My first app in Apple app store & Android Market...

I've been building a large multiscreen app in Air for boating that's quite involved - it's been about 2 years in development.  I realized that I had no experience getting apps into the varous app stores so I made a small app and released it to the Apple app store and Android Market.  It was accepted in both places within two days.

When you drop an anchor on a boat for an overnight stay, it's very useful to know that the anchor isn't dragging along the sea floor.  If it is, it's a bad thing.  It needs immediate attention before you end up grounded, tipped over ashore, or worse.  Many navigation systems have an anchor alarm but they are often at the helm and away from the sleeping areas.  As with most things, your anchor is most apt to drag in the middle of the night when you're asleep since that is the worst possible time it could happen.

DragQueen is an anchor alarm that detects if your anchor is dragging.  Running on your phone or tab, it can be seated right next to you while you sleep.  If it detects any dragging, an alarm goes off and wakes you since there's almost no question you'll hear it.

Amazingly there have been 3,000 iOS downloads and yet only 400 Android ones.  It has 12 reviews on iOS with eleven 5-star ratings and one 4-star.  Strangely on Android it has two ratings, a 1- and a 3-star.  It doesn't freeze - I fear there is some game playing in the Android world.  I have not asked anyone to put up a fake review on iOS.  I've gotten dozens of emails of people actually using it on their boat including a couple of people who had the alarm go off and now owe me a beer.

DragQueen is free on both platforms.  It was a great learning experience.  It took much more time to get it into the stores than to write it (maybe 10 hours of development time versus at least 2 full days learning about the signing, submission process, store processing).  I'm looking forward to finishing the more major app for desktop, iOS, Android, PlayBook, and SmartTV.  It too will be free.

I did uncover a bug in Air/Android - you can't detect a deactivate when there is a geolocation update loop in process.  As a result, you can't turn off the GPS when the user switches out of your app.  I submitted the bug in bugbase but there hasn't been any action on it yet.