Groundspeak announcement

Check out this link if you've not heard yet.

Remember when I had said I was speaking with groundspeak? I was, but it wasn't what you may have thought.

It took over 3 weeks to get on the phone with them after they agreed to talk with me. When I finally did, they had me sign an NDA, which took another week, and then
another week after that to talk to them again. After all that, they told me that the
terms of use would continue to apply to me and that I was welcome to
continue as I was, but nothing would change in the near future. That was... difficult. =) They also told me about their project (no details, just that there was a project in the works). I've been sitting on that for weeks and it's been rough not saying anything to you guys.

Congratulations to them though, from the looks of it it will be a very capable caching system, in some ways very similar to Geopher Lite but with a better UI than the web view and with a saved cache list. And it sounds as though they will continue to add features.

So.

The big question is, what does this mean for Geopher Lite? And more importantly to many of you, what does this mean for the full version of Geopher?

I'm not really sure. I haven't ruled out completing it, but I also wonder what the use would be. Groundspeak is doing what I would have wanted in the ideal of Geopher. That doesn't mean that it would be useless, it would still have it's pros, but also it's cons. I'm leaning against a full version at this point.

However that's good news for those of you who have already purchased Geopher Lite. I will likely make more updates to Geopher Lite than I had intended. It's funny how that has worked out. I had originally planned for Geopher Lite to be free with a basic interface similar to what I had done here with the UI. Now here we are, the free demo is $1.99 and I could pour more functionality into it, bump the price, and make it the full version. That may or may not happen. Life is often unexpected that way.

Sorry, I'm rambling... I'll give you a sneak peek at what I'd like to get working (or rather, what I am working on) with Geopher Lite.

The next version already has the compass letters rotated like you would expect. This has been requested by a few people since the initial skins and I finally got around to doing that a week ago. In addition, I am adding a skin that will be more clear outdoors. It's not where I want it to be, but it looks okay. If anyone would like to donate a good black and white compass rose and arrow I'd be most grateful. I've done a few myself and... well, I'm not an artist. My images would get the job done, but it's not all that hot. =) I'll do what I have to do though, so this isn't me begging, just if you're an artist, bored, and want a better outdoor screen you have the ability to help. =) So that's coming, slated for 1.0.6, which has no real date yet.

I am also working on a way to allow for hitting the .GPX or .LOC buttons on the geocache listings and having them download the file, parse the GPX/LOC file, and then auto-fill the target coordinates. I can't get around a few limitations with apple's web view (or it would be done already), so I may take more time than I'd like to get this done. But that is the goal, and would be a legal way for me to auto-enter the coordinates without doing anything out of the ordinary in regards to the terms of use.

I have considered allowing these GPX files to be saved, but no promises here. That would be nice, and I'd like to see that, we shall see. At the moment that has a higher possibility of happening, but again. I MAKE NO PROMISES. =)

I would also like to find a way to use wap.geocaching.com, but again, that's been made to be intentionally difficult to use and groundspeak has indicated that it is what it is -- I won't be getting any help there. I have some ideas and I'd like to see what I can do here, but it should be an interesting process to get done without breaking any of the rules. I'm going to give it a go though.

Compass rotation will be revisited, but I'm not spending tons of time there. I do have an idea of stopping the compass rotation when not moving and I'll be working on that, but the theory is that apple will be adding to their GPS functionality in the near future and I'll be using their data to rotate the compass, not the simple math that I'm currently doing. I am making a (big?) assumption here that apple has access to better data than I do for this. I guess we shall see.

Oh, and I registered the domain geopher.com a while back, and I have had a kind soul offer to help with getting a webpage going for me once I make time to get the hosting figured out. So that may be coming soon, depending, again, on time.

Also I'm keeping an eye out for the links on geocaching.com to work (i.e. the map link) as well as saving the webpage. These are annoying, but are currently not at the top of my priority list. I also have some code for sun/moon directions as well, but I'm on the fence if that should be added or not. I'm sure there's more, but this is all off the top of my head, so I guess you guys will deal with the rest. =)

On a more personal note, my time at work has been more demanding lately and I'm not sure how long that will continue. Additionally, my wife is 7 months pregnant with our 4th kid (Yeah, I know. It's our last. We love our kids but soemtimes I wonder about having another. =) ). This means that my job as a dad will take more time in the near future as well. On top of that I've decided to start on another iPhone app which I will likely briefly mention here once it gets released. So time will be streched. Don't expect all this to be available in a week or two.

As always I'll keep you updated with what's happening.

Feedback, comments and suggestions are always welcome. Despite groundspeak competing in this space, I'll still be around maintaining Geopher Lite, so no worries there. Thanks for using Geopher Lite and being part of the iPhone geocaching community!