Hello

howdy, Mike!

how can I help you this morning?

We've received 2 emails from people claiming to have app stores, but I've never heard of them. Is this a common scam or people actually trying to start up stores?

oh, there's a zillion of 'em

whether they're worth your time is a whole 'nuther matter

how can you tell?

if they are preinstalled on devices (AndAppStore, Motorola's SHOP4APPS), they might be worth considering, for global-focus apps

not sure if you have many subscribers outside of the US

for the US, it's pretty much just the Android Market

we have some, but our most important subscribers are US. That's what the pharma companies are interested in.

that's what I figured

OTH, is there a way to target stores that are preinstalled on devices?

in that case, unless you start getting inquiries from potential customers that they can't get your app, I wouldn't worry about it

ok thanks

howdy, Frank!

good morning Mark

Mike: I know of a few alternative stores that get pre-installed -- AndAppStore, Motorola SHOP4APPS, Archos' own AppsLib

there are probably others (carrier-specific stores, etc.)

however, I don't have a definitive list

thanks mark

and they're mostly seen outside of the US

Frank: do you have a question?

I am trying to find out if it is possible to bundle several applications together

use duct tape

I have several apps that work together

:-)

lol, but I only want the user to have to download one thing

unfortunately, there's no easy way for that

you can give them menu choices and stuff to direct them to your Market pages for the other apps

so I am forced to have them download one at a time

but the unit of installation is the APK

yes

I have suggested, on a few occasions, that Android needs a separate container for installs, that might support multiple APKs

I have also suggested dependency chains, akin to Linux package managers

I still have the bruises from those suggestions :-)

hummm. That's too bad. Well thanks for the help. I will just have to do your trick with redirecting them to the Market

Oh. I think they are very good ideas

yeah, but we don't have to implement them

especially because that's exactly what I'm trying to do!

anybody have any other questions?

ummm not today. Still trying to figure out about the ActivityGroup

I'd ordinarily say "good luck with that", but ActivityGroup and kin make me break out in a rash

oh. I guess this goes along the line with that

if I make an app widget, will I be able to include that inside of an activity?

not easily

there should be a way to apply a RemoteViews to yourself, but I haven't gone looking for it

Grr. I was really trying to avoid recreating the exact same HUD in two places, notice that this is also for the app that I have the ActivityGroup question with, lol

hmmm

actually, it might not be too bad

RemoteViews has a simple apply() method

you give it your activity, plus the ViewGroup that will be the container

it returns the View representing the root of the hierarchy, akin to inflate()

you'll still need to call addView() on the ViewGroup to attach it

the somewhat icky part will be click handling -- you'd still wind up with PendingIntents in that case

yes. I am reading the methods you are talking about

if that's not desirable, you might need to go back in and patch that up with regular OnClickListeners

so that would prevent me from having the widget be interactive, it'll only fire my pendingIntent

without additional fix-up work, yes

actually, for my purposes that wouldn't be too bad. The widget will just be displaying data. And I can have the PendingIntent just fire the preference screen to adjust the settings for that widget

well Mark, thanks again. If I make any progress on that ActivityGroup I will be sure to write up a blog to post on my mobile development page.

cool!

any other questions?

I'm going to take that as a "no"...