First, let’s cover Calorie Inquiry. I was made aware of several issues last night as I was drinking, and felt that it was only right that I disclose this information to the general public. First of all, Calorie Inquiry *IS* safe to use, and won’t mess up your phone any more than any other program. Next is what I need and should have disclosed in the first place: what type of information is being sent, and possibly being recorded by my server and the calorie inquiry web software. The following information is being recorded by either my server, or the web software:
- IP Address, date/time of access, etc. Normal webserver logging – google Apache server logs (or I will post a sample entry in the next few days)
- A unique identifier for each phone generated through the Lucid Utilities class. Basically, this identifies a phone as being “unique” and not related to another. This, in future patches/releases, will be going away as I continue to implement JSON v2 into the CalInq web software. Only sent when modifying or adding a new drink
- The software version – this is used by me to see how many users are using what version, etc. as well as to identify between the Market version, and the internal development version used by myself and a few others. Only sent when modifying or adding a new drink
- Drink Info when you are adding (calories, etc) a drink or a Barcode when modifying a drink
At this time, I believe that this is the only information that is being logged; however, I could be wrong and will update if I come across anything else
Now onto a more pressing matter at hand, I was at my bar last night drinking and taking pictures because of it being a friend’s birthday. I realized late last night that because of Google+ being installed, it has an option enabled by default that uploads all pictures to a PRIVATE Picasa album (this album has now been deleted from my account, and this feature HAS BEEN DISABLED). I want to stress to everyone that has Google+ and is using this option, to either disable it OR make sure their photos are appropriate (after all no matter how much you set that photo to private it is NEVER truly private). There are several issues between why this should have NEVER been enabled by default. I want to make people aware of this feature, and be able to make their own decision about whether or not they should use it. It’s actually quite funny because I can see why Google did it and I ran into the same issue with Calorie Inquiry with the global updating feature (which pretty much makes or breaks my program). To anyone still running v1.00 of Calorie Inquiry, compare the default settings to a new version (v1.01 or even 1.03)
Also on this blog post, I’d like to confirm the existence of a project codenamed Echo (though, those of you on my Facebook will have already seen posts about it). It is confirmed to be a “pay” app and it is about 85% complete. Current issues that are preventing me from releasing are User Interface issues and writing a much more efficient, faster, and versatile method for checking for entries needing to be sent.
Anyways, that is all I have for now. Enjoy!
