If your premium version of Sign stopped working overnight, please download update 1.02 which has already been uploaded to the market. The issue has been resolved and a huge thanks to the users who brought it to our attention quickly. This issue did not impact the Lite Version.

We apologize for any inconvenience this caused to those impacted.

First, we want to thank everyone who has downloaded and tried Sign and Sign Lite. So far almost all of the comments and feedback we have received has been positive. However, there is one big issue that we want to make sure people are aware of and to let everyone know that we are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Currently, Sign only recognizes contacts from your Google account contact list. This means that for 90% of people, there is NO issue at all. However, there are still a significant number of people who use Exchange Active Sync (EAS)/3rd Party contact lists as their primary contact list. In these cases, Sign does not recognize your contacts at all. We are aware of the issue and are working hard to fix the problem.

We appreciate your patience as we fix this issue. However, there is a simple work-around if you would like to try Sign or Sign Lite in the meantime. Simply decide which contacts you wish to create Signs for and import/copy their contact information into your Google account contact list. From that point forward, Sign will recognize those contacts and they will be available when you pull up the contact list in Sign. Everything should work smoothly from that point forward. The only time you would need to mess with the Google Contacts again is if you want to add another contact to Sign.

If you are experiencing this issue with EAS/3rd party contact lists, please send us an email to simplyapplied@gmail.com. We will personally confirm that we received your email and that we will update you as soon as the issue is resolved. Again, we apologize to the people who are affected by this issue, but we will work to fix the problem quickly so you can use Sign and Sign Lite as intended.

Please let us know if you encounter any other issues, or if you have other comments and suggestions.

Thanks for helping us make Sign successful!

SA

Simply Applied is wrapping up beta testing for its flagship mobile app for Android, Sign. Sign enables people to call or text their contacts by “signing” self-assigned gestures. Simply Applied expects to be releasing Sign to the Android Market very soon, so stay tuned!

Simply Applied is happy to announce that its gesture-based contact system, Sign, has reached pre-production status and is being finalized for external beta testing.

What is Sign?

Sign is an innovative way to contact your closest friends and family directly from your home screen. Sure, there are other “speed dial” applications available, but the key element that makes these speed dial applications fast is the same thing that makes them ineffective – they are located directly on the home screen and it is too easy to inadvertently call someone without meaning to. Then you’re left scrambling to end the call if you even notice your phone is dialing someone.

Sign is a gesture-based widget which allows you to quickly call or text the people you contact most often, directly from the home screen, without worrying about accidentally calling somebody just because you inadvertently bump your phone’s screen. Sign is still extremely fast, easy to use, and best of all, you decide how to activate a text or phone call. Simply assign a gesture to any contact. To make a call or text, all you have to do is activate the widget and Sign, right from your home screen. Simple and secure.

Based on Google’s Gesture API, Sign uses gestures to initiate phone calls and/or texts to your favorite people quickly and easily. We have improved on Google’s gesture recognition engine to provide a more accurate, consistent, and reliable system to recognize the gestures that you assign to your contacts. Numbers, letters, symbols, your choice. What’s your Sign?

Depending on what they’re doing, widgets can be resource hogs. A home widget is essentially a small and limited user interface to either an existing app or background service. They’re primarily used to display data, not for input, which can be a challenge for apps like our notes widget which is in development. Since widgets are typically displaying data from a background source, they have to be updated at regular intervals…for example with a stock ticker app, it would be every second, using lots of resources. With our notes app, it only updates when a note is added/modified so it is relatively lightweight. Our upcoming gesture dialer/text widget Sign is also very lightweight because it is essentially dormant until activated by the user.

Thank you to everyone who voted in Simply Applied’s recent poll! We value your input as we feel our way around the Android landscape. After mulling over the results and weighing the practical aspects, we have chosen the late entrant Sign as the name for our upcoming gestures dialer application, currently in beta testing. We feel this fits with Simply Applied’s brand image of simple and efficient.

The initial user interface will incorporate the gray header and footers that were shown in the poll. However, future updates may incorporate a variation on this theme and may eventually allow some level of customization.

Please check back frequently for updates on the release of Sign. We believe you will appreciate the convenience that ‘signing’ can offer for speed dialing and sms/texting. For up to the minute updates, please follow Simply Applied on Twitter at www.twitter.com/simplyapplied.