Ink Calendar and Journal

Is Google Ads a scam for indie developers?

Posted on June 13, 2021 by TheJoeFin

It sure feels like it.

Ink Calendar is a hobby project for me. I work as a mechanical engineer for my primary income. I would love to be an indie Windows app developer full time, but it doesn’t seem like that is in my near future. I am frequently trying out new ways to get Ink Calendar in front of potential users. An easy way this can be done is use online advertising.

In early May of 2021 I launched a Google Ads campaign for Ink Calendar. The ad directed people to this blog InkCalendar.com where the “Get From Microsoft” button is right at the top eager to be clicked. I ran the campaign for 3 weeks and spent $179 for around 883 clicks and 55k impressions.

To judge the ads performance I used the stats from WordPress, and initially I was impressed… then I dug a little deeper. Here are the WordPress stats around the time of the ad campaign:

Week of	Views	Visitors
3/1/2021	74	44
3/8/2021	103	74
3/15/2021	102	58
3/22/2021	97	65
3/29/2021	86	60
4/5/2021	94	61
4/12/2021	180	103
4/19/2021	94	53
4/26/2021	80	48
5/3/2021	77	50
5/10/2021 (campaign begins)	308	350
5/17/2021	477	388
5/24/2021 (campaign ends)	495	390
5/31/2021	93	58
6/7/2021	116	58

At first look these stats are impressive! The weeks during the ad campaign had on average 6x more traffic! Exactly what I wanted! However I did notice there was not a similar increase in app downloads, so I checked to see if these new visitors were clicking on the link to get the app. Here are those numbers:

Week of	Views	Visitors	Store Clicks	% of visitors click
3/1/2021	74	44	10	23%
3/8/2021	103	74	21	28%
3/15/2021	102	58	17	29%
3/22/2021	97	65	12	18%
3/29/2021	86	60	11	18%
4/5/2021	94	61	15	25%
4/12/2021	180	103	17	17%
4/19/2021	94	53	13	25%
4/26/2021	80	48	11	23%
5/3/2021	77	50	7	14%
5/10/2021 (campaign begins)	308	350	21	6%
5/17/2021	477	388	19	5%
5/24/2021 (campaign ends)	495	390	15	4%
5/31/2021	93	58	7	12%
6/7/2021	116	58	14	24%

These numbers were pretty shocking to me. The weeks during the ad campaign had no significant change in store link clicks. In fact when looking at what percentage of visitors clicked the store links the ad campaign had terrible performance.

I am aware advertising for Ink Calendar is not the same as general business advertising. Plumbers or restaurants in an area use ads to win customers from their very similar looking competition. I’m still not completely sure what is going on with this or what to make of these numbers. But here are the things I know for sure:

I am no closer to being a full time indie dev
I will never use Google Ads to promote Ink Calendar again

A side anecdote, I would wake up around 6:00am Central Time and by that time there were already a large number of views to Ink Calendar for that day. The ad only ran in the US and the new traffic to this blog was also only from the US. I cannot understand why I’d have a couple hundred of view before the day had even begun. Very suspicious in my opinion.

Let me know what you think, either in the comments below or on twitter @theJoeFin

Joe

Fixes and Efficiencies

Posted on May 18, 2021 by TheJoeFin

An updated was submitted to the Microsoft Store yesterday which contained a few key fixes bringing efficiencies to Ink Calendar. A newly discovered issue with Ink Calendar happened to be the way the Appointment Store was being used. Now I am calling a single instance of the Appointment Store which improves loading speed, memory usage, and appointment reliability.

There is more work to be done in this area and there are still strange behaviors with the Appointment Store API surrounding change notifications. I am trying to figure out what might be causing duplicate notifications when an appointment is added to the calendar.

Work to be done

I discovered today that adding appointments to the Windows calendar does not work well without an internet connection. Ink Calendar in the future will not enable appointment adding if the internet is not available. This should improve the experience as a whole because today the API simply fails with no warning or error.

Extra writing space has been a requested feature for some time, and it is a feature I have experimented with. Also adding text and hyperlinks to the canvas will eventually make its way to Ink Calendar.

As always thanks for using Ink Calendar!

Joe

Great Features in 2.2

Posted on May 4, 2021 by TheJoeFin

Add images to your calendars alongside your inking! This feature has been on my roadmap for years. Finally I focused on the feature and got it working.

To add images to the canvas click the “Add Image” button after tapping the canvas

To modify the images click the Enter Image button. Once in Image Mode use the mouse or touch to move and resize the images around the calendar.

In addition to adding images to the calendar, several bugs have been fixed.

Background images do not flicker
Changing calendar settings more reliable
OneDrive sync faster and better indicator

Let me know how Ink Calendar is working for you!

Joe

Roadblocks to Fixing Known Issues

Posted on February 2, 2021 by TheJoeFin

Cover Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

I have been working on Ink Calendar since October 2017. Since then the app has grown to be much more capable and complex. When developing I expect there will be issues with my code, but as I have discovered there are also major issues with Windows APIs. In this post I plan to layout the issues I have been trying to fix for years with no success.

Ink Analysis Crash

One of the obvious hallmarks of Ink Calendar is the inking. Inking is different than traditional computer inputs like keyboard and mouse. A powerful inking experience requires quick selection and the ability to convert from ink to text. Lucky for me Microsoft makes this very easy with an API.

However this same magical API called InkAnalysis is the single biggest source of instability within Ink Calendar. My personal guess is this API is not heavily used because it has not improved or changed since I have been using it. Also Microsoft’s documentation on how to isolate the application from the InkAnalyzer does not exist. I have been working with the team to resolve issues; so far with no success.

Calendar API Errors

The other headline feature in Ink Calendar is the Calendar part. When users ink on a day and want to add that day to their Calendar in a more formal way there is a very easy API which can be called to add the appointment to the user’s calendar. However this API is frequently and randomly broken. No good feedback on a successfully added appointment. This means as a developer I have to guess if the appointment was added or the dialog was just canceled by the user.

Within the same AppointmentManager API is getting the user’s calendar appointments to show them on the calendar. This also is broken randomly and does not provide up-to-date appointment data. This completely prevents Ink Calendar from being able to provide a seamless calendar application. There is no clear way to connect with Microsoft regarding this issue and I have tried several different avenues.

Azure Pipelines

Building UWP apps and submitting them to the Microsoft Store should be the easiest Azure Pipeline that exists, but it is such a terrible experience there is no wonder UWP was never widely adopted. When users finally get pipelines working they randomly break with totally unhelpful error messages “internal compiler error.”

Does Microsoft Want UWP Developers to be Successful?

It doesn’t seem like it. When compared to other platforms like iOS and Android, UWP devs have no advocates within Microsoft. All of the recent developer and technology investments have been made last and worst for UWP experiences. Azure DevOps, AppCenter, C# language, .NET 5, are best when not developing a Windows GUI application. UWP is ignored and abandoned. Microsoft’s own 15 year old framework WPF has gotten more support than UWP.

I want to be an independent UWP developer, but as time goes on it becomes clear UWP is the bastard child of Microsoft.

Selection Time in 2.1

Posted on November 28, 2020 by TheJoeFin

Work has been going well on Ink Calendar 2.1. The major new feature is selection time. This feature is simple; on week and month views, show text of when the selected ink is. There is a dot which will highlight the exact location being picked when trying to understand the date.

I personally find this feature useful when planning out an itinerary for trips. When I’m zoomed in tight on a week view it can be hard to tell which hour is which and which day is which. Now with selection time it is obvious.

In addition to selection time 2.1 should be faster to load views, more memory efficient, and hopefully fixes a few bugs.

As always, thanks for using Ink Calendar,

Joe

Freezing and Crashing issues

Posted on October 28, 2020 by TheJoeFin

Finding and fixing bugs is a constant struggle with any software. It has been a painstaking process of narrowing down exactly what and where the bug resides in code. With Ink Calendar I group crashes into a few different categories.

File read/write
Microsoft Graph
Unspecified Error
null References

Recently I was emailed by a user who mentioned OneNote was unstable until they turned off ink analysis. So in Ink Calendar version 2.0.7 there is a new toggle switch to disable ink analysis.

Turning off ink analysis should help with crashes. If you make this switch and it helps please let me know. The ink analysis is a Windows 10 API, so if there is an issue, I’ll collect what I hear from users and reach out to Microsoft.

Other than analysis issues file read/write issues are largely related to the Microsoft Graph which does the cloud syncing. I can improve the cloud service, but some things are beyond the scope of Ink Calendar.

Finally null reference errors almost all come from getting appointments from Windows 10. The Windows 10 appointments API has some issues with not getting fresh appointments. Also there maybe intermittent access issues resulting in null references. There is a helper in Ink Calendar which checks to see if Ink Calendar has access to the user’s calendars. Even though this check runs before attempting to get calendar data, the data can still return null.

If you are seeing consistent repeatable crashes with Ink Calendar I would like to hear from you so I can get to the bottom of the issue.

As always thank you for using Ink Calendar and please feel free to email me (support at inkcalendar dot com).

Joe

2.0 has been released to the Store

Posted on September 7, 2020 by TheJoeFin

I have now handed off Ink Calendar 2.0 to the Microsoft Store. The update will be rolling out soon. This update brings 3 major features:

Cloud syncing with OneDrive
New App Icon
New symbols throughout the app

As always, reach out on twitter (@TheJoeFin) or email support at Ink Calendar dot com to let me know what you think of the app.

Joe

Version 2.0 Work Slow and Steady

Posted on July 21, 2020 by TheJoeFin

The biggest feature request has been cloud syncing feature. With such a big improvement comes a bump to version 2.0. Also on the way with this release comes a refresh to the apps icon set.

The cloud sync plan was going to be a custom hosted cloud service. However, the best long term solution for every option is the Microsoft Graph. Ink Calendar 2.0 will enable users to login with their MSA and sync via OneDrive.

All of the symbols throughout Ink Calendar are being refreshed with Microsoft’s new fluent icons. They are natural and fit the natural shape of inking better than the previous symbol set.

Work is ongoing and hopefully be finished soon. While I want this release to be perfect I also needs to get into users hands to increase their productivity.

Joe

Simple Elements and Bug Fixes

Posted on May 9, 2020 by TheJoeFin

For years I’ve been adding features to Ink Calendar making it more complex. At the same time I’ve been tracking and squashing bugs. This is the classic cycle of app development. With Ink Calendar 1.27 I’ve broken the UI elements into smaller chunks making it easier to reuse them and to find exactly where the bugs are happening.

Since Ink Calendar uses calendar data from Windows 10 that means many of the calendar views are drawn using async methods. Understanding failures in async methods via AppCenter can be tricky. By breaking down the rendering of each UI component into their own UserControl I’ve been able to narrow down exactly where errors are occuring.

Another way 1.27 is more reliable and robust will be in the settings page. The page loading sequence has been reordered to put the longest running tasks at the back and let data validation occur while those long running tasks are happening. Now working hours, agenda start/stop, and week start/stop times should all validate before saving bad data. This was an issue which can be hard to find on my development machine because usually the settings page loaded so fast, but personal usage on my Surface Go highlighted this problem.

The work done in 1.27 doesn’t bring any new major features to users, but should enable me to do some cool view blending in the future. Now that each of these controls are broken out on their own they can be inserted into different views in different ways. Look forward to a possible new blog post about how views could be changing.

As always, thank you for using Ink Calendar. If you encounter any issues please email support at inkcalendar dot com, and if you have any suggestions or ideas I’m always interested to hear!

Joe

WinUI Comes to Ink Calendar

Posted on March 9, 2020 by TheJoeFin

Ink Calendar now makes use of WinUI with version 1.26. In addition to this new modern UI framework comes many changes and bug fixes throughout the app. One of the elements of Ink Calendar which has been improved is when tapping the canvas even when Ink is not selected the Ink Actions menu appears to make you more productive and bring information to your fingertips.

Previously tapping on the inking canvas would just select ink. Now tapping the canvas invokes the Ink Actions menu with a new day button. This button when tapped shows appointments and the ability to quickly jump to different views. The new improvement to the Ink Actions menu means you can more quickly see appointments and can more fluidly switch between days.

When in the year view tapping on any day will enable the Ink Actions menu to show appointments for that day. Quickly zoom into a view or skim a quick list of appointments. In addition to this working on the year view, it also works when tapping the month days shown on the day view. Quickly peak into another day and see what you have going on.

In addition to these changes there have been many bug fixes throughout the app. One major change is handling the way Ink Calendar interacts with the Windows 10 Calendar data. Now when Ink Calendar does not have access to the calendar data the user is notified with a list of steps to take.

If you have any feedback about Ink Calendar don’t hesitate to email support at inkcalendar.com

Joe