Guest Simon Desser Posted July 26, 2003 Report Posted July 26, 2003 An Analogue Clock plug-in has been released by Madbeetle on Handango Here's what they say:- The analogue clock plugin puts a analogue clock onto the home page. As well as an analogue clock, its displays the time in text, the date, and Internet time. Internet time (@ time) is a number 0-1000 that represents time and its the same time all over the world. So if you arrange to call someone @765 in a different country , you don't need to worry about time zones because @765 is the same all over the world. The plugin is fully configurable via its xml in the theme xml file. See our website for details A www.madbeetle.com production. Source:- msmobiles.commbclock1.gif
Guest awarner [MVP] Posted July 26, 2003 Report Posted July 26, 2003 Looks cool :) just what people asked for in the early days, and we were told it's not possible, well it was'nt then.
Guest Gorskar Posted July 26, 2003 Report Posted July 26, 2003 So I take it you need to buy the plugin per phone rather than per homescreen. Like say I was to make a homescreen that used this plugin, everyone who wanted to use it would need to pay for a copy of the plugin!
Guest nickcornaglia Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 Although I find having to pay for a plug-in initially distressful...I settled into the thought that it actually IS a "program" and should be purchased if that's what the developer wants. Maybe this will entice others to develop some more plugins! (I thought I posted this once...but I may have messed up...so excuse me if this comment is posted elsewhere!)
Guest Will Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 shudder how often is the time polled? and does this trigger the phone coming out of powersave? Will
Guest nickcornaglia Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 Out of curiosity...what do you use internet time for?
Guest midnight Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 from a homescreen designers pouint of view, this is a nightmare, just what we didnt need. How are we to design homescreens that work for the masses when people have to buy plugins, i do not agree with this one little bit, especially when there is already a plugin that can display an analog clock and is free (lcd plugin). I think i'll start charging for my tweaks, what do you think? :) Sorry madbeetle, you've written some nice software, but this is one thing i will never buy, nor design homescreens for (i am already designing one using lcd plugins analog clock) FASC is watching you ;)
Guest nickcornaglia Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 From your point of view...I totally understand your thoughts. Maybe if it were $1.99...it would be easier to swallow. Like purchasing ringtomes on other phones. I'm just hoping for more plugins to become available and if a pittance is what it takes to make it work for programmers to design them...then maybe a minimal fee is appropriate! By the way...I would pay for your Speed Tweaks as they have made my phone usable. Or even for RitchieM's Alarm plugin if it were finished. (Again...a minimal amount to make it worth your troubles) But on the other hand...I appreciate the work you do for FREE as it comes from your passion for the device and what you do. Maybe DonationWare is more appropriate for wares like these? (By the way...I still mean to donate to Gears...I just never get around to it! :) ) In the end I would only ask....SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE MORE PLUGINS! ;)
Guest midnight Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 From your point of view...I totally understand your thoughts. Maybe if it were $1.99...it would be easier to swallow. Like purchasing ringtomes on other phones. no its more about plugins should be free, apps i dont mind paying for, but plugins are siomething that everyone should have access to at no extra cost, this is what makes homescreens work, why should i write a homescreen for this plugin when 10 people might buy it, kind of a waste of time on my part dont you think. And i cant package the plugin with the homescreen to ease distribution and installation either. Not everyone wants to edit the xml, and so this plugin would be restricted to personal use for people who code their own homescreens, kinda kills the idea of homescreens for the public dont you think?
Guest nickcornaglia Posted July 27, 2003 Report Posted July 27, 2003 Man...there were 10 ways to reply to this post. I'll give it a shot...playing devil's advocate. Please excuse me thinking out loud. My first response was..... You have the right to choose to offer your work for free. But the developer does have the right to charge for his work as well. And then you have the right, in turn, not to include it in your homescreen creations. I'd rather it be free as the functionality isn't all that great. (I wont be buying it). But what happens when someone get's the gumption to offer a weather plugin, for example, that will show a 5-day forcast right on the homescreen. Should that be free? (Though it would have to be tied to another program, I'm sure). Maybe some should be free and not others? But then I got to thinking...... The masses will not be creating homescreens, even for themselves. Probably a group of 10% of Smartphone users have the knowledge or the incentive to even edit XML to the point where they would be making/editing their own homescreens. Most rely on creative people like you who have offered hundreds of homescreens to choose from. Even the simple list-views with a backdrop that come standard on the phones are beyond many users capacity to edit. So unless there were a better WYSIWYG wizard to create homescreens using plugins...they should be free. Who's going to buy them? 10% of the 10% listed above? And if you DID decide to purchase it to use on a homescreen, you couldn't distribute it. So what's the point??? ============================================ I CONCEED....charging for plugins is a BAD idea. ============================================ Future Thoughts The confusion may come from the PocketPC Today Screen. No one wants to limit the functionality of the Smartphone screen by just offering BASIC plugins. After all...it is not a plain old cellphone screen. It's customizable and you can do soooo much more with it than just offer a background change, or just show the time and date. People may want to go beyond what exists today on the Smartphone. I know I do. Some may also try to treat this as a PPC Today screen where you buy individual items to list on your screen. Like a weather plugin or a task plugin or whatever! Really...the answer to what the home screen should be is somewhere between the PPC Today screen and the editable XML screen. Maybe there should be 2 offerings from MS...the option for the current XML Home Screen, customizable. And the option for more PPC-like functionality where plug-ins can only be listed due to their complexity where users could choose via an interface which plugins show up on the screen. Better yet...a two-page HomeScreen. The first is what we are used to. This is the user's HOMESCREEN. Scroll right to find a second screen with purchased plugins that are not re-formattable....(with a matching backdrop to the first screen.) Now I'm rambling (but how cool would that be? And everyone would be happy!! :wink: )
Guest Richie M Posted July 28, 2003 Report Posted July 28, 2003 Hmmm a plug-in you pay for but you have to make your own homescreen for :? unless of course you just use the basic one provided :D As has been pointed out already, why not just use the free LCD Plug-in - i used it for the Analogue clock version of my Longhorn M5 theme (check my sig for link :)). I would imagine that this works on the same principle as the LCD Plug-in and therefore has to poll every second, therefore making it a bit of a resource hog and eats batteries :D Hehehe if this is the way to go, i'll guess i should remove my Alarm plug-in and start charging for it ;)
Guest smartman Posted July 29, 2003 Report Posted July 29, 2003 once again the lust for greed outweighs innovation you can stick your plugin where the sun dont shine :shock:
Guest madbeetle Posted July 29, 2003 Report Posted July 29, 2003 Pricing is a problem, and I can see your points about comparing it to a ring tone. How much do you charge for anything. Personally I'd sell everything $1.00 if I thought people would buy more. I'd rather sell 100 copies of something for $1, than 10 for $10. That way more people will get to use my stuff. I'll take on board your comments for future pricing decisions. Thanks for you useful comments...
Guest vijay555 Posted July 29, 2003 Report Posted July 29, 2003 Aww come on peeps, i don't mind them charging, but i just don't think they'll sell too many! I spend ages on my code, and if i thought that i had a commercially viable product, i might consider knocking it out, even for a quid. Richie, if you ever sort out the Alarm Plugin, i'll paypal you £1. or buy you a drink. or whatever. It's not going to earn you a million, but even if 100 out of the X0,000 uses of Modaco send you a quid, that's not bad. I don't mind paying for something that does a job well, but to be fair, a homescreen plugin doesn't deserve to get too fussed about. It's only about £3, but even then i think it's a bit steep.. but market forces should dictate. If it sells, good for them, if not, drop the price, or at least give us a 14 day trial! BTW: richie, i'm using the lcd pugin in a skin i knocked up: http://smartphone.modaco.com/viewtopic.php...=67988&start=23 the analogue clock is between the woman's legs. For some reason tho, it's not updating. When i load the homescreen, it tells the correct time, but then it just sticks. The plugin "works", in that i can select it and choose bip etc, (although the alarms don't work, any idea why?) Any idea why the clock doesn't poll? Cheers all, and Happy B'day Paul! V
Guest midnight Posted July 29, 2003 Report Posted July 29, 2003 madbeetle, the pricing of everything else is great, dont get me wrong. but i just feel that anything to do with the homescreen should be free, that way your product gets to be used by everyone, and us homescreen designers wont think twice about designing homescreens using that plugin. I dunno, maybe if it was more, say a custom homescreen with that plugin built in, then it would be worth it to so many people, as it stands it requires homescreen xml knowledge from a user, which is likely to put lots of people off in their purchase decision. It is tricky when it comes to plugins i must agree. (dont forget my comments come from a homescreen designers point of view, i want my homescreens to be available to all, and so using plugins that have to be bought prohibits that)
Guest drblow Posted July 30, 2003 Report Posted July 30, 2003 I absolutely agree with Midnight on this one!! :? There is so much work on homescreens that is done for free, by amazingly talented people, that is of an incredibly high standard! As Midnight says - should he start charging for his tweaks?? (even tho we would all pay, as Midnight has established himself as a worthy cause! :) ) I think if this kind of outrageous charging was to be allowed to take over, the smartphone community would be destroyed. Part of the beauty of smartphone, is that there is a large MoDaCo family, who are more than happy to work on customistaions for free. & that is not just me being stingy - it's more to do with the sense of community, the feeling of 'sharing' - you know?! & I think that it is pretty laughable that there is a free version of this analogue clock plugin, which has been doing the rounds for a few months now (see Richie M's magnificent Longhorn theme) - and then somebody comes along & tries to charge for essentially the same thing!! Perhaps the 'donation ware' idea is kind of acceptable - but realistically, who is going to make a donation for a homescreen plugin, when ALL the others are free???? :? I mean, there is a staggering amount of homescreens available - all for free, & all requiring at least as much work as would go into creating a plugin. I would like to think that anyone seen to be cashing in on an established area of work which has been traditionally free would only succeed in alienating the majority of smartphone users!! & of course, all the tireless MoDaCo geniuses who do all this work for nothing. Get it???? :twisted:
Guest drblow Posted July 30, 2003 Report Posted July 30, 2003 vijay555 - I see what you're saying, & I agree that more commercial support for smartphone would be positive in the long run, but I think the argument here is based more around the fact that this is the first time anyone has seen a charge being applied to homescreen development, which up until now has all been free (skins, themes & plugins). As you said yourself, there needs to be more (eg. demo) for this to be a reasonable purchase. And while I don't think things like this will stifle creativity from anybody (creative people tend to be creative by nature, not demand) it certainly makes a bit of a mockery of the fact that so many people on this forum put in so much time on apps, skins etc. for FREE. And that includes skins, plugins, themes, apps etc - all of which offer the user a whole lot more than 1 simple homescreen plugin - & even worse than that, a plugin which offers nothing new or outstanding, and one that is very similar to an established FREE version!! I think that is why this example has been getting a generally poor reception about the price thing. I wonder how much better it would have been had the plugin been free??!! 8)
Guest madbeetle Posted August 12, 2003 Report Posted August 12, 2003 The plugin is now cheaper - $1.95 and there is a demo version. So now it is comparable to a ring tone - does this make it less controversial ?
Guest Gorskar Posted August 12, 2003 Report Posted August 12, 2003 I think you could drop it to $0.50 and still see very poor usage, as there wont be alot of homescreens designed for it, and the majority of us are too lazy (or lacking in talent) to design our own homescreens. Those of us with some artistic flair (like Midnight and others) with a willingness to share it by releasing their homescreens to everyone won't want the people who can benefit from their efforts limited to the few people willing to pay for the plugin. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort that went into it, but a plugin is not a complete product - it needs some homescreens to go with it. Possibly if you were to bundle a few well designed homescreens (and they'd have to be comparible to some of the best for people to want them on their phones I'm afraid) then it would sell. Thats just the unfortunate reality of plug ins. :? And just for the record I love your other software, especially the Pong game (which I got on an SD card from the last meet), and think the pricing for those works is fine. 8)
Guest Terwin Posted August 12, 2003 Report Posted August 12, 2003 Hrrrm, actually I see no problem at all with someone wanting to charge (or not charge) for their work. It's up to all of you to decide if you'll use it or not. If he feels the need to charge for the work he put into it, I'm all for it. Everything can't be for free ya know. :)
Guest madbeetle Posted August 14, 2003 Report Posted August 14, 2003 Fact is the analogue clock plugin has sold more than some of my games. Correct me if Im wong LCD's plugin isn't signed, MB's is. Bear with me here, to getting a signing cert its $495 for 100 signings or one year, which ever comes first, to be eligable to apply for one you have to be a company. Setting up a company costs a bit too - handango & smartphone.net take 30%/20% - and when all said and done the market is sooooo small at the moment you got to try make some money out of it anyway you can - just to afford the certificate next year.
Guest OttoR Posted March 13, 2005 Report Posted March 13, 2005 Another note on pricing plugins/homescreens/software/... What about warranty? If my phone crashes by your creation and it is payed for, I should be able to hold you liable for caused damage. If it is free however, you cannot.
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