Alex Stetsenko

An ex-colleague of mine, @shaded2, has been working tirelessly to bring Astrid Android app back as Tasquid Tasks.

While currently it is mostly stabilized fork of the original open sourced Astrid, it does have a new name and logo. Based on current plans the next upcoming feature is adding an alternative (open source) website backend for Tasquid to sync with (since Astrid.com is not available anymore).

Stay tuned – hopefully Tasquid will keep up with Astrid’s original level of awesomeness!

It’s been a while since Android is out but apparently there is still no way to connect an Android device to a Mac OS computer without extra efforts.

If you ran into this problem then look no further as Google has an official Android File Transfer desktop app. No need for any third party solutions.

P.S.: It is interesting how it says: “For Mac users only. You don’t need extra software to connect your Android device to a Windows computer.”

Another win for SAT Vocabulary as it has been selected to be listed on YesCollege.com among other sites and apps for ACT/SAT preparation.

It’s #59 out 100 but still a huge success for the app!

Sprint came out with entertaining Nexus 4G commercial introducing Android and cats.

SAT Vocabulary was selected by Cellular South to be promoted on their Online Discover Center (Lifestyle section).

It’s been a while since it was published. But downloads number still grow as well as active installs ratio is not bad (65%). In the mean time I am starting to work on version 2.0 for Android 2.0 🙂 .

It is not that I don’t like iPhone but Verizon Wireless has started a very aggressive campaign against iPhone while promoting a new Android powered phone Motorola Droid. Verizon seems to be the first who will unveil Android 2.0 although Donut (i.e. 1.6) has just been released for T-Mobile Customers.

Simultaneously with GRE Vocabulary I decided to release SAT Vocabulary. Applications have the same core and the same features. However SAT Vocabulary has its completed A-Z list of almost 5000 words.

At the same time GRE Vocabulary covers only letter A-D but already includes about 1500 words. I am still working on GRE words list and it looks it is going to be 10K+ words and definitions. But unfortunately downloads went extremely down – from about 200 on the first 24 hours it is hardly 20 per day now after 7 days on the Market.

Will see how it will work for SAT Vocabulary. It is already about 200 downloads in a few hours on the Market. Perhaps there are more people who is preparing for SAT rather than for GRE. Another advantage of SAT one that it has ‘all letters’ words.

In any way there is still a lot of work on some new features for both applications.

Update 7/12: SAT Vocabulary appeared to be more popular than GRE one. It was downloaded almost 1000 times in a week on the Market which is already more than GRE Vocabulary after 2 weeks.

Here I promised some experiments in software development.

And I’ve started one recently. A beta version of my first Android application was released early today. It is my first ‘production’ written on Java application too.

The application is simply called GRE Vocabulary. Its goal is to help to learn words required for verbal section of GRE exam which tests knowledge of words and their meaning. Unlike other similar applications it is free and going to contain comprehensive list of words – not just 50-100 ‘preview’ words. Current release has only letter ‘A’ words but it includes 475 (!) words and definitions!
There is no doubts that user interface is not perfect but it is only beta. I have a good list of future features. Hopefully user’s feedback will help to prioritize it.

Feel free to comment on this post or leave your suggestions at Android Market.

Update 6/30: about 350 downloads after 2 days on the market. Added 184 letter ‘B’ words. Working on a feature to mark words.