Sugar Dave's Place

I have been learning JavaScript/CSS/HTML 5 for the past 7-8 months and have a couple of applications available in the official Palm App Catalog. Early on, one of the downfalls of the Palm developer portal was that we could not see actual unique purchases of our applications. The numbers that could be seen for "downloads" were just that: TOTAL downloads which included application updates, re-installs, etc. That is just not a good number for people who want to try and anticipate potential revenue, user base numbers, and so on.

In my last two applications, I implemented a very simple nduid registration system. Basically, the application starts up, checks for an Internet connection, contacts the cloud server, and uploads the device nduid, application name, application version, and a timestamp. This lets me do a simple count of unique endpoints that have installed my application(s) AND have Internet connectivity.

I know of at least one other webOS developer doing something similar. Our initial discussions showed that we had very different ideas about how to store data. In my system, I only register an endpoint once and assume that the timestamp provided is their "registration" date IF there isn't an entry for that nduid in the table already. If there is an entry, then the timestamp is just an "update." The other developer was inserting a record every time a phone contacted his cloud. I have since heard from them and how they decided to not do that anymore, due to space constraints.

Of course, the Palm developer portal has been improved and now we can see all kinds of numbers. However, I still think there is a desire on the part of developers to be able to see more detailed application usage statistics. Therefore, I have begun tinkering with a new Drupal project.

It is very early in the design/testing phase, but results are promising. The goal is to provide a simple API to developers that they can then include in their applications. This API will allow an application to contact my cloud, register/update a phone, and send application name and version...just like I have for myself. The difference is that developers will be able to register at my Drupal site and the information handled by familiar Drupal modules, such as CCK and Views. In fact, CCK and Views will do a LOT of the heavy lifting for this project.

Once I have a semi-working system, I will get some other developers to try it out. The first set of features will likely be very poor compared to what you can get from the developer portal, but I'm trying to design things so that extensibility won't be too much of a problem....we'll see how that goes. If it goes well, then I will be able to add additional reports and other goodies.