The release of Hello AIM! has been spectacular although not without hiccups. Most of our users are happy and they understand that this is a beta version. BTW, I expect that the application will remain in beta some time into next year. There is a lot of work remaining but overall I’m happy with the results.

Starting Monday 12/15 I’m going on vacation. It will be a working vacation however a few days here and there I will not be reachable by e-mail. I will continue to read all the e-mails and try to answer issues that are not addressed in the blog. I will also fix issues and add features but I will work at a slower pace.

To all the users of Pictorial, Maverick and Hello AIM: Happy Holidays!

Since the release of Maverick I have received many e-mails from users asking me if I’m working on an AOL instant messenger. Some users even promised to love me if I do it :-). In the face of so many e-mails I caved in and I decided to develop a new Android application: “Hello AIM!”.

“Hello AIM!” borrows heavily from the Maverick user interface but focuses on functionality which is specific to AIM. There are many differences between AIM and Google Talk IM protocols and for many reasons it did not make sense to add AIM support to Maverick. This is not a plain vanilla AIM client. The application has a host of features which hopefully you will find easy to use.

I’m currently beta testing the software with the help of a couple of buddies from Google. I’ll use this opportunity to thank Jason and Justin for their support.

The software is almost ready for release. I’m doing everything I can to complete the testing and to release the public beta. The Android Market is in dire need of a good AIM messenger. This is not my opinion rather the opinions of about one hundred users that wrote to me on the subject. Also, the star ratings of the AIM applications in the Android Market speak for themselves.

Stay tuned for the release announcement of “Hello AIM!”.

From the maker of Maverick comes a new functional Android application: Pictorial, a Picasa photo manager.

It’s been a busy October. I worked feverishly to get Pictorial ready for public release. Not only did I had to polish and test the app but I had to revamp the website as well. I hope you will find the new version of the website functional. The major work for the website was to switch to the use of WordPress for both support and the company blog. WordPress is an amazing blogging platform, I strongly recommend it!

The idea for Pictorial came to me shortly after Maverick was completed. Given the fact that Maverick uses Picasa to store photos sent by the IM client it was obvious to me that Pictorial would be a great companion application for Maverick. There just wasn’t any way to manage the photos you sent with Maverick. This was not a flaw of Maverick, I always thought that Maverick’s UI would had been overwhelmed by a photo managing feature, so I decided to let users manage their Picasa photos online. Pictorial became my new focus overnight … literally. I get very excited when I start work on a new app. There is so much excitement about designing software from ground zero. You have to think of all the technical issues and design a functional and beautiful user interface. The WordPress authors say:

Code is poetry.

I will paraphrase that and say:

Coding is an artistic expression.

It may sound like an exaggeration but I strongly believe that. Sometimes when I start work on an app I see myself in front on an empty canvas. I see things in my head much the same way a painter visualizes it’s work. I’m no Michelangelo, I only see a back and white sketch at first but with every additional day the details start to emerge. The shapes come alive in color and harmony. I just can wait to see how it turns out even though I’m the one working on it. Once the work is complete my position changes instantly. I’m an art critic all of the sudden. In the unintelligible language only an art critic can use I express my satisfaction with the outstanding features and the occasional word wiping with not so great aspects of the app. Coding is better than painting: there’s always a next version of the same app.
I’m happy with the feature set of 1.0. I considered the 1.0 feature set the basic one. The app has been released for a couple of hours and I’m already getting great feedback from users. I’ll wait a week to collect users feedback and to statistically prioritize features for the next version.
I’d like to thank to all the users who have helped me test the application. Thanks for the encouragement and for the great input!

It’s been a busy few months. After the Android Challenge ended I spent quite a bit of time preparing Maverick for the public release. Some cool features had to be placed on hold and others had to get more of my attention. After the Google Hackathon I managed to hand over to Google the first public version. This version was uploaded into the Android Market for Google’s internal consumption. Those were exciting days. I got quite a few emails from the first batch of users. Some good feedback few good questions but nothing can prepare you for the public opinion… and that came on Oct. 22nd when T-Mobile started selling the much anticipated G1.

The end user feedback for Maverick has been overall very positive. The number one difficulty that users encountered is the enablement of the Picasa account. First, I thought that users don’t understand something that is quite simple. After receiving quite a few emails on the subject I decided to do something about it. I released version 1.1 which clearly explains that users do not need to download the Picasa desktop application, rather all they need to simply log into ‘Picasa Web Albums’ online once. In all fairness, Google designed the Picasa home page to promote the download of the Picasa desktop application hence making the link to ‘Picasa Web Albums’ less obvious. Since that release I had far less inquiries on the subject.

Another very popular request has been support for AIM. Maverick got many low star ratings because it does not support the AIM protocol. For crying out loud, please rate an application for what it is not for what it is not! AIM is not a missing feature it’s a different protocol all together. Few clever users even pointed out that it should be easy because the web version of GoogleTalk supports AIM. AIM and GoogleTalk remain incompatible. The web version of GoogleTalk appears to be a dual head IM AJAX client. For the tech reader I’ll just mention that AOL had developed an XMPP gateway which has lately been abandoned. The desktop version of GoogleTalk (non AJAX) does not support AIM. Will I ever develop an AIM version? I’ll think about it.

Version 1.2 and 1.3 brought a few new minor features. Version 1.4 fixes a problem related to 8GB SD cards. I’m proud to say that Maverick is very stable and continues to get good reviews from users.

To further improve the interaction with Maverick users the web site has now a support page. Users can post suggestions and point out new problems. Thanks to all the users that had already provided feedback. Most of the feedback was already incorporated in version 1.3. I’m looking forward to hear from you!