Related to Ad network and Banner per Apps - xcode6

This is not a programming but the best practice question. I have been looking for answer on internet but no success so far.
Question is very simple.
Do you guys keep only one banner per app or one banner per view.
I have app which is 4 tabs and having 2 navigation drill down. Its pretty basic app and things are already out of in my admob dashboard.
So I am here. seeking advice from people who have multiple apps on appstore.
How you manage ?
If I am keeping only one admob signature per app. would it affect my impression.
I am thinking to have one banner and one interstitial per app.
Don't know if that right thing to do.
Please suggestion.
PS: I know its not programming question, but its not useless question. I am sure there are people like me out there.

It's best not to get overly crowded. One banner and one interstitial is good. Because interstitial ads are so effective, you might even consider taking out the banner if you get complaints about it. If you're doing interstitial ads on a game that finishes quickly, you might consider implementing a boolean so that it runs every other time the player dies.
At this point in the development, I'd focus on what the user is going to see and think. If your app is heavy handed on ads, it will drive away your users. It's really not unlike the history of U.S. tariffs on foreign goods. The lower the %, the more money we actually collected:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history#Tariff_revenues

Related

Building ecommerce

My company want to build an e-commerce mobile apps. But the thing is I don't have any knowledge on how to start it. The question is, is it enough to have only 2 developer to conduct this project? if it is enough, how long will it takes to complete the app and launch the app for public use.
I don't know if SO is the right place for your question, but I think its all about what you want to achieve. The first questions you could ask yourself are:
Whats the detailed plan?
Is there any ecommerce project already running (website, processes around (like order management))
Should it be really a native mobile app or could it be a (mobile first) responsive Shopwebsite?
Whats the application about (product searching, shopping, something else) ?
eCommerce projects lives with content, content, content (e.g. product descriptions, category descriptions, blog articles, images). Who delivers this content?
do you want extra stuff (e.g. push notifications) ?
Whats the budget?
If there is an ecommerce infrastructure in your company already existing, then achieving an on-top app or website would not be a major case, but of course it should be planned carefully as well.
If your company starts with ecommerce, than you should be realistic: A whole ecommerce project is not as easy as its sounds. And of course it will costs surely an amount of money, time, etc. First you should make a plan. Ask your company stakeholders for this project what they want, whats the budget, etc. Maybe search for ecommerce consulting agencies.
Good Luck :)

What IoT project to develop modules connected by BLE was funded on Kickstarter?

I apologize in advance. I'm almost certain this question may not be appropriate here, but there doesn't seem to be a specific place on SO for such questions, so I've decided that as a last ditch effort, I'll ask on the main site. Please don't be (too) angry with me....
I'm looking for a specific IoT project, that was developing modules connected by BLE. They were independent modules, say just a speaker, on a coin-sized die connected to each other or a computer via BLE. The project seems to have been succesfully funded on Kickstarter, with an SDK and shipping to the backers, but I can't find them again. I've been searching for a day and a half, but I can't remember for the life of me what they're called. I've searched through my chrome bookmarks, but the computer I was using at the time was a lab system, so I most likely wasn't logged into Google, and those systems are wiped every week. The project was probably from 2014, and they kinda advertised themselves as an easy way to learn HW/SW, and the SDK might have had Code block drag and drop, like Scratch. No combination of search terms that I can think of on Google is bringing up the results I want. Please help, if you know this project, or a specific way to find it.
I'm fairly certain this question will get moved, but before it does, I hope SO's vast and vastly informed community will be able to help me or point me in the right direction....
After days of searching and going through possibly most of the IoT style projects out there, I finally found the one I was looking for: it's SAM Labs. If anyone wants to know, it's probably one of the cheaper options for creating a limited use remote application.

ipad programming guidance

I'm just at the startup level in ipad/iphone programming. There is a project in my mind, but I need some guidance on key points:
fundemental requirements:
1)user interface and interaction like wired magazine app(playing movies on page,etc)
2)accessing the timeuser spent on pages and videos
more:
-accessing another application's data (and let's say that application can give permission, if there is so)
Maybe these are just easy things to figure out, but if you could point me where to look I would be pleased.
PS: I have more than 10+ top seller ebooks on ipad/ios/iphone programming and I'm started to reading them. To be clear, names of these concepts (in what way I should research accessing the time user spent on a page- I did try on google on my own words but could not get the desired result)or some material pointing the issues really ease my way.
The UI portion of your question should be pretty easy to get to, it will just take learning a lot of the Cocoa Touch library, probably even a bit of Core Foundation.
There are two books I highly recommend:
Programming iOS 4
iPhone Programming: Big Nerd Ranch
I strongly recommend Programming iOS 4, primarily because it has been updated for XCode 4.
To answer your other question: to the best of my knowledge, you are not allowed to access other application's data due to sandboxing. You can, however, share data between your own apps if they share the same App ID.
First, as to the question on sharing data between apps. You can pass data between apps - basically launching one app from another and passing arguments. This can go both ways. If this is what you want, I'll share more on that.
As to learning, I recommend devouring Apple's documents, their samples, and Stackoverflow. Most of the iPhone development books you come across on development will be useful.

Uninterrupted background music on website

I was making a website for a music band, and i was wondering the best way to play background music on the website without interrupting the flow of the music (even for a split second).
At the moment, i am considering using frames, but this is not supposed to be good practice. Please someone tell me how i can do this. I would prefer to use HTML to code the website as i have not yet mastered coding in flash.
This might sound controversial, but here's an idea: Don't play music on your website. Seriously, don't. I think everyone knows how incredibly annoying that is, and asking a group of software developers to help you out with that is going to be like asking a group of sheep the best way to make a lambskin coat.
If you really have to do it, frames would be the simplest way, so I'd do that. But you're not going to do it anyway, right?
I can think of four ways:
Frames, as you said.
Make your entire website in Flash and have only one page. You need to know Flash to be able to do this, which could make this difficult.
Pop-out your music player. This is probably the easiest approach, but the downside is this could be annoying, and a lot of web browsers these days would block it.
Use AJAX and dynamically load all your site content within one page, like Gmail. Users will need to have newer browsers, and this will take quite a bit of coding on both the client and the server side.
The only way to prevent the music from stopping is to not let the page your music component is on reload. Currently the only way to do this is to use frames, unfortunately.
The only alternative is to develop the whole site in Flash or another technology that doesn't rely on changing pages as navigation.
It wouldn't be pretty but you could do it using AJAX. Have the master page with the header/footer/navigation controls with a big empty content div, and instead of regular links you have calls to AJAX functions that return HTML to be injected in the content div.
I tend to agree with the others who recommend frames. It may be considered "bad practice", but so is playing background music in the first place.
As was said, to do that you have to prevent your website from relaoding.
An option to achieve this might be to use asynchronous requests to modify your website content without reloading the whole page, that's basically what Ajax is about.
That being said, I sort of agree with Alex here : dont' play music.
This may be a topic for another post, but why would you cosnider IFrames to be good practice? you could out the content you want to change into an IFrame and have your code running your music player ouside it. When you load a page it woul load on the IFrame. Just a thought...
You would most likely need flash or a new window (pop-up) outside of the window.
Don't use frames. Ever.
EDIT: To all the people downmodding and commenting on this, not a single person has given a valid reason why you SHOULD use frames.
Just to clarify my position, please read ANY article on usability, the web, and frames.
For those still learning (and to those old people to dumb to update)
Frames break the unified model of the web.
Frames cause problems for search engine robots.
Frames make URLs stop working.
Frames break bookmarking.
Frames make printing more difficult.
Frames hurt accessibility.
Frames increase technical complexity.
and the #1 reason to not use frames......
USERS HATE THEM!
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200411/who_framed_the_web_frames_and_usability/
Are there seriously this many people out there suggesting frames are a valid solution in 2009? How disappointing.

Quick and Dirty Usability testing tips?

What are your best usability testing tips?
I need quick & cheap.
While aimed at web design, Steve Krug's excellent "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability" features (in the second edition, at least), a great chapter entitled "Usability Testing On 10 Cents A Day", which I think is applicable to a much wider range of platforms.
The chapter specifically deals with usability testing done quick and dirty, in a low-budget (no money and/or no time) environment, and illustrates some of the most important considerations for getting an initial "feel" of the thing.
Some of the points I like in particular are:
You don't need to test with a huge number of people (a sentiment also echoed by Jakob Nielsen)
A live reaction is worth a lot; if possible, make sure the developers can see the reaction (perhaps using a video camera and a TV; it doesn't need to be an expensive one)
Testing a few people early is better than a lot later
Joel Spolsky is known for advocating "hallway usability testing", where you grab a few passing users and ask them to complete some simple task. Partly inspired by the "a few users yield the bulk of the results" philosophy, it's also relatively convenient and inexpensive, and can be done every so often.
Ask someone non-techy and unfamiliar with it to use it.
The archetypal non-technical user, one's elderly and scatterbrained maiden aunt. Invoked in discussions of usability for people who are not hackers and geeks; one sees references to the “Aunt Tillie test”.
The Aunt Tilly Test (Probably needs a better name in today's day and age, but that's what it's referred to)
You have to watch people use your application. If you work in a reasonable sized company, do some 'hallway testing'. Pull someone who is walking past your door into the room and say something like, 'Could you please run the payroll on this system for the next month? It should only take two minutes'.
Hopefully they won't have any problems and it shouldn't be too much of an imposition on the people walking past. Fix up any hiccups or smooth over any processes that are unnecessarily complex and repeat. A lot.
Also, make sure you know what usability is and how to achieve it. If you haven't already, check out The Design of Everyday Things.
Some good tips here.
One mistake I made earlier on in my career was turning the usability test into a teaching exercise. I'd spend a fair amount of time explaining how to use the app rather than letting the user figure that out. It taught me a lot about whether my applications were easy or hard to use by how puzzled they got trying to use the app.
One thing I did was put together a very simple scenario of what I wanted the user to do and then let them go do it. It didn't have step-by-step instruction ("click the A button, then click the B button") but instead it said things like "create a new account" and "make a deposit". From that, the user got to 'explore' my application and I got to see how easy it was to use.
Anyhow, that was pretty cheap and quite enlightening to me.
Quick and cheap won't cut it. You have to invest in a user experience framework, starting with defining clear goals for your app or website. I know it's not what people want to hear, but after supervising and watching a lot of user testing over the years, using Nielsen's discount usability methods is just not enough in most cases. Sure, if your design really sucks and have made huge usability errors, quick and dirty will get 80% of the crud out of the system. But, if you want long-term, quality usability and user experience, you must start with a good design team. And I don't mean good graphic designers, but good Information Architects, interaction designers, XHTML/CSS coders, and even Web Analytics specialists who will make sure your site/app is measurable with clear goals and metrics. I know, it's a lot of $$$, but if you are serious with your business (as I am sure most of us are), we need to get real and invest upfront instead of trying to figure out what went wrong once the whole thing is online.
Another topic to research is Heuristics for usability. This can give you general tips to follow. Here's another use of heuristics
If you don't know where to begin, start small. Sit a friend down at your computer. Explain that you want them to accomplish a task using software, and watch everything they do.
It helps to remain silent while they are actually working. Write everything down. "John spent 15 seconds looking at the screen before acting. He moused over the top nav to see if it contained popup menus. He first clicked "About Us" even though it wasn't central to his task." Etc.
Then use the knowledge you gain from this to help you design more elaborate tests. Tests with different users from different knowledge realms. More elaborate tasks and more of them.
Film them. A web-cam mounted on the monitor is a good way to capture where their eyes are moving. A video recorder coming over their shoulder at 45 degrees is a good way to capture an overview. Bonus points if you can time-sync the two. Don't worry if you can't do it all. Do what you can do.
Don't plan your test as if it's the last one you'll ever need and you want to get it perfect. There is no perfect. The only thing approaching perfection is many iteration and much repetition. You can only approach 100% confidence as the number of tests approaches the number of actual users of your software. Usually nobody even gets close to this number, but everybody should be trying to.
And don't forget to re-test people after you incorporated the improvement you saw were needed. Same people, different people, either is ok.
Do what you can do. Don't lament what you can't do. Only lament what you could have tested but didn't.
I am answering very late but I was thinking about asking a similar questions about some ideas. Maybe it is better to keep everything in this question.
I would say that:
Do not teach people about your app. Let them have fresh eyes.
Ask them to make some tasks and record their actions with a tool like camstudio http://camstudio.org/
After the test, ask them to answer so simple questions. Here is my list:
What was your first feeling when you accessed the app?
Can you define the key concepts that are used by the app?
What are the top-3 positive things about the application?
What are the top-3 negative things about the application?
What do you think about these ideas?