Show HN: My first android app Disha | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first android app Disha

market.android.com

19 pointschussad9 comments

Not that it matters an incredible amount or that you can fix it now, but I highly doubt that you own rails.com . Your package name is meant to be a unique domain that you own.

You don't need to "own the domain", strictly speaking, you need to use a unique package identifier. Owning the domain and using it for package naming is a good enough convention and helps avoid conflicting identifiers.

Java package naming convention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_package#Package_naming_con...

Useful Stackoverflow discussion http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6273892/android-package-n...

If you don't own any domain, get one, it will help you tons and you can recoup the cost by passing on a cup of coffee every other sunday morning.

Wow! Never thought it will make it to the first page. Since I am new to the whole android development. Can anyone suggest how to promote this app besides advertising it/sending an email out to friends and family? I will really appreciate it.

Some ideas for promoting the app:

Try to get linked from an official web site, whatever the equivalent of this is: http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/Mobile_Device_Schedules.ht...

That may require navigating some bureaucracy, but it may be surprisingly easy.

Also, try handing out fliers with QR codes or placing stickers somewhere where train riders with Android phones are.

You could also possibly leave Foursquare tips at every train station that you have access to. Hope this helps. :)

Looks good. Thinks will start to pick up by themselves once you have a few reviews and download stats are shown on the market page. When I submitted one app, even though it was having downloads (it had a server-side component so I knew from traffic), the stats on the market page and publish page didn't update for nearly two weeks!

Pay a friend $100 or get someone to make an UI design for you. If you can't afford that, have a look at the popular android apps, at the apps developed by google and at free/paid themes on the internet. I don't know what's the website for the indian rails system, but if you can get them to officially support you, try to get approval to use their design style. Basically, anything works, just make your app look better :) It matters much more than you might think.

Otherwise, I wish I had this kind of app for

Thanks zrgiu, do you have any recommendations from where you got the app themes or any designer recommendation who is not going to cost me a fortune?

Nice App! Just wanted to know one thing. How are you retrieving data from Government's site. AFAIK, Indian Railways restricts such data, and this information can't be used commercially without their permission. Right?

I mean on some pages of the site it says that However, I am not sure how well they crack down on apps like this. If it becomes too much of a concern, I will take the advertisement out.

I just wanted to build something that will be useful without being rude on their site resources. For their site, the requests that come in are just like from any other client. This app do not put any extra burden on the site like crawling and such. Having said that, I agree that this a gray area.

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