Android And I: Shovelware Indeed

       Let me be perfectly clear: Those 3 apps I made? Not useful. At all.
       As I've mentioned before, I have been developing Android applications. It's not easy. I purchased a lovely Android development book (Hello, Android 2nd edition) to help me along with that. I won't bother posting a link to it's Amazon page as it's currently out of print and a 3rd edition is on the way which covers 2.0 and 2.1.

      So, my apps: The first one is the most useless and the most expensive. It's called "I've Got Money" and it costs $100. What does it do? It displays a picture of a pile of money. Yes, completely useless. So why? First off, it's definitely not the most expensive (or useless) App on the Android Market. Far from it.  There is currently an app on the Android market called "I'm Richer" That displays a picture of a blue diamond and costs $200. The sad thing? People have downloaded and kept it. This whole thing started when the iPhone's App store was incredibly young. Someone had created an app called "I'm Rich". It cost a whopping $10,000. One person downloaded it. After that, it was removed from the app market. My app is more of an experiment. I want to see who is willing to pay for such an app. If someone downloads it, I will keep upping the price until people stop buying it. So far, one person has downloaded the app. They refunded it (I'm guessing it's the angry commenter in a previous "night cap" post), but still: one person was willing to download something for $100. Once someone actually keeps the app without refunding it, I will up the price. Others have been running similar experiments.

   Another app is called the "Iron Man Arc Reactor". It's a picture of Iron Man's Arc Reactor and chest piece. It costs $.99 and so far, 10 people have downloaded it. Only one person has kept it. Again, an experiment to see who's willing to pay to keep something that does nothing. I'm also willing to see how many people are willing to get their money back, even for just $.99. I will be updating it and trying something different and I'll keep you posted.

   My last app, called "Paper Weight Plus" is the most interesting so far. It's a picture of a paper weight and it costs $.99. If you can't guess what it does.... I can't help you here. So far, two downloads. One person has kept it for longer than 24 hours. That means one of two things. Either they thought the idea was so funny, they decided to keep it out of novelty or they didn't feel it necessary to get their $.99. There is a possible third reason: they do not know that you can get a refund for apps you don't want within 24 hours of downloads.

   Apparently the whole refund thing is a big problem with developers. Not because they can't swindle schmucks out of their money with useless shovelware, but because root users can download a paid app, back it up to their micro-sd card, refund it, then just reinstall it from their micro-sd card.

   I would also like to make something ese perfectly clear: I am constantly working on making useful, fun apps. They are proving very hard, but they are coming. I also have a couple ideas for some extremely useful, extremely cool iPad apps, but that will be much, much farther down the road.

   Until then, enjoy the uselessness :)