Marketing and User Support

TrailBehind now consists of 3 full-time developers, and we are looking to hire our first non-technical employee.

Your primary responsibility will be to answer user emails for Gaia GPS, and to create FAQs and other materials to decrease support requests and improve the user experience.

In addition, you may be asked to help with marketing, including things like improving our website, creating how-to videos, and improving our press coverage.

Requirements/Info

• The position is part-time to hire. Expect 20 hours of work per week to start, potential for full-time after 3 months.

• We are offering $15-25/hour, depending on your strength as a candidate.

• You can work from our office in Berkeley, and after the first week, you can choose to work at home instead.

• We would prefer you have a college degree or are working towards one, though it is not required.

How to Apply

Please send an email to jobs@gaiagps.com with a resume and/or other information that you think would help distinguish you as a candidate. We will pay attention to how good your email sounds.

I got this email from a user on an search and rescue team, and I wanted to share what he said. It makes my day to hear Gaia really make a difference.

Our group S&R group was actually out this evening evacuating a snowmobiler with a broken femur from miles back off the trailhead.  I am a huge proponent of your software and I think I’ve gotten at least a dozen people our team using it now.  The area we were in this evening, is an area we were in last year, past midnight in a white out blizzard.  It is on top of a ridge where you have to thread your way down through various rock bands without actually going off the ridge.  Last year, after we found a lost snowmobiler we used my phone and your app to guide about 10 of us and the subject through the white out conditions and safely down through the rock formations while we couldn’t see more than 10 feet around us.  The others with their GPS units had horrible version of topo maps, and it was too cold and windy to break out the actual maps.  Using the GPS overlayed onto the actual USGS topo maps was key in getting us out safely.  So, with all sincerity, thank you for this app!     

The new version of Gaia GPS for Android, v3.2, should now work with devices that have been upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s also must faster and more memory efficient.

if you have any issues with Gaia under the new operating system, please email us at android@gaiagps.com.

iTunes makes it hard for people to get refunds for apps they don’t like – you have to send an email to Apple, and they won’t always provide a refund. Android too – on the Android Market, you can only get a refund within 15 minutes of your download.

That’s not how we think it should work though – if you don’t like our apps for any reason, send us an email at gaia@gaiagps.com, and we’re happy to provide a refund, no questions asked.

Here’s a new video that explains how to record tracks using Gaia GPS.

You can also access this in Gaia’s Help section in the app.

Despite all the shenanigans this week, we’re back online with topo maps now.

In Gaia GPS, go to Settings->Help to show topo maps in the app. The default topo map source no longer works, but you can use topos by activating them in Settings->Help.

In addition, the new versions of Gaia GPS and Offline Topo Maps should be live next week, and they include our new topo server as the default source.

If you have a question, please read this blog a bit, or ask your question on our user forum.

Update: We now have our own USGS topo server. It’s live in our Android app now, and we’re pushing an update to Apple today. Thanks to all of our users for the flood of supportive emails, and thanks to our partner EarthNC (maker of Marine Charts) for standing up the topo server literally overnight.

I’m sorry folks, but as of today the MyTopo maps are dead in Gaia GPS. We should have an alternate topo source up later this week, but for now, users will be limited to the OpenCycleMap topos.

This was a competitive move by Trimble, following their acquisition of MyTopo this summer. We were given no warning, and they did this intentionally in order to cripple our app, as well as a leading outdoor app on Android, Backcountry Navigator. We found out when maps stopped showing up in our apps – no email, no phone call, no nothing. Their purpose was to mow down the competition, so that they could dominate with their line of inferior apps.

I understand the cold-blooded reasoning that would lead to this course of action, but I could never imagine making such an unprofessional move, regardless of the money at stake. And it’s much worse than just not warning us – they went as far as to lull us into believing this wouldn’t happen. When MyTopo was acquired, we were told that we would be warned about impending changes in the usage of their tile server. Furthermore, I have spent the last month and a half discussing my company being acquired by Trimble, all the while they were systematically plotting to ruin us instead.

What is even more disturbing about this is that Trimble is jeopardizing people’s lives, for money. I doubt it will work out that way, and I hope with all my soul and being that it will not, but it is simply irresponsible to pull maps from circulation with no warning. Despite our disclaimers and Terms of Use telling users that Gaia GPS can’t be relied on, people still use the app for critical navigation. If this move strands someone in the woods or gets a traveler lost overseas, Trimble will regret these machinations dearly.

And look at this scummy image they are serving up instead

If Trimble thinks this is the end of Gaia GPS, they are sorely mistaken. I don’t think they realize that my friends in the industry can replace the MyTopo server in a matter of days, and that they are coming to our aid to do just that. As we speak, our allies with expertise in maps and GIS are taking time away from their families and evenings to help us respond to this emergency and stand up a new topo server. While we’ll take some lumps over the course of the next few days, in the end we’ll go back to beating the tar out of Trimble on Android, iPhone, iPad, and everywhere else they try and compete with us. The end result of this move will simply be a black stain on the Trimble’s corporate name and the wicked corporate suits who dreamed it up.

The sad truth is that despite having vast marketing resources, and tons of money to spend on development, Trimble makes inferior apps. They brand them with well-known logos (Backpacker and Cabella’s), outsource development to people who don’t care, and then use vicious moves like this when their apps get dominated by Gaia GPS. So if they want to fight dirty, bring it. It just makes me want to redouble my efforts and beat them all the more.

The latest in our series of how-to videos gives a quick tour of the Map Screen and goes over all of the main features you can use. This information will probably be old news to current Gaia users, but we hope it will get newcomers off to a quick start.

As always, we have linked the video under help in the app, and you can view it in Gaia by going to Settings->Help.

Our series of videos on how to use Gaia GPS is coming right along. The third video in the series demonstrates how you can get guidance to waypoints and tracks that you create or import.

You can watch it on YouTube, and it’s included in Gaia’s Help section as well.

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