As a Hungarian software developer, up to this day it is not possible to sell apps on Google Play, because Hungary is not on the merchant list, therefore only free apps are allowed to upload from Hungary.
Is it possible and legal to upload the free trial version of my app to Google Play, and when the trial expires, through an intentional and unequivocal notification / window redirect the user to my own website, where she / he, after the payment process, can get the full version?
I'm also planning to put the link of the full version app to the Google Play app description section.
You can post a free trial version of your app in Google Play and when the trial expires then they will be required to download a license file from your website.
This file will only remove the trail and let user use the app. You can add a notification when after 7 or so days of trial to purchase license. when they press okay then they would be directed to your website and download the license apk file after they pay.
And then after you post an updated version of your app in Google play. They will be able to update too and they will not loose their full version of the app.
Please make sure that you describe your app correctly in google play, and state that your app is free only for some days. and do not post a link to a full version app in your description if you are planning to host it on your website.
You can also integrate in-app purchase with the help of Paypal. This documentation teaches you how to do it.
You should get legal advice from a lawyer but I would say this is against the Google Play terms.
https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html
3.3 You may also choose to distribute Products for free. If the Product is free, you will not be charged a Transaction Fee. You may not collect future charges from users for copies of the Products that those users were initially allowed to download for free. This is not intended to prevent distribution of free trial versions of the Product with an "upsell" option to obtain the full version of the Product: Such free trials for Products are encouraged. However, if you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market. In this Agreement, "free" means there are no charges or fees of any kind for use of the Product. All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market's Payment Processor.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer
Updating would be a problem then.
Or you could put the paid version for free and block some of the paid components, then you could enable the paid component if the user has paid, you need to make a web service for that.
I am not sure,I think even in-app purchases are supposed to be through Play Store
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In the Web Store Developer Dashboard, I see no way to set the price for an extension I am uploading. Am I missing something? Or is it no longer possible to create a paid extension? I saw an article saying they were removing paid extensions in January but there are still paid extensions on the store.
I got an email yesterday from chromewebstore-dev-support#google.com that included this info:
Chrome Web Store payments - We are disabling the ability to create new paid items or add payments to existing items. This includes extensions, themes, apps, and in-app purchases.
Here is the full text of the email:
Dear Developer,
We want to tell you about impending changes to the Chrome Web Store as
a result of the COVID-19 situation.
Given adjusted work schedules due to these unprecedented times, there
may be some temporary limitations and delays in support in some cases:
Delay in publishing - New versions submitted to the Store will take longer to be reviewed and published.
Delay in responses to appeals - If you appeal an item rejection or removal, or appeal an account suspension, expect the response to be
delayed. However, we will respond to every appeal request and we will
get back to you as soon as we can.
Delay in developer account transfers - If you are transferring your extension to a different account, expect a significant increase
in the time taken to complete the transfer.
Delay in general support - If you are trying to reach out to our support team for issues related to your account(s) or extension(s),
expect a delayed response from our team. We will get back to you as
soon as we can.
Chrome Web Store payments - We are disabling the ability to create new paid items or add payments to existing items. This includes
extensions, themes, apps, and in-app purchases.
You can help by making sure that your extensions comply with the
Developer program policies before you submit them. Refer to these
resources for more information:
Help center articles
chromium-extensions Google Group
StackOverflow
Chrome support forum
We understand that these changes may cause inconvenience, and we
apologize for any interruption of service. Thank you for your support
during this challenging time and for your participation in the Chrome
extension ecosystem.
The Google Chrome Web Store team
Sorry about the formatting.
I'm trying to deploy a Dialogflow chatbot on our Pepper robot. To do this, according to the tutorial provided by Softbank, I need to access to the Pepper Host and Peppy Chat CMS website to pair my chatbot and my robot. However, I have no idea what the account is. I can only see a window asking for an account and a password when opening the website, but cannot find a place where I can create an account. Dose anyone know where I can get an account? I'm in Europe by the way.
Here’s the link
for the tutorial: https://softbankroboticstraining.github.io/pepper-chatbot-api/
for Pepper Chat: https://pepper-chat.azurewebsites.net/
I was in the same situation a year ago and got in touch with softbank.
This is a product from SBRA (Softbank Robotics America) and you need to buy a $5000 licence.
They also wrote:
[...] but it should be noted that we are actually no longer actively
developing the Pepper Chat solution (despite its overwhelming success
in the market!), as we are planning to launch a new 1st party solution
to replace it in the near future. The new solution also integrates
with Dialogflow, but in an abstracted, template-based way, configured
through the CMS. If you are interested in purchasing a license to the
software, please contact our sales team at
sales_us#softbankrobotics.com [...]
Here is a more recent tutorial: https://developer.softbankrobotics.com/pepper-qisdk/lessons/integrating-chatbot-dialogflow
This one doesn't require any special account (apart from a dialogflow account), but does require a Pepper with the latest software.
I have a published and used Chrome extension that I want to monetize. I've added a small monthly subscription ($0.99) for use of the extension and maintain it frequently.
I introduced the subscription after some of the users installed the extension, none of which are subscribed but still use the application as if they were.
Is there a way to prompt the user for a subscription if they already have the extension installed? Or do I accept that they won't have to pay and cut my losses?
While this comes from One-Time Payment page in the docs, I think it's generally a good advice:
Migrating from a free to a paid experience
If you decide to migrate from a free experience to a paid experience, you should consider what experience you want to provide for any user who installed your item prior to the change. We strongly recommend grandfathering these users into the full, paid experience though the decision is yours.
From a technical standpoint, prior users do have a license issued authomatically:
Users who installed your item prior to the change will have a FREE_TRIAL license. To determine if a user installed your item prior to the price change, you can check the createdTime value in the license to determine when they first installed it.
Are you checking the license.accessLevel in the extension? If you don't, your license code may think they are fully licensed.
But suppose that you do want to charge users (subscription implies ongoing costs), then the usual dilemma applies.
Users that are not grandfathered in are likely to complain if you degrade their experience. You have to be careful with the announcement.
If you don't have any logic offloaded to a server, anyone can go in and rip your license code out. That is a fight likely not worth fighting.
As long as they have that .crx file (older version) in their computer and your extension's functionality and features are not server side, you cannot do anything about it.
You can however note at the change log or through your extension that the subscription helps you with the development and maybe some of the users will be kind enough to support you.
An account manager that I work with has come up to me and insists that the Foursquare API can be used to "checkin" to a website, so basically saying one could checkin to www.somewebsite.com (this differs from checking into a venue via a website). Admittedly the language on the brand page creative use FAQ on foursquare.com reads a little odd:
Building “check-ins” into your own application or website
Has the FS API been used to do such a thing? I couldn't see how, or why FourSquare would allow this capability. I do see they have Brand pages which looks nothing more that what Twitter might accomplish.
On another note, where does someone contact FS regarding a branded promotion like the one they have done for SuperBowl Sunday? There is nothing on the site to let someone know where to contact them.
Foursquare check-ins are to venues, and venues always have a physical location associated with them. So no, you can't check in to www.somewebsite.com. What you can do is use the API to check in from www.somewebsite.com.
To contact foursquare about partnership opportunities, e-mail partners#foursquare.com
The foursquare API is for checking into locations. What the FAQ is telling you is that you can make an application that allows people to check in to a location from that application.
Let me give you a potential example.
A restaurant has a loyalty club where you register online and can check into the restaurant when you arrive, for coupons. But the restaurant also allows you to link your restaurant account with your foursquare account. So the next time you show up at the restaurant, you enter your phone number and presto, you're also checked into foursquare.
It might not be a great application, but it's an example of something that could be done and the type of application to which the FAQ was referring, not checking into a website itself.
as for the branding question, check out their Merchant Platform page.
I have updated the current version of one of my application on app store so that it supports in-app purchase, it's been more than couple of hours and there is no in-app purchase visible on the appstore yet though on itunesconnect it says that the in-app purchase is ready for sell along with the new version of the app.
Can anyone tell me what might be wrong with my application?
Regards,
Ankur
Did you check "Clear for Sale" for the InAppPurchase?