn't see comments or test it directly. Having the developer phones has helped, but what we really needed was to be able to view the market place from a PC, online, from the web.  

Thankfully Jay from cyrket.com has made that possible by providing a website with all the applications, games, comments and ratings from the Android market place. 

We wanted to add to this and have launched a stats website - androidstats.com . This website tracks the rankings and movements of apps and games within the market place. Take a look and let us know what you think. We'll be making improvements over the next few weeks so come back and check often. 

Why 99 cent iPhone apps wont work for you

You are an iPhone developer. You are a small software company. You are not a large company like Apple, Nitendo etc. Then this information is for you!

Why can large or popular labels charge 99 cent for iPhone apps?
Larger companies like Apple can afford to release 99 cent iPhone apps like a remote control for Keynote. Very cool app and probabely similar quality as iTunes Remote. Where iTunes Remote was free Apple now starts to charge for these kind of apps on the iPhone. I have no problem wtih that. They should charge for good software. But, hey, 99 cent. What is the thing to learn here? When you are big you can affort to sell your iPhone app for "just" 99 cent.

They know that they will get the volumes of users downloading the app and thus will be making enough money with a small price tag.

Why 99 cent iPhone apps wont work for you!
Seriously, you wont get the volumes of users like Apple, Tabulous, etc. Try it. I can tell you right now that it is a waste of time. It does not mean that your app is not as good the apps from the large lables. It just means that your app is one of 15,000 apps in the AppStore and not enough people will download the app to make it worthwhile. Unless you developed a blockbuster app such as iFart Mobile 99cent wont wont work for you!

What works for us
jTribe has released so far nine iPhone applications and we tried different prices to find out what the optimum price point is. Prices ranged from free to USD 3.99. We changed prices to see what happnes. We do not develop more "niche" apps and not the blockbuster apps.

Price that work for us is:

• USD 2.99 for a utility application (such as our PinPointMe app)
• USD 3.99 for more complex solutions (such as our "Coming Home Soon" app)
• Free for a platform app that is used to build niche products. We offer FirePin Trip Tracker for free. Then we use the same platform to build more complex but niche solutions we will charge USD 3.99 - 5.99.
• Would we use USD 9.99 as a price tag. Maybe. Currently, I cannot think of a complex enough application on the iPhone to justify this price.
  

These prices work us as "normal" iPhone developers that are not producing blockbuster apps. If you are similar then these prices should work for you too.

Is the AppStore broken? Here are some indications

It looks like the Christmas break did something to the AppStore. First, the iTunes Connect was pretty much closed over the Christmas period, which is understandable. After iTunes Connect came back online again the review seem to take longer and the correspondence is not working well.

Here are four cases that indicate that the AppStore is broken.

1. We notices a spike of new users for our PinPoint app. Additional users did hit our sever and we know for sure that they are new users. However, the AppStore Trend Reports did not show any increased download at all. We are talking several hundred downloads that might have been missed. Since the daily trend reports may differ from the *real* download numbers we need to wait for the financial reports to see whether there is a problem with the AppStore operation. If the financial reports will not show the additional downloads then Apple needs to explain to us how that is possible.
   
   
2. I received an email that our new app is Ready for Sale. After login into the AppStore it shows the app still under Review. (Remark: It is now set to ready for sale. More than 2 hrs after I received the email from Apple sayig it was ready. But the app is still not in iTunes.)
   
   
3. Another app is shown as rejected. However, there is so far no email from Apple telling us that it was rejected or the reason why the app was rejected.
   
   
4. I updated some screen shots for an application several days back but in iTunes it shows something different.
   I Uploaded three images and all three are different. However in iTunes it shows only two different images and one is shown twice. Not happy with that because our customers might think we are idiots putting the same screen in there twice.

iPhone and Android can tell when you arrive

Location apps that tell people "when" you arrive not just where you are.

When we tell friends in non-technical terms what we are doing at jTribe we usually say something like:

" We make applications that allow your partner to know when you are coming home".

The response we then get is:

" That means I don't have to call or message constantly where I am and what my ETA would be? I could use that."

jTribe has finished the first application that solves the problem of "personal ETA notification" (Has anyone a better term for that?).

The application is called "Going Home" and it is based on the problem many families have: Someone is waiting at home and would like to know when you arrive.

The underlying User Intention

#1: I want to meet someone at their place.
#2: I want to let them know how long before I arrive.

The 4 Ingredients
To solve the problem of letting someone automatically know when you are going to arrive we need four ingredients:

1. Destination - of the place we want to go (e.g. home)
2. Contact - details of the person waiting for us at the destination
   (e.g my partner waiting at home)
3. Current Locations - where we currently are
4. Notification - let them know
   

Hey, the iPhone or Android G1 is providing exactly what we need. It has an Address Book with contacts. The contact often have an address which we could use as destination. The GPS in iPhone or Android phone provides current location. Great, almost done.

Stop, we still need a Solution for Notifications
TXT/SMS would be good for that because it a great mean to notify people instantly. Email would work too but does not have the instant characteristics of TXT/SMS. We settled for a combination of Email and TXT/SMS. At the start of the trip an Email is used to send a shared map link to the person who is waiting. TXT/SMS messaging is used to notify the person when you close to their place.

Unfortunately, the iPhone does not let you send TXT/SMS programmatically. Yes, it's true Apple still hasn't included it in their last iPhone 2.2 update. We thought there is no point waiting until Apple may or may not include an SMS API. So we had to integrate with a TXT/SMS gateway to send messages on behalf o the user. The issue with that is that these gateways are not free and someone has to pay for each SMS that gets sent. But without SMS the whole solution would be pretty much pointless. On the Android phone it would be possible to let the phone send SMS.

The Frontend
The primary frontend for the person that is travelling is either the iPhone (Android G1 is coming soon). As long as the iPhone application is running in the foreground it can constantly submit the current location to the backend server.

SMS will not be sent from the iPhone but from the backend server.

The person who is waiting has a different frontend. They receive an email with the shared trip map. They can then use the web browser to live-track the traveling person.
They will also receive an SMS when the traveling person is close enough.

The Backend
One key component of the solution is our FirePin platform. We use it as a backend to store all the user's locations so it can be shared with the person waiting. It also allows that person to track progress of your trip in real-time. (Sample of a shared trip)

FirePin Recap: The FirePin platform that allows recording and tracking of locations via the iPhone and Android G1 (and Symbian S60 soon). Basically, FirePin is a generic platform for location tracking and trip history. Because people store quite a number of trips on our FirePin servers we could almost call FirePin "personal GEO location hosting". (Rem: currently we got almost 2 million GEO locations in the FirePin database).

With the limitation of the iPhone we decided to extend the backend to include Notification services. Based on the locations that are constantly submitted to the FirePin server the service calculates the remaining distance to the destination. When a distance is close enough it will send out the TXT/SMS message to the person that is waiting.

Did I mention that the backend is written in Ruby On Rails.

The Integration
Integration between the iPhone and the Ruby On Rails backend is done via JSON and REST. Check out http://jtribe.blogspot.com/2008/11/json-and-restful-web-services-on-iphone.html

The End?
No this is not the end. It's the beginning of a series of apps from jTribe. Going Home is just the start. We have many ideas of location-aware applications that are getting more micro-social .

Pushed out a new iPhone Travel and Location app

Yes, we where busy recently. Daniel got his Google phone and Armin did work on some more iPhone apps.

As a result we are happy to announce that "going home for Christmas" has been released into the AppStore today.

Here is what the app does:

Are you on a road trip and want to let someone know that you are close by.

This app can automatically send a TXT message when you are approaching home.

Driving home from work or traveling to visit your family or friends? Let them know that you are coming and where you currently are.

Allow them to see your travel progress in real-time.

Going Home for Christmas gives peace of mind to the people waiting for you.

FEATURES:

- Simply select a person from the Address Book

- A TXT/SMS message is sent when you are close enough

- An Email is sent so the person can track you live via the Internet

- Uses the location services on your iPhone (GPS)

- The distance to the persons address will be constantly calculated and once you are closer than 5 km (3 miles) a TXT message will be sent

NOTES:

TXT sending is included in the price for this application. No additional costs for TXT/SMS will be charged by your phone provider.

This application relies on the information in your Address Book. It uses the home address of the person you choose to visit. If they have a mobile number it will use it to send them a notification TXT/SMS message.