Merry Christmas!

Hey all.

I hope you're having fun geocaching out there! I've taken a couple weeks haitus on working on Geopher Lite, but I am now back at it. The dust is settling on a new addition to our family, hopefully after Christmas things settle into a real routine so I can make some real headway on the full version.

Quick update, for the moment I'm abandoning in place the web archiving. I've sunk a ton of time into this and it's not getting me the results I would like. There's still hope for this feature, and I'm seriously thinking of putting it into a beta state like I did the compass rotation. Drop me a line if you're interested in this if I get more than one or two people responding I'll stick what I have into the next release as a beta feature.

I've done some testing with the new 2.2 APIs for compass rotation and the results have been less than stellar. I'll be doing some more testing with this and see if I can polish up the compass rotation as I find the time. It's still less than ideal and a bit less accurate than I'd like it to be.

Speaking of the compass, I am working with another app developer (The guy who has done the free Geocaching Toolkit) on a newly released app called Geocaching Buddy. The author has added support via URL linking to Geopher Lite for the compass rotation! I'm pleased and honored that he would do such a thing and I am working to improve The URL linking to be even better. He has also graciously given me a copy of the application. I'm looking forward to trying it out on my next multi-cache. There's been a lot of thought and work that has gone into this app and I'm excited to put it to use.

I've received little to no feedback in the past 6 weeks or so (other than spam from t-mobile wanting me to develop for their app store as well as adMob spam), with one notable exception. I had one user ask about textmarks via coord.info, and I thought I'd let you all know I am looking at this for the full version of Geopher Lite. I had originally planed on simply filling out notes and a link to the log page forwarded to the mail application for final submission later, but this would allow more on the fly entry of such things. If anyone uses this system (or would like to) I'd love to hear your feedback on how you'd like to use it.

I would also appreciate any feedback about what you do and don't like with Geopher Lite in regards to other Geocaching applications for the iPhone. My original plan of what I had envisioned really isn't realized yet. TO be clear, from some of the integrated options I have looked at are very tech-oriented in GPS's. What I'd like to do is go the other way some and simply focus on geocaching and making that as easy and as fun as possible. Cross your fingers, it's time to re-dedicate myself to this languishing project.

Thanks for your patience. As always feedback is encouraged and appreciated!

Good and bad

So, I have some good news and bad news.

The good news is that apple has recently released some sample code that allows saving web pages for offline viewing. This is exactly what I've been trying to get working with cURL but have had mixed progress with. To bring you up to date, I've gotten cURL working with mixed results. The web page saves, but the images and such do not easily, so I was having to write all of that manually. This should help a lot with that. So if all goes well the next release of Geopher Lite will have web archiving capability. For those of you who are developers and curious, you can check out some of my initial work with cURL here. It's not everything I've done, but the initial part of getting it working.

That said... Yesterday my 3 year old "cleaned off" my iPhone in the toilet. It was still on when I grabbed it from her, I think she just dipped it in and was wiping it off when I got to it. Still. I turned it off (the touch screen wasn't working and flickering on and off) and quickly stuck it in a bowl of dry rice to try and wick away the water as much as possible. I'll let you all know tomorrow morning when I dare try turning it on again if it actually works still or not. So that may be a setback to getting this next version released, I'm going to try and not have it be though. I may have to rely more heavily on my beta testers for this one.

Always something. =)

S-L-O-W

Hey everyone.

I have to be honest, my drive behind Geopher has had a gunshot wound to the head and it's slow going what with everything else that's happening in my life. However, I still want a better solution than what is out there for the iPhone, so I am not giving up, it is just taking a bit longer than I had planned.

I'd like to get an update to you all by thanksgiving (That's towards the end of november for you non-U.S. folks) on Geopher Lite in between other things and I'll see what I can do there. This would include the rotated compass graphics (which have been done actually since the end of september, shame on me for not getting those to you sooner), probably the GCxxxx on the main target screen and the new outdoor skin. There are other potentialities for that release, but I won't promise anything else.

Hang in there and thanks for stopping by!

Quickie

Hey, just a note to let you all know that I'm still here, I've not forgotten about you.

Lots of stuff happening for me lately, so I've not done much of anything for the iPhone in about a week.

I left work tonight at 10:15 PM. This isn't unusual lately, I think I need to talk with my boss.

Good news on the web archive front, I've made some progress there. Someone has also suggested allowing field notes in the final version, I have thought about this and wanted to get some feedback on it. For the moment I'm thinking of allowing you to add notes and then giving you the option to email yourself the notes with a link to the cache that they are attached to so you can log them or do whatever you need. It'd be great for logging bugs and coins and the like.

Groundspeak's app finally hit the app store this weekend. It's worth checking out, but I'm a bit disappointed in the initial offering -- I was hoping for a bit more than that. Still, there's tons of potential with it.

I'm planning on posting my thoughts about the current geocaching software that's out there and what a user's options are. At the moment things are very usable, and there are a number of choices. Some decent options at the moment, though nothing anyone is dying over. I think that groundspeak has the best shot at that, but there's plenty of room for competition.

Thanks for stopping by, as always drop me a line with feedback or questions, I'm happy to help where I can.

Conclusion

Before I say anything, I want to say thank you to magicwaldo. That was a humbling thing to read directed at me and I thank you for it.

On another note, for those newer to the program, the compass WILL rotate. I've seen a few comments here and there that this doesn't work. It needs to be turned on, it is off by default. I will be turning this on by default in the next version.

I've been thinking about a lot of things the past week or so, and many of those thoughts had to do with Geopher and Geopher Lite.

I have decided to continue on with Geopher. In the coming weeks I will post on what the initial version of Geopher will be. There's a lot I want to do and likely everything I want to do will not make the final cut. I have lost some time here in my indecision, and I'll be stepping things up to get back on track.

In regards to geocaching.com -- I won't be able to ever do what I originally wanted to do with Geopher. However I think I can make a simple, clean app for dealing with GPX files and offliner caching, while keeping things in line with the feel of Geopher Lite.

In regards to Geopher Lite. Instead of following my own priority list in my last post, I've been looking into a way to archive the current web page. The short answer is that there's no quick way to do this with apple's SDK and I am looking into a way to do this myself.

Many things are on the plate, and my last post summarizes a lot of what's going to happen in the next while. As always, drop me a line via email or in a post here. Thanks everyone for your comments and support!

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!

Geocaching on the iPhone at apple

Here's a big THANKS! to the Geopher Lite fans at apple. I'm honored, and I hope that you're loving it!