Websites

October 1, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

I have updated the theme for this site. I was getting a bit bored of it and I think this one looks simpler and might be quicker to navigate.

The new theme is a free one called TA Portfolio. I have made a few adjustments, such as colour, image sizes, hiding titles to fields I leave blank and threw in a timeline, just because I could.

Now that the theme has been improved, I think I should also go back and improve the wording and images on the portfolio pages. But all in good time.

I have also added a website portfolio item to showcase some other sites I have made. There is another web site I will add to that portfolio page, but I am going to wait till the new update is live (stay tuned).

3-2-1 app: Now in 15 languages

September 16, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

A while back I stumbled upon this Welsh youTube translation of the 3-2-1 Gospel presentation. I then got back in contact with Glen Scrivener to let him know that I planed on putting this video into the android app. During the discussion I learned that there was another Welsh video in the pipeline and there was a spreadsheet that had a whole bunch of other translations in it. I then set out to add a few more languages to the 3-2-1 app. The funny thing is, that the new Welsh video never surfaced, so of the new languages, Welsh is without a video.

The other new videos are is the English one with subtitles applied down the bottom. I had the most problem with the Hindi script displaying down the bottom. Hopefully there is enough time on the screen for the words to be read on the screen.

There was also a problem with the German text, in that a small bit of one section was missing. After trying to seek out this text, in the end I just used Google Translate. I hope no one notices which bit.

I can’t read, write or speak any of these languages (apart from English), so if you can and find some issues with the text can you please let me know and pass on some suggestions on how it could be improved.

Below is a quick summary of what is in the new 3-2-1 app. Like normal, if you don’t use the Play Store, you can side load your kindle or other android device by downloading the APK from the portfolio page.

Translation content (Red is new content)

Language	Video presentation	Text presentation	Localised images	Course content	Prayer & What’s next page
English	●	●	●	●	●
Chinese	●	●	●
French	●	●	●
Italian	●	●
Spanish	Subtitled	●
Arabic	●		●
Czech	●	●	●
Turkish	●	●	●
Hindi	Subtitled	●
German	Subtitled	●
Dutch	Subtitled	●
Norsk	Subtitled	●
Portuguese	Subtitled	●
Swedish	Subtitled	●
Welsh		●

I am still yet to update the tablet images on the Play Store, but hopefully they will come soon.

NCC Widget patch

June 24, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

It seems that there is a bug in the New City Catechism widget. The cause is related to the widget not finding the start date preference in the app, so it doesn’t know what question to start from. When it looks, it seems the app is not in memory and the preference can not be found. I have experienced the error, but when I did, I wasn’t near my PC for me to run diagnostics on it.

Based on the 27 error reports I have received, I think I have solved the issue, but I am not 100% sure. It is now set to say that, if the date preference can not be found, then set the week to start on to be 1.

This has just been pushed to the play store (and on this site), so it should update soon on your device. Hopefully this will stop the error from appearing. I will be looking at the error reports to see if more come in on the new version.

Sorry to everyone who has experienced this crash, and thanks to all who sent back the crash report. It is useful when lots of people sent the same error.

A widget for New City Catechism

June 3, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

I wanted to make an android widget for one of my apps for a while now, just to see if I could. Way back in August last year, on twitter I said I would start working on one after October. It seems October 2014 turned into May 2015, this was because I wanted to release mobile multiply in Spanish first.

Anyway, I have just pushed the new update to the play store which contains the widget. This lists all the questions in a stack view, and when you touch them it will display the answer in a slightly bigger card, due to the answers being longer than the questions, they need more space to display. This works in English and in Spanish. There is even a setting to choose if you want to show the adult or children’s answers.

I only have my one phone screen size to play with, so sizing objects can be a bit tricky. Hopefully it will work. Also I had to up the minimum android version to display a stack widget. This mean the update is only for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and above. Before Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) was supported. According to Android stats. Gingerbread has about 6.25% market share, and only 1.18% of my users are running it. I think this is an ok loss of support.

And while I was looking at stats, New City Catechism has just crossed over the 11,000th download. It was only at the end of March when it got to it’s 10,000th.

multiplican móvil out now

April 15, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

It has been a long time coming, but now mobile multiply is available in Spanish. This update couldn’t have been done without the multiply movement guys putting up a Spanish pdf of their materials online. If there are any errors they are mine and not theirs. Please let me know.

You can head on over to the play store, or to side load the apk to a kindle or other android device from its portfolio page.

I haven’t updated the tablet screen shots yet, so it won’t be available for larger screens, until I install this new version on my tablet, probably in the next day or two.

10,000 downloads for #NewCityCatechism android app!

March 30, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

I just want to give a big thanks to everyone who has downloaded and used the android New City Catechism app. It has just crossed over the 10,000th download. This app has a 75% retention rate, so there is over 7,500 devices that has this app presently installed.

Since putting a Spanish version, I was hoping to see a spike in Spanish downloads. However it seems since the 7th December, when the Spanish version was pushed there were already 31 users who default language was set to Spanish. On the 25th March, the day the app crossed over the 10,000 mark, there were 58 users who’s default language was Spanish.

This can also be seen on twitter with a comparison between the number of results #CatecismoNuevaCiudad gets with #NewCityCatechism. I’m not sad about this, as its not really about the numbers, but rather the people it teaches, and that can not be measured by Google stats.

Minor update for New City Catechism

February 4, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

A minor update has just been pushed to the play store for the New City Catechism app. This now includes the catechism introduction in Spanish (thanks Eduardo Barrientos) and I also took out the little zoom in and out controls (if you are running higher than honeycomb). Pinch to zoom still works, but now those little buttons shouldn’t annoy you.

You can wait for the play store to update, or you can download the APK from the profile page now (and if you run a kindle and want to side load it).

10,000 downloads for mobile multiply!

January 27, 2015 ampers Leave a comment

While I was away mobile multiply clicked over to 10,000 downloads. A big thankyou to everyone who has downloaded this discipleship app. The app has a rententaion rate of about 69% so that isn’t too bad at all.

I thought this milestone was going to happen sometime in Feburary and I hoped it would coincide with my next update that would see this come out in Spanish. Sadly this is not ready to be pushed yet. Stay tuned.

I do hope that everyone who has used this app did so to help make more disciples of Jesus who in turn make others disciples of Jesus.

2014 in review

January 2, 2015September 23, 2015 ampers 1 Comment

I think 2014 was a pretty good year for my android app development – considering all the other things that happened in 2014. I managed to update a few of my apps and even released a few more. Hopefully there will be a bit more movement in this area for 2015, but we will see. Below is a quick summary on how my apps went in 2014.

321 (new for 2014)
A simple gospel presentation by Glen Scrivener
27th February was the initial release (1.0.0)
21st July (1.1.0): added seven more languages
Total installs between initial release and 31st December: 334

Australian Daily Prayer
Displays the 1995 Australian Anglican Prayer Book morning and evening services and uses the 2005 Weekday Lectionary.
13th Jan (1.1.0): added pinch to zoom
1st April (1.2.0): added a menu, 39 articles and you can go to any date
Total installs for 2014: 349

Communicate Jesus (new for 2014)
Displays content from the Communicate Jesus blog run by Steve Kryger
10 June was the initial release (1.0.0)
Total installs between initial release and 31st December: 27

Mobile Multiply
Simple discipleship program written by Francis Chan
11th May (2.3.0): added support for Gingerbread, fixed pdf links
12th May (2.3.1): fixed missed pdf links
4th Sept (2.4.0): fixed the order of chapters listed, removed broken video links
Total installs for 2014: 7,632

New City Catechism
A modern weekly catechism written by Tim Keller
11th May (3.1.0): added support for Gingerbread
7th Dec (4.0.0): added Spanish, bible version options, video thumbnails
Total installs for 2014: 6,590

OpenSpritz Bible (new for 2014)
Allows you to quickly read the Bible without moving your eyes.
22nd June was the initial release (1.0.0)
15th Oct (1.0.1): removed ESV, minor 2 Tim searching bug
Total installs between initial release and 31st December: 206

I have put on hold both Two Ways To Live and Who Will Be King? for a number of reasons, but they are still on the play store for download.

Two Ways To Live
Simple gospel presentation by Matthias Media
Total installs for 2014: 1,553

Who Will Be King?
Child version of Two Ways To Live by Matthias Media
Total installs for 2014: 129

#CatecismoNuevaCiudad

December 8, 2014 ampers Leave a comment

The New City Catechism android app is now available in Spanish. Big thanks to Eduardo Barrientos for his translation skills. Not only is Spanish added to the app, it is also added to the mobile friendly site, so if someone tweets from the app, it will link back to the mobile site.

Other new features include video thumbnails to the adult English version (this increased the file size a bit) and you can now choose between Bible versions. ESV or NIV with the English and RVR1960 or LBLA for Spanish.

Stay tuned for the app store to update or you can download it from the portfolio page now.