GPS Prasna and the phones
I probably mentioned GPS Prasna about a week premature. Somehow on Google's Android product page I missed the "publish" button that was rather tucked out of the way. I noticed it a week later after no week of downloads and the "draft" became published. A day later there was over 200 downloads. Now there are over 600. Now currently I don't have a G1 phone. After over 10 years of PDA development I learned it was unreasonable to own every PDA that was out there. Besides there are other Android phones coming on the market that I might prefer to own. However, even if you are a developer you can't see the Android Market unless you have the phone. The only way to somewhat see the market (and comments) is to go to http://www.cyrket.com which copies the info from Android Market. I was amused as a number of people who downloaded GPS Prasna had no idea what Prasna means nor Indian Astrology. I added some more info on special mobile version of my website especially emphasizing that if you don't know Indian astrology you probably won't find the program very useful.
One issue that has popped up on the Android developer forum is data usage. The T-Mobile G1 is sold with an "unlimited" data plan. But from other carriers in other countries may actually have "limited" data access or charge a fee per kilobytes of access. This might be important if someone is using GPS Prasna in an area where they'll get charged for the extra data access. GPS Prasna makes it clear GPS location services have to be turned on for its use. On some of the programs in development I allow coordinates to be found by using Google Maps but the user may have to be aware of the possible hidden cost unless they have "unlimited" data access.
Another thing about many of these new phones like the G1 is they don't have a keyboard on the panel. Most phones like the Samsung Instinct pop up a virtual keyboard whenever you need to type in something. The new Android OS will provide a virtual keyboard too but for the time being the only keyboard access is in landscape mode with the slide out QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately the landscape height on tiny phone screens does not lend itself much to astrology programs where you need to cram a lot of information on the screen. I have an alpha version of Quick Jyotish which runs on the Android phone very much like the Pocket PC version which will work in both landscape and portrait modes. However in the more useful portrait display currently there is no way to enter data. So I may wait to release that version until the newer OS is available with the virtual keyboard.
One issue that has popped up on the Android developer forum is data usage. The T-Mobile G1 is sold with an "unlimited" data plan. But from other carriers in other countries may actually have "limited" data access or charge a fee per kilobytes of access. This might be important if someone is using GPS Prasna in an area where they'll get charged for the extra data access. GPS Prasna makes it clear GPS location services have to be turned on for its use. On some of the programs in development I allow coordinates to be found by using Google Maps but the user may have to be aware of the possible hidden cost unless they have "unlimited" data access.
Another thing about many of these new phones like the G1 is they don't have a keyboard on the panel. Most phones like the Samsung Instinct pop up a virtual keyboard whenever you need to type in something. The new Android OS will provide a virtual keyboard too but for the time being the only keyboard access is in landscape mode with the slide out QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately the landscape height on tiny phone screens does not lend itself much to astrology programs where you need to cram a lot of information on the screen. I have an alpha version of Quick Jyotish which runs on the Android phone very much like the Pocket PC version which will work in both landscape and portrait modes. However in the more useful portrait display currently there is no way to enter data. So I may wait to release that version until the newer OS is available with the virtual keyboard.
Hi Brian, Thanks for the update. I'm lucky, cuz my contract w/TMobile doesn't expire till Sept--hopefully you'll have something ready for the IPhone by that time!
Just a quick question: I got this email twice: one at 3:18 and one at 3:28. Do you know why I got 2?
Again, thanks for all your good work.
Sincerely,
Laurie
If the email was because of the new post that was because it didn't show up and I deleted then reposted it. The server seemed to be having problems.
Dear Brian, Being so non-tech as I am, I did not understand the 1st paragraph--have now read it several times over many days and maybe I somewhat get it. Is it talking about you the developer "publishing" or presenting on the market a new free software? Then when you mentioned 100's of downloads you weren't talking about your computer getting them but about people getting your software--is that correct?
Anuyway, the other info about GPS was interesting but as I don't have one of these phones yet, I can't comment on any of it.
Also I could finally understand what you meant about landscape vs portrait and virtual vs qwerty keyboard. I personally found the virtual keyboard on IPhone very hard to use compared to my pda. Went way too slow for me (cuz I am a very fast typist) and wasn't very accurate if you tried to go fast--in other words not like a "REAL" keyboard.
So I am still thinking of getting a Blackberry or other phone that has a pull out keyboard but I haven't tried them and they are so tiny they may also not lend themselves to people like me who are used to typing fast with both hands as on a laptop or full sized computer. Course I couldn't use 2 hands with my pda but at least you could use the stylus on the screen and write what you wanted fast--do none of the phone allow that--or is the virtual keyboard supposed to take the place of that (since my pda screen is now "dying" from overuse of the stylus)?
This all probably has nothing to do with your blog--just my decision-making process re buying an IPhone-vs Android vs Palm phone vs Blackberry.
Thanks for listening!
Namaste,
Laurie
What I was saying was that when I announced here the program was available on the Android Market it wasn't. It didn't actually appear until last week. I assumed no jyotishis had a T-Mobile G1 yet. Just like the Palm I had lots of downloads from PalmGear back in 1998 when I launched Jyotish To Go as people were hungry for any Palm software. And of course many didn't understand it either.
As for GPS, you do prasna? You know that for prasna you need the coordinates of where you are to do a prasna chart. New phones these days can provide those coordinates. GPS Prasna does this automatically if the user has GPS turned on (you can turn it on and off in the phone settings). I did want to warn people if they have a package with limited data access using GPS might cause them additional data fees (just like some packages charge additional fees for text messages). The package that T-Mobile sells with the G1 has unlimited data access. I am doing a little update to GPS Prasna that will let it run if GPS is turned off but with a warning that the latitude and longitude are demo only. There will also be a warning they could occur additional data fees (since other companies are starting to offer Android phones). And of course GPS Prasna is just a basic chart and some astrologers will want more. But there are many schools of jyotish that just use a basic chart of the moment for prasna.
The lack of a "virtual" keyboard has been a big drawback on Android phones. But as I mentioned the new OS has a virtual keyboard so I've decided to go ahead and release the first version of Quick Jyotish where you type in the data rather than having a bunch of clunkly widgets which makes entry more tedious than text entry. Most of that entry will be numbers which is pretty easy. And I am planning to add a button for Google Maps for coordinates. This is just a free light program for beginners and casual use. A full program is also in the works.
Yes, a lot of Google information on Android is rather geeky and aimed more toward developers. However an article on yesterday's CNET News.com says a research company feels that Android phones may outstrip the iPhones by 2012. One very compelling reason is only one company, Apple, sells the iPhone and there will be many companies offering Android phones. To me Android looks like a better inverstment of my time than the iPhone. However Apple has quite a following so I wouldn't rule out an iPhone version.
Here's a picture of the Google Maps screen I will be using:
That's great, I never thought about GPS Prasna and the phones like that before.
Wow, I never knew that GPS Prasna and the phones. That's pretty interesting...