fail - Mike Cohen

Links for 2011-03-17 through 2011-03-27

March 27, 2011 by Mike Cohen

Links for 2011-03-17 through 2011-03-27:

Amy Ziari – The Newsroom – PR Case Study: Where Color Went Wrong – By now, you may have heard of the little app that could(n't), Color. Funded to the tune of $41M pre-launch, co-founded by a prestigious Silicon Valley entprepreneur and already brimming with 27 employees, you'd expect the product to be decent if not extraordinary.
And you'd be wrong.
The Art Of The Reveal –
Haiti and Louisiana – an interesting piece about the link between Haiti and Louisiana
Stop Wasting Promo Codes! | BitWit.ca – Every time a developer updates or releases an app, Apple gives them 50 small marketing opportunities. These opportunities come in the form of promotional codes to a free copy of your product. Not everyone needs to use their codes (at least not all of them), but if you are small and are looking for more attention you do. Wasted promo codes are wasted opportunities if you are struggling with visibility. Everyday I see developers wasting promo codes in all sorts of ways.
TE-snippets | Because expanding text is what the web is all aboutTE-snippets | Because expanding text is what the web is all about –

Posted by Postilicious

Check your app release dates!

November 1, 2009 by Mike Cohen

When I checked my app store stats for the first day, I noticed that the only PicSlide sales were from my blog & promo codes I gave out. On further investigation, I discovered that it suffered the same fate Craig Hockenberry described here: the release date was set to Sept. 24, which is the day I submitted it, rather than yesterday, when it was approved. As a result, it wasn’t listed as a new application.

I went into iTunes Connect and changed the availability date to tomorrow, which will probably cause it to disappear until then, and hopefully be listed as a new application. If you want it now, leave me a comment to get a promo code.

Have iPhone apps reached a new low?

October 26, 2009 by Mike Cohen

Today I received the following press release:

Venice, Italy, 26 October 2009. MobFarm announces availability in few days of PUSH my Fart on Apple App Store.

PUSH my Fart is a revolutionary joke application for iPhone and iPod touch. Using Apple Push Notifications you can let fart your friends devices from anywhere in the world. It’s priced 0.99$ (Tier 1) and will be available in few days worldwide.

PUSH my Fart uses the latest sdk api to share contacts with friends like Bluetooth, e-mail and obviously Push Notifications, it integrates with Facebook for unique user experience.

Here a PUSH my Fart brief description.

Fart on your friends wherever they are, whenever you like with PUSH my Fart!

Make their iPhone or iPod touch ring with a loud, rolling fart when they are enjoying a beer at the pub or while in a staff meeting!

Or just at the bus stop or even in the elevator!

Thanks to the most advanced technologies, Apple’s Push Notification Service and Facebook integration, PUSH my Fart allows you to make jokes with extreme simplicity, but surefire success.

Just select you friend, choose the fart and… FART!

Features:

– Make your friends fart with just a tap!

– Choose between 30 different high quality farts to send or play directly on your device.

– Add friends with Bluetooth or trade contacts through E-mail

– Find even more friends from around the world with Facebook Connect

– Send farts thanks to Apple’s Push Notification Service

– Send farts from the Web through Facebook on http://apps.pushmyfart.com/pushmyfart/

Become a fan of PUSH my Fart on Facebook and help spread this amazing application, or just find more unwitting victims of your jokes!

Visit http://pushmyfart.com for ideas and jokes to play on your friends, you’ll find amusing videos and nice gags.

Notice:

Sending and receiving Farts, and Facebook Connect, requires Internet connection.

Bluetooth doesn’t work with iPhone 2G and iPod touch 1G.

PUSH my Fart is localized in English, Spain and Italian with many languages coming soon.

PUSH my Fart will be available on App Store

PUSH my Fart has a dedicated Website http://pushmyfart.com

There’s a support e-mail support@pushmyfart.com

PUSH my Fart is also a Facebook application with the ability to send farts to your friends’ devices directly from the web.

ICHC Crashes

September 9, 2009 by Mike Cohen

I’ve been receiving a lot of reports of ICHC crashing recently. I’ve never been able to duplicate any of those crashes myself, but from looking at the crash logs available in iTunes Connect I have an idea of what’s crashing them.

The crashes seem to occur when restoring the last viewed item results in an index out of range. We use a scraped feed (which is hosted on one of ICHC’s servers) that returns pages of 10 items each, to reduce the load time. I’ve seen a few instances where items, usually videos, are missing from the scraped feed, and in that case it returns a page of fewer than 10 items. If you happen to have been viewing item 10 the last time you quit and the next time you end up with only 9 items, it will crash.

I’ve put in some error handling for that case, but if you’re experiencing that crash, I’d like to have you test it before I submit the update, so email me your device ID and I’ll add you to my beta list. Note that Apple can take several weeks to approve an update, so even if I submit it right away, it may be a while before the update becomes available.

This will be the last update to this version. I’m doing a major rewrite for version 2.0 using Three20, the framework used in the FaceBook app. This will be a free upgrade.

Before I do much on v2.0, I’m finishing a new application I plan to release first. More about that in the next few weeks.

I Can Has Cheezburger free version STILL not approved

August 24, 2009 by Mike Cohen

I submitted version 1.5.2 of both the free & pro versions at the same time. As you know, ICHC Pro was approved a few days ago. The free version is still in review.

I got a call from Apple today asking about a contest (which I figured out was probably one of the ads). Thanks to AT&T’s wonderful wireless service, the call was dropped right in the middle. I wasn’t able to return the call and they haven’t called me back.

U CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER! (almost?)

August 21, 2009 by Mike Cohen

I just got an email from Apple saying that I Can Has Cheezburger (ad free) is ready for sale. Nothing about the free version, which I submitted at the same time.

However, as of 11PM (3 hours after I received the email), it still shows ‘removed by developer’. Something is badly screwed up. I had pulled the previous version while waiting for this update to be approved, but it changed from ‘in review’ to ‘removed by developer’ rather than being ‘available for sale’.

Unexpected additional time

August 20, 2009 by Mike Cohen

For anyone who hasn’t kept up with my saga, I got a call from Apple Monday telling me exactly how I should rate ICHC and what changes I should make to the description. I did everything exactly as they requested and resubmitted it.

Today, I got the following email from the app store reviewer:

Dear Mike,

Your application, I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) 1.5.1, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

App Store rating inconsistency

August 19, 2009 by Mike Cohen

I was under the impression that any application which accesses the internet must have a 17+ rating in the app store, yet Twitterrific (which even has a built-in web browser) and some other Twitter clients have a 4+ rating.

This makes no sense at all to me.

App Store Rating Inconsistency hosted by Ember

I Can Has Cheezburger removed from sale

July 31, 2009 by Mike Cohen

I have removed I Can Has Cheezburger from sale until Apple approves the updates, if they ever do. I’m tired of everyone bitching about it. I know that version has problems, most of which have been fixed more than a month ago in the update Apple still hasn’t approved.

Changing app store ratings

July 31, 2009 by Mike Cohen

I finally discovered the trick to change the ratings for ICHC, so hopefully Apple can review it now. As long as there’s a valid binary, iTunes Connect won’t let you change the ratings. If you reject the binary, you can go to edit information and change the ratings BEFORE you upload a new binary. Once you upload that new binary, the ratings are locked out again.

I set the ratings to infrequent/mild for all items, which still only results in a 12+ rating, not the 17+ rating Apple requested. We’ll see if Apple approves it now.