What Determines Whether Something Gets Added To Pandora Apps?

[mali]

^ "Official" is a relative term in this case, imo. So far all the apps are non commercial and Open Source and people are free to upload to or download from which location they want. If there are commercial apps in the future this may change but I can't see commercial devs having much interest in this micro market until production ramps up significantly.
We should concentrate on making what we have as attractive as possible. Fragmentation in this early stage is no good, imo. When someone from the community offers to develop an appstore and puts a polished piece on the table for free, like dflemstr did, this offer should be accepted thankfully, because OPT could spend the time on more important stuff like QC. Seeing devs begging for upload rights is funny in a bitter sense.

 

[Esn]

Ok, all dates are added and all games from the File Archive should now be on the wiki.

If the list is kept well-updated, this discussion about the best place to download things may be moot. It also avoids the problem of Craig maybe not wanting to host some legally dubious fan games on the official Pandora site.

 

[craigix]

Some people will call this "choice", "options", "freedom". But I'm seeing it as fragmentation. Who wants to search 3 apptores to make sure they're not missing anything? Almost no one. But each of the three stores has very good reasons to exist. There needs to be some kind of synchronisation effort, or it's going to get Dingoo ugly.

I couldn't agree more. I hope that "The Box" becomes the primary source of PNDs, it seems like dflemstr's work has gone a little under appreciated, specificly the PND repository spec. We could potentially in the future have our own apt-get like program with automatic updates and the whole bit if we took advantage of it. I don't know about anyone else, but the idea of that excites me. For now though, a group effort to maintain the games list (and emulator list) on the wiki could be enough.

I have already coded that feature into pandora apps. It even shows you updated apps in your control panel so you can get them.

I could write a script for the Pandora in an afternoon which checked and grabbed updates for you.

If someone wants to help do this now we can do it today.

 

[raul]

Why not include in the registration of craig's site a check box that says "do you need upload rights?" If its due to security, I don't see a difference clicking a box, than asking Hey I would like to upload, why is not automatic? that will save a lot of time everywhere.

You can restrict the type of file being uploaded, to just ".pnd"

 

[craigix]

Why not include in the registration of craig's site a check box that says "do you need upload rights?" If its due to security, I don't see a difference clicking a box, than asking Hey I would like to upload, why is not automatic? that will save a lot of time everywhere.

You can restrict the type of file being uploaded, to just ".pnd"

I am slowly giving all those who asked access. I might have to turn on 'approval' for apps (but you will still be able to directly link to your app even if it isn't approved).

It's a tricky balance which we will get right.

 

[Aninhumer]

I think the best bet is as much interoperability as possible between any sources.
If Appstore and The Box automatically sync between each other, it doesn't matter which is more popular, and also means we have a backup if someone's servers die or something.
The PNDs contain information about the Author (IIRC) so it shouldn't matter too much who uploaded them, the attribution will still be there.

 

[mali]

^ I see the situation from a far outside perspective and people are free to do whatever they like anyway, but inefficiency in a project with limited resources doesn't make me feel overly enthusiastic.

 

[Esn]

I've also updated the wiki's emulator list:
http://pandorawiki.org/Emulator_list
(big props go to Cheese, who did a great job of starting it)

There is definitely a downside to being split up. Right now, Pandora Apps has significantly more emulators available, while the File Archive has significantly more games. This is what I've noticed from trying to make the wiki complete.

Next up on the list is making a similar wiki list for utilities - I'll get on that a bit later.

Craig, I think that people just want one place where they can see everything that can be downloaded. Other features are nice, but that's the main one.

Right now, I think that the wiki has the potential to be the closest to such a place - provided, of course, that people keep it up to date.

 

[craigix]

Craig, I don't think people want an app that will automatically download everything new - they want one place where they can choose what to download.

That is exactly what it does, serves up new files and updates for their existing files.

You could choose on the Pandora just like you can choose now in HTML *because it already works*. You could also link up with the twitter feed too.

As I've said before, we're not using someone elses appstore mainly because people get bored and disappear (or worse). Pandora apps will be updated essentially until I leave the console industry. It will evolve with what users want for the life of the Pandora, Pandora 2, Pandora 3... (I also have support for other consoles in there, they just can't be selected yet as I'm not decided about it).

I think Pandora apps is really great but I'm not going to shout about all the things it can do all the time. It 'just works' and that's how I think most people like it to be. It is designed to be as simple, lite and easy as possible, hiding all the complex things.

If people want to scratch the surface and write scripts or code on the Pandora side which interact with it I'm ready to help.

Personally I like HTML because it can work on anything these days.

 

[MonkeyChops]

maybe a "quotes for the blog" type thread for the wiki is in order? one that is more based on software releases.

"info for the wiki"?

that would streamline updates for the wiki as it does for the blog
I am willing to help update the wiki when I find time and something like this would save a lot of time imo.

 

[Esn]

Sorry Craig, I changed the sentence you quoted after you replied to it. (I realized that I had misunderstood what you said)

I do like PandoraApps. I think it is well-designed.

But the fact remains that the two main Pandora software libraries have different content, and I can't imagine that this will get better with time unless you guys make some effort at synchronization. Maybe even some sort of program that will automatically compare the two sites and let the admins know when one of them has something that the other doesn't.

It's always more difficult to try to keep two different places up to date rather than one. At the moment, the wiki is the synchronization effort.

maybe a "quotes for the blog" type thread for the wiki is in order? one that is more based on software releases.

"info for the wiki"?

Why? Just update the wiki! It's not that hard. Or use the wiki discussion pages.

 

[PokeParadox]

Personally I like HTML because it can work on anything these days.

What I would like to know is when do the commercial and donation-ware options become available?

 

[SomeGuy99]

Craig: Why not add a few people here as trusted moderators of the Appstore? It would speed up the approval process for sure.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, I'd love to give up on the archive and switch to the appstore as soon as possible - however, it lacks a few things for me:

1. A theme that is optimized for a desktop PC (I rarely use the Pandora to download games)
2. Subcategories (I mean - we only have Emulators, Applications, Games and Misc... once there are a few hundred games out, it will be annoying to browse through them all).
3. Include license selection, link to sourcecode and link to the authors website.
4. Not necessary, but would really be nice: Use PXML-Data from the uploaded PND-File for links, description, version number, etc. (like The Box does).
5. Would also be nice in the future: Data Exchange with a possible PND Manager on the Pandora (which can autoupdate, list files, etc.). Could simply be a text or XML file with all the information.

So basically, a mixture of all what we have here would rock!

 

[craigix]

Personally I like HTML because it can work on anything these days.

What I would like to know is when do the commercial and donation-ware options become available?

When some software appears which needs the feature

I'd guess we might start seeing some paid-for software towards christmas?

 

[PokeParadox]

Personally I like HTML because it can work on anything these days.

What I would like to know is when do the commercial and donation-ware options become available?

When some software appears which needs the feature

I'd guess we might start seeing some paid-for software towards christmas?

Aha well for instance, I would like to put my paypal donation info beside all my free apps so that an easy link is there, because I don't want my email splashed about ready for spammers to pick up.

 

[Esn]

2. Subcategories (I mean - we only have Emulators, Applications, Games and Misc... once there are a few hundred games out, it will be annoying to browse through them all).

Once you click on "Games" or "Emulators", there are further subcategories at the top of the page. However, it looks like there's only room up there for 3 or 4 of them...

 

[craigix]

Personally I like HTML because it can work on anything these days.

What I would like to know is when do the commercial and donation-ware options become available?

When some software appears which needs the feature

I'd guess we might start seeing some paid-for software towards christmas?

Aha well for instance, I would like to put my paypal donation info beside all my free apps so that an easy link is there, because I don't want my email splashed about ready for spammers to pick up.

Ah, the little paypal button? Yeah we can add that in. Are you on MSN?

 

[MonkeyChops]

Why? Just update the wiki! It's not that hard. Or use the wiki discussion pages.

I know editing the wiki isn't hard, it's locating all the info that can make it time consuming. For instance, you just updated the games list but you missed Statagus from the beta testing forum. I guess it would only be helpful for the software that is not released on the main download sites. But, we do want the wiki to have all the available software, not just the official PNDs from the main download sites don't we?

If its a bad idea, I'll let it go. It just seems to me that it would be easier for the average joe to add to a thread than to the wiki. It's a little intimidating if you've never edited a wiki before, you sure don't want to mess anything up. Plus it would be cool imo to have a thread in the forum that had all the software updates in one place just because, maybe that's just me...

 

[mali]

^ Just do it, I like the idea