Hi from Vietnam

Hi all 7Pass users. As I may have noticed, 7Pass 2.2 is now available in the MarketPlace. Kudo to the MarketPlace testing team for approving 7Pass within one single day. Maybe 7Pass gets some special attention, or at least I dreamed so.

Today, I’d want to share to you how I detect issues with 7Pass: via this blog’s searched queries. From example, just some days ago, “7pass will not login to dropbox” suddenly appeared in the searched queries. I immediately investigate the issue, but did not find any problem. Curiously, I tried with my second DropBox account, which I’ve never used with 7Pass, and voilà, 7Pass cannot log in. It seems that DropBox now requires the authentication type to be specified even when there’s no authentication for that request (we’re logging in, right?). All this happens even before the first comment comes. The fix was quite simple and DropBox integration is working just right now.

Another interesting stats: 7Pass 2.2 entry was viewed 200+ times in the same day it was published. 200 may not be a big number, but since 7Pass has only 236 downloads so far, I’m happy that I was able to keep my customers updated. Happy customers are the best thing for every project isn’t it.

I’m now enjoying my 2 weeks leave for the Tết holiday (Vietnam’s Lunar New Year celebration). Please excuse my progress on 7Pass as I will not have access to development machine during this time. I’ll update on this blog if there’s any issue reported.

Ideas for trial expire notification needed

7Pass is available on MartketPlace for a small fee of $0.99 and is also available as a trial.

In version 1.3, 7Pass will start to show notification screen after 50 usages when user view any entry:

When user updates his database, the count started again at 1.

Clearly, this notification is annoying. I wanted to let user know that he can buy the app to support the author, not for the author’s income. I work fulltime as a desktop developer and extremely happy with my job. I develop 7Pass for my love for KeePass, not for financial reason.

I’d want 7Pass to have a better way to tell the user that he can support me, but in a way that doesn’t prevent him from using 7Pass, something very gentle. I have some ideas in mind:

Something like the notification when you receive an SMS, which can be clicked on to allow user to buy 7Pass.
Keep the notification, but then resets the count to 1 again, repeating the cycle.
A small link at the bottom of the Entry page to allow user to buy 7Pass.

After DropBox support, I’ll add support for multiple database, so the idea of counting based on database/application usage will have to be considered.

Please give me advise how to do this.

7Pass MarketPlace performance

I’ve been using KeePass on all my computers (work, home, laptops, netbook), synchronized using DropBox. I wanted to use my KeePass database on my Windows Phone 7 device as well, since it’s the one that is always with me.

Thanks to the open source nature of KeePass, reading the database was not much of a hassle, especially when I wanted this application to be a reader only. When I need to edit the database, I’d prefer to use a computer, where I’ll perform any password change, sign up, etc… and make changes to the database. Considering copy & paste is not available on the phone, I don’t see any reason to edit the password on the phone.

7Pass then has its first version submitted to MarketPlace on 12 December, 2010.

As of today, 28 December, the MarketPlace has updated data for until 22 December. I’d like to share with all 7Pass’ performance so far.