Friday, March 1, 2013

Well, I guess I'll fix that, then...

Those of you that received the latest update may have noticed the new Clock module. I had been working on it for a couple weeks, I even bought some software specifically for the purpose of being able to make the computer voices with a variety of voice packs since I can't use the real computer voice here. Interestingly enough the closest one I found was one of the new Microsoft voices. Hopefully I will find more uses for it as well in future functionality. More development blogging after the break if you care to read it, but the short version is that I fixed the computer talking over itself and hope to have it and more features in a new update submitted this weekend.



Anyhow, I spent a lot of time sorting out issues the clock had and made it work smoothly, but there was one thing I was not happy with and that was the voices talking over each other if you start the time too close to an interval where it gives a time update. Well, I've already been called out for this issue on this blog and in a store review. I thought before I submitted it: "how often is that really going to happen?" I underestimate how thorough my users are in finding faults in this thing. I do appreciate it, and it keeps me on my toes. 2 people (or even 1 person) out of hundreds being unhappy with something is enough to make me want to fix it, so please let me know about any other issues like this. So, I spent some extra time and resolved this issue. The computer will now interrupt itself if there is going to be overlap. This fix will be in the next update. As usual, though, I don't want to just submit a bug fix update so I need to find some additional features to add while I am at it. Hopefully I will have a new version submitted this weekend!

As for other issues I've heard about, like the weather not being accurate sometimes. I did recently fix an issue that was showing the Fahrenheit values on the Current page incorrectly, so if it was before the last update that you noticed problems, that display should be fixed. Otherwise I can't do much besides apologize that it doesn't work well for you since I don't collect the data myself. This service (World Weather Online) is getting weather data from all over the world, so I guess there are bound to be a few spots it doesn't work well in. In order to buy possibly more reliable data from some "premium" weather services, based on the number of users I have, would make me charge you at least $10 a month to use this app's weather function since this app is not ad supported. As always if I find a better option I will switch to it, but this is the best global one I could find right now.

I like that you all crave more features. I don't think I will ever be able to replace Windows itself for you, but I'll keep doing as much as I can. The early adopters have seen quite an increase in the number of features this app has and I hope to continue that, although if I add much more the structure of this app will need to change somewhat.

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