Anthony Tietjen

Yesterday I decided I wanted to get at least something out on the Android Market. So I put together a very very simple app called Shopping Assistant. Currently its only function is to help you figure out cost per ounce while you are out shopping. This is helpful for knowing if something is really a good deal or not. Shopping Assistant is a simple app, but in the first day there were 15 downloads. The app is currently free. Perhaps someday I will add more features. The ADT Plugin for  Eclipse made it very easy to export the app, sign it and get it ready for upload to the Android Market . I used the Dalvic Debug Monitor to take the screenshots. You can find Shopping Assistant in the Android Market.

I listed my Android app "Auto Respond By Text" on  GetJar.com and it went active on October 14th. Two days later when I checked at about 5:05 PM it was showing that there were 18 downloads. Now, 16 days later, there have been 55 downloads. I may have contributed to one (if any) of the downloads. Because "Auto Respond By Text"  was made using App Inventor for Android, it isn't setup correctly to be able to publish via the Android Marketplace. When I tried to upload it to the Android Marketplace I got an error about the icon. So, as an alternative I have listed it on GetJar.com. Download Auto Respond By Text

I noticed that the apps I was making using App Inventor for Android were ending up being about 4MB in file size. So I decided to find out what size an app is when you use the Android SDK instead. It turns out that there is a considerable difference. A simple Hello World app made using the SDK is only 20KB, whereas one made using App Inventor for Android is 3.55 Mb. I also found out that the startup time for the two Hello World apps differed. On my phone, the app made using the SDK opened maybe 1 1/2 seconds faster than the one made using App Inventor for Android. See below for more details. Made with Android SDK File size: 20.00KB Startup: Maybe less than a second Made with App Inventor for Android File size: 3.55MB Startup: About 2 seconds