In recent weeks we’ve been seeing higher incidences of cancelled orders on Android Market than usual. It seems to be due to a change in payment processing that Google has yet to explain to developers.

One way that Google has always differentiated Android Market from Apple’s App Store is by offering refunds to users. Initially there was a very generous 24-hour refund window that was subsequently reduced to a barely useful 15 minutes. When a user requests a refund, that order is assigned the CANCELLED status (it shows up in Appmonger‘s list view as red/pink) and the Google Checkout order history will show the message “Cancellation requested from phone” (or some non-English translation thereof) as below:

The other scenario in which orders could become cancelled was when the customer’s payment card was declined. Google gives the customer 7 days to provide alternative payment and then automatically cancels the order if payment is still outstanding. In this case the order is assigned the CANCELLED_BY_GOOGLE status (it shows up in Appmonger as orange) and the Google Checkout order history contains the text “The customer did not provide valid credit card information in repsonse to the email Google sent. This order was automatically cancelled”:

In the last couple of weeks we’ve been seeing a third kind of cancelled order. These are also assigned the status CANCELLED and therefore, like refunds, show in Appmonger as red/pink. But these cancellations are not due to customers requesting refunds. These cancellations occur several hours after the orders are made, well outside of the refund window. Nor are they a result of declined credit cards since Google Checkout shows that the authorisation succeeded. The salient text in the order history is “We could not complete your order in a timely fashion. Your order has been cancelled automatically. Please retry your purchase”:

Trying to get an explanation out of Google is like trying to get any other information out of Google – i.e. not a very rewarding exercise. There are some suggestions that these cancellations are related to the recently-introduced carrier billing but I don’t think that’s the case. The most benign theory is that Google is simply cancelling orders where the user fails to download the app. However, the wording of the e-mail sent to the customer implies that there is a payment processing problem on Google’s side. If that’s true then developers are losing money from lost sales.

Whatever the real reason for the cancellations, Google could easily clear up the confusion by communicating better with Android merchants.

There are many important milestones in the early life of a new country. The declaration of independence, diplomatic recognition from other states, and membership of the United Nations to name just a few.

South Sudan is the world’s newest country. It gained independence on July 9th this year and joined the United Nations five days later, but until now it has lacked the prestige of an entry in Rectangular Software’s Flagpole mobile app.

South Sudan becomes the 234th flag to feature in our educational game  for Android and iPhone. The updated Android app is available now on the Android Market. The iPhone update has been submitted to the App Store and should be available soon. Also included in these versions is the change of Libya’s flag back to the pre-Gaddafi red, black and green design.

Tech conferences are great when somebody else is footing the bill. A couple of days away from the office, visit a new city, meet new people, have a few beers, maybe even learn something if you can find the time. When you’re running your own company you tend to look at these events differently. How much will it cost and what benefit will I derive?

For a UK company, such considerations tend to rule out the big US events such as JavaOne, Google I/O and Apple’s WWDC. The time and expense involved is simply not justifiable. Realistically, from Rectangular Software’s base in darkest Kent, it’s only the London conferences that tick enough boxes (though the company finances might stretch to a Eurostar ticket if I can find a suitable excuse).

Being largely concerned with Android, last year’s Droidcon UK was one of the few conferences that looked like it might be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I was busy with contract work for a client at that time so I had to give it a miss. So this year I made sure to sign-up early. Droidcon 2011 begins four weeks from today (I believe tickets are still available). The programme features such Android luminaries as Mark Murphy (a.k.a Commons Guy, a.k.a. that bloke that answers your Android questions on StackOverflow when you get stuck) and Nick Butcher and Richard Hyndman of Google.

This will probably be the only conference I attend this year. If you see me, come and say hello (I’ll be the one looking considerably greyer than the picture on his company’s website).

One of the major limitations of Appmonger has been that it requires you to use your merchant ID and merchant key to authenticate with Google Checkout to download Android Market orders. At first glance this doesn’t appear to be a limitation at all – it is simply how Google requires clients to connect to the Order Report API. But for reasons that are not at all clear, Google does not provide merchant keys for all Checkout merchants. It seems that all US and UK accounts have merchant keys. In other countries some accounts do have this basic integration option but many don’t. As a result, the number one most requested feature for Appmonger has been for some alternative way to connect.

Finally we have a solution. Appmonger 2.1 provides the option to use your phone’s Google Account to authenticate with Google Checkout. Appmonger gets an authentication token from the Android AccountManager and then mimics what your browser does when you download CSV data manually from the Google Checkout website.

To use this new mechanism, select the “Google Account” radio button on the Checkout credentials screen. If there are no accounts listed (only accounts associated with Google Checkout are shown), you will need to add one.  This can be done from Appmonger (select “Add Google Account” from the app menu) or from the device’s settings (under “Accounts & Sync”).

You will need to grant Appmonger permission to use your Google account.

Users with a merchant key should probably continue to use that as it is Google’s officially supported way of integrating with Google Checkout and as such is less likely to break if Google changes something.

Version 2.1 of our Beep Test for Android application is now on the Android Market, which merits a blog post because there is one significant change that might cause confusion. You are now fitter. Or at least that’s how it will appear since we have changed the way that scores are presented.

This makes no difference to you if you only ever performed your Beep Tests using our app; it just means that the numbers are slightly higher than they were previously (your saved scores are automatically converted on upgrade so that they are consistent with any new scores that you generate).

Where the change does make a very important difference is if you were comparing scores from our app with scores generated using other Beep Test software or procedures, or comparing against specific fitness targets set by certain organisations. The way that we were presenting scores previously was not consistent with these third-party scores. Our scores were one level too low because they displayed the last fully completed level rather than the highest level reached. We have made the change to make your scores more readily comparable with scores from other sources.

Flagpole, the educational flag recognition game, is now available for iPhone as well as Android. Featuring the same 233 national flags, 7 challenges, flag browser and flag descriptions as the Android version, Flagpole for iPhone can be downloaded from the App Store for just £0.69/€0.79/$0.99.

Many Appmonger users have been in touch to say that they are having problems with Appmonger not displaying all of their recent orders. The problem is that Google Checkout is not including these orders in the CSV data that Appmonger downloads, even though it is showing the orders in the orders inbox on the Google Checkout web interface. This has happened a couple of times in the past and usually the situation has been rectified within 6 to 12 hours with the orders eventually reappearing.

On this occasion the problem has persisted for a couple of days. Some users have no orders from the last 24 hours, some have no orders for a longer period, and some have the recent orders but are missing orders from previous days.

Unfortunately this problem is not something that Rectangular Software is able to do anything about. If Google Checkout provides the data, Appmonger will display it. We are assuming that Google will rectify this problem shortly, as it has done in the past. Your orders have not been lost (as you can see, they are in the orders inbox) and should become available to Appmonger in due course.

Update (13th July 2011 11:00 BST): Google Checkout appears to be back to normal now. If your orders haven’t already reappeared they should do shortly.

Appmonger, the Android app for keeping track of your Android Market sales, has had a bit of an overhaul for version 2.0 (available now from the Android Market). The most obvious change is the look of the app. We’ve changed from white-on-black to a black-on-white theme and we’ve chosen the colours to better match the app icon that Spiderfly Studios designed for us previously.

Perhaps even more fundamental, the mechanism for changing which chart you are looking at has changed. No longer do you need to perform a long press on the chart itself; instead there is a button on the title bar that serves the same purpose. The reason for this change is twofold: the old way was not obvious and we are now free to attach different touch functionality to the charts.

Pie charts now have scrollable legends, which means we don’t have to make the pie tiny to fit all of the items on screen.  Line charts and bar charts have also been improved with grid lines and more axis labels to make it easier to read off values.

The orders list view has a new context menu. Long-press an order and you will be given a list of related actions. In this version the only action is the option to view the order on the Google Checkout website but we envisage adding more actions in future releases.

In addition, background fetching is now more intelligent for users on WiFi connections and flag icons have been added for almost 100 additional countries, with high-res versions for users on HDPI screens.

If you’ve been using StackAnywhere, our free Android client for the Stack Exchange network, but don’t like the adverts, we now have an ad-free version available.  StackAnywhere Gold Edition is available from the Android Market and costs just £1.49 / $2.49 / €1.69.

Appmonger 1.6 is now available from the Android Market. The major new feature in this release is “Order Reconciliation”. Basically, this is a mechanism for Appmonger to take advantage of the recently introduced monthly Android Market Sales Reports to make its figures more accurate. This is described in more detail below.

Another new feature is the option to exclude orders that haven’t been charged yet from your figures. Effectively this allows you to toggle between glass-half-full and glass-half-empty reports. In addition, there are several other minor improvements and fixes that make this a recommend update for users of previous versions.

Order Reconciliation

Back in February, Android Market added support for buyer’s currency transactions. To support this change, Google Checkout’s order report data changed to report values in the buyer’s currency rather than the seller’s currency. This change broke Appmonger 1.4.

Unfortunately, the data provided by Google Checkout now includes only the buyer’s currency value; it does not convert it into the seller’s currency nor does it provide any indication of the exchange rate used. To resolve this problem we introduced third-party currency conversions in Appmonger 1.5. While this addressed the immediate problem of the figures being completely incorrect in Appmonger 1.4, without access to the exact exchange rates used by Google, it could only ever be an approximation.

Since then, Google has introduced Android Market Sales Reports and these do include the converted amounts and exchange rates. These reports are only updated once a month so they cannot completely replace the Google Checkout reports that Appmonger uses to provide timely sales information. What they have enabled us to do in Appmonger 1.6 however is to periodically replace the provisional currency conversions with the exact values according to Google.

Performing the reconciliation process once a month (when a new sales report becomes available) will maintain the accuracy of your reports by eliminating the drift caused by exchange rate differences. You can reconcile the order reports by selecting “Reconcile” from the application menu. You will need the username and password for your Android Market publisher account.