Free Chirp?

Opencaching.com is giving away a chirp a day for each placed cache. There aren't a ton of active users on there right now, so your chances are pretty good if you cross-post a bunch of caches. Check out the rules and make sure your caches are marked as entries in the contest!

User Questions

I've taken what I have done with the iPad version of Geopher Lite and been working on what is essentially a rewrite of Geopher Lite, that is closer to the original vision I had of the full version. There are plenty of things on my list left to do.

You can see the results of my work here.

I have kept putting off my changes for Geopher Lite because to do what I wanted would essentially be a rewrite of the app. I do have changes, and I have made some improvements, but nothing I am satisfied with. I believe that I will only be comfortable with a full revamp.

I was also holding out hope that groundspeak would eventually open up more to 3rd party developers now that they are dominating the market for geocaching on the iPhone. I do know they are working on a 3rd party developer API, but it is invite only. Because I directly compete with them in the iPhone space I don't expect them to contact me. (Though I would love it if they would!)

I'm going to have to assume at this point that this won't happen. So where does that leave us?

I would like to take many of the changes I've made for the open caching port and put them into Geopher Lite. This will lose the skin support but should bring the app more into the modern iPhone world. For example, settings will be contained in the app itself. I will likely move forward with this and have an update submitted in the next few weeks.

As always, thanks for using Geopher Lite!

opencaching.com

A friend of mine tipped me off to this site this morning. It looks like Garmin is going to host their own geocaching site. I'm very interested to see where this is going.

I normally don't mention stuff like this here, but one of the big deals about this is that they have an open API to interact with. I do need to read the terms and conditions, but it's likely that Geopher Lite will be able to directly interact with the site. That's a big deal.

Work continues on the iPad version with a few features that will enhance the functionality quite a bit. Some exciting stuff, especially when combined with the above. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, go create an account and check out this new player in the geocaching community.

As I suspected...

...not a peep about the iPad version. I'll probably polish up what I have and release it as a separate app in the app store. I've heard nothing other than what my friend has told me in basic usage on his iPad. If anyone would like to beta this version let me know.

The changes to the regular version are underway and I'm trying to decide if I should make the original a universal app or not. If anyone has an opinion on this, again, let me know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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!