yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
A quick note for those folks running older versions of Recast...

Today we released an update to the online services that support Recast. These updates were necessary to maintain and support Recast and to enable new features. Unfortunately, this service update is not compatible with early versions (1.0.0 and 1.0.1) of Recast. That means that those versions can no longer show the widgets and color sets inside the Catalog.

Luckily, on July 3, we updated the Free and Paid versions of Recast to 1.0.2, and that version works correctly with the new online services. We strongly recommend updating to version 1.0.2 or newer in order to continue using the catalog feature… as well as new features, widgets and fixes. You can get up-to-date by downloading the latest versions of Recast Paid and Free versions today.

If you have any questions or comment on this, let us know.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
slowdyve, take a look at this version we just cooked up and see if it is close to what you were thinking the Recast layout might be to your suggestion. We can't do new backgrounds just yet, but the general design and placement should be pretty close to that widget you posted:
[Android Apps and Games] Enterprise-D:
Is there any 4x4 widgets?:confused:
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Enterprise-D, we haven't had a request for 4x4 widgets before your mention of it, so at present Recast doesn't have them. Is there something that you are thinking of that can't be done with two 4x2 widgets?
[Android Apps and Games] slowdyve:
mstroud, that is exactly what i was thinking. Good job :good:

No problem waiting. Recast has many nice widgets. So that 4x2 widget would have to wait it's turn to go to my homescreen ;)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
slowdyve, thanks for the confirmation. I'll try to get that layout all wrapped up soon so we can post it and you can grab it from the Catalog. No new app downloads and no waiting... beyond holding for a little bit longer so I can clean things up.
[Android Apps and Games] LTunez:
I've been keeping an eye on Recast for quite some time and have tried some of the betas. Love the layouts and such, and it fits most of my needs, but if you could add a "Cellular Data On/Off" utility widget, I'd be all over Recast and it would likely replace the app/widgets I now use. Just a suggestion...otherwise, it's excellent in all respects! :)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
LTunez, thanks for the suggestion. This is something we've been asked before and it is something that Recast doesn't have just yet. We will add your vote for the 2g/3g/4g toggle feature to-do list and see what we can come up with. Given how difficult it is to support this request, it may be a little while before we can do it. Every phone/device manufacturer seems to use a different chipset with a different way of exposing this feature... and on some devices the feature isn't available at all.
[Android Apps and Games] 21productionz:
Are you guys going to allow users to create widget layouts in the future. If not is it possible for me to help you guys in some way create widget layouts?

ParaNOTE Android
[Android Apps and Games] gnwest:
The time zone is GMT -05:00. I changed it to GMT -04:00 and that corrected the time on the widget. And, my location is set to "Current."
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Thanks for that info. We'll have to see if we can reproduce the issue here.

Can you give us the approximate location where Recast got the time zone wrong? If you don't want to share it precisely for privacy reasons, you could give us another city in the same rough area or state that uses the same time zone and daylight savings time rules as your location does.

Thank you for the feedback. We'll try to make sure things work better in the next release.
[Android Apps and Games] paradisezt:
I'm trying your app and the first impression it's very good.

If you will to make it multilanguage I'll give you help translating in Italian.

Thanks for your work.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
paradisezt,

Thanks for the kind words and offer.

We are still working through our release plan for Recast, but as soon as we get things solid enough to head toward an actual final build I will reach out to you and others here at XDA for translations. As a small developer we greatly appreciate the help we get here and are grateful for the assistance and input.
[Android Apps and Games] gnwest:
I'm in New York City.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
OK, thanks for the location. We'll check on it here and see what we can find out.

Just as a point of reference, when we add New York, NY here in California as a new location we get GMT-04:00, which is correct. We'll have to look further to see what is happening.
[Android Apps and Games] dmb219:
You've done a great job with this! It's attractive and I like all the options and customizations. I think you have a big time winner here, good luck and thanks for sharing it here.
[Android Apps and Games] gnwest:
Ok. BTW, I was using my current location and didn't choose a specific location. Also, when my phone changes from wifi to 3G, the widget time loses an hour, back to -05:00.
[Android Apps and Games] dmb219:
I've added a widget with time and it is also 1 hour behind. I'm using my location (it is correct), and I'm in the eastern US, western PA. Thanks again.

---------- Post added at 10:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 PM ----------

I thought that would be GMT-05:00, no?
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Thanks for the additional details. We are looking into the issue as it is related to Daylight Savings Time and how we are determining if it is needed or not. It seems that at least a few of you are in locations where the DST calculation isn't as predictable as Recast would like it to be, due to the accuracy (or not) of the location.

We'll have more updates on this when we have the next beta version ready to share. Until then, keep us informed if you run into other issues and we'll check on it.

And again, many, many thanks for the feedback. It helps us out greatly to track these types of things on real devices in places other than California :)
[Android Apps and Games] 21productionz:
Correct, Eastern Standard Time is -05:00

UNOFFICIALy NOTEd
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
I think you guys are trying to confuse me here. Recast reports NY, NY with the same data that the US NIST does: -4. See here for details:

http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5/java

Is it possible that we missed a memo and the Eastern seaboard is running on their own schedule now?
[Android Apps and Games] 21productionz:
Est is gmt-5, the confusion comes from dst (daylight savings time) when we set our clocks back 1 hour for extra daylight, during this time we are still gmt -5 but it is called edt-4 (eastern daylight time)

Which technically = gmt-4

http://wwp.eastern-standard-time.com/ which can be found by going to Greenwich mean time's website.

UNOFFICIALy NOTEd
[Android Apps and Games] 21productionz:
And to make it more confusing its messing up for us because our phones automatically adjust for dst that is what's causing the difference I think =P

UNOFFICIALy NOTEd
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Well, my team told me to stop making a fuss about the DST issue because they are on the case and are looking into it. So I'll pipe down and go back to answering other questions now. Sorry for the sideshow.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
We just had a customer report that he saw an increase in battery consumption while using Recast in locations where he couldn't get GPS reception. This can happen because we are checking for your location to keep the weather up-to-date.

We will revisit how we do location checking for the next beta release, but in the meantime you can dial-down how often Recast checks for a location by reading our latest FAQ entry: "I seem to have less battery life when indoors. Can I do something about that?"

Our FAQ items are on the web site: http://recast.phase2i.com/faq/

Please let us know if you experience any issues like this while you are trying Recast.
[Android Apps and Games] bartoloandre98:
Can the ability to add a weather in notication bar be consider.?would love having that:)
[Android Apps and Games] ballubas:
Great app, only one thing that would make me use it that there's no option to use temperature in celsius as °f I have no idea what temperature is in °c!
[Android Apps and Games] blackbearblanc:
Press location in settings
[Android Apps and Games] blackbearblanc:
Did someone mention that the time is two hours off.. I cant seem to change it. Offset doesnt do anything.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
21productionz, we would like to keep opening up more of Recast to customers, yes. We don't have an ETA for that just yet, as we have more infrastructure to put into place first so that we can support it well. You will be at the top of the list of folks we talk to when we're ready to do more :)

In the meantime, feed us your ideas, layouts, colors, etc and we'll do our best to work with you to create the kinds of widgets and views that you want... so long as it is feasible and not completely looney tunes :)
[Android Apps and Games] LTunez:
Thanks for your prompt response! Just to be clear, the toggle wouldn't necessarily have to toggle between the different connection speeds/types, just a simple on/off for data.

Thanks again for your time and efforts! :)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Ahhh.... just having a global on/off could be easier than moving between the different levels of GSM/LTE speed. I'll ask the team and see what we can come up with.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Since I know that some of you get nervous when we don't post every few minutes... here's a quick update on what we're up to with Recast.

We sent Recast off to Amazon for the Appstore and we still haven't heard back. Our submission was 1.0.0, so when it does go live it will be way behind the current version. Hopefully we'll know more soon and can swap the APK up to the newest one we have.

Some customer suggestions have come in for widgets, and we made a few of them... and then we found some bugs with the layouts from these new requests. So, because of the issues we're holding off putting out new widgets until we have a new build of Recast that fixes the issues.

There is a short-list of features for the next build that we're already working on. Those of you who have paid for the full version will be happy, as almost all of the new stuff is just for you. There will be some bug fixes in there for everyone, so it will be worth it for everyone to move up.

We're concerned with "update fatigue" so we are slowing down our releases a bit unless some kind of critical fix is needed. This will give us some breathing room to test a bit more thoroughly and hopefully won't drive everyone crazy since we won't be pushing out a new version every few days. We all need a bit of a break, I think :)

And that's the update from our side. We have certainly had a big run-up to this release and we're not done adding new stuff yet. Let us know if you have ideas, requests or issues and we'll hop on them as soon as we can. Otherwise, use that sharing feature! You can show off your love of customized widgets... that's why we put it in the app!
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Better late than never... Recast is now approved for the Amazon Appstore. Folks looking for their weather and widget fix outside of the Google store world have the option to grab it there. Check it out on the Amazon Appstore page.
[Android Apps and Games] LTunez:
Not sure if this is a limitation of my phone/launcher (Motorola Droid4, stock, rooted, set to 5x5 grid using 360 Launcher), or if it's just how Recast behaves in general, but the widgets don't seem to expand to fill the screen in landscape mode. Here are a few screenshots to show you how it looks...I have included an unnamed competitor to show how it handles the resizing/expansion for comparison. Both widgets are 4x1 resized to 5x1...

Please advise...thanks! :)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
LTunez, the developers tell me that this is something they haven't seen during development and testing, so they will need to look into it and get back to me. So, when I find out something I will let you know.
[Android Apps and Games] LTunez:
Thanks once again for the prompt response. You'll be happy to know I have now purchased Recast, as I want to do my part in supporting further development of this very promising product. I have tried some other widgets & sizes (clock weather date, utility, forecast, 5x1, 5x2, etc) and can confirm the landscape resizing issue is present with those as well. I will try some other launchers as well to see if maybe there's an issue with my current one, but the unnamed competitor's widgets seem to resize correctly under other launchers I have tried in the past, so we'll see. :)

If you're able to implement the "Data On/Off" toggle/utility and figure out this resizing thing, I'll one very happy camper!

Go team! :)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Thanks for the support!

We're pretty sure the issue isn't device or launcher specific, so don't spend a lot of time trying to track down the issue. Now that we have this as an official, tracked issue we will investigate and hopefully take care of it. And we do have the cellular radio toggle on the list of items, too. :) The ETA on these items is unknown at this point, but we'll keep everyone informed as we make progress on them.

One thing that would be helpful to know... is the data sync toggle really what you are after or is it turning hardware radios on and off? We have the "Auto Sync" (aka the "chasing arrows icon" below) option already built into Recast as a utility item that does turn on and off the Android OS level option to use data sync services to the device. I think I mentioned it before, but radio toggles are tough to do because of all of the different hardware drivers and OEM specific changes made across different devices.
[Android Apps and Games] LTunez:
Looking to turn the radios on/off...for example...on my Droid4, there's an option within "settings", "data manager" that lets me check/uncheck "Data Enable" which turns the radios on/off.

In my other widget, the toggle is represented like this image...
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
OK, thanks for the clarification. I think I now fully understand your request. I'll pass it along to the devs and see what they say.
[Android Apps and Games] LifeInAnalog:
I'm starting to get nervous, you haven't posted in.. like... days! Has development stopped..? Is this the "LauncherPro" of weather apps? ;-)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
LifeInAnalog, no, we're not dead and yes, we're working on cool stuff for the next release. I should have more to say a little later today, but I'm saving the update until I have something newsworthy to share :)

Fear not, we're not going anywhere.
[Android Apps and Games] NaabKing:
Well, how you think the sales are going? Cuz from what i see, i don't think it goes very well, but i hope for the best.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
NaabKing, sales are certainly not where we would like them to be. The problem, as we saw with our other product, is people have a lot of difficulty finding Recast in either the Google Play Store or Amazon Appstore.

Part of the problem is that these stores don't rely on the previous methods of keyword search, so that now when someone searches for "weather", "custom" or "widget" we don't show up at all. Another issue is that all of the stores now penalize new apps in search, meaning that only apps that have had customers for more than a year are likely to appear in the first few pages of results. The last issue is that there has been, deliberately so, very little review or press coverage for Recast. We learned with our other app that you really only get ONE opportunity for reviews, and after that happens you'll likely never get a review again. So we elected to wait a while to submit Recast for reviews, wanting to put more features and unique options into the app before we seek more exposure.

All of this makes Recast a bit tough to find. So in the meantime we are relying on you guys, our early supporters, for word-of-mouth referrals, mentions in social networks, and of course widget shares using the built-in share feature, to tell those people you know how much you like Recast. At least, that's what we're hoping will happen.

How's that for an over-abundance of data sharing?
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
We've posted up our first set of string resources so that we can begin translation work on Recast.

If you have a good understanding of English and would like to help make Recast available in another language, we would love to have your help!

Click this link to visit the site and edit the app resource strings. Let us know if you have any questions or comments!
[Android Apps and Games] NaabKing:
I think Recast is not in the right category at Google Play, why is it not in "Weather" category? (=
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
NaabKing, Recast is not in the weather category because none of the apps it is similar to or competes with are in the weather category.

Everyone who has traction, downloads and visibility in the stores is in this Personalization category. We don't know why that is, but after looking extensively through both app stores, personalization seems to be the only category where Recast type of apps live. Weather, it seems, is reserved for "pure" weather apps that do not provide toggle widget or customization options.

We're open to changing this, but if everyone else in the same type of app grouping is in Personalization it would seem that to be found by that customer we too must be in that category.
[Android Apps and Games] NaabKing:
Maybe you are right, but Weather apps are much more few then Personalization, i'm not sure if that's a good decision, since i guess the people who are searching for Weather forecast apps would first go to "Weather" category to search for it, not in "Personalization", that would be my guess :P
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Well... our issue with Recast is that since we do things beyond weather, like clocks, calendar and device toggles, we really don't fit the bill for the weather-only category. I suppose we'll have to wait and see if it makes a difference moving between categories, as we haven't seen search ranking change when we looked at apps that have moved in the past.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Before someone asks today... yes, we are busy working on Recast stuff. Here's a little bit of what we're crunching on.
[Android Apps and Games] 21productionz:
Any chance of being able to save the widget you name? I like to flash, so I'm always restoring widgets. It let's me name it, but it seems kind of pointless, if it doesn't save it, or let me select the widget I've named.

ParaNOTE Android
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
21productionz, the infrastructure for server-side storage of widgets is being put into place, but there isn't a way (yet!) to make this available to everyone. Recast, both the app and servers, don't have any way to know that "you are you" at this point... everyone is anonymous to us. So it will be a little bit longer before we have support for things like user accounts and backup/restore functions.

It takes time to get this sort of thing right, so we are not rushing it out. We want to make sure that when we offer a feature it is something we can fully support and provide over the long-term... and we're not quite there yet with this feature. Don't fret, however, it will eventually arrive. :)
[Android Apps and Games] NaabKing:
Titanium Backup?
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
NaabKing, as far as we are aware of, there is no way to locally backup & restore widgets. This is because of the way Android handles widget entities shown on the launcher screens. There isn't a way we've found to successfully restore a widget, fully configured and laid out, between devices or on the same device between installs of Recast. Once we have user accounts and a service component that can link to those accounts, there should be a way to keep a widget template for things you've created on the server, and restore it at-will to the client. However, you must still re-create the widget manually, via the launcher & widget drawer, each time you want to see it. That's the way Android works, it seems.

To be clear, this is how it would likely work (since this is effectively what Recast does today):

First-time creation: Launcher > Widget Drawer > Recast Widget Size > Recast Widget Template Picker > Recast Widget Settings > Save > Widget now exists on Launcher screen

Re-creation: Launcher > Widget Drawer > Recast Widget Size > Recast Widget Template Picker > Download/Restore Template > Recast Widget Settings > Save > Widget now exists on Launcher screen

Hopefully that makes sense.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Just another quick update: we've been working on several different things for the next Recast release but there are a few features that just aren't as easy, fully-flushed out or as ready as we thought they should be. Because of this, we're going to take a few more days to work them out before committing to any kind of public release.

I know this is a bummer for those of you waiting for "the next version" but we want to make sure that the features we add from here on out are pretty well built-up and have as much thought put into them as possible. We would rather spend a bit more time getting things solid and close to what we feel is right rather than fling something out there and get your feedback that more work is needed.

Hang in there, it certainly feels that we're getting very close to a release now.
[Android Apps and Games] Utilizator2000:
Cool. Beautiful
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Utilizator2000, thanks, we try. :)
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Quick update: We don't want to jinx it, but it seems like we're in the final stages of testing for the next release. As we just got our first Google Nexus 7 device, we took some extra time to validate on Jelly Bean 4.1.1 and so far, everything is looking good. If all the features and functions stay good over the weekend we may be very, very close to a release.

Hopefully we'll have more to share in the next few days but for now, rest easy in the knowledge that we're really nearly there for a new Recast release. Thanks for your patience.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
You guys asked for it, and with a little bit more work it's nearly here: custom colors and transparency on backgrounds... coming soon to Recast 1.0.3.

[YOUTUBE]j9VAe_IrMME[/YOUTUBE]
[Android Apps and Games] NaabKing:
Nicely done (= Hopefully later on, we'll see some real images as the background on the widgets :P
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
NaabKing, if you have some suggestions for backgrounds, do let us know and we'll see what we can do. So far we have found it very challenging to do much more creative or unique backgrounds because of the idiosyncrasies and requirements Android puts on re-sized, tiled and scaled images that are required for widgets. A simple, one-piece background image just doesn't work.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
Well, it appears we did find some last minute issues. :(

Because these issues are highly visible we are going to hold back until we can fix them appropriately. This is, we hope, just a slight delay on the road to release of 1.0.3, but a necessary one. The last thing we want to do is release a new Recast and immediately have people asking for lots of fixes for stuff that is really noticeable. Hopefully this is the last set of issues to fix before we kick 1.0.3 out to all of you.

Thanks for your patience.
[Android Apps and Games] mstroud:
We're down to our last major issue that we will either fix or skip for the 1.0.3 release. I know it seems like forever since we put out an updated Recast but we have been busy behind the scenes working on the server and preparing for future releases... as well as working on other non-Recast related projects to help us pay the bills. Hopefully tomorrow morning (8/7 PST) we will know when the next release will be ready to publish.

As always, thanks for your patience.