Adfonic ready to go again !

2 weeks ago I published Poulpytris' results.
I told I got some problems with Adfonic latency.

As usual, Adfonic's team was quick to contact me.
They had "5 times more traffic in the fourth quarter of 2009 than the third!"
Good news!
Unfortunatly, they had to install new servers to handle this...but no fast enought for some publishers...like me !

It's now fixed and the reply time is very fast...so fast that it is now the fastest of the 4 networks I'm using!

See you in July for the 6 months result analytics ;)

The 'new' GetJar

It took me some times, but now, here it is : my opinion of the new GetJar website.
It's a very hard one but I think there are some majors problems existing that GetJar must work on!
In October'09, GetJar switched from a very simple website to an App Store, following the move.

This change was good...and bad for developpers

The good :
- Flash Lite category is no longer existing, we are now mixed within the other categories. (for me, it's a good change!)
- Android support. Unlike the Apple's AppStore, Google isn't the only one allowed to distribute APK file
- It's easier to navigate (with some major limits, see below) and isn't 'for geek only'. (the previous layout missed some Wahoo! effect)

The bad :
- If you don't use the menu on the top, you can't access more content (only the top10 of each category and the sponsored apps)
- The description layout used is so hard to use (since the CSS doesn't work the same way on IE/FFox/Safari...) that you finally use raw text or a single picture....and so you're not indexed by Google or others search engine. It's very surprising from GetJar since they made a webinar to explain how to attract more download making a richest description.
- The search isn't working : try to search for Poulpy...Poulpytris won't load!
- The category filter isn't working : if you're on "Puzzle & Strategy" for example, you can't filter for the newest on THIS category, only on "Games".
- The category filter is very limited : only 'Popular' (wich doesn't mean downloads number! but something similar to the "Best games"), 'Newest' (but unuseful for the previous reason) and 'Supported'....not way to filter by 'Rate'. I would love to see an advanced search to find the game from the latest month with a 4+ rate!
- If you're not on the "Best games" (the new "recommanded by getjar" filter I assume), you download rate will drop fast! Two reasons : you had to pass 3 pages to access to the "Browse for more games" button and for the 2 previous reasons. The side efffect is that if you are on the "Best games" your download rate is awesome! I was lucky enought to be on the 2nd page and I earn in 1 week what I earnt in one month!

The mobile part also changed...and there is nothing good !
- Search doesn't work better
- Mobile auto detects doesn't work : I sometimes opens the PC version while using Opera Mini or it doesn't recognize my Nokia 5310. In that case, you could only choose your brand model (and for Nokia, you only had access to J2ME file!)
- You didn't figure the menu is on the top (since it's white on black)
- same filters (but working!) when you successfully find how to acces the categories!
- to make it short, if you don't know what (the app name) you are looking for, it will take you ages to find it

So the new GetJar AppSite is surely a good news but I see it like an 'unfinished' product...you could even find some 'beta.www.getjar.com' links ;)
Until GetJar is only looking for a way to make money with the top10 and Sponsored apps, I hope they'll improve it soon because GetJar is still THE site to upload your apps/games!

note : I'm talking about the public area, not the developper area which improved also ...but I didn't use it enought to write a post yet

iPad : the revolution..but not the one we were waiting for!

Last week, Steve Jobs made another of these geek presentation, wearing jeans and basket.
Until you lost your internet connection, you know what I'm talking about : the "so waited" iPad.



now, this is the kind of reaction you have all over the web



I won't talk you much about the lacking Flash support because, this times, it's not the main problem.
If you read my post about the lastest Ads mobile networks bought by Google, Apple and Opera, you knew what I'm afraid of...and Apple made a new move on this step.

After Microsoft which tried and failed, Apple is actually trying to make an AppleWeb...
Like they're doing with their AppStore when they control what you are allowed to install, they are trying to control what you are allowed to see.
No USB to transfert data, DRM everywhere, no plugin to see what you want (PDF?), video and music by iTunes again...

So the revolution is here...Apple made a public presentation of a system to control the information. It really fears me!
I'm not alone and even if it's from an Adobe employee, I'm totally agree with him.
I'm not for the OpenSource everywhere but we can't let ONE actor decides on what is good for us.

I'm trying to think "he! it will be a failure, it's so dumbass" but when I see the success of the iPod and iPhone 1 & 2, I'm not sure...
When I saw how 'professional' journalists claims how much the iPhone is a revolution, forgetting all what had been done by Nokia, I'm not sure...
When I saw how iPhone maniacs are...maniacs, I'm not sure...
When I saw how some of these 'extremists' iPhone maniacs are able to say "great! they are cleaning the web of the flash ads! HTML5 powa!!!", I'm not sure... (see Lee's blog for this, it seems they are all there!)

My only hope is that people were waiting for a real revolution, the next step of the netbook and so won't see a reason to buy a 'big' iTouch....

To everyone looking for a "good" tablet, browse Scott's blog...a lot of useful (and not locked) systems exist like the litl

2009 mobile gamers data

Today's Gamers released free graphs on consumer data.
The interesting thing is they made special graph for mobile gamers.
Visit their website to find more data on your countries (USA & europe)

Opera bought an Ads network...too

Today, Opera announced they bought AdMarvel for at least 8M$

After Google with AdMob and Apple with Quattro Pro, it's the 3rd 'browser maker' which acquire a mobile ads network.

Now, think a little :
you BUY an Android's phone, an IPhone or any other phones (which support Opera) to see ads and so they earn money...
or, if you prefer, they SELL their products to EARN revenue from their ads...
you pay to help them earn more and more...funny now ?

It's like if Ford was selling a car which needs a special gazoline...made by Ford

Poulpytris results after 1 month

Poulpytris was released one month ago so, it's time for some analytics !

The main difference with Poulpy's Game is the ads feature : Poulpytis shows up to 4 ads on a 'sponsored by' screen at startup.

Poulpytris is hosted on Playyoo, GetJar, Voeveo, Mobango, Mobile9 & Phoload

In one month, because (?) hosted in more sites than Poulpy's Game, it definitly beat Poulpy's Game result

Downloads
Playyoo : 324 (web) & 88 (premium)
GetJar : 5796 (swf), 3954 (sis) & 1430 (cab)
Voeveo : ?
Mobango : 14488 (swf, sis & cab)
Mobile 9 : 11386 (sis 3rd), 18033 (sis 5th) & 7948 (cab)
Phoload : 22 (sis)

so, in 1 month, Poulpytris was downloaded 63469 times !!!
For info, GetJar was about to be a failure...until it became one of 'Best Puzzle game'
I assume it's because of the old GetJar rank or I'm again recommanded by GetJar ?
GetJar changed a lot of things these last 4 months, for good and bad...but I'll post about this later.


Phone models
Playyoo : ?
GetJar : 5130 (10% of download!), 3110, E71 & still the 6300...N95 & 5800XM close the top 10
Voeveo : ? (N95 ?)
Mobango : ?
Mobile 9 : mainly 5th ed (5800XM)
Phoload : mainly 5800XM

So classics on Asia and Touch/smartphones on Europe ?


Country
Playyoo : Italy ;)
GetJar : Indonesia & India are 40% of download !
others : Indonesia, India, US, UK ?


WillNa connections
1000 from PC
3600 from mobile
so 7.5% convertion rate, better than the 2% of Poulpy's Game
+ the daily users count is near 30 (0 before!)


Ads
About 12000 ads request and about 40% impressions
Revenue on Admob : 14$
Revenue on InMobi : 9$
Revenue on ZestAds : 1$
Revenue on WebMobLink : N/A => still waiting activation of my website (!)
Revenue on AdFonic : N/A => we'll try next month if their servers won some speed
EDIT: fixed, see this post

Of course, this is the result for Poulpytris, we can't assume it will be the same for any others app/games


Results
12K ads from 60K downloads... it seems only 1/5 of the people go throught the 'Allow internet connection' screen...
and, shame on me, I forgot to activate unique visitors analysis so it's perhaps worst !


The VERY important thing to note is how many download you got from 'community' sites.
At first, I said "WOW!, GetJar is nothing compared to them" !
But, looking at ads impressions, I saw GetJar users are more allright with adware than community's users.
Community users are looking for totally free games/apps : an ads and they close the game/app!
and don't even think about selling them the full ads free version !

For this reason, the download rate from mobile9 is impressive but I doubt we won a lot of money with that.
It's very interesting because it means more downloads is not equal to more money.
If you have 100K downloads but 1K ads request, it's no use : you could win more with 20K download and 2K ads request !

So key is ...the target!
but I don't have a clue on this point since, apart for GetJar, others sites don't report by countries :(

The only way I see to make a deeper analysis of this point is to release a version for each host and to look at the results.
I'm pretty sure we'll see something like
Mobile9 => 30K download for 1K ads request
GetJar => 15K download for 4K ads request
For Mobango, I don't know...very interesting host anyway, I'll submit my others (past/future) games on it, for sure!

Wii Flash Lite - trying to handle Wiimote(s)

After some basics testing, I jumped to a more exciting test : the Wiimote support!

Before the update, the Wiicade API was the lib to use.

(4 wiimotes on Wii Flash Player 2 years ago)

I so implemented it using the same example : unfortunatly it is no longer working!

Honestly, I was afraid of this since I saw the B button was no longer logged, even using the official Opera example : Browsing button.

So, what are the problems ?

• B button isn't logged, for any of the wiimotes


• the update of the remote data is no longer fast enought : you press several buttons, stop and see the buttons pressed after some delays.


• Opera thinks your wiimote is disconnected on startup


• angle and distance are totally wrong

so...bad news....:(
It's sad because, apart for the B buttons, everything is still working on the Browsing buttons example (in full javascript) so they didn't broke the initial JS API..

So, it's time for some R&D ;)

EDIT : in fact, LocalConnection calls are queued, it's why, if you move a lot your wii or press a lot of buttons, every lags...got to find how to optimize this

Wii Flash Lite and Javascript

I made a quick test to enable exchange between Flash Lite & Javascript :

ExernalInterface still doesn't work

LocalConnection still works (hurra!!!)
For information, it was the way guy like Quasimondo & WiiCade team found to handle 4 Wiimotes with partial nunchuk suport on Flash Lite

See you soon for a test of WiiCade api...does it sill work too ?! I hope so!

Move on CS4

I started year 2010 with a 'good' idea : since Adobe is already talking about CS5, I'll make the move to Adobe CS4!

I could only use one word after 2 weeks using it : SLOW

slow to install (3 hours!!)
slow to launch
slow to update
slow to compile
...and I don't know why ?! perhaps for this ugly new UI...

my...is it another of these software only made to force you to change your PC ?!
my notebook was on top 2 year ago, CS4 was released 1 year later...
It remembered me why I upgraded my pc every 6 months...because of games, not software !

Sorry, I had to post this ;)

ps: and happy mobile year !

Wii Flash Lite - basic input

If you're not using a third library (more on this soon), the input on Flash app/game played on Opera Wii version are very limited!

- The wiimote acts like a mouse (use a mouselistener!) where A button is the mouse button
- Input texts are handled : if you select one, the Wii opens its virtual keyboard on full screen
- No keydown except a very strange one : after a click on a the screen, if you press the A button with the curson OUTSIDE the screen, you receive a keydown where Key.getCode() returns 57433 and Key.getAscii() returns...57433 (ie 0xE059)! I don't know what it means, I found nothing on the web (bluetooth related?) but it perhaps could be used to know when you're out of the screen.

Wii Flash Lite - capabilities & fscommand

Today, I run some tests to find the capabilities and fscommand available on the latest Flash Lite player on the Wii.
Note, Device Central CS4 still includes the previous version, not the latest, updated on September'09

Here are the capabilities
audioMIMETypes = audio/mp3,
imageMIMETypes =
MIMETypes = audio/mp3,
videoMIMETypes =
avHardwareDisable = true
has4WayKeyAS = true
hasAccessibility = false
hasAudio = true
hasAudioEncoder = false
hasCMIDI = false
hasCompoundSound = true
hasDataLoading = true
hasEmail = false
hasEmbeddedVideo = true
hasMappableSoftKeys = false
hasMFI = false
hasMIDI = false
hasMMS = false
hasMouse = true
hasMP3 = true
hasPrinting = false
hasQWERTYKeyboard = true
hasScreenBroadcast = false
hasScreenPlayback = false
hasSharedObjects = true
hasSMAF = false
hasSMS = false
hasStreamingAudio = true
hasStreamingVideo = true
hasStylus = false
hasVideoEncoder = false
hasXMLSocket = true
isDebugger = false
language = fr
localFileReadDisable = true
os = undefined
screenOrientation = normal
screenResolutionX = 640
screenResolutionY = 800
softKeyCount = 0
version = AFL 9,1,122,0

Some interesting things to note
os return nothing
imageMIMETypes & videotype return nothing while it should be able to read video (more test later) and has hasStreamingVideo to true
has4WayKeyAS return true while keydown aren't read by default, perhaps because of the virtual keyboard (hasQWERTYKeyboard is true)

---

Here come the fscommand2 available


fscommandname, return, optional var defined
FullScreen -1
SetQuality 0
SetInputTextType 0
SetSoftKeys -1
ResetSoftKeys -1
StartVibrate 0
StopVibrate 0

GetVolumeLevel -1
GetMaxVolumeLevel -1

GetDateDay 5
GetDateWeekday 2
GetDateMonth 1
GetDateYear 2010
GetLocaleShortDate 0 01/05/2010
GetLocaleLongDate 0 Tue, Jan 05, 2010
GetLocaleTime 0 23:30:23
GetTimeHours 23
GetTimeMinutes 30
GetTimeSeconds 23
GetTimeZoneOffset 0 0

GetBatteryLevel -1
GetMaxBatteryLevel -1
GetPowerSource -1
GetTotalPlayerMemory -1
GetFreePlayerMemory 40706
GetDevice -1 undefined
GetDeviceID -1 undefined
GetPlatform -1 undefined
GetLanguage 0 fr

GetSignalLevel -1
GetMaxSignalLevel -1
GetNetworkConnectStatus -1
GetNetworkRequestStatus -1
GetNetworkStatus -1
GetNetworkName -1 undefined


So, no information on system (memory, os, etc...)
Hard to detect you're on a Wii !

StartVibrate return 0 while I wonder what could vibrate on a wii (no, not the wiimote)
40Mo free memory (?!)