Emmer Inc

It took a while, but a new version of Be Tv has been sent to Apple for review. Be Tv has been available in the Belgian App Store for 6 months, nearing 30.000 downloads. Version 1.3 adds – as lots of people have requested – detailed program information, a freshened up interface & a few minor improvements. Nothing groundbreaking but a normal evolution. Here’s a small sneak preview:

All programs have a genre & most of them have extra information like a short comment and/or a long summary. Movies have a list of the main actors and series the episode name. There is however one huge issue which might be a showstopper for non-dutch speaking users. The extra information is in dutch, even when the interface is set to english or french. We unfortunately do not have access to translated info.

One of the small improvements is how long program titles are displayed. Long titles are cut off in version 1.2 & some of them are – even with holding the device sideways – not readable. Long titles are displayed over 2 lines in version 1.3, greatly improving the readability. Nothing earth shattering, but as said before a logical improvement.

Having said that, I think we’ve given a nice preview of version 1.3. As soon as the upgrade shows up in the App Store, I’ll post it on the blog & Twitter. One final word, for those wondering, Be Tv remains a free program.

Almost 3 weeks after submitting the 1.2 update to Apple, it has finally been approved and can be downloaded in the Belgian AppStore as of yesterday June 17th. Apparently some minor event called WWDC & the release of a phone delayed the approval division of Apple. We weren’t the only victims, the UiTagenda update was approved after 3 weeks too & a new Facebook update addressing some specific 3.0 bugs is still in review after several weeks.

The main improvements of version 1.2 have been mentioned before and can be found here. This new update is fully compatible with firmware 3.0, but isn’t built for 3.0 specifically. Users with 2.x firmwares are still able to install & use Be Tv.

In the mean time I can announce that Be Tv has been downloaded more than 20.000 times and has never left the top 50 since version 1.0 was released almost 3 months ago. It is currently at position 43 in the general top free applications and at position 9 in the entertainment ranking.

Unfortunately the new release was hindered today by a datacenter problem. And as with most things, it wasn’t something we could do much about ourselves. A firewall was misconfigured at the datacenter causing traffic directed at the Be Tv server to be rejected for a timespan of 6 hours, which is of course totally unacceptable. This downtime had nothing to do with the new Be Tv release, nor with firmware 3.0, there is and was no need to reinstall the application. We have started the quest to find a new hosting partner, since our current partner hasn’t proven to be reliable & responsible.

Update now and enjoy the new release!

Now that Be Tv has been launched more than a week ago, I thought it would be interesting to publish some statistics regarding Be Tv. I’ve taken the first 8 days as data for the statistics from the launch date (2 April 2009) to 9 April 2009. Be Tv was downloaded 7.836 times in this period and was launched a little over 24.000 times.

Be Tv ranked 11th after only 430 downloads, 7th after 759 downloads, 5th after 1057 downloads, this was in the first 24 hours after the iPhoneclub.nl article. The number 1 spot was reached by the 6th of April after a little over 4.000 downloads.

Another interesting statistic was the ratio iPhones vs iPod Touches, I somehow anticipated more iPod Touches than iPhones, since they have been introduced a lot earlier than the iPhones. The firmware graph is pretty predictable, firmware versions older than 2.1 we’re negligible (44 devices in total) and to my surprise there are some developers who are already running 3.0 on their (main) devices.

Be Tv remained 6 days at the number 1 spot and is at the time of writing (12th of April) still the number 1 in the free entertainment list.

Who would have thought, after almost 6 hours of exposure on iPhoneclub, Be Tv is ranked at position 49 in the “Top Free” list of the Belgian App Store. Be Tv has received some great comments via various channels ranging from regular e-mail, Twitter replies, comments on this blog, comments on iPhoneclub, to normal App Store reviews.

At the moment Be Tv is being downloaded at a rate of a little over 1 download per minute (75 per hour to be more precise) and Be Tv is being fired up at double that rate, slightly less than twice per minute. Totaling 350 downloads in less than 6 hours, landing us on spot number 49! The server providing the schedules is holding up quite nicely, despite being hammered a bit. The launch has been quite hectic (no crashes though), due to all sorts of PR-stuff, but it has been (& still is) great fun!

I’d like to thank everyone for their positive comments & I’ll try to review every feature-request and see if it’s feasible in an upcoming release.

Update: as of this morning (3rd of April) Be Tv is ranked at #11!

It has finally happened, Be Tv has been approved and can be downloaded in the Belgian App Store. After being in development & testing for almost 2 months, it was time to submit version 1 to Apple. I still have lots of stuff I want to add or change, but otherwise it would never hit the App Store. It took Apple a week to approve it, but it was worth the wait. Depending on the reception of Be Tv I might make it available in the Dutch App Store too.

The new Emmer Inc website has been launched as well and for being a developer, I think it turned out ok. As for Be Tv, I’d love to hear what you guys think of it in the comments.

See you in the App Store.