Staff Reports

We’re proud to debut Gaia 9 today, now live on the App Store. Gaia 9 results from four months of intense development and beta testing, and this is our most ambitious release to date.

Gaia 9 includes a new mapping engine, new features, improvements to existing features, and updated art.  You can see the complete release notes for Gaia GPS 9.0 here, but I want to shine a spotlight on Gaia’s new vector topo maps. Here’s a screenshot:

This vector source is the beginning of our journey to make the best outdoor map, a living map that gets etched with your footsteps, is complete and reliable, and is easy to use in the field. We overhauled Gaia’s core mapping engine both to make the existing maps faster, and also so we could build the vector maps we’ve thought about since the beginning.

Our map draws updates from OpenStreetMap, which you can contribute to, and the style is influenced by the USGS maps we have used and loved for so many years. We stand on the shoulders of giants, leveraging OSM data, MapBox’s technology standards, and open source software like Mapnik and WhirlyGlobe.

We still have an eternity of work left to style the map better, add more data, make it faster on old devices, and bring it to Android, but we think many people will find it very useful today. You can get  small download sizes, crisply rendered labels, and topo lines in feet, all over the world. These vector maps work online and off, and Gaia GPS is the only iOS app that provides streaming vector topo maps today.

There’s something in Gaia 9 for everybody, and we hope you enjoy the update. Beyond that, we’re going to keep working at our craft and make sure Gaia GPS is the definitive mapping app for the outdoors. Send us your comments on Gaia 9 at support@gaiagps.com.

When we wake up to find we’ve been included in a new Apple feature, it’s always a good start to the day. Doubly so when it’s both our outdoor app, Gaia GPS, and our boating app, Skipper. You’ll find both apps in the Apps for Summer feature on iTunes, front and center on the top row.

Apple gave top billing to the section that includes Gaia and Skipper  – “Get Outside.” Running just ahead of the “Backyard BBQ” category, we think that Apple has their priorities straight.

This is one of the better features we’ve been included in, but Gaia GPS, Skipper, and Offline Topo Maps are featured and have been featured in numerous collections on iTunes.

Offline Topo Maps is featured in a variety of educational collections, and is sometimes purchased in bulk by schools through Apple’s educational program that we opt into. Skipper is featured in several collections, including On the Water, On Deck, Fishing & Boating, and Marine Navigation. And Gaia GPS is our most recognized app, and is heavily featured in the Navigation category, and in features like Apps for the Great Outdoors and Hunting & Camping. Gaia is featured as one of the Navigation category’s “Essential” apps, in good company with Google Maps and Waze.

If you are a writer and a Gaia GPS user looking for part-time work, send us a note at jobs@gaiagps.com.

Besides writing up new features we release, you’ll also write articles about amazing outdoor destinations, other apps, how-to guides for backpackers, and all sorts of information that might be useful to prospective Gaia GPS users.

This is also a chance to learn about marketing a product, get a lot of feedback on your writing, and learn the methods and analytics we use to reach potential customers. Our approach to marketing combines both a classic agency approach to marketing/advertising, along with modern growth-focused analytics and tests. We’re profitable, and you’ll be able to see the work you do translate into sales.

Visit our online topo map today, and you’ll find a boost in performance. We made some changes on the back-end such that the POI overlays on the map load much faster, as do the search results in the left sidebar.

Also, you may notice some other recent changes that affect the entire site. Our top level page at www.gaiagps.com is now showing Featured Trips, and our main map is at www.gaiagps.com/map. Cloud.gaiagps.com is no more, which should make our web experience easier to return to.

Since the Featured Trips gallery is bursting with your interesting photos and trips, our analytics tell us that landing on this page is better for new people than landing on our old homepage. So, the old homepage is now just a sub-page, and the adventures of Gaia GPS users tell the story of why you might want to use our software.

Much more to come with the website and apps this summer! Here’s a sneak peak at versions of a new app icon for Gaia GPS, which seasonal variations. You’ll see something like this replace our existing app icon with the release of Gaia GPS 9, and that will be the least of the changes in version 9.

With the rest of the team toiling on the actual code of Gaia GPS, I’ve been taking some time to help out with videos and documentation.

Here is a pair of new videos for GaiaPro – one describes the online printing feature on gaiagps.com, and the other details the weather capabilities you get in the mobile version of Gaia GPS.

GaiaPro has changed a lot since we first launched it – even the name isn’t the same anymore, we started by calling it Gaia Green.

Here is an updated overview video that touches on all the features in GaiaPro, from web printing and route-making, to premium MapBox downloads in the app, to priority support.