Author: Eric Kok

Pulled from the Android Market, remains available

I have just received an e-mail from Google that Transdroid, both the free and donate version, have been pulled form the Android Market. This is due to apparent violations in the content policies of publishing in the Android Market:

This is a notification that the application, Transdroid Torrent Manager with package ID org.transdroid has been removed from Android Market due to a violation of the Developer Content Policy. Please review the Content Policies and Business and Program Policies before you create or upload additional applications.

Note that Transdroid has been available for around 2 years on the Android Market. During this time there have been over 400.000 users who downloaded the app, who rated the app with a very high 4.6 stars average. Also, the Torrent Search module connecting to news feeds of sites that link to trackers by which media content can be obtained is still available.

I have requested an explanation on the specific reasons behind the removal of the app, to which I will post any follow-ups here. Until a hopefully soon reappearance it is possible to download Transdroid directly from this site or even get the full source code, hosted at Google Code, as you like, under a GPLv3 license.

Thanks to all Transdroid users for their support and enthusiasm. Let me be clear that I am happy to build a version for the Android Market that does satisfy their policies and can still help thousands of happy BitTorrent users around the world. If you feel the same way and can spare a donation, please consider a PayPal donation.

Update: Transdroid’s removal from the Market has been covered by sites such as Slashdot and TorrentFreak. Irony: Google hosts Transdroid’s code and Google awarded the app with a free phone.

Update: I have asked Google for reinstatement of the app on the Android Market. Torrent Search has been removed from the Market and a new version of Transdroid, stripped from the search and ezRSS features, has been mailed to them.

Dear Android Market Team,

Attached you will find an updated version of Transdroid. I kindly ask to consider reinstating Transdroid Torrent Manager on the Android Market by evaluating this new version. Since I have not received any details regarding the exact violations with the Android Market Content Policies, I have made the assumption that the violations applied to searching for media (as provides by internet sites and the now-removed Torrent Search application). This functionality has been removed.

Thank you for your consideration and hope to hear back regarding the reinstatement (or additional problems with the content policies) soon.

Regards,
Eric Kok
2312 development

The new version can be downloaded from the Google Code project website. Google is fully entitled to set rules for their own application market and I hope to yet again comply with these in the new stripped-down version.

Update: Feature on AndroidGuys, too. And Android Police. And Planet Android. And Digg. And Geek.com. And others…

Update: Google replied!

Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response and appreciate the opportunity to review your appeal regarding the suspension of your application from Android Market. After an investigation, we affirm our initial decision and will not be reinstating your original application at this time.

If your developer account is still in good standing and you would like to upload a new, compliant version of this application to Android Market, please apply the following Content Policy guidelines to future releases:

[zip]

We are unable to reinstate applications that have been suspended due to policy violations. Please upload a new instance of the application which complies with Android Market Policies and Guidelines.

I am considering uploading a new Transdroid Lite version without torrent search and ezRSS feeds. The full version will, of course, remain available from this site.

On ads, open-source and Transdroid development

As most of you Transdroid users have noticed I experimented the last few months with advertisements in the non-donate version. To be honest I never liked them myself and in a final attempt to make something out of this I changed ad provider last week. Well, the results were pretty obvious. Since MobFox, that was the new provider, requires to read your phone’s unique ID users littered the Market comments with bad reviews, low star ratings and e-mails asking why. So I removed them.

Transdroid is, and will always be, open-source and free to use. If you love Transdroid, please consider donating by buying the donate version form the Market or making a direct PayPal donation. It keeps Transdroid development going.

Transdroid has become a mature product but I will keep on fixing bugs, tweaking the UI, adding small features and providing support for (new) users.

I’ll end with a word on 2312 development’s newly release app ‘Control Panel for cPanel’. If you own a web server that uses the cPanel tool to manage files, e-mail, domains, etc. then get the free or donate version of the app from the Android Market.

Techpost: Debugging against a virtual machine Android

A small technical writeup here about a nice Android development issue I just found out: it’s possible to use an Android 2.2 x86 virtual machine as debugging device for Android development.

First of, why? I often find debugging against a real device doesn’t suit my needs. I have to switch to different devices too often, for one. Testing witwith the SDK emulator works fine, especially to test different configurations. It can be slow, though, in particular when connected to a debugger. A new option – one I just realised might just be possible – is debugging against a virtual machine instead. Depending on the software and your hardware it often even bypasses your host OS. Here is what I did.

Head to the Android x86 project website and download their Android 2.2 generic purpose ISO file. Next, open your VirtualBox or VMWare Player software and create a new virtual machine. Use the downloaded ISO file as startup/install mount. VMWare said to me it’s a FreeBSD system and I accepted this choice. I did set the HDD to 2GB (which is too much, actually).

Start up your new virtual machine and install it locally. Now I’m not sure you can create the needed partitions here using the installer (I messed around a little with the partitions manually first) but I believe you can. Don’t forget to let it create a virtual SD card as well. Now restart and Android should start just fine!

Now open the browser to see if you’ve got network. I set the virtual machine to use NAT mode. Everything okay? We need to find the IP of your device. Use Alt+F1 to open a terminal in the virtual machine and in this Busybox shell enter ‘ifconfig eth0’. This is the IP that adb will connect to. Hit Alt+F7 to go back to Android. Open a terminal on your host computer and run ‘adb connect ‘. It should say ‘connected to :5555′ now. If not, try killing and starting your adb server. If it does connect it still doesn’t necessarily show up in ‘adb devices’! Don’t worry. Try to push a file and see if it works – it should.

Finally start Eclipse or whatever you use and start debugging your app! (Don’t forget to allow application installs from external sources in Android.) Pretty cool huh? Note: I just tested this on my Ubuntu 10.10 machine with VMWare yet.

Next time I’ll write about Transdroid again, promise! 🙂 Did I say a new release was coming soon?

SeedM8 seedboxes

With the release of the (now already in beta) 0.20.1 release 0.21.0 release, Transdroid will offer a new partnership. SeedM8 offers inexpensive GBit seedbox hosting:

Since December 2007, SeedM8 has been providing users with ways to use the BitTorrent protocol to it’s full potential with unparalleled support and inexpensive solutions. Today, SeedM8 is one of the largest seedbox providers with over 375 members and 30+ servers. Our servers pack new stable processors with plenty of RAM and harddrive space to insure your files are getting to their peers. No waiting lines, no subscription requirements, no costly accounts, no weary privacy policies and no unfair agreements are what you are guaranteed with SeedM8.

Users of SeedM8 can start using Transdroid very easily: filling in your server, username and torrent client password(s) and you’re set! If you like, you can use all of Transmission, Deluge and rTorrent (with your RPC password) at once. See what the speed of SeedM8’s hosting can do with the magic of Transdroid: see the offered monthly plans.

Did I already say that Transdroid finally supports The Pirate Bay as in-app search site? 😉

Website back

After some weeks of website troubles, we have moved to a new server (thanks to Xirvik.com) and everything should be running again. Sorry for all the inconvenience it may have caused.

To at least make something nice out of this post, check out this nice review by AppJudgement. Although it doesn’t really go into the great features of Transdroid, it’s a nice introduction into how to set up Transdroid.