Following my decision to release my first desktop app as donationware, I did a little research into the experience of others with this model and found a great interview with Hillel Stoler, developer of donationware app GetSocial.
My own reasons for releasing my first app as donationware are quite similar to Hillel’s actually, and are as follows:
- I don’t like apps with limited functionality and I don’t like apps with ads embedded in them (yes, I have released a number of Google Android apps with ads in them but I am trying to get away from this model).
- I am curious about the donationware model as a long term opportunity for open source developers to be able to feed themselves (thus being able to devote even more time to developing open source apps).
For those of you who want to know the raw numbers, Hillel estimates that he gets a 0.55% conversion rate (ie the donation/downloads ratio) and that an average donation is $9.19. Therefore, 1000 downloads bring in $50.54. He qualifies this further by saying the stats only represent downloads from his own website as he cannot quantify downloads from third party websites and furthermore, as he regularly updates the app, the same person might download the app several times over the active lifespan of the app to get the updates.
Thanks to Andy Brice over at Successful Software for publishing the interview, it is very informative 
After reading Stephen’s post Why I love programming!, I got inspired to write down my own reasons for loving programming.
Firstly, I will quote Stephen here, because he said it very well: “[...] a desire to create! To keep learning! It’s fun, To make the world a better place!”
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AdMob has sent a newsletter to its publishers today, confirming Google buyout which took place on 27th May and asking publishers to sign a revised Terms of Service to enable transfer of the account to Google. The transfer to Google accounts is due to take place on 7th July.
AdMob is an ad service with a SDK for iPhone and Android developers, enabling them to show ads in their apps. In my experience, the payouts have fallen quite a lot over the last few months – I wonder if it is because there are too many publishers for not enough ads?
Anyway, as Google AdSense for mobile apps is only available within the USA and Canada at the moment, I am curious as to the effect of Google on AdMob ads inventory – hopefully, more advertisers will flock to the network and payouts will go up again 
I had to do a bit of research to get my T-Mobile mobile broadband USB Stick 120 (ZTE) to work on my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop but in fact, it’s very simple once you know how, so I thought I’d share it here.
First use:
1. Boot your computer WITHOUT the USB stick plugged in.
2. Plug in USB Stick.
3. Wait until “ZTE Modem” icon appears on your desktop/in your list of drives.
4. Right-click on “ZTE Modem” drive and select “eject”.
5. Wait for roughly 20 seconds.
6. Left click on your Network Connections manager (it’s an icon near the date, top right corner of desktop – or find it in your menu).
7. It should list things like “Wired Network”, “Wireless Network” etc Among them, it should list “Mobile Broadband”.
8. Select VPN Connections –> Configure VPN and click on the “Mobile” tab.
9. Click on “add” and then follow the wizard steps. My setup is for T-Mobile UK and it works (I selected “default” for the price plan). This will save your settings as “my connection”.
For future use:
Follow steps 1 to 7 as above; “my connection” should appear in the list at step 7, so simply select this and it will connect.
… learn Scala.
… learn how to use the command shell in Ubuntu.
… refresh my Perl knowledge.
… investigate HTML5.
Because
… I want to learn a multi-paradigm language and Scala can integrate with Java, a language I already use.
… I need to know my programming tools and not just rely on Eclipse.
… I want to write some quick text manipulating scripts to help with producing content for a couple of apps I’m working on.
… I was blown away by the HTML5 demos at Google I/O (No, I didn’t attend, I watched it on YouTube).
Today’s date is 05.05.10. It might be very geeky of me but I like it. 05 + 05 = 10. Very neat. I just wanted to share my excitement. I had a couple of dull meetings today but at least, I got to write 05.05.10 in my notebook