Posts Tagged iPhone
Mobile Analytics
Posted by Evrhet in Mobile Development on February 17th, 2009
It looks like Omniture is stepping into the mobile analytics space. They are doing very similar things they currently do with their web analytics software, and I believe they are planning on building upon it.
Omniture is having an iPhone App competition at BYU, and it looks as if the competition is used to test their mobile analytics software. From the screenshots in their presentation, the analytics software looked very similar to their site catalyst software used for web site analytics.
I am going to sign an NDA today to by part of the competition so I don’t know how much more I can talk about. It looks as if it just does http requests to the Omniture servers to track usage. Right now the tracking only works while the iPhone is connected to the internet. They are planning to add offline support, but they did not share the time frame for the support.
The screen shot to the right is an example they gave in their presentation. The top would be a list of your applications and the bottom shows a list of apps and what views the user went to. Their app requires adding a method call in your viewDidLoad or similar function to keep track of the application usage.
Joshua James, the CEO of Omniture, seems to be very excited by mobile technology so I don’t see this as a surprise. I am excited about this. There does need to be better mobile usage tracking other than app sales, and Omniture is in a great position to do this. If you have any other questions you can look at the iPhone competition website.
iPhone beta testing
Posted by Evrhet in Mobile Development on February 11th, 2009
I have been working on an iPhone app with my friend Nate Graves for about one month now. We are about 98% done with it, and it’s time to start beta testing the app. It might be a bad thing to say, but I have grown tired of testing the app. I do think there is a difference between testing a game and playing a game so I am not worried about our game being fun, but I am worried about getting reliable beta testers. Yeah, I could give the app to a bunch of my friends, but they just want to play with it. I have been struggling with how to test the app because I know that I won’t catch all the bugs, and I don’t want to release with a lot of bugs. Releasing is a great way to find bugs, but it’s also a great way to piss people off if they are paying for your application.
I came across an iPhone testing service called iBetaTest through MobileOrchard. First off, I would like to say that I like the design of the website. Dark web designs have been growing on me, and this website pulls it off. iBetaTest allows beta testers and developers to sign up and get in contact with each other. One of the greatest features I see as a developer is the ability to rate beta testers. Right now with only 6 apps in the system, I don’t think there will be that many people rated, but as the system grows this will be a great resource for finding reliable beta testers. This has given me a stronger desire to get my application rolled out. Hopefully we will have it ready for beta testing by the end of the week, and submitted to iBetaTest.
The only problem I had was that they didn’t hash my password, and they emailed it to me. I used one of my more secure passwords, and I was a little disappointed when I got the email. Hopefully they will make a change to that soon. Other than that, it seems like a great resource, and I am excited to use it. I will update when I start using the service.