[android-developers] Screebl 3.0 Beta Test
Looking for some brave souls to test a ground-up rewrite of Screebl. The engine is mostly there, but things aren't pretty yet. If you're interested, I've published to the market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.keyes.screebl.beta. Still wish Google provided a more integrated beta program for developers so that this could be managed from the developer console. Anyway, let me know how things work out. Thanks in advance. dk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Just in section
I blogged about this http://bit.ly/qfo5Ab topic a few days ago, and then saw this thread. I recently released a new project that I've been dinking around with for a few months while learning something about gaming, and was surprised to see how much marketing an app has changed since the last time I went through the exercise. The days of gaming the market are gone, IMO. Google is getting serious about making money with the market, and they are funneling devs into their advertising programs as a means of getting the word out. I think the idea of spending money to market an app is going to be hard for part-time devs to swallow. I also think that Google has made or is in the process of making a move AWAY from paid apps towards advertising in apps. The main problem that I see with advertising as a primary source of revenue is that it simply doesn't work for many types of apps. Even when it does, it's my opinion that advertising in the context of mobile is done horribly wrong. It sucks. It's cumbersome, clumsy, and quite frankly could be done so much better. And yes, I have been looking long and hard at how to do things better. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Help: BOOT_COMPLETED has started acting weird in 2.3+
I'm looking for ideas on this one, as I've been unable to reproduce no matter how hard I try in any of my local evironements. As users are getting upgraded to 2.3+, a small but significant number are reporting that my app (Screebl) is failing to start on phone reboot. The app has had a receiver for BOOT_COMPLETED for a long time now, and it seems to be something new to 2.3 that is causing it to fail for some users. What I know: - The app does not allow users to move to SD, so that isn't the problem. - It works for the majority of users. - It happens on stock and custom roms. My best working theory is that the new smart battery saver and optimization features in 2.3 are deciding the receiver is taking too long to boot and throttling it somehow, but I haven't been able to validate this. If this is indeed the problem, is there any way to deal with the startup of a service in a more friendly way? The service is threaded properly, and notifications are registered to make the service less likely to be killed. The onStart method is reading preferences, registering to receive about a half-dozen broadcast events (screen on/off, dock events, etc.), and then starting a thread. That's about it. Any ideas on how I can nail this one down? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Scaling text up to be relative to screen pixels
Struggling with the same thing. Anyone find answers besides just make lots and lots of layouts based on resolution? On May 26, 9:14 pm, Robert Green rbgrn@gmail.com wrote: Not possible, eh? On May 26, 1:03 pm, Robert Green rbgrn@gmail.com wrote: I'm a long time Android developer (Been here since pre 1.0). My focus is on games, so I don't care too much about the apps side of things. Generally I want a game to just consume the screen and everything to just scale up as a percentage (a button should always be 50% of the screen, etc). I even want that on 10 tablets and whatever size future devices, because without scaling up, I have no other content so there will just be more blank space and a less predictable UI. I can work it out for buttons and such but how do I scale up text on my menus? Saying, use a surfaceview is awesome for the game itself but all my legacy games have multiple activities for menus and use standard Android UI components. They worked great on all screens before honeycomb/tablets, which are quickly becoming a major headache for me. Usually I just want 5 or so buttons laid out linearly vertically either in the center or on the right side of the screen (portrait/ landscape) and I want the text on the buttons to scale up with the screen so it looks exactly the same at 1280x800 vs 480x320. Am I missing something or is this not possible to do without adding additional layouts for larger screens (and potentially making even more layouts for even bigger screens later, etc)? Best practices to achieve this, anyone? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Bluetooth is driving me nuts -- Galaxy tab lockups and pairing stupidity
I think I've come up with a pretty good interim solution (until nfc) to the adhoc comm issue, using qr codes and bt spp. It looks like it's going to require lots of fine-tuning for individual devices though, which just sucks. I've tried a number of different approaches, including bonjour over wifi, which worked surprisingly well, but the dependence on wifi was just a bit too goofy, so the only choice left is bt. making the experience truly seamless for my users has been surprisingly difficult -- this use case is not well thought out at all by Google, particularly how pairing works. I'm hoping for some guidance from someone there on how to make that work well, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm going to post the code for connecting two peers via bt spp comm using qr codes if I can get it to work well enough. If it all comes together it will be a nice stop-gap until nfc is everywhere, which will be a while... On May 27, 3:32 am, Zsolt Vasvari zvasv...@gmail.com wrote: I've never owned a device where Bluetooth just works every time. The closest that one came to has been my Garmin GPS. I do hope NFC will make it easier to do adhoc peer-to-peer communications. On May 27, 9:58 am, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: I'm trying to use bluetooth SPP to establish a socket connection between two Android devices. There are a few things that are really driving me crazy in this effort. First, the Galaxy Tab seems to just be broken when it comes to SPP. I can establish the connection just fine, but after a few minutes, and most notably whenever the app on the Tab on which the SPP server socket was established is killed, the tablet effectively locks up, requiring a hard reboot (hold down the power for 7 seconds to reboot). I've seen others mentioning the same thing in various places, but haven't seen any solutions. Has anyone come up with ANYTHING to solve this issue? Second, I've been struggling to find a way to make it easy for users to pair devices. I'm developing a full-screen game involving two devices, and the pairing request on 2.3 and later seems to happen (sometimes) as a notification, which doesn't do much good for a full screen game. In some cases it does seem to be displayed as a dialog (which is what I want), but it's frequently as a notification. Is anyone aware of a reliable way to initiate pairing via DIALOG automatically when a socket is opened between two unpaired devices? Finally, has anyone else noticed pairing requests happening twice? Dialog shows, user clicks pair, second dialog appears, click pair, pairing happens. Thanks for any help! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Bluetooth is driving me nuts -- Galaxy tab lockups and pairing stupidity
I'm trying to use bluetooth SPP to establish a socket connection between two Android devices. There are a few things that are really driving me crazy in this effort. First, the Galaxy Tab seems to just be broken when it comes to SPP. I can establish the connection just fine, but after a few minutes, and most notably whenever the app on the Tab on which the SPP server socket was established is killed, the tablet effectively locks up, requiring a hard reboot (hold down the power for 7 seconds to reboot). I've seen others mentioning the same thing in various places, but haven't seen any solutions. Has anyone come up with ANYTHING to solve this issue? Second, I've been struggling to find a way to make it easy for users to pair devices. I'm developing a full-screen game involving two devices, and the pairing request on 2.3 and later seems to happen (sometimes) as a notification, which doesn't do much good for a full screen game. In some cases it does seem to be displayed as a dialog (which is what I want), but it's frequently as a notification. Is anyone aware of a reliable way to initiate pairing via DIALOG automatically when a socket is opened between two unpaired devices? Finally, has anyone else noticed pairing requests happening twice? Dialog shows, user clicks pair, second dialog appears, click pair, pairing happens. Thanks for any help! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Soft Home Button Makes Games Suck on Android
My kids and I love playing games on our various iOS and Android tablets. One thing that bothers everyone though is the full-screen experience when dealing with soft or semi-soft keys on Android. I'm getting ready to deal with this issue myself in my own application development, so I though I'd solicit advice on the best way to deal with it. In a nutshell, the problem stems from accidentally hitting the home key. As one plays a game, wildly moving fingers around on the screen, commonly the home key is accidentally pressed which exits the game. If you want a good example of this, play Fruit Ninja on a Galaxy Tab. With physical buttons this isn't usually an issue (e.g., iPad, and some Android devices), but for those that have soft keys and soft menus it can be really annoying. It seems like things are getting worse with Honeycomb and beyond, too, as device manufacturers move more towards an all-soft platform. I know all of the requirements that Android places on devices (and with good reason) for keeping the home button's semantics clean. But it really does compromise the platform for many gaming scenarios in a particularly annoying way. How are other game devs dealing with this? As for what I would LIKE to see, I think a good compromise would be the ability for a game to make it harder for the home key to exit the app. For example, games could request a permission that, if granted, would require the user to hold the home key down longer, or press three times within 3 second, or something along those lines. This would still always allow a user to exit the app, but would eliminate the spurious home key presses. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Help with Hacking the State of the Union
Over the past few days I've hacked together an experiment that targets using an app to augment live television. I've described it here: http://keyeslabs.com/joomla/blogs/i-think-im-becoming-an-android/421-hacking-the-state-of-the-union It's interesting in that it takes advantage of the Android platform talking to a Google App Engine back end to solicit real-time sentiment feedback during the course of the speech. The State of the Union is a great venue to test out the concept and portions of a generic platform that I'm working on for future projects along the same lines. If there are any friendly devs that are planning on watching the State of the Union tomorrow and would not mind installing the app and then giving me feedback that would be much appreciated. The GAE portion of this has been the most challenging, really. It would be nice if GAE would start offering services specifically targeted at supporting long-lived connections with Android clients. The biggest wild card in this whole experiment is whether the GAE app will be able to withstand X number of clients polling. I thought about Cloud to Device, but I wanted a bigger user base than Android 2.2+ would provide. Anyone else doing something similar? What has your approach been? I'll post some follow up later with results of the experiment and a bit more detail on architecture. Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Did Market Ranking Change?
I know, I know. No one can actually believe that their app would drop in the rankings. I've seen these threads before. I'm not complaining, just curious. My app has held fairly stable in the Tools category over the last year, but over the course of the last few days has dropped by 25 slots (from roughly 25th to roughly 50th). Here's what I know. - My active installs have not gone down, they've actually gone up. - I recently dropped my price for a holiday sale - due to in-app promotion in the lite version of my app, I had a temporary 20x increase in purchases of pro, but that trailed off after about a week. That happened about 4 weeks ago. - The dramatic drop happened just recently (sometime near Dec 17) and seems to coincide with the deployment of the new market app Theories? Others seeing the same thing? I'm curious if the temporary kick in sales and subsequent decrease back to normal is somehow affecting a sliding average used for ranking. Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Anybody seen a slowdown in sales?
Has anyone seen resolution of this? My sales have decreased, most likely due to a dramatic drop in rankings (by about 25 slots). Sudden and dramatic would be how I would characterize the change. Seems closely correlated with the new market app. Interestingly, my active installs has been climbing during the same period. I'll be very interested to see how transparent the ranking algorithms are in some of the other markets. VCast is already rolling, and others are soon-to-be kicked off. Android Market rankings have been a roller coaster over the last year, and it's been a frustrating ride as dev. I can say one thing about these other markets for sure, they have forced Google to make changes to the market at a rate that developers and consumers never could. Whether those changes are improvements or not remains to be seen. I just LOVE competition! BTW, how many of us that saw drops in rankings are registered on the other markets? :) On Dec 17, 9:34 pm, Zsolt Vasvari zvasv...@gmail.com wrote: My sales have started to decline about 10 days ago and now they are at about 50% compared to then. Has anybody seen anything like this with their own apps? I am at a loss as I cannot see a reason for this -- my ratings are as high as ever, no 1-stars to scare people off, no hot competitor app. I did increase the price by $1 about 14 days ago, but that actually lead to more sales for a few days after, so I don't know. The $1 increase is from $7.99 to $8.99, so percentage-wise it's not that much. As I am typing, I'm going on a 5 hour without a sale lull, with only a couple of Declined authorizations. I've evem seen an 11-hour lull also which has never happened since day one. I mean it's possible that my app has run its course and most people who wanted it had bought it or a competitor's, but that's pretty hard to believe. Anybody with any insights? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Off market sales and LVL
Solving this very problem is going to be really important for Android Devs. With multiple viable markets, each with their own DRM solutions, managing the builds for a smallish Android app is getting a bit ridiculous. There's room for innovation here in the form of a layer above all of the different DRM offerings associated with the various markets. Been down that road though, and it is a thankless job worth approximately $0. :) On Nov 3, 10:20 am, Alex maroeb...@gmail.com wrote: If I sell a copy of a LVL controlled app outside of the market, is there a way I can authorize it so that it checks out as licensed? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Google TV Remote Control App
Has anyone put a packet sniffer on the remote control app provided for Android devices to interact with Google TV? I'm curious about what the protocol is. I would guess that it's ProtoBuf, or possibly XBMC (wouldn't that be nice?)... Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Piracy Breakdown by Country
. the recent ads for the Samsung i9000 Galaxy S ) - so I assume its either a perceived marketing negative, or its not worth the 'copy' space the single word would take up. * As a former president of the Australian Software Publishers Association, I know that Australians generally 'do' buy their software when its not open source - which is the main precursor to acountry having a software industry. Its a part of the 'a fair go mate' ethos here - so Indy developers are likely to do well here - and do, given an avenue to market. * I do know that there are lots of software developers in Australia 'very pissed-off' with Google in that we are unable to 'sell' our programs in the Android Market (even though our customers can buy them from elsewhere) - e.g. I've had programs sitting here collecting dust for 12 months (yes, 365 days, one planetary orbit around the Sun [the one thats 93 million miles away] - no actions, and worse, no words about actions, from Google) come Tuesday this week see:http://www.digitalfriend.org/blog/month2009-09.html- but that is unlikely to cause a software developer to pirate other software developers hard work. I certain haven't and wouldn't. That kama is reserved for Google (and then Android), not for fellow software developers. i.e. If you are unable to circulate your own work, ones enthusiasm eventually dries up and withers on the vine, such that, in my case at least, I've abandoned my daily usage of the Android phone itself, and now use an alternative smart phone from a company with a global perspective instead. * Its true that, within the list of countries wrt your downloads, Canadian, Kiwi and Swiss developers also cannot sell their apps on Google Android Market to their own customers - so if it was 'a disgruntled developer issue' re Australia, you would likely see it there too - but as I've pointed out, your figures for those countries are statistically insignificant, so that doesn't constitute evidence either way. * I'm not surprised at your figures for Japan - even major software contracts with Japanese companies usually only require a hand-shake to seal an honorable relationship. (I wonder if they even have local lawyers? ) * As much as I am surprised at your figures for Australia, I am also surprised at your figures for the US. They seem overly high to me. It makes me wonder what your software does and how much it costs wrt other apps? More so, it makes me wonder if the 'Lite' version is an overly crippled version of the 'Pro' version, such that large numbers of people are justifying an illegal download of the Pro version. I.e. Is the Lite version 'really' useful in its own right - or is it little more than 'an ad' that constitutes an expensive download to the unwitting customer/phone user? It would also be of general interest to know what the respective download numbers for your 'Lite' version are, over the same period of time? (Note: I really have no knowledge of your app - so these are just very general questions/ponderings by me, and are certainly 'not' reflections upon your apps, Lite version or Pro)… If your figures are indeed generally representative of Android apps of all sorts, then yes, your experience is indeed a worry for all - and it makes a Licensing approach totally necessary for paid apps - sad but true, given the low retail cost of phone apps in general. Cheers Steve On Aug 27, 7:15 am, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Actually, the largest *contributor* to piracy was the US, but the highest piracy rates (as a percentage of total installs) were elsewhere. For example, the US has a piracy rate (on my app) of about 70%, but Australia is more like 92%. For the countries where apps may be purchased, here's the breakdown: CountryPurchases Installs Pirated Installs Piracy Rate Australia 26 321 295 92% Austria 6 13 7 54% Canada 25 96 71 74% France 23 104 81 78% Germany 38 161 123 76% Italy 4 36 32 89% Japan 467 467 0 0% Netherlands 24 98 74 76% New Zealand 4 8 4 50% Spain 7 63 56 89% Switzerland 7 21 14 67% United Kingdom 108 335 227 68% United States 2051 6105 4054 66% The US isn't the highest, but still, it's disturbing how high the rate is in ALL of these countries where purchases could be made... Dave On Aug 26, 4:59 pm, niko20 nikolatesl...@yahoo.com wrote: Excellent analysis. Once again showing that you can't make assumptions about a market without cold hard data to back it up. Your results found that the largest piracy rates actually occurred in countries where users COULD buy apps ! I guess USA is just a bunch of cheap *sses :) -niko On Aug 26, 3:22 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com
[android-developers] Piracy Breakdown by Country
Recently did an analysis of piracy rates by country for my app. Found some very interesting tidbits that I think may be of interest to members of this group: http://bit.ly/bSaoBe Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Had time to take a look at this raw data. You can see results here if you're interested. Some things surprised me: http://bit.ly/bSaoBe. On Aug 25, 1:46 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Um there is a culture of piracy *everywhere*. :} If you are saying that because you think most people are pirating Android apps... I think your perception of things is probably pretty off. I know lots of people who have Android devices, and none of them even think of turning on the option to install from external sources, let alone go out and find pirated apps. You're correct. My perception could very well be off. Without a doubt I see VERY high piracy rates on my software in Android market (see here: bit.ly/9ZYrh7). In my paranoid mind I've always distributed this tendency towards piracy uniformly across the Android user base. I think that it's a good point that this is likely NOT true though. As many have pointed out, piracy is motivated by different things, including the inability to purchase from the market, over-priced apps, etc. These motivations don't exist everywhere or for every app, and so my guess is that there are piracy hot spots around the globe. Actually, that would be a very interesting study. I think that I may even have the raw data to do it for my own app. My app tracks coarse- grained (city-level) location information, and I think that I could extract that same information from Google Checkout records. I smell a weekend going up in smoke... :) Dave On Aug 25, 1:04 pm, Dianne Hackborn hack...@android.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 8:13 AM, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Again, my contention is that something stronger than obfuscation is needed to lock the APK down. OS-level APK encryption support in addition to license verification. I would like to see us get to the point that users must choose to root the phone (similar to Apple) in order to use pirated apps. Better yet, users must root the phone and in so doing remove the legal ability to access some desirable piece of software. Yeah there we are. As far as I can see, the next step in preventing piracy is to not allow users to install apps outside of Market at all. We're not going to do that. If there are other suggestions that will actually make things harder without doing that, I would certainly like to hear them. At this point people need to modify apps; once they are doing that, there aren't too many more things to do except make it harder to remove the illegal use check code out of the app. I realize that it's easy for me to rant on about what I want, and very difficult for Google to strike the right balance between open and lucrative. My fear at this point is that we're establishing a culture of piracy on Android that is going to be difficult to turn around. Um there is a culture of piracy *everywhere*. :} If you are saying that because you think most people are pirating Android apps... I think your perception of things is probably pretty off. I know lots of people who have Android devices, and none of them even think of turning on the option to install from external sources, let alone go out and find pirated apps. -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer hack...@android.com Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Piracy Breakdown by Country
Actually, the largest *contributor* to piracy was the US, but the highest piracy rates (as a percentage of total installs) were elsewhere. For example, the US has a piracy rate (on my app) of about 70%, but Australia is more like 92%. For the countries where apps may be purchased, here's the breakdown: Country Purchases InstallsPirated InstallsPiracy Rate Australia 26 321 295 92% Austria 6 13 7 54% Canada 25 96 71 74% France 23 104 81 78% Germany 38 161 123 76% Italy 4 36 32 89% Japan 467 467 0 0% Netherlands 24 98 74 76% New Zealand 4 8 4 50% Spain 7 63 56 89% Switzerland 7 21 14 67% United Kingdom 108 335 227 68% United States 20516105405466% The US isn't the highest, but still, it's disturbing how high the rate is in ALL of these countries where purchases could be made... Dave On Aug 26, 4:59 pm, niko20 nikolatesl...@yahoo.com wrote: Excellent analysis. Once again showing that you can't make assumptions about a market without cold hard data to back it up. Your results found that the largest piracy rates actually occurred in countries where users COULD buy apps ! I guess USA is just a bunch of cheap *sses :) -niko On Aug 26, 3:22 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Recently did an analysis of piracy rates by country for my app. Found some very interesting tidbits that I think may be of interest to members of this group: http://bit.ly/bSaoBe Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
I don't completely buy the assertion that PR wasn't part of the equation in designing, announcing, blogging, and writing press releases about LVL. Piracy is one of the biggest thorns in the side of Android at the moment. If Google doesn't recognize that as both a technical AND a PR problem, then the platform is in for a very bumpy ride from an application developer's perspective. Regardless of whether LVL was intended to be presented as the solution to piracy, that's how it came off. That was my point in my original prediction -- we're all setting ourselves up for the perception of failure. And, here we are... On Aug 25, 3:40 am, Dianne Hackborn hack...@android.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:20 PM, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: LVL is flawed in the same ways that AAL (and other similar approaches) is flawed. Google could do better, and I hope that they will. Obfuscation isn't really going to do much to improve the situation. What is really needed is O/S-level and app store support for signing apps (in real time) based on user credentials, application authors, and phone characteristics. The dependence on the android market app is a single point of failure that is too easy to search for and find regardless of how obfuscated your code is. I'm curious, how do you see this helping much? We are already to the point of people having to modify an app to pirate it. Once you do that, you need to strip the credentials off anyway and sign it with your own cert. From a technical standpoint, LVL will help to some degree, but I've got to think that in terms of P.R., Google did themselves more harm than good here. LVL wasn't done for PR, but to have a better solution to forward locking, and which eliminates many of the problems of forward locking that have been causing trouble for a long time. -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer hack...@android.com Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
All copy protection systems have two parts - something they bind to, and the obfuscation that makes it harder to rip that binding out. This is basically correct, if you assume that things like encryption are bundled under the umbrella of obfuscation. So there are obviously two ways copy protection schemes get cracked. One is that the binding is removed - the obfuscation wasn't good enough. That's what was being done in the recently published tutorial. In that case there was no obfuscation at all! This isn't true. If you look back at the article on AndroidPolice proguard was used on at least one of the applications. Furthermore, my contention has been all along that code obfuscation is not going to protect apps all that well. Manual LVL modification might be able to make it difficult for auto-crack scripts to remove LVL without human intervention, but I think that regular old obfuscation is going to not be very effective. Obfuscation is the only thing that will improve this situation! The two pronged attack is split down the middle - LVL makes obfuscation your problem and preventing illegitimate licenses being vended Googles problem. Again, my contention is that something stronger than obfuscation is needed to lock the APK down. OS-level APK encryption support in addition to license verification. I would like to see us get to the point that users must choose to root the phone (similar to Apple) in order to use pirated apps. Better yet, users must root the phone and in so doing remove the legal ability to access some desirable piece of software. I realize that it's easy for me to rant on about what I want, and very difficult for Google to strike the right balance between open and lucrative. My fear at this point is that we're establishing a culture of piracy on Android that is going to be difficult to turn around. Dave On Aug 25, 8:16 am, Mike Hearn mh.in.engl...@gmail.com wrote: LVL is flawed in the same ways that AAL (and other similar approaches) is flawed. Google could do better, and I hope that they will. I think it's wrong to focus on what Google could or could not do here. Did you read my reply to your original mail? If so what did you think of it? All copy protection systems have two parts - something they bind to, and the obfuscation that makes it harder to rip that binding out. Most video games bind to a genuine DVD. Some games, like those distributed via Xbox Live Arcade, bind to licensing data from an online market, which is closer to what Android apps are doing. So there are obviously two ways copy protection schemes get cracked. One is that the binding is removed - the obfuscation wasn't good enough. That's what was being done in the recently published tutorial. In that case there was no obfuscation at all! Another way is that the thing the program binds to is swapped out for a duplicate, eg in the PC world DVD emulation drivers are often used. For Android this approach means getting a valid license the app accepts in some non- valid manner. Obfuscation isn't really going to do much to improve the situation. Obfuscation is the only thing that will improve this situation! The two pronged attack is split down the middle - LVL makes obfuscation your problem and preventing illegitimate licenses being vended Googles problem. Fortunately there's lots of room for creative people to create interesting obfuscations, either custom for their own product or as a third party developer who sells copy protection solutions. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Sorry if things are coming off that way Dianne. I'm passionate about this topic (obviously), but I only admire and respect you (in particular) and the Android team in general. You've saved my butt more than once. :) I'm invested here. I'm all in on Android and success of the platform matters to me. I want you to succeed just as much as I'm assuming you want developers to succeed. On Aug 25, 1:05 pm, Dianne Hackborn hack...@android.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 5:25 AM, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: I don't completely buy the assertion that PR wasn't part of the equation in designing, announcing, blogging, and writing press releases about LVL. Piracy is one of the biggest thorns in the side of Android at the moment. If Google doesn't recognize that as both a technical AND a PR problem, then the platform is in for a very bumpy ride from an application developer's perspective. I think I'll bow out of this discussion. It looks like you are trying to read the worst in what I write, so I don't think there is much more useful we can discuss here. -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer hack...@android.com Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Yeah there we are. As far as I can see, the next step in preventing piracy is to not allow users to install apps outside of Market at all. We're not going to do that. That's not what I was picturing. Isn't there some way that we could do both? Apps downloaded from market could be encrypted and only decrypted by the OS when used (in real time, never decrypted and left as an open APK on the device). I guess what I'm looking for is the market to encrypt and sign an APK in real time for a particular user/ phone when downloaded. Each download would result in different bytes for each user/phone This doesn't necessarily preclude the installation of unencrypted apps does it? I totally agree that we need app distribution capabilities outside the context of Android Market -- it's a necessity for an open platform. In a nutshell, what I'm hoping LVL can grow into is a system that packages license verification in a way that is really really hard to remove. It seems like we've got half of that equation nicely under way with LVL in its current form. Dave On Aug 25, 1:04 pm, Dianne Hackborn hack...@android.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 8:13 AM, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Again, my contention is that something stronger than obfuscation is needed to lock the APK down. OS-level APK encryption support in addition to license verification. I would like to see us get to the point that users must choose to root the phone (similar to Apple) in order to use pirated apps. Better yet, users must root the phone and in so doing remove the legal ability to access some desirable piece of software. Yeah there we are. As far as I can see, the next step in preventing piracy is to not allow users to install apps outside of Market at all. We're not going to do that. If there are other suggestions that will actually make things harder without doing that, I would certainly like to hear them. At this point people need to modify apps; once they are doing that, there aren't too many more things to do except make it harder to remove the illegal use check code out of the app. I realize that it's easy for me to rant on about what I want, and very difficult for Google to strike the right balance between open and lucrative. My fear at this point is that we're establishing a culture of piracy on Android that is going to be difficult to turn around. Um there is a culture of piracy *everywhere*. :} If you are saying that because you think most people are pirating Android apps... I think your perception of things is probably pretty off. I know lots of people who have Android devices, and none of them even think of turning on the option to install from external sources, let alone go out and find pirated apps. -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer hack...@android.com Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Um there is a culture of piracy *everywhere*. :} If you are saying that because you think most people are pirating Android apps... I think your perception of things is probably pretty off. I know lots of people who have Android devices, and none of them even think of turning on the option to install from external sources, let alone go out and find pirated apps. You're correct. My perception could very well be off. Without a doubt I see VERY high piracy rates on my software in Android market (see here: bit.ly/9ZYrh7). In my paranoid mind I've always distributed this tendency towards piracy uniformly across the Android user base. I think that it's a good point that this is likely NOT true though. As many have pointed out, piracy is motivated by different things, including the inability to purchase from the market, over-priced apps, etc. These motivations don't exist everywhere or for every app, and so my guess is that there are piracy hot spots around the globe. Actually, that would be a very interesting study. I think that I may even have the raw data to do it for my own app. My app tracks coarse- grained (city-level) location information, and I think that I could extract that same information from Google Checkout records. I smell a weekend going up in smoke... :) Dave On Aug 25, 1:04 pm, Dianne Hackborn hack...@android.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 8:13 AM, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Again, my contention is that something stronger than obfuscation is needed to lock the APK down. OS-level APK encryption support in addition to license verification. I would like to see us get to the point that users must choose to root the phone (similar to Apple) in order to use pirated apps. Better yet, users must root the phone and in so doing remove the legal ability to access some desirable piece of software. Yeah there we are. As far as I can see, the next step in preventing piracy is to not allow users to install apps outside of Market at all. We're not going to do that. If there are other suggestions that will actually make things harder without doing that, I would certainly like to hear them. At this point people need to modify apps; once they are doing that, there aren't too many more things to do except make it harder to remove the illegal use check code out of the app. I realize that it's easy for me to rant on about what I want, and very difficult for Google to strike the right balance between open and lucrative. My fear at this point is that we're establishing a culture of piracy on Android that is going to be difficult to turn around. Um there is a culture of piracy *everywhere*. :} If you are saying that because you think most people are pirating Android apps... I think your perception of things is probably pretty off. I know lots of people who have Android devices, and none of them even think of turning on the option to install from external sources, let alone go out and find pirated apps. -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer hack...@android.com Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Licensing server, app cracked.
That is code from the Ant task generated by the Android tooling. I
added a new target to do obfuscation, and called it towards the end of
the build process. What you see here is the contents of my obfuscate
target.
On Aug 25, 5:38 am, sblantipodi perini.dav...@dpsoftware.org wrote:
Thanks to Trevor for his reply, I'm really impatient to see this new
doc.
To you keyeslabs, I'm actually using netbeans,
what is the code you posted? An addition to build.xml for eclipse or
Android SDK project?
On Aug 25, 4:27 am, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote:
If you can't wait, here's something to get you started that worked for
me. It's what I used to obfuscate AAL, which was a library not an
Android App, and thus a bit simpler.
You'll need to adjust what you keep (e.g., don't obfuscate) so that
you don't shred classes that are referenced by your manifest, or
you'll have to update your manifest after the fact.
taskdef resource=proguard/ant/task.properties
classpath=/adev/proguard4.4/lib/proguard.jar /
proguard
-libraryjars ${android-jar}
-injars ${build-location}/license.jar
-outjars ${build-location}/license-rel.jar
-dontpreverify
-dontoptimize
-dontshrink
-dontusemixedcaseclassnames
-repackageclasses ''
-allowaccessmodification
-optimizationpasses 1
-verbose
-keep public class com.keyes.license.LicenseManager {
public *;
}
-keep public class com.keyes.license.CheckLicenseCallback {
public *;
}
-keep public class com.keyes.license.LicenseException {
public *;
}
/proguard
Dave
On Aug 24, 6:53 pm, sblantipodi perini.dav...@dpsoftware.org wrote:
As
title,http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/08/licensing-server-news
where is the guide to obfuscate our code?
--
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[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Isn't that only because the APK gets decrypted and written to disk as opposed to only being done in transient memory as the application is launched? There's an application startup overhead obviously to decrypting the APK on-the-fly, but seems like a much higher bar than just cp /data/app/foo.apk... Dave On Aug 25, 1:50 pm, Michael MacDonald googlec...@antlersoft.com wrote: Encrypting the .apk is like forward-locking; it is easily defeated on rooted phones. On 08/25/10 13:33, keyeslabs wrote: That's not what I was picturing. Isn't there some way that we could do both? Apps downloaded from market could be encrypted and only decrypted by the OS when used (in real time, never decrypted and left as an open APK on the device). I guess what I'm looking for is the market to encrypt and sign an APK in real time for a particular user/ phone when downloaded. Each download would result in different bytes for each user/phone This doesn't necessarily preclude the installation of unencrypted apps does it? I totally agree that we need app distribution capabilities outside the context of Android Market -- it's a necessity for an open platform. In a nutshell, what I'm hoping LVL can grow into is a system that packages license verification in a way that is really really hard to remove. It seems like we've got half of that equation nicely under way with LVL in its current form. Dave -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Seems like I was unfortunately very right on this prediction. Just off by a few days :). LVL is flawed in the same ways that AAL (and other similar approaches) is flawed. Google could do better, and I hope that they will. Obfuscation isn't really going to do much to improve the situation. What is really needed is O/S-level and app store support for signing apps (in real time) based on user credentials, application authors, and phone characteristics. The dependence on the android market app is a single point of failure that is too easy to search for and find regardless of how obfuscated your code is. From a technical standpoint, LVL will help to some degree, but I've got to think that in terms of P.R., Google did themselves more harm than good here. Dave On Jul 31, 5:21 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Speaking as someone who has traveled this road before with my own implementation of basically the same approach, obfuscation will be critical. With AAL, it took about three days for someone to crack the app. The process looks something like this: decompile the apk using a freely available open source tool, find the code that invokes the licensing check, skip it, recompile and repackage the apk. Obsfucation will make this more difficult, but not all that tough given the usage of intents for communication betweenLVLand the market tool. Don't get me wrong, I think thatLVLwill offer a much needed road bump for pirates -- stealing apps will actually require a crack of each app. This is a viable approach to license verification and that's why I took the same route with AAL months ago. It certainly seems like google could have gone further though. The coverage of this has been very extensive in the press, and I would guess the coverage of the first released crack within a week or two will also make a fairly big splash, which won't look great for the platform. All told though, I thinkLVLis a positive step for the platform. Speaking as someone that was seeing 90%+ piracy rates before implementing something very similar toLVLin my own apps, I'm happy to see google addressing the problem. DaveKeyes On Jul 27, 5:44 pm, sblantipodi perini.dav...@dpsoftware.org wrote: I haven't understood if using this library external obfuscation (proguard for example) is needed for security reason or if we can avoid using external obfuscator, it's quite a pain using proguard in netbeans plus android sdk. On Jul 27, 10:24 pm, Sebastian Rodriguez srodrig...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Anton Persson. When will Google realize that opening the paid market to all the other countries is crucial for the market environment :( We don't have access to them here in Singapore either. But this is a major step already, let's hope for even better! Seb On 28 July 2010 04:19, Kaj Bjurman kaj.bjur...@gmail.com wrote: I saw that entry, and have a question. What will happen if the user doesn't have network connectivity? Many users turn of data traffic when they travel to other countries, but the probably still want to use the licensed applications. On 27 Juli, 19:55, Trevor Johns trevorjo...@google.com wrote: Android fans, For those of you who haven't already heard through our blog, we've just launched the Android Market licensing service: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/07/licensing-service-for-... From the above blog post: This simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications targeting Android 1.5 or higher. At run time, with the inclusion of a set of libraries provided by us, your application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records. Developer documentation is available here: http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/licensing.html Happy coding! -- Trevor Johns Google Developer Programs, Androidhttp://developer.android.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comandroid-developers%2Bunsubs cr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- Sebastien Rodriguez -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com
[android-developers] Re: Licensing server, app cracked.
If you can't wait, here's something to get you started that worked for
me. It's what I used to obfuscate AAL, which was a library not an
Android App, and thus a bit simpler.
You'll need to adjust what you keep (e.g., don't obfuscate) so that
you don't shred classes that are referenced by your manifest, or
you'll have to update your manifest after the fact.
taskdef resource=proguard/ant/task.properties
classpath=/adev/proguard4.4/lib/proguard.jar /
proguard
-libraryjars ${android-jar}
-injars ${build-location}/license.jar
-outjars ${build-location}/license-rel.jar
-dontpreverify
-dontoptimize
-dontshrink
-dontusemixedcaseclassnames
-repackageclasses ''
-allowaccessmodification
-optimizationpasses 1
-verbose
-keep public class com.keyes.license.LicenseManager {
public *;
}
-keep public class com.keyes.license.CheckLicenseCallback {
public *;
}
-keep public class com.keyes.license.LicenseException {
public *;
}
/proguard
Dave
On Aug 24, 6:53 pm, sblantipodi perini.dav...@dpsoftware.org wrote:
As
title,http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/08/licensing-server-news
where is the guide to obfuscate our code?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
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android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
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[android-developers] Re: Android Market Licensing: Now Available!
Speaking as someone who has traveled this road before with my own implementation of basically the same approach, obfuscation will be critical. With AAL, it took about three days for someone to crack the app. The process looks something like this: decompile the apk using a freely available open source tool, find the code that invokes the licensing check, skip it, recompile and repackage the apk. Obsfucation will make this more difficult, but not all that tough given the usage of intents for communication between LVL and the market tool. Don't get me wrong, I think that LVL will offer a much needed road bump for pirates -- stealing apps will actually require a crack of each app. This is a viable approach to license verification and that's why I took the same route with AAL months ago. It certainly seems like google could have gone further though. The coverage of this has been very extensive in the press, and I would guess the coverage of the first released crack within a week or two will also make a fairly big splash, which won't look great for the platform. All told though, I think LVL is a positive step for the platform. Speaking as someone that was seeing 90%+ piracy rates before implementing something very similar to LVL in my own apps, I'm happy to see google addressing the problem. Dave Keyes On Jul 27, 5:44 pm, sblantipodi perini.dav...@dpsoftware.org wrote: I haven't understood if using this library external obfuscation (proguard for example) is needed for security reason or if we can avoid using external obfuscator, it's quite a pain using proguard in netbeans plus android sdk. On Jul 27, 10:24 pm, Sebastian Rodriguez srodrig...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Anton Persson. When will Google realize that opening the paid market to all the other countries is crucial for the market environment :( We don't have access to them here in Singapore either. But this is a major step already, let's hope for even better! Seb On 28 July 2010 04:19, Kaj Bjurman kaj.bjur...@gmail.com wrote: I saw that entry, and have a question. What will happen if the user doesn't have network connectivity? Many users turn of data traffic when they travel to other countries, but the probably still want to use the licensed applications. On 27 Juli, 19:55, Trevor Johns trevorjo...@google.com wrote: Android fans, For those of you who haven't already heard through our blog, we've just launched the Android Market licensing service: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/07/licensing-service-for-... From the above blog post: This simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications targeting Android 1.5 or higher. At run time, with the inclusion of a set of libraries provided by us, your application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records. Developer documentation is available here: http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/licensing.html Happy coding! -- Trevor Johns Google Developer Programs, Androidhttp://developer.android.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comandroid-developers%2Bunsubs cr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- Sebastien Rodriguez -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: I've found a way to stop piracy of my apps
I would be interested in discussing this, Al. Assuming that our use cases align and that your APIs provide necessary functionality, it should work quite nicely. As for the code base, I split LicenseManager and LicenseManagerImpl primarily to facilitate obfuscation (I don't obfuscate LicenseManager and a few other classes in the public API, but the remainder of the classes get scrambled up during the build process). There will be some level of refactoring that will need to be done in LicenseManagerImpl to support pluggable purchase verification providers, but this shouldn't be too difficult. Let's take this into the AAL message group to discuss further. Dave On Jun 18, 3:45 am, Al Sutton a...@funkyandroid.com wrote: Dave, Would you be interested in working with us at AndAppStore to offer an alternative purchase location? From your code I can see that we could create a LicenseManagerImpl which interfaces into our purchase checking system to cover the license management aspect, and we accept payments via PayPal so it looks like a good fit. I don't really want to spend time doing it if you're not interested in incorporating the code into the project because we don't want to create fork your code base just to support us. What do you think? Al. On Jun 17, 9:31 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: Biggest issues that I've seen for my own apps (and those other brave souls who use AAL) have been related to legitimate users that somehow can't validate their purchase. For example: 1. user buys app on marke using a 2.0-based phone. validation happens just fine. 2. user backs up app, flashes rom to as-of-yet unreleased 2.2, and restores app 3. Upon startup of the app on the newly-flashed phone, AAL properly detects the missing license. 4. AAL fails validation, since 2.2-based devices can't see paid apps on the market since Google hasn't registered that release in the market database. Other fringe scenarios similar to this. When I deployed AAL into my apps, I had a few loud complainers that has tapered off now and I don't really have any serious problems. I now get a lot of emails from people in countries that can't buy from Android market. Overall, AAL seems to be working quite well. Lately I've been wondering if there's a way that I can offer the user an alternative mechanism for purchasing the pirated app. For example, I upload to Android Market, pirates post on download boards, others download, and then when validation fails offer to let them buy from PayPal and license things that way. I don't think that would break any of the Android Market rules (since the pirated version isn't being distributed by the market -- it's being distributed by a pirate board), and it sure would open up distribution to markets that Google doesn't currently serve. Dave On Jun 17, 3:39 pm, String sterling.ud...@googlemail.com wrote: On Jun 17, 8:05 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: AALhas now been open-sourced. Find details here: http://bit.ly/coz0yB. Cool. Thanks for sharing it. Are you still having good luck usingAALwith your own app(s)? Any downsides you've found? String -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Newer Market Comments Disappearing?
There could be for a number of reasons, most likely being that the user either changed or deleted their comment. The market only records one comment per user per app. The layered market services scan the market via its private API and maintain their own cache of the comments. Dave On Jun 18, 5:40 pm, gcstang gcst...@gmail.com wrote: I've noticed over some time that some comments are disappearing and not just old ones but ones that have recently been placed, is this a bug? The comment that I noticed was placed on 6/3 but doesn't show on the phone, it only shows on some sites that index the market. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: I've found a way to stop piracy of my apps
AAL has now been open-sourced. Find details here: http://bit.ly/coz0yB. On May 10, 4:24 pm, niko20 nikolatesl...@yahoo.com wrote: Well I will say one thing, if it was opened up, that would allow each dev to make small code changes, so it would never be cookie cutter then...however, I am not against that you are trying to make some income from it, I mean you still did have to do the work. -niko On May 10, 10:06 am, dadical keyes...@gmail.com wrote: That argument assumes that I don't respond to those cracks with improvements toAALthat will make it more difficult! :) Also, each app will need to be cracked individually, and I'm trying to work out some ways to make that a job that isn't cookie-cutter. The point here is to get this past the pain threshold where it won't be worth the trouble for an app that is only a few bucks. This is fascinating stuff, but very, very non-lucrative. I don't really want to engage in this game, but I don't see an alternative until it gets solved at the platform level. Given the lack of commercial interest (and the prodding of several smart devs), I've considered opening this up, but I'm not sure how to do that without it simply lowering the barrier for pirates. On May 10, 3:55 am, MobDev developm...@mobilaria.com wrote: It took several days (almost a week) for crackers to decompile Screebl Pro and find a way to circumventAAL. Typically it takes about 90 secs from the time that we publish to the market for the various warez sites to start tweeting the location of the download. I was wondering, after the first crack-run they obviously will have devised a crack-method, which means that every other app usingAAL will be cracked within 90 seconds till a new version is released... A week of cracking will only be the case during the first attempt... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: I've found a way to stop piracy of my apps
Biggest issues that I've seen for my own apps (and those other brave souls who use AAL) have been related to legitimate users that somehow can't validate their purchase. For example: 1. user buys app on marke using a 2.0-based phone. validation happens just fine. 2. user backs up app, flashes rom to as-of-yet unreleased 2.2, and restores app 3. Upon startup of the app on the newly-flashed phone, AAL properly detects the missing license. 4. AAL fails validation, since 2.2-based devices can't see paid apps on the market since Google hasn't registered that release in the market database. Other fringe scenarios similar to this. When I deployed AAL into my apps, I had a few loud complainers that has tapered off now and I don't really have any serious problems. I now get a lot of emails from people in countries that can't buy from Android market. Overall, AAL seems to be working quite well. Lately I've been wondering if there's a way that I can offer the user an alternative mechanism for purchasing the pirated app. For example, I upload to Android Market, pirates post on download boards, others download, and then when validation fails offer to let them buy from PayPal and license things that way. I don't think that would break any of the Android Market rules (since the pirated version isn't being distributed by the market -- it's being distributed by a pirate board), and it sure would open up distribution to markets that Google doesn't currently serve. Dave On Jun 17, 3:39 pm, String sterling.ud...@googlemail.com wrote: On Jun 17, 8:05 pm, keyeslabs keyes...@gmail.com wrote: AALhas now been open-sourced. Find details here: http://bit.ly/coz0yB. Cool. Thanks for sharing it. Are you still having good luck usingAALwith your own app(s)? Any downsides you've found? String -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
[android-developers] Re: Service gets killed (due to activity ?)
If you have a very good reason for doing so (one that you're willing to defend to users and the likes of Mark) then you can force the service to have the same priority as an activity use setForeground. The caveat is that you must keep a notification visible for your service. On Jun 10, 11:00 am, Tejas tej...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I have a service running in the background. It starts on device boot. Also, I have one activity (that appears in the task launcher) in which I have provided buttons to start and stop the service. Now, I install the application on the phone and I start the service using this activity (and not on-device boot). As expected the service starts and starts doing its designated task. I no-longer need the activity. So it goes out of sight and may not be required for a long time now. My question is, now, if the android platform kills this activity, will it kill my service too ? (This is because I see that after few hours, my service is not running anymore.). If this is true, then will the service continue running longer if the service was started on device boot. Regards, Tejas -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
