Do NOT buy “Better Keyboard PRO” on android market. It’s not Better Keyboard!

Some users informed us that there’s an app named ‘Better Keyboard PRO” on the android market. That is NOT the original Better Keyboard. In fact, it has nothing to do with us nor Better Keyboard 

 

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.betterandroid.betterpro

Not only you should NOT buy this app, you should also report this app as fraud to the android market place using the following link.

http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/request.py?contact_type=contact_policy&policy=apps

Better Cut is now on Amazon app store

Enjoy!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IQSD0A

Click for larger image and other views

Better Keyboard 8 is now live on Amazon AppStore and SlideMe!

This version is fully unlocked, there’s no need to download any unlock key. Just download it and you will have access to all features. Enjoy.

If you are in the U.S. we strongly recommend purchasing using Amazon. 

http://slideme.org/application/better-keyboard-8-gingerbread-edition

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HZJ0QS

3 days, 20K+ downloads later, Google banned our account again.

Hello everyone, we have to say good-bye this time. Here’s our story in brief (I really don’t have the mood to write anything in length right now ):

As many of you know, we develop an app named ‘Open Home’ which allows users to develop themes for to replace their phones’ standard home screen. In addition, we realize that while many artists may have the skills to develop themes but they don’t necessary have the knowledge to publish them on the android market. Therefore, we allow our users to send their themes to us and we will publish them on the market for them for free. Open Home was one of the very first few popular paid app for the android market when android was still in its infancy.

During the life of Open Home (about 2 years up to this point), we have received 2 app suspension notifications from Google for 2 of the skins we published. Since then, we had been really careful about publishing anything that are likely to have copyright issues. About 10 days ago, we suddenly received a notification from Google that tells us our developer account was suspended (see post below for more details). From the vague suspension email, we suspected that our account might have been suspended because some of these skins that we have published over the years. We tried contacting Google but received no responses. Therefore, we decided to just upload the 3 apps that we are sure have no copyright problems: Better Keyboard, Better Cut and Better Alarm back to the market. In less than 3 days of republishing Better Keyboard, one of our most popular apps, the app had already received over 20,000 downloads.

This morning we finally received an official statement from Google regarding the suspension of our account:
“Hello,

Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response. Your
Android Market Publisher account has been suspended due to multiple
suspension violations of our Terms of Service. You may view these terms

here:

http://www.android.com/us/developer-distribution-agreement.html

http://www.android.com/market/terms/developer-content-policy.html

Please note that Android Market Publisher suspensions are associated with
developers, and may span multiple account registrations and related Google
services. Please do not register a new developer account. We will contact

you should your account become reinstated.

We will not be restoring your account at this time.

Regards,
The Android Market Team”

The email was clearer this time, our account was suspended because of multiple violation of TOS, which we honestly did had over the years of publishing different skins for Open Home. What we really concerned are the part that it gives the developer little chance to correct the mistake, it says “Please note that Android Market Publisher suspensions are associated with developers, and may span multiple account registrations and related Google services. “. It basically says once your account is terminated once, not only the apps that violates the market TOS are banned, ALL of your apps, regardless of what they are, will be banned from the market.

And that’s what they did, a couple of hours ago, the new developer account we registered to upload Better Keyboard, Better Cut and Better Alarm was terminated again.

Unfortunately this time we really don’t feel like dealing with the Google android market anymore. We think pulling the apps for copyright issues are understandable, but banning all apps from a developer because of some of the apps the developer had published is absolutely despicable.

For all our paid users of Better Keyboard, Open Home, Better Cut, etc, all we can say at this point is that we are truly sorry about this. If you have the unlock key, please make sure you back it up using apps such as “Astro File Manager”. We will offer our apps on alternative android market instead such as the Amazon AppStore, and slideme.org in the next couple of days.

We know we should share some of the blames, but if you think we took your money and left, we really didn’t. It’s Google who took your purchase away for ridiculous collateral banning policy. You should also know that we are not the first, the popular emulator developer YongZh was a very famous example (http://mashable.com/2011/05/30/emulators-banned-android-market/) . That was probably a million dollar worth of purchases (perhaps more) that was taken away from the android users in that incident. If you feel angry about this ridiculous practice like we do, you should voice your opinion by writing to the android market using the following link:

http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/request.py?contact_type=contact_policy&policy=apps

Better Keyboard, Better Cut, Better Alarm Clock are re-uploaded

Hello everyone,

We re-uploaded some of our apps to the android market: Better Keyboard 7 & 8 , Better Alarm Clock and Better Cut are now back. Open Home will be made available as soon as we can get to it. Thank your for all your patience and understandings.

To those who emailed us or voiced your opinions to google, we are sincerely grateful for your help and supports. Since our account was terminated, we tried our best to do the right things: we contacted google, we patiently waited, we contacted google again and again, and we patiently waited and waited. It has now been almost 1 week, we had received nothing meaningful other than a couple of canned responses that did not give any explanation nor any help. Needless to say, we are extremely disappointed about how google treat its developers. While we honestly believe google has the best intention to maintain a healthy android market by pulling copyright infringing apps and by suspending questionable developer accounts, we think google’s execution is deeply flawed.

Our voice and many of our users’ voices were not able to get through to google,  but life must continue. For us, developing for android is our full time job. We hope we can all look past this incident and repair the damages in all possible ways we can. We will continue to support everyone of our users, hopefully you will continue to support us. If you are one of our users and have any concerns, please feel free to contact us and we will do our best to help you out.

Thanks everyone.

Our android market account was suspended, and we had no ideas why!

[Update] We tried to contact Google, no responses yet.

We sent the following appeal email to Google:

“Dear Google,

Our developer account was suspended today, we have no ideas why. Can you please take a look and let us know? We believe we have not violated any android market policy.

A few of our applications are among the most popular apps in the android market, with a few millions downloads. We really hope this is just a misunderstanding and sincerely hope we can work something out.

Thanks in advanced,

Better Android”

So far we had not received any responses from Google yet. Thank you everyone for your kind supports. Please be patient, we are trying to work something out instead of just distributing our apps through other channels (direct downloads, new developer account, alternative market, etc), not just yet.

============================================================================================

A couple of hours ago, we received a notification email from Google stating that our developer account was suspended. We have no ideas what we did wrong!

Here is the email we received:

“Hello,

Your Android Market developer account has been suspended due to violations of our developer agreement and policies. You may view these terms here:
http://www.android.com/us/developer-distribution-agreement.html
http://www.android.com/market/terms/developer-content-policy.html

As a result, your developer account has been closed and your apps have been unpublished from Android Market. Please note that developer suspensions may span multiple Android Market account registrations. Please do not register a new developer account. We will contact you should your account become reinstated.

Regards,

The Android Market Team”

As you can see, there really isn’t any info about why the account was suspended. We will try our best to contact Google to find out what’s going on. We did some research on the Internet, and we found many horror stories (such as this, this and this) about Google’s lack of responses to developers after their accounts were suspended. We hope we will get some responses from Google, but our expectation is very low.

We are a small group of developers who have been developing apps for android since the very first release of android. As our name suggested, our mission is to improve the android platform by developing useful apps for it. We hope we can work something out with Google or at least find out why our account was suspended. In the mean time, please be patient with us and we will sure support our users no matter what.

If you want to help us out, please use the following form to ask Google market to look into this case and your apps. Thank you for your supports.

http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/request.py?contact_type=market_website

Better Keyboard 8 now has optimized layouts for tablet!

If you have an android tablet, download the latest update of BK8 (v8.9). We added the optimized layouts for tablet size devices, including split keyboard that makes thumb typing much easier. Enjoy!

Open Home 6 Skin template available!

We just published a skin template for Open Home 6 at http://code.google.com/p/betterandroid/

you can use the skin template to create skins that are compatible with Open Home 6.

If you don’t have any knowledge of creating android application but still would like to create skins for Open Home. Modify the graphic assets, send them to us in a .zip package, we will help you package it and publish it on the market.

 

Open Home 6.3 now on the market

Change log:

-More desktop Animations & Effects – try it by going to menu/more/Open Home settings

-Workspace label is now enabled

-3D drawer effect added menu/more/Open Home settings/Drawer

-bug fixes and stability enhancements

Open Home 5.2 and 6.1 released!

We just released Open Home 5.2 and 6.1 beta into the android market. We added a tons of visual effects and animations to Open Home. They are pretty cool, get them a try!