Hacker News Reader

Good point; I'll have a look at the analytics data and see but I have already been contacted by users in the past asking questions and suggesting features I already have because they got mixed up by the other apps they were testing.

dotnickon Ask HN: Any way to find why users uninstall my app?

The app is fully functional without a purchase.

dotnickon Ask HN: Any way to find why users uninstall my app?

Thanks, I'll have a look at usertesting.com

dotnickon Ask HN: How do you prioritise your daily tasks and to-dos?

As the developer of a mobile todo app, I would love to know why. Was there something missing?

dotnickon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (June 2015)

SEEKING WORK - Remote

Full stack freelance Android developer. I've built numerous apps - both personal and for clients - many of which using fun APIs like geolocation/geofencing, beacons, mapping and more.

Portfolio: http://www.nicknicolaou.me

dotnickon Ask HN: How do you handle feature requests from your users?

I've been looking for a good time to ask my users for a review. I used to have one of those annoying popups but decided to move it to a point where the user had a positive interaction with the app.

For a couple of months now I've moved it to the 'Thank you' dialog after an in-app upgrade but although I do see less negative reviews, the number of reviews has gone down dramatically. (To a point where I get 1 or 2 reviews a week) It kinda makes sense because I wouldn't want to exit an app I just upgraded (before checking out the pro features) to review the app.

I will probably try out what circa does and see how that works out. Thanks for the link.

dotnickon Ask HN: How do you handle feature requests from your users?

I added a 'Feedback' navigation menu entry in one of my Android apps that simply launches the the email client and I did see an increase in feedback from users.

If I think that the suggestion fits it with my vision of the app I add it to the backlog on Trello. When it gets implemented depends on how good I feel the feature is.

dotnickon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2015)

SEEKING WORK - REMOTE Full stack freelance Android app developer. Have been creating Android apps for the past 4 years, 6 months as a freelancer. Portfolio/Website: http://nicknicolaou.me

dotnickon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2015)

SEEKING WORK - REMOTE

Full stack freelance Android app developer. Have been creating Android apps for the past 4 years, 6 months as a freelancer.

Portfolio/Website: http://nicknicolaou.me

dotnickon Ask HN: Workarounds for selling apps from unsupported countries?

The easiest thing would probably be to use a relative's or a friend's bank account that is living/studying in a supported country. You would have to create and transfer your apps to a new Google Play developer account with the same country as the bank account.

You could also try to open an offshore bank account in one of the supported countries but most banks have balance limitations (the lowest I found was 5000GBP) and/or monthly fees.

dotnickon Ask HN: How useful are the Cisco CCNA and CCNP networking classes?

You can indeed study the course material by yourself; I did that myself and got the (CCNA) certification. If you intent to go through it for the sake of learning the just get a book, Packet Tracer or any other emulator and have fun.

If you intent to take the exam as well, you have to do it a bit structured and use multiple resources. For example, I started out with Todd Lammle's CCNA book, completed it and aced the practice questions. Luckily I also went on to use other resources, (mainly CBT nuggets) since the actual exam was considerably harder than what Lammle leads to you to believe.

dotnickon Running out of savings just as getting close to traction

What does your app do exactly? I didn't get that from the website.

dotnickon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2014)

SEEKING WORK - REMOTE

Full stack Android app developer, recently transitioned into freelancing full-time. I have experience with the Android Location APIs.

Portfolio/Website: http://nicknicolaou.me

dotnickon Ask HN: Freelancers of HN, do you get clients/leads from your websites?

Interesting.

All the replies I got so far (both on HN and /r/freelance) seem to be negative.

Do you have an idea what makes a difference in your case? Is it your niche? Maybe, as you said, the fact that you establish yourself as an authority in your field through your blog?

dotnickon Android without the mothership

> ... CyanogenMod is free; it is mostly a build of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) release with a bunch of added goodies. Google's proprietary user-space apps and utilities are available, but they must be downloaded and installed separately.

Interesting. Isn't this against any Google terms?

dotnickon Ask HN: How do you find good developers on oDesk?

I have to ask; why oDesk? (or Elance or freelancer.com?)

I moonlight on Elance but I'm trying to build a solid portfolio to get away, and I think most decent remote workers do the same, mostly because projects posted on these websites are a race to the bottom.

I would say stay away; you're better of posting the position on the 'Who is hiring' thread here on HN, careers.stackoverflow etc.

If you insist on hiring developers from freelancing websites though, my personal opinion is:

1. Have a realistic budget. You get what you pay for. Yes, there are differences between countries, and not everyone needs to charge $100 an hour to make ends meet but when you're hiring a developer for $15 an hour (from anywhere in the world), you're taking a huge risk.

2. Don't bother with job posts, the signal to noise ratio is too low, especially when you specify a decent budget. Just search around for developers with solid portfolios. Don't pay too much attention to reviews, all it takes is one bad client who's not able to communicate to ruin your 5-star record.

dotnickon Ask HN: Tool to know approximate price quotation for a given job?

Estimation techniques are one thing; how much OTHER people would charge is another.

How much would make you happy to do the above tasks?

dotnickon Ask HN: What are you learning right now?

Objective-C.

A lot of people suggested I get straight into Swift but some of my clients need help with their existing apps so I chose to start with Obj-C.

dotnickon Ask HN: What can I do to find more leads for freelancing?

The leads mailing lists look very interesting. I'm thinking of subscribing.

Is there anything like this for Android?

dotnickon A swift Introduction to Swift

Good read, thanks for the link.

dotnickon A swift Introduction to Swift

There was a relevant Ask HN thread [0] but it didn't get much traction so I'll ask here:

What would you recommend to someone just starting out in iOS, starting with Obj-c or diving straight into Swift?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7875208

dotnickon Share: The Icon No One Agrees On

> Overall, the idea of this design is not immediately intuitive and the association of sharing with this symbol is purely because users have learned what it means over time.

I honestly believe that this is the case for all the icons. As an Android user and developer, I wouldn't associate the box with the up arrow with a "share" action, much less the Windows 8 circle thing.

dotnickon Android-resource-remover – utility to auto-remove unused Android resources

I remember reading somewhere that lint might give false positives if you refer to resources in your Java code instead of the xml.

From the README:

If you have references to elements in an old layout that you're not using anymore, you will get a compile error that the ID (R.id.<something>) can not be found. The reason is that the resource file that contained R.id.<something> has been removed as it was not used any more. Time to clean up your code.

If there is a reference to the resource somewhere doesn't that mean that the resource is in use?

dotnickon Google I/O 2014

I've never been before; this will (hopefully) be my first time, but my excuse is that I can combine in with some geeky sightseeing in the US.

dotnickon Google I/O 2014

I honestly fail to see how the lottery improves things.

IMHO the best way is to just announce that there's no giveaway this year. Not the best promotion for the event though.

dotnickon Android Development Tips For iOS Devs

You can get a pretty responsive emulator if you use an x86 ABI and HAXM[0].

[0] http://software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/intel-hardw...