After many months of active development ...
AppUpdate Beta 1 is NOW AVAILABLE!!
To install AppUpdate on your Android 2.2 or later mobile device please go here:
http://appupdate.com/beta.html
If you have any questions please post to the AppUpdate users forum at:
http://appupdate.com/forum.html
This is an OPEN BETA so please feel Free to share AppUpdate with anyone you want.
Our plan is to make AppUpdate Beta 2 available in the Android Market in a few weeks.
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What's New in AppUpdate
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Sharing AppUpdate
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This is an OPEN BETA! This means you are now free to share AppUpdate with
anyone you want. We have tried to make this is as easy as possible by adding a
Share AppUpdate button to the home screen. Just click it and you'll have a
number of options for getting AppUpdate to your friends including sending a
text message, email, posting to facebook, etc.
Please share it out with as many people as you can con into using it.
Speed Improvements
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We have put a lot of effort into make AppUpdate MUCH faster. It's now a full
release mode build with debugging removed and should be much snappier. If it's
not snappy enough, please let us know.
Context Menus
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To bring up context menus with additional features, press and hold on an app
or status update. This works in the News Feeds and Top Apps List.
Default Ranges
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On the Top Apps and NewsFeed screens notice the search button magnifying
glass. If you are not seeing any apps you can change the range and the groups
you want to display by clicking the magnifying glass button. In the alpha test
version we had the default range set much longer.
Do note that what you set in that screen will persist so to change it you need
to bring up the search details screen again.
Notifications
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When someone posts a comment to something you're written or posts an update
about an app you've shared or posted to, you will get a notification email
and will also be notified in the app. See Menu -> Preferences from the home
screen to set the interval for checking for notifications.
The AppUpdate notification icon will appear in the notification bar when new
notifications comes in.
This means we can now have discussions in AppUpdate about apps. Finally.
News Feed
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When you click on a status update or share from the news feed you will now go
to the status update and associated comments. You can then click on the app to
go to the app detail page to install an app.
Suggestions
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When posting a comment to an app status update in the news feed you can now
suggest an app from your own list to send along with your comment. This is a
great way to answer questions like "Hey, does anyone know of a Marine Weather
app". You could then reply "Yea, here it is" and attach the app. You can
select the app to suggest by click the little app icon next to the comment
button or by using the menu button.
Ads
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Beta 1 now includes ads by AdMob. We are trying to keep the number of ads to a
dull roar. Obviously we need the app to generate some revenue in order to keep
building it but we don't want the ads to be too intrusive. We're curious to
know what you think.
For the final release we will have a paid version that will not include these
ads.
Support for Amazon
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If you have the Amazon store app installed, AppUpdate will give you the option
of searching it when you click a Market button to get more information about
an app.
AppUpdate Status Icon Turned off by Default
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Based on user feedback, by default we no longer display the persistent
AppUpdate icon in the notification bar. You can turn it on and off from the
Home Screen -> Menu -> Preferences
No Background Task
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AppUpdate no longer starts a background service to check for updates.
Clicking on AppUpdate links on a Web Page
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We do not yet have posting of updates and shares to Facebook turned on. But if
you click on one of the App Permalinks from the App website on your phone you
will have the option of opening the app page either in your browser or in
AppUpdate (we recommend AppUpdate because we don't have the mobile version of
the site done yet.)
Service Announcements
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If there's some important announcement that needs to be made we can now pop up
service announcements in the app itself.