Teaser

No official timeline, or even if I plan on releasing it officially, but a few weeks ago I sat down and got serious about an iPad port because a friend was bugging me about porting Geopher Lite to the iPad. I still do not have a 3G iPad, but I was able to get some stuff working. Rotation has been a headache and does not work yet as expected, but otherwise maps, coordinate entry and target screens appear to work fairly well other than that. (The map screen doesn't show the target or current coordinates correctly either and is missing an icon for the current location in the top left, but those are minor details)

On an unrelated note, I've been able to finally see a problem I keep hearing about in reviews but have yet to reliably reproduce, which is the compass screen not working properly. I am toying with the idea of a major facelift for the app as it's not obvious to me what might cause this. Well, that and among other things the code could really use a face-lift now that I'm a better iOS programmer. I have a few ideas, but if you have a wishlist for Geopher Lite (or iPhone/iPad geocaching in general), the next few weeks would be a good time to shoot me an email.

As always thanks for using Geopher Lite!

Ads

So, I'm thinking of making an ad supported version of Geopher Lite. I wonder if it would make any difference.

I've been thinking about this since I had that 24 hour (ish) sale and made the app free. I don't think that it actually did anything other than get about 800 people to try the app out. That was a huge spike in one day.

With an ad supported version I think that some people out there who might use Geopher Lite if there were no up-front cost.

Obviously I'll post here if/when it happens.

As for the iPad, I've not gotten much feedback, and what I have got is mostly that people wouldn't want to use it on the iPad anyhow. So I doubt I could even pay off an iPad with the 3G chip if I ported it anyhow. I still may do so, but it won't be at least until late summer.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Opinion

I've not had a single email about iPad support as of yet, so I thought I would find out any interest here. Would you be interested in an update for Geopher Lite for the iPad 3G version? And if so, what would you like to see in that update?

If anyone missed it, the 3G version will have GPS, I suspect because GPS is part of the 3G chip that apple is using. the non-3G iPad will not have GPS available.

Feel free to drop me an email or comment here. Thanks!

Tablet

Things have been quiet around here lately. Did everyone fall asleep? Oh wait, sorry, that was me!

Apple is announcing a new device tomorrow, reportedly a tablet computer of some sort. If it has a GPS init, I will be updating Geopher Lite to be using said tablet. I'm itching to do a number of projects on such a device. Don't hold your breath, but if the tablet is as capable as I think it might be, I will likely update Geopher Lite to a full version of Geopher, with all that that would entail. If I do so I'll announce it here once development is under way.

I have to say, even though my plan of working with geocaching.com didn't go as planned, it's been a fun and interesting ride to watch paperless caching come into it's own as a real paperless option. Thanks to everyone who have helped make this happen, not only with Geopher Lite, but with the many options that are available!

Holiday sale

Hey all. For any of you who have been waiting for some oddball reason to get Geopher Lite, it is now on sale for FREE for the next 24 hours. Enjoy!

Haitus

Due to personal reasons development has slowed on Geopher Lite. Don't count me out yet, but don't expect much in the next while.

Just for fun, I've changed the price to $0.99 U.S. for the time being.

Thanks for stopping by.

What's next?

Well, it's been a couple of weeks and I've had little feedback on the new version. How is it treating everyone? Anybody notice anything odd or out of place? (Or even better, anything that works better than you'd hoped?)

I've been looking into caching the last viewed website, but it's an uphill battle. I actually had code months ago to do this, but I never got all the images and such to re-display properly. So I'm looking at that.

I'm also thinking about doing something with the download links on the geocaching.com webpage. It would be nice if you could press the download button for a LOC or GPX file and get the coordinates that way rather than typing them in.

That's about all that's happening on the Geopher Lite front at the moment. As always, suggestions, comments and complaints are welcome. Thanks for stopping by.