Game Type: Puzzle, Casual

Price: Free; $0.99 for ad-free version

Get It: If you enjoy word games and casual puzzle games like Bejeweled

I have to admit that when I think about Android games, I tend to focus on the ones that keep my kids entertained. But lately I’ve been hogging the phone for myself so I can play Dropwords.

This game is sort of a cross between Bejeweled, Scrabble, and a word search. You start with a grid of letter blocks and find as many words as you can before the clock runs out. The letters can be touching in any direction—up or down, sideways, or diagonal—and you can keep switching directions. For example, you could go down, to the left, then up. Longer words earn higher scores and a time bonus. After you find a word, those letters disappear, the other blocks slide down, and new ones appear at the top.

If you get stuck, you can shuffle the tiles or discard them for a whole new set. There doesn’t seem to be any penalty for doing this, which seems a little odd to me.

Modes of play and customizing your game: In addition to choosing the size of your letter grid (four, five, or six letters down and across), you can choose from three themes and six modes of play, and you can decide whether to use the Scrabble dictionary, Webster’s, or both.

Choose letters by swiping or tapping; I find that swiping is faster but more likely to result in errors. If you make a mistake, go back and tap the previous, correct letter.

Modes of play include normal, hard, lightning (which gives you just a little time), blocker (which blocks off random locations across the board), relax (an easier mode), and untimed. High scores are tracked separately for each mode.

Ambiance: This game’s look and feel are OK; they aren’t quite as sleek as something like Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies, especially in the free, ad-supported version. But unlike those fancy-graphics games, it won’t take up a huge amount of space on your phone. And if the ads bother you, 99 cents for the “pro” version really isn’t bad.

Social networking: Like quite a few games and apps, Dropwords has recently added the option to connect with a community of game-playing friends. Signing up for this network gives you access to chats, circles, a leader board, and extra challenges.

My recommendation: Give Dropwords a try. And if your kids ask why you’re hogging the phone, claim that you’re reading an important e-mail from their school principal.

I have been mulling over the idea of writing this post for a while now. It was mostly triggered by a video I saw on Android Central. I was excited that they finally had an (apparently) female-centric podcast with female hosts, called “Girls Gone Gadgets”, with hosts Georgia and Ashley. Now maybe the play on “Girls Gone Wild” in the title should’ve tipped me off, or even their logo, (which I think is supposed to be a pink heart with Android antennae and an Apple bite, but now that I look back, sure looks like breasts in a tank top), but I went in hopeful that Android Central was finally addressing the growing female smartphone audience and providing us with some content to consume.

Instead of clicking on a full episode, I thought I’d start with a peek behind the scenes and see who these women were, and clicked on this video Ashley Esqueda put together to describe how she develops her weekly show for Mobile Nations, “Monday Brief”:

I was so disappointed. This seemingly-smart girl made fun of the work she does to produce the show, and even talked about her boobs. Even if she’s being sarcastic, I just had really hoped for something different.

But I decided to go ahead and watch the “Girls Gone Gadgets” Pilot thinking (based on the title) that they might be aiming that show more toward women. I figured Ashley’s behind-the-scenes video was probably intended to just be silly, and that they would probably be more informative in the actual show. I wasn’t surprised at all when the women were introduced “Charlie’s Angels” style, and still held out hope for the episode. Ashley started out by saying she was nervous in front of the camera, and immediately turned what she said into a sex joke and said “there are boys in the chat room”. She explained that they were going to talk tech by saying “don’t be afraid that we’ll talk about cramps and the perfect shade of lipstick”. I was losing hope fast, and it was becoming clear by the chosen phrases that I was not in this show’s target audience.

Ashley and Georgia go on to have a discussion about Android tablets vs iPads, then start talking about what not to do with your smartphone on a date, and Georgia says “Let’s help some guys out”. I honestly stopped watching at that point because they hadn’t even yet addressed that there may be some females that came across their podcast and might be interested in learning how the women used their devices. It was clearly produced for the apparently majority-male audience Android Central already has, rather than using female hosts talking about how they use gadgets to attract more female readers and viewers. I think Android Central and Mobile Nations missed a big opportunity there.

However, it’s not an uncommon mistake. You may have recently heard some of the recent hubbub related to “booth babes” at tech conferences, sparked by this BBC video (featuring a one-time WomenWithDroids contributor, Taylor), and the role of women in the tech industry is a valid discussion to have. Just how do tech manufacturers see women?

Now let me be clear, I have no problem with companies that use sexy models to attract attention to their products, I just assume their aim is to attract men. I have no problem with tech blogs using hot female hosts – I’m sure they can talk tech just fine while attracting a large male audience. What I worry about is the apparent lack of female voices in the industry, or more specifically, the lack of people talking to female tech consumers.

I say “apparent” because I don’t believe there is actually a lack of women in tech. A growing number of women are working in technology-related fields, and there are several women with prominent roles in tech journalism that aren’t just writing for men. Some are listed in this list of “Women in Tech You Need to Follow on Twitter“. Most of all, there has been a noticeable increase in women consuming technology, and it’s time companies took note.

When I started this blog with CraftLass, she was the only other woman I had met that had an Android phone. Remember how the original Droid was being marketed as the “powerful robot” alternative to the “pretty princess” iPhone? Now, I see as many women with smartphones as men, and a high number of them have Android phones.

In February 2010, 73% of Android owners were male. In 2011, Nielsen published numbers on which apps women and men used, so at least businesses were starting to wonder how women used their phones, but I couldn’t find any numbers on how many of their survey respondents were female. I published a survey here on Women With Droids in June 2011 and got over 150 responses, so I knew women were buying Androids in increasing numbers.

More recent articles show that women buy more technology than men (4.7 tech products on average in 2010 vs 4.2 for men), more women (88%) buy technology than men (83%), women download more music and movies than men do, and women spend more time on fewer websites, showing engagement and loyalty.

Barnes and Noble announced that 75% of Android-based Nook Color tablet owners were women, and I’d venture a guess that more than half of Kindle Fire owners are women, too. I have looked, but haven’t found any recent reliable stats about the breakdown of male and female Android users, so please let me know if you come across any. Check out this great TechCrunch article by Aileen Lee about “Why Women Rule the Internet”, which explains that when it comes to social networking and online shopping, women participate at a higher rate than men do.

Women use technology. Women are educated. Women have purchasing power. So, why do tech blogs, conferences, and gadget marketers insist on continuing to focus their efforts on attracting men? My guess is that it’s because, unfortunately, the majority of decision-makers in these companies are men.

So, instead of just complaining about it, I would like to do something about it. Women With Droids was started as a blog written by women for women to help us make the most of our smartphones. If the “big blogs” won’t do it, we will.

I am starting to build a team of women to have online video chats (low-cut shirts not required!) about how we (the female half of the population) use apps to make our daily lives better, write articles about apps we’ve tried and whether or not we recommend them (like we have been doing here for a while, but at a faster pace), and to basically be the go-to source for women with Android phones.

So, are you with me?

I want and need your help! If you want to write an app review (or 10!) for us, if you have an idea to contribute, if you want to participate in a video chat, or just want to help spread the word about Women With Droids, let me know in the comments, and I’ll be in touch to get this all organized and start growing Women With Droids into the blog it was always meant to be! Even if you don’t want to play an active role, even just commenting on our posts and sharing our articles helps a lot!!

Follow us on Twitter, and circle us on Google+! Also subscribe to Women With Droids by RSS or email so you don’t miss any follow-up articles! >(:] )=

Earlier this week, we published an interview with Dora, creator of the JellyPlanner app.

Today, we introduce Jennifer Wong from Alt-12 Apps. I thought it was interesting to learn from her website that Alt-12 was named after the keystrokes (Alt+1,2) used to create the female symbol:

Alt-12 has been publishing apps for women since 2009, and now you can learn all about the creation of their app Pink Pad from Jennifer, who designed it!

Hi, Jennifer! Can you tell us about the Pink Pad app and how you came up with the idea for it?

Pink Pad is a social health tracker app. It allows women to track their health, from fertility, menstrual cycle to weight management and more. The most essential part is the health centric social network built right into the app which allows women to connect to women like them for support, advice and friendship.

Pink Pad is actually my company’s second app and the inspiration for it came out of our first app, BabyBump. BabyBump is a pregnancy app that I started working on during my pregnancy because I saw a lack of apps addressing the special needs of women’s health. Out of of BabyBump’s success we learned that a large portion of our users were women who weren’t pregnant at all but we’re either planning to get pregnant one day or enjoyed connecting with other women on health issues. It seem natural that we create an app that addressed the broader needs of women’s health, the stage before and after pregnancy, thus Pink Pad was born.

Jennifer Wong of Alt-12 Apps

Once you had the idea for Pink Pad, what were your next steps? What was your role in the creation of the app?

When creating Pink Pad, there were only myself and my co-founder involved. My strengths are in front end design and user experience so my role was heavy in the initial and early stages of the app development.

I started by researching the market and looking at potential competitor apps. It’s always a good idea to know what’s out there so you can figure out how you’re going to differential yourself and create something compelling that a user will love.

I created a wireframe of the product to hash out user experience and flow and then began taking the concept to design the front-end of the app while my co-founder implemented the back end.

Because our skills sets are so complimentary, we were able to complete the first version in just a few months.

How did you learn how to do these things – did you go to school for design?

I’m pretty much a self-taught. In college, I studied some design but it’s always been my personal interest in being creative that has kept me learning. Prior to starting Alt12 Apps, my career started in design and marketing so I was able to continue to develop my design skills.

Did you publish your app for Android first, or for another platform? Why did you choose to market it to Android users?

Because we were a small and a resource constrained team of two we published Pink Pad on iOS first but we always had plans to port to Android as soon as we could. We launched Pink Pad on Android just three months after our iOS launch so I’d say there wasn’t a huge lag. As a developer, I feel Android is a necessary platform to develop on. You have the ability to reach a much broader audience because of the range of devices using Android. I love that we have teen users [on Android] who are able to track and learn about their health.

What is your target audience, and have you gotten a good response from them?

Our target market is any woman who’s interested in tracking their health or wants to connect with others for advice or support. We’ve gotten phenomenal positive feedback from the women who use our app. Word of mouth from our community of users seems to be the strongest and most successful marketing tool. Pink Pad Pro has been the #1 Health App in the Android Marketplace for a while now. Our users have said they are more addicted to our app than Facebook. I take that as a huge compliment!

Screenshot from Pink Pad Pro

As a female app designer, what is your overall impression of the app “world” as a whole – do you feel like a minority? Does that impact what you design & how you develop your ideas? How do other people react when they find out you have an app in the Android Market? How does that feel?

When I first started in 2009, I definitely felt like a minority. Most app developers were men, which reflected in the type of apps that were created. I think things have definitely changed and the industry is realizing that women are strong consumers of social media and mobile usage. I see a lot more apps being created with women in mind and it has definitely influenced our development.

For starters, we’ve always believed in paying attention to quality of design and User Experience (UX). We chose to develop our apps natively to ensure the best UX that was fast and felt natural to the device.

People are often surprised to learn that I’m a developer. But they’re usually even more surprised to learn that I’ve been doing it since 2009 (while five months pregnant) and that our apps have been long-time category leaders with over three million downloads.

Overall, it just feels good to be producing something in which you really believe has a positive impact on people’s lives.

Do you have any advice for other women that have Android app ideas and are considering designing and/or developing an app?

I was just starting to write a blog article on my top ten tips for mobile apps, but here are my top two.

Deliver an experience out the door.
I see so many apps fail at this. You download the app and the first thing it asks you to do is register or input a ton of data before you can really begin exploring the app. You have one chance to make a first impression with apps. The retention rate is incredibly low, less than 5% [of downloaders] use an app after the first month. If you don’t wow the user with something upon their first experience, they’ll never come back.

Iterate, iterate and iterate.
You can never do this process enough. When coming up with an idea or feature you should be your biggest critic, stripping away at what’s not necessary in the app and that requires constant iteration. Don’t expect that your first idea or version will be perfect, it’s more important to iterate quickly to get it right.

Where can we find more information about you & your app? Any last “plugs” you want to share?

In the next month, we’ll be launching a new app for parents that we’re extremely excited about. It’s geared towards new parents to help them learn, capture, and share their child’s milestones. You can “Like” Pink Pad App or BabyBump App on Facebook to be notified as soon as it’s launched!

Thanks so much for the interview, Jennifer!

To those of you reading this interview, please support Jennifer Wong and check out Alt-12 Apps in the Android Market, then come back and tell us and her what you think! If you are interested in becoming a developer and have any other questions for Jennifer, please comment below!

You may remember back when we featured Diana Luckevich, developer of TextDooDad as one of the few female Android developers at the time. Well, luckily since the Android Market has grown, so have the number of women that develop apps for our devices. We have a special series this week in which we’ll introduce you to several of them.

First up is Dora, a European developer who started CheerApps and just released her first app, “Jelly Planner” to the Android Market in November. Here is our e-interview. Enjoy!

Hi, Dora. What is your app, Jelly Planner, and how did you come up with the idea for it?

Jelly Planner is a task list with a unique relaxing underwater interface. You use it to plan your tasks or long term goals. Each task is displayed inside a colorful jellyfish that smiles at you and moves its legs. You can easily prioritize your tasks by moving them around.

And how did I come up with this idea? Where I live, there exists a custom of making New Year resolutions – some people may laugh at it. Anyway, I find the end of the year a great time for reflection and making plans, choosing vacation destinations, thinking of things to learn and projects to complete. I used to write these goals in a small traditional paper calendar that I got myself every year. But last year I had a thought that it might be more convenient to have these goals in a place that I check more often than some page in my calendar. And then I thought of an application. I’m sure that I would have found an existing one that would do the job, but I wanted something cheerful that would make planning things fun and relaxing. A vacation on some seaside is always in my New Year plan – so this is why I thought of a planner with jellyfish :).

One more reason why creating such an app came to my mind is that I felt it’s fine (at least for me) to relax about some things – to avoid the trap of perfectionism – planning the future should be fun, it’s great if I realize most of my ideas, and it’s ok if others – that are not crucial – will be postponed to the next year.

Dora, the creator of Jelly Planner

Once you had the idea, what were your next steps? What was your role in the creation of the app? Did you design and develop the app by yourself, as part of a team, or hire someone to put your idea into action?

I’m a software developer myself, and my boyfriend used to write applications in the past. He is a great fan of iPhone. I didn’t have a smartphone myself at the time when the idea came to my mind, but we both thought it would be a great platform for this project.

So the first thought was to write an app for iPhone. We didn’t have an Apple computer that would have been ideal for the task, so I found a framework that makes writing for iPhone on PC possible in C++ programming language. After a few days of the application development I realized I didn’t like this C++ stuff, it wasn’t very friendly for human beings. And I read a little about Android: the documentation I found looked promising, I’ve been programming in Java for years, and it cost less than programming for iPhone. We decided it was a great choice for us, so I bought an Android phone and the development started.

I was responsible for the graphics, the main underwater screen and its logic, database site, alarms, etc.. And my boyfriend became the master of those Android forms – when there was a line in a form that was a few pixels too short, he was the patient one who always fixed it.

How did you learn how to do these things – did you go to school for software development or teach yourself?

I studied at a technical university, and then have been working as developer (mostly in Java) for more than 7 years. So after I set up a development environment for Android on my netbook, read some documentation, and took a look at a few sample applications, I was ready to write an Android app. We created the same setup for my boyfriend and began the work. Of course it was more like learning stuff at the beginning, we were making a lot of errors – but that’s how you get to know a new technology.

What is your target audience and how have you reached out to them to tell them about it? Have you gotten a good response from women?

The target audience are all those who like planning, but feel overwhelmed by a desire to organize every detail of their life precisely. Those who need to relax.
And anyone who is open to use a colorful, funny app to plan things in :).

Screenshot from Jelly Planner App

Our app is new and we’re still working on reaching out to potential users.

It seems that women are the greatest fans of Jelly Planner — My sister, my women friends, and myself are very happy users of the app.

As a female app creator, what is your overall impression of the app “world” as a whole – do you feel like a minority? Does that impact what & how you design/develop your ideas? How do other people react when they find out you have an app in the Android Market? How does that feel?

During my studies or in any job I’ve had, women have always been a minority, so I’m used to this fact. I’m not aware of how it looks like in the Android app world yet, but I do realize I have a tendency of coming up with cheerful / relaxing / sweet ideas :).

Everybody who hears about a finished Android app that appeared in the Android Market congratulates me and wishes me luck. And ‘finished’ is a very important word here, for it’s really hard for someone with a regular job to complete such a project. It took us almost a year to finish it – with vacation breaks or weeks when we had no time for the app development.

I work in a software company where I could find a lot of people with Android phones who were interested in testing the app. It was great to hear from them that Jelly Planner is a nice application that works well.

Do you have any advice for other women that have Android app ideas and are considering designing and/or developing an app?

It’s hugely satisfying to complete development of an Android app. It’s incredible when you think that something you’ve created is going to be available to millions of people around the world.

A very important thing when creating an app is to have it tested by many people and to listen to their opinions on what’s intuitive, and what they would like to see in the app. When you hear several times that the checkboxes should be bigger since it’s hard to tap them with a large thumb, it’s worth considering :).

And there’s one thing that I’ve just clearly realized after Jelly Planner has been released in Android Market in the middle of November: there are thousands of applications out there. And a new one is well visible on the ‘New’ apps list only for a day or two. When I enter ‘task list’ in search field in Android Market I get over 3000 results. On the top of the list are the apps that were downloaded over 250 000 times, and a new app with a small number of downloads is on the very bottom. Those who might like it have a very little chance to learn that such an app exists at all.

So it’s not enough to write an application these days. If you want to earn some money on it or simply find users for something you’ve worked so hard on, you need to be prepared that there’s a big task ahead of promoting the app that demands creativity and patience.

Where can we find more information about you & your app? Any last “plugs” you want to share?

We have a facebook page for both Jelly Planner and Cheerapps:
www.facebook.com/JellyPlanner
www.facebook.com/Cheerapps

And a web page:
www.cheerapps.com

I will also answer emails sent to cheerapps at gmail dot com.

Thanks so much for the interview, Dora!

To those of you reading this interview, please support Dora and check out Jelly Planner in the Android Market, then come back and tell us and her what you think! If you are interested in becoming a developer and have any other questions for Dora, please comment below!

Jelly Planner for Android on AppBrain

Related posts:

• “Women With Android Apps” Series: Jennifer
• “Women With Android Apps” Series: Mélanie
• “Women With Android Apps” Series: Silicon Sisters

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