FlightPredictor progress, a few links
Mood: determined
Posted on 2011-12-02 13:41:00
Tags: projects programming links
Words: 407

The sales of FlightPredictor for Android have still been pretty flat, but it did at least get 2 5 star ratings! And it looks like more people are downloading FlightPredictor Lite, which will hopefully translate into more sales down the line. (as for the ads, I have made a whopping 3 cents so far...so that's not looking too promising)

Having said that, I'm excited to jump into the Windows Phone version. Having just finished a port makes it easier to know how to start, although I'm trying to be careful to port it intelligently, using the nice features of C# and XAML, rather than just making it a direct port. I plan on working in Windows Phone for the foreseeable future so I'd like to take the time to learn how to do things right.

One of the big wins from the Android port was being able to test the updating in the background functionality relatively early. This is one of the riskiest parts, as it's done almost entirely differently on every platform, and it's also somewhat time-consuming to test. I've made a list of basic stuff I need to have ready before I can test that, and I'm just working down the list...there are a lot of parts to FlightPredictor and just sitting down with no plan can be overwhelming, which this helps with.

In the meantime I've been reading a lot about Silverlight and such, and I discovered this free ebook by Charles Petzold(!) about Windows Phone programming, which has been excellent so far. (ironically enough, it's been very handy to read on my TouchPad...) There's also the 31 Days of Mango covering features that are new (and less discussed elsewhere).


A few links:

- The Democrats are trying to extend the payroll tax cut, but the Republicans won't vote for it because they're paying for it by raising taxes on people that make more than one million dollars a year. People affected by the payroll tax: 160 million. People that make more than one million dollars a year: ~350K.

- News Corp (parent company of Fox News) made a gay marriage guide! I know corporations aren't people (ahem), but the cognitive dissonance level is still pretty high.

- Crazy story from the New York Times: apparently Ambien can help people in vegetative states become more responsive and, in some cases, recover to some extent. This makes the long-term prognosis for people in vegetative states even more uncertain...

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