Hi, I have just completed my first screencast.
I go though the process setting up App Analtyics in an AIR application. It literally only takes a few minutes to be tracking real analytics from your AIR application to App Analtyics.
Thanks Paul
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This is just a post to say a huge thanks to all you early adopters out there. We have had some had some amazing positive feedback from your guys about Air Analytics which makes me only want to try harder to get more features and better systems in to Air Analytics for you.
Looking back on this year it has been crazy mixed with allot of fun. I thought that you guys might enjoy the story of how Air Analytics came about.
As you know by reading my about page I have been living in London for the last couple of years with my lovely now fiancé Kelly. Well at the beginning of this year we had saved enough money to buy a van called Charlie, take 4 months off and drive around Europe, we saw some of the most amazing sites, visited some great places and meet wonderful people as we traveled round.
As we were packing to leave on our 4 months journey into the unknown, I (in my infinite wisdom) decided not to take to many books as for some reason I thought we wouldn’t have much time to do any reading or such crazy things on a holiday where we were sitting on beaches and generally relaxing… Kelly on the other hand was well clued up and pretty much brought a library with her which I scoffed at. Well about 3 weeks into the trip I had finished all my books and lets just mine and Kelly’s book tastes differ wildly so I couldn’t even get past the first chapter on almost all of her books. So while she was reading some times I would just start to ponder… turns out i couldn’t find the meaning of life so I started to ponder things that maybe I could solve.
After a while I remembered when I was trying to find an Analytics solution to the AIR app I was writing. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t one out there. I figured that well if there isn’t one out there I would write one for myself… at this stage I had no plan to make it into the app it is today, this was just going to be something that I used for myself. But I didn’t jump into writing it straight away, after all I still was on holiday for a few more months. But most days I would work it all over in my head.
I distinctly remember sitting in a campground in Spain at night with it bucketing down outside Kelly was reading her book, I was pondering again and suddenly it all just clicked. I could see how it would all work and fit together. So I got out my note book and wrote everything down. The rest as they say is history… from there on out when we were parked and chilling out I would plan, develop and trail my new app (yes I’m a geek).
By the time we had finished our trip I had a working system that was rough but worked. It wasn’t till I got back and was explaining what I had built that a friend said that he had a need for an app like App Analytics, I said I can set you up with an account and you can have a play with it… App Analytics was born.
Since we have got back from our trip and I decide to release this bad boy into the wild the real work started, it has been quite usual for me to work all day and then come home and work way in the early hours of the morning and then again on the weekend trying to get bugs fixed, running support, making improvements, and developing infrastructure.
But as I said before, all your words of encouragement and great feedback on issues has made the process allot more enjoyable and easier. I also have to say a HUGE thanks to my long suffering fiancé who has put up with all this and all my other crazy ideas along the way. With out her support we wouldn’t be were we are today.
Here are a few pics from 2009 and our trip around Europe
Mulit touch, gestures, some wicked file stuff and more.
So Air Analytics is on the way soon, and you find your self wondering how will I be able to implement the tracking into my application.
Well my friend you are reading the right post. Let me take some time out of the dev schedule to tell you how easy it is to implement Air Analytics tracking in your app. In a future post I will tell you what stats and info you can expect to see.
Over the past 4 months we have been going out of our way to build an application analytics solution that is user/developer friendly as possible while still keeping the app streamline and the tracking unobtrusive to the user. We understand that AIR applications can take many forms, functions, shape and sizes, so have we set about developing a system that is totally flexible and can mould to your application not the other way round.
Implementation
To start the tracking you only need import the class to add the following line of code:
AirAnalytics.start(“api_key”, “app_ID”);
and Air Analytics is ready to roll.
Now to track an item, pageview or click all you do is call:
AirAnalytics.track(“Action”, “Type”);
Action = the item that was tracked eg “page/home” or “mainNav/homeBtn” this can be anything that you wish to define.
Type = the type of action it is E.G if it is a page view use the type “page” or you can even create you own type and add it to the system all in the control panel.
For example if you have a twitter app why not add a type “tweet” and every time and successful tweet is sent tack it. This way you will be able to see how may tweets you app is sending.
We have started you off with 4 common types that we think people will generally use in every application they are
- “page” for page view
- “click” for any button click you want to track
- “url” for those links to external URLs
- “error” Yes… for those unwanted errors… now you can see how many and when the appear
Don’t worry about loosing any tracks while the app is running offline. Air Analytics manages the tracking offline as well making it a complete tracking solution for you application.
Like we mentioned before we will be going into a private beta so if you are interested please drop us a line or leave a comment here somewhere with your details.
Thanks Paul