• Two Pieces of News

    It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the land of iPhone OS developers, and we have two pieces of news to go along with recent events.

    The first concerns Queuetastic, our iPhone app for accessing and managing your Netflix queues. One of the most-requested features we’ve heard from users is the ability to stream Netflix instant movies onto the iPhone. Until recently, it’s been unclear when, or if, Netflix would make this possible. Today, however, Netflix announced that they’ve developed their own app for the iPad that provides instant streaming, and strongly implied that an iPhone version is in the works as well. Although it’s not yet possible to integrate streaming into Queuetastic, we’re thrilled that Netflix is making it possible for users to watch video on their mobile devices.

    Where does that leave Queuetastic? We’re very proud of where the app is today, and we hope that Netflix will soon allow third-party developers like ourselves include the same streaming content. Until then, we’ll continue to support Queuetastic in it’s current form.

    That brings us to what’s next: the iPad. We’ve been hard at work over the past couple of months on an app for Apple’s new tablet, and we’re pretty pleased with the results so far. More details to come soon, but suffice to say that we think you’ll be able to cook up some amazing things with our newest creation…

    Posted at Apr 3, 2010 at 1:13am | Permalink | Tags: iphone ipad queuetastic netflix streaming

  • How the iPad Changes Our Business

    It’s been a week now since Apple announced the iPad in San Francisco, and that time has given everyone a chance to digest the new product. More importantly, it’s given us a chance to take a look at the developer tools for the iPad. (We’re still not sold on that name, but unfortunately we’re stuck with it.) While the developer tools remain under a non-disclosure agreement for now, I can safely say that the tools have erased any doubts we had about the iPad as a platform.

    Prior to the iPad announcement, we’d been in the early stages of designing a new desktop app for the Mac. But now we’ve decided to put that project on the back burner for now and work on an iPad app idea that jumped out at us almost immediately. While we don’t want to be specific just yet, suffice it to say that we’re really excited about this product and it’s potential for success on the iPad.

    Mean while, there are a lot of unknowns surrounding iPad development. Of particular concern to us is when test hardware will be available to developers. The iPhone had already been on the market for a year when Apple released the first SDK, so most developers had hardware in their hands on which to test new apps. With the iPad, we’ve had no indication that we’ll get access to the hardware before it gets released to the public, probably in late March or early April.

    Moreover, because apps tend to work a little differently on the device itself versus in the simulator, most developers (ourselves included) are hesitant to release apps based only on simulator performance. It seems likely that Apple shares the same concern. That’s let to quite a bit of speculation that there may be a waiting period between the release of the iPad device and when Apple begins accepting apps from most developers. While the device may ship with a small store containing a handful of “blessed” apps by trusted third parties, it seems likely that Apple will hold off a bit with most developers. While we’d love to have our new app available when the device launches, we’re preparing ourselves for a slightly longer wait. Stay tuned!

    Posted at Feb 3, 2010 at 7:10pm | Permalink | Tags: ipad iphone

  • Queuetastic 2.1.1 now available!

    Queuetastic version 2.1.1 is now available for download on the App Store! Grab a copy here!

    Posted at Jan 21, 2010 at 4:50pm | Permalink | Tags:

  • Queuetastic 2.1.1

    We’ve just submitted version 2.1.1 of Queuetastic to Apple for review. This version concentrates on fixing a number of bugs, but we also did quite a bit of work behind the scenes to get ready for Version 2.2, which will include some UI updates and new features. Stay tuned here for more information about the next version! Until then, here’s the list of changes for version 2.1.1. With luck, it’ll be approved and filtering it’s way down to you shortly.

    Version 2.1.1. Changelog

    • Fixed a bug where new ratings were not sent to Netflix
    • Fixed a bug where some users reported an error 412 when adding titles to their queue.
    • Fixed a bug where attempting to view movie details from the Browse tab caused movies to crash when the movie title contained non-alphanumeric characters.
    • Fixed a bug where deleting a movie from the detail view, reached via a search rather than a queue, caused an error 504.
    • Fixed a bug where the “in queue” status was not always reflected properly in search results.
    • Updates to Google Analytics for more accurate results and better performance.

    Posted at Jan 16, 2010 at 6:23pm | Permalink | Tags: queuetastic

  • Viewing Google Analytics stats in real time

    As I discussed in an earlier post, Google Analytics is a huge boon for web and app developers. Unfortunately, there’s one aspect of Google Analytics that’s always been a little frustrating: it doesn’t display real-time (or even pseudo-real time) results, stopping at the previous day’s statistics. Or so I thought.

    As it turns out, there’s a clever little trick that you can use to see Google Analytics stats that are quite current. In my experience, these stats are current to within the last 30 minutes or so. The trick to real-time tracking is in the date range Google uses by default. Most people loading up Google Analytics probably see a date range something like this:

    Google Analytics default date range

    In order to see those most recent statistics, you’ll need to expand that date range to include the current date, which is excluded by default. Observe:

    Select today's date in Google Analytics

    Click Apply, and your newly updated stats will be waiting for you. Why does Google set it up this way by default? My guess is that it helps avoid confusion that might ensue if partial-day results were mixed in with previous days. For example, today’s traffic might seem like a significant drop-off from yesterday if it’s only 9:00am. By giving users the option of viewing today’s stats without making it a default, Google has given us the best of both worlds.

    Posted at Dec 31, 2009 at 10:27am | Permalink | Tags: analytics

  • Using Netflix sub-accounts in Queuetastic

    A number of users have mentioned that they have multiple queues associated with one “master” Netflix account and would like to access each of those queues in Queuetastic. For example, a family might have one Netflix account with separate “sub-accounts” for each member of the household, each of which has its own queues.

    Multiple account support is something we’ve got in the works for a future version of the app, but until then, there’s a workaround that allows Queuetastic to access each individual’s queues within a master account. In short, the way to accomplish this is to assign a username and password to each sub-account. After the username and password is assigned, you can use the login for each sub-account in Queuetastic to access that sub-account’s queues. Here’s how to set it up:

    1. Log in to Netflix.com using the primary username and password.
    2. Click on “Your Account & Help” in the upper-right corner of the screen.
    3. Click on “Account Profiles” in the Preferences section.
    4. Click on Edit next to the sub-account you’re interested in.
    5. The username for the sub-account will be listed, and you can set a new password if you need to.

    If you have any trouble, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line at support@littlegreenmenlabs.com.

    Posted at Dec 30, 2009 at 1:18pm | Permalink | Tags: queuetastic how_to

  • Our website has a new look!

    We’ve just updated our website! We hope the new look will make it easier to get in touch with us, harmonize the look of the blog and our main site, as well as provide room to grow with future apps. Head on over and take a look!

    Posted at Dec 20, 2009 at 1:33am | Permalink | Tags: website

  • iPhone Apps and Google Analytics

    Yesterday Google made an announcement via its Google Mobile Blog that I hope will generate some excitement among iPhone developers: Google Analytics are now available for iPhone apps. Essentially, this will allow iPhone developers to do what web developers have done for a long time: collect statistics about how many people are using a product, how they navigate through it, and for how long.

    Analytics are important for a number of reasons. First, it gives us developers a good sense of how many people are using our app on a day to day basis. Beyond satisfying our egos (who doesn’t need a little pat on the back now and then?), this helps us figure out how quickly a product is being adopted and whether people who buy the app keep using it.

    Second, analytics help us understand how people are using our products. Take Queuetastic as an example. The order of the tabs at the bottom of the screen reflects a guess that people care most about their disc and instant queues, then about searching, and so on. Using analytics, we might discover that the first thing most users do upon launching the app is open the At Home screen.  Moreover, people might be spending a lot of time on that screen.  That gives us some clues that we ought to be focusing development on the At Home tab, since it seems to be fairly important to our users.

    Third, analytics can help with the business side of app development. Along with the time we spend building and refining our apps, developers have to spend time marketing our products so we can get them into users’ hands. We also keep track of what people are saying about the app, so we can respond to constructive criticism by making the next version even better. Analytics help track patterns in app usage in response to reviews, press, marketing efforts, and more.

    It’s important to point out that analytics don’t provide personal data about the user of an app. Developers can use analytics to find out how many people use a particular app feature, for example, but the identities of those users remain confidential.

    In coming versions, I’m looking forward to moving ahead on integrating Google Analytics into Queuetastic. With luck, it will provide us with important information about how people use the app so we can make it even better.

    Posted at Nov 4, 2009 at 9:46pm | Permalink | Tags: analytics app_development

  • Bug fix in Queuetastic 2.0.4

    Apple has just approved Queuetastic version 2.0.4, which should fix the crash on startup that some users were experiencing. Many thanks to Apple for the quick review and to all of you for your time and patience!

    Posted at Nov 3, 2009 at 7:58pm | Permalink | Tags: queuetastic

  • Bug Update

    Just a quick note for anyone who might be experiencing problems with the new 1.2.1 update. One user pointed out a bug in which the Edit button may not work on the Disc Queue tab under certain circumstances. We’ve managed to squash the bug, and an update has been sent to Apple, so with luck will be on its way to you ASAP. Thanks for your patience!

    Posted at May 5, 2009 at 2:28am | Permalink | Tags:

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