To ALL developers, coders etc. - VERY IMPORTANT, READ THIS!
As you may know, I am involved in several projects that provide your software a lot of good free publicity:
I regularly make thorough, all-product, roundup reviews of most Windows Mobile software categories.
Hal Goldstein, publisher, Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine, has appointed me Best Software Awards 2007 Nominations Manager, http://www.pocketpcmag.com/awards (site may not yet updated for 2007 but current information almost all applies for 2007)
For the awards to succeed and in order to be YOUR software not to be missed from my roundups, you REALLY submit or update your product listing at the Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories ( http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_enc/encyclopedia.asp ) (click the link - the listing is free!).
IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO THOSE ALREADY LISTED In ENCYCLOPEDIA: Make sure all your listings are up to date. A new field has been added - Last Major Update. The field will be used in the awards process and published on-line and in print. See the end of this E-mail for details.
To be nominated for the awards, a product must first be listed in the Encyclopedia. For my roundups, I do my best to track down all possible alternatives. However, sometimes even I don't find them; for example, when they're only discussed on a forum in a language I don't speak (for example, Chinese) I speak / understand (Germanic) Western languages, all the three major Finno-Ugric ones, Russian and spoken Japanese. Except for Japanese, I keep an eye on most of these forums and WM-related sites. I can't do this, however, with Far-East languages. That is, I can't follow, for example, Chinese forums and, therefore, don't know what the Chinese discuss if they don't post on a European/U.S. forum.
Therefore, I *strongly* implore you all to make sure your product is listed in the above-linked Encyclopedia. By doing this, you can be absolutely sure it won't be missing from my future roundups. Registering / editing / updating stuff is FREE and can be done in a few minutes. In exchange, the entire world will be aware of your product, particularly when I include it in one of my forthcoming articles AND / OR if it is nominated for the Best Software Awards 2007. In addition, Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine uses the Encyclopedia to create their New Products section in the magazine, their New Products weekly newsletter, and their New Products section on their web site.
Note that you don't need to be a "big", established software developer. One-man developers should register their products and if there product is strong have BIG chance to be nominated for the Best Software Awards 2007 contest. For example, I do plan nominating several free, but very-very important and life-saving utilities of well-known, mostly XDA-Developers-based hackers / programmers like vijay555 (for example his full screen TSC hack), water (SmartsKey) or FdcSoft (Task Manager). The same stands for other, free utilities like Motoblast, LLC’s PMRecorder. That is, even if you're a hobbyist programmer / free-time coder "only" writing free utilities, make sure you DO register your stuff in there. This will help me a LOT in the nominating process (I REALLY don't want to leave out any decent titles from nomination), let alone my future articles & roundups.
Once again, it's for everyone's advantage that you register your stuff. For me (and the other folks at PPCMag in charge of the Best Software Awards 2007), it's easier to find them, nominate for the Best Software Awards 2007 voting and consider them for my product roundups; for you because your product will be not only included in my roundups but are also accessible to the public in the Encyclopedia - again, all this for FREE! -, and, finally, for all Windows Mobile users because they will have an easier time finding your stuff.
Finally, I'd like to point out that I've just added a new data input field to the product update form containing the Date Of Last Major Upgrade of the product. Please do fill it in and always make sure you fill it in whenever you implement a major upgrade on your product.
What is a major update, you may ask. An example: the NetFront 3.2 -> 3.3 version jump is a major update. So is the PIEPlus 1.x -> 2.0 version jump. Sticking with PIEPlus, a 2.1 -> 2.2 jump is NOT a major update. I'd say everything should be considered a major update that involves at least 20-40% completely rewritten / redesigned / brand new code or resources. Please, therefore, refrain from always updating this field with every minor update - the 20-40% rule should always be right (and note that I'm also a die-hard programmer - I can give a pretty much exact estimation of how much of that code base / resources have been changed between subsequent program versions. That is, no cheating please ;-) ).
Thanks in advance,
Werner 'Menneisyys' Ruotsalainen Best Software Awards 2007 Nominations Manager, Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine
Many thanks Werner for the reminder and information on this! :) We will be sure to update our listing of our current applications up to date on the PPC&Smartphone Magazine encyclopedia already during the next few hours to be sure that everything is updated. (I believe that our listings should already be pretty updated BTW).
Regarding the last major update field definition I'm not really sure in what cases we should use this field and when not. As an example, for our latest update of PocketBreeze to version 5.2 we had to write LOTs of new code sections and also modified really a lot of code from the existing code from version 5.1, however, since the PocketBreeze code is a really large project I wouldn't say that we changed more than %20 of the entire project code lines, but probably got really close to it. The amount of code changes and time invested was over four months of work, which is definitely enough time to write a full new application, so technically I would assume that we can list this as a new major update using this field, but I'm not sure if percentages-wise based on the actual changes in the existing code wise this qualify or not?
We usually release first sub-version level updates only every few months after working on them for really long time while releasing smaller updates such as 1.2.01 -> 1.2.02 etc. more often, so I'm not really sure if it will be OK if we can list such updates as major updates or should we just keep this to larger paid updates? (which we usually do once every two years or so :/ ).
I will be glad to hear any general thoughts on this and what level of updates would you like us to list as major updates? :)
Many thanks Werner for the reminder and information on this! :) We will be sure to update our listing of our current applications up to date on the PPC&Smartphone Magazine encyclopedia already during the next few hours to be sure that everything is updated. (I believe that our listings should already be pretty updated BTW).
Regarding the last major update field definition I'm not really sure in what cases we should use this field and when not. As an example, for our latest update of PocketBreeze to version 5.2 we had to write LOTs of new code sections and also modified really a lot of code from the existing code from version 5.1, however, since the PocketBreeze code is a really large project I wouldn't say that we changed more than %20 of the entire project code lines, but probably got really close to it. The amount of code changes and time invested was over four months of work, which is definitely enough time to write a full new application, so technically I would assume that we can list this as a new major update using this field, but I'm not sure if percentages-wise based on the actual changes in the existing code wise this qualify or not?
We usually release first sub-version level updates only every few months after working on them for really long time while releasing smaller updates such as 1.2.01 -> 1.2.02 etc. more often, so I'm not really sure if it will be OK if we can list such updates as major updates or should we just keep this to larger paid updates? (which we usually do once every two years or so :/ ).
I will be glad to hear any general thoughts on this and what level of updates would you like us to list as major updates? :)
Many thanks for the help with this! :)
Thanks for pointing out this issue in my original post (that is, code size vs. modded percentage). I'll add something like this:
with small(er) apps, more modded percentage is required (say, 20-40%), with larger ones, less is sufficient (10-20%).
BTW, there's a reason we added the new field: next year we MAY (nothing is certain as yet) introduce a new Awards category? a brand new Awards? called something like "Best WM software awards for software released or really updated in 2007".
This is why the new field is needed so that we can decide what earlier-released apps should be eligible for nomination (see "major update" - not just plain cosmetic "updates" or just a version bump to make the app eligible for nomination).
Of course, this may still change, completely abandoned etc. We'll need to come up with some really decent rules for the new voting / nomination.
Well, I'm a (retired) SW Quality Assurance Manager, so
Changes in code only should be reflected in the non-public build number (configuration management)
Changes in the design/functionality which requires changes in the (acceptance) test procedures shall have a new issue number.
So may I suggest that you classify your changes into 3 groups
Editorials - typo's etc
Minor - correction of small errors etc
Major - changes in layout, functionality etc
This has nothing to do with how many % of code that have been changed.
But it has a lot to do with the change of functionality available to the user.
.
Thanks for the suggestions; I'll also take them into consideration for the next update of the announcement above.
In general, with the percentages above, I (we) just wanted to make sure no developer will just bump up the version number to become eligible for "last year's awards" while introducing almost no changes (this is what I call "cheating"). This is why I've put extreme weight on the percentage rate of rewritten / new codebase or resources (for example, brand new icons like the ones in the new, 6.x series of Resco Picture Viewer or the forthcoming Opera Mobile 8.65).
I think the codebase / resource modification percentage (compared to the already-existing codebase) give a pretty good estimation on how much energy / time has been spent on a given software product and can pretty easily be checked / estimated by a Windows Mobile guru by just comparing the previous and the new versions, looking into DLL files to examine the resources and the like.
Of course, functionality to end user is also very important. For example, when a given Web browser adds for example Flash or cookie support (speaking of, say, Deepfish now), its functionality is greatly enhanced, while, at least with Flash (with cookies, the situation is different - let me point out that not even the latest versions of NetFront have fixed the cookie bug I've discovered some two years ago), minimal coding is necessary (as opposed to, say, implementing JavaScript support from sscratch, without using any alrerady-available codebase). That is, surely "end user functionality change" is also very important and will also be incorporated in the next version.
... I will be glad to hear any general thoughts on this and what level of updates would you like us to list as major updates? :)
Many thanks for the help with this! :)
Actually, I was trying to provide some guidelines to amitregev :p
... but I also think it's a very pragmatic way that you suggest, Menneisyys
BTW: I would consider changes of the icons to be 'editorials'
A major change (read: improvement) is one that I'm willing to put my money in - even if I have the old version :approve:
Afterthoughts:
I have to admit that a major change is not always a desired one:
Just think about ActiveSync - now without wifi functionality etc
.
Last edited by Zaniax; 03-30-07 at 07:11 AM.
Reason: Afterthoughts
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