Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS, for Haitian Disaster Relief

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

I was sitting around yesterday working on the v2.2 release of Gaia GPS, when a friend and user of Gaia contacted me. Jeff Johnson, who works on digital mapping professionally (and in his spare time with OpenStreetMap), had been contributing to a project to provide up-to-date maps and satellite imagery of the Haitian Earthquake.

Jeff asked if Anna, Tim, and I would be willing to make a free version of Gaia GPS so disaster workers could download and use these maps. Well, we hadn’t done anything for this cause to date, and this seemed like a good endeavor, so we spent the last day and half putting together the app. Hopefully Apple will approve it quickly and make these maps a bit more accessible to relief workers in Haiti.

Here’s a couple screenshots:

It only took us a small amount of work to make “Gaia GPS (for Haitian Disaster Relief)” but a ton of work went into creating the maps, both from the OpenStreetMap community and mapping companies GeoEye and Digital Globe, not to mention the computing power contributed by the New York Public Library and Oxillion.

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Gaia GPS

Over Six Hours of Battery Life

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

Someone asked a question on our forum about the GPS Accuracy/Battery Life Slider that Gaia GPS had in v1.x, and I had a chance to write up some information about the battery life of the app. I thought I’d share that on our blog too.

Depending on what other programs you have running, on a 3GS Gaia GPS can take almost 6.5 hours of tracks, based on some independent tests from a user.

To get the best battery life, make sure to:

  • Turn off any Push Notifications – I have been told that Yahoo’s push app shaves off 2 hours.
  • Turn off Notifications via iPhone settings (~.5 hours recording time)
  • Turn off Wi-Fi and 3G – (maybe 15-20 minutes each, depending on where you are)
  • Once you start recording, put the phone in standby by clicking the top button to get over six hours.
  • Using the Lock Button on the front or map screen, instead of putting the phone in standby, will shave an hour off the recording time. It’s still pretty efficient though, since the screen will black out when you put it in your pocket, using the proximity sensor.

Also, here are some things Gaia GPS does to improve battery life in the background:

  • Writing to disk efficiently
  • Throttling the frequency of GPS readings based on your velocity
  • Using the proximity sensor to blank out the screen when the app is “locked,” which some other apps copied after we came out 🙂
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Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS 2.0 Surging up the Charts

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

As the users of Gaia GPS know, v2.0 was a massive release and a big improvement on v1.1. Besides various bug fixes, the release included new features such as GPX imports, pause/resume of tracks, new types of coordinates, more maps, and a dozen other things I won’t list here. Our strategy is just to listen to our users and do whatever they seem to agree on :).

In an effort to get the new version out to a lot of people, we also put the app on sale for $.99, and the response has been tremendous. We’re now back in the top 20 in navigation, and we have gotten a ton of positive feedback both from new users and from our beta test group.

If you are thinking about buying Gaia GPS, get it while it’s cheap! When v2.1 gets approved in a few days, we’re going to raise the price to $4.99, and we don’t plan to put the app on sale again this year. That said, I think you’ll be getting a good deal at either price.

Gaia GPS now flies solo as my only GPS device when I go hiking, and we are steadily working to add all the features our users are asking for. With the snow just beginning to settle around us in Truckee, I’m also looking forward to using Gaia GPS to help me navigate the snow-covered wilds on my skis.

We also have no plans to charge for an upgrade anytime soon – you can expect another major version or two at least before we even consider such an idea.

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Gaia GPS

Gaia GPS v2.0 is Live

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

I’m happy to announce that Gaia GPS 2.0 went live in the App Store today. V2.0 is a tremendous improvement on the last version, with a bunch of new features and bug fixes. Here’s what’s new in 2.0:

New Features

  • pause/resume, last track remembered at start-up, resume any old track
  • guide to waypoint and guide along track
  • use Decimal, DMS, and UTM coordinates, and type in coordinates to make waypoints
  • app continues recording while the iPhone is suspended
  • map: includes a scale, can be displayed full-screen, and added OpenCycle map tiles
  • photos can be exported at full-resolution, include EXIF geo-tags, and have thumbnails in the photo table
  • consolidated all Saved stuff (bookmarks, maps, waypoints, tracks, and photos) on Saved Screen
  • consolidated settings
  • more settings are remembered (lock contrast, waypoints, labels)
  • added Help section
  • “me-marker” is now an arrow that shows your bearing (or heading on 3GS phones)
  • distance markers and distance chimes (turn on via Settings)
  • zoom in Map keyhole on front screen
  • added clear buttons to search boxes

Bug Fixes/Improvements

  • much faster and more stable on 3G phones
  • fixed various UI inconsistencies reported by users
  • sounds no longer turn off iPod
  • photos are no longer stretched on detail page
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Gaia GPS

A Flashlight! On Sale Now

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

I am conducting a little iPhone app experiment – I decided to make a flashlight app and join the hordes of other developers that have one. I know it won’t make any real money, but I’m just curious to see if anyone buys it.

If you would like to donate .99 to my little experiment, or even if you need a flashlight, here’s the link to buy A Flashlight! on iTunes.

Even though it is just a flashlight, I do have a unique feature among flashlights, two actually. The first is you can use a color wheel to select your color of light. The other is you can strobe the light at a continuous range of speeds. Take that other Flashlight apps!

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Gaia GPS

Update on Gaia GPS Releases

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

As you may have noticed, Gaia GPS Lite went on sale in the App Store this week. Unfortunately, Apple also rejected v1.2 of Gaia GPS. For a look at what Gaia GPS v1.2 should have looked like, check out the Lite version – the two would have been identical except for the restrictions we put on Gaia GPS Lite.

We have also now pushed Gaia GPS v2.0, which includes all the stuff that should have gone in 1.2, along with what we have been working on in the intervening weeks. I guess the silver lining to this situation is when v2.0 comes out in a couple of weeks, it’s going to be awesome!

Why the rejection?

Gaia GPS was rejected because it had dead buttons on iPods – on iPhones you can take photos and tracks with Gaia GPS, but on iPods those features don’t work (which we state in the app description). Apple had approved this configuration twice before (1.0 and 1.1), and they approved the same configuration in Gaia GPS Lite, which shows you how unpredictable the Apple review process can be.

Our app TrailBehind actually suffered the same treatment last summer. TrailBehind provides links to Wikipedia and other websites, and at some point Apple decided that all apps that give unfettered access to the internet have to have a strong parental rating. TrailBehind had four versions approved, but then this rule was put into place, and Apple rejected TrailBehind v1.4 because the rating wasn’t strong enough.

Bad For Everyone

I’m usually one to come to Apple’s defense when people impugn the App Store. I say, for all of its problems, the App Store is a newly created billion dollar market, and it provides indie software developers a chance to make money, and results in tons of great software for users. Software on cell phones has never been so good.

However, in this case, I feel like some pretty simple policy changes would help everyone. In both the cases of Gaia GPS and TrailBehind, the versions on sale had the same problems that the new versions were rejected for, so it’s better for everyone involved to get new features and bug fixes out, and require the revision in the next release. Randomly rejecting apps for “pre-existing conditions” is just folly. These sorts of unpredictable problems are obviously incovenient for us as app developers, and they hurt the end users as well.

What’s next?

When we submitted a new binary to Apple, I wrote them an email complaining about this treatment and suggesting that they should not be rejecting new versions for this type of reason. All I got back was a two-line form letter thanking me for resubmitting a binary, and letting me know the review process would begin anew. So, I guess we’ll just have to suck it up and keep focusing on the software.

I apologize to our users, who will have to deal with v1.1 for another couple of weeks. If you are interested in getting the 2.0 release now, please contact me at andrew@gaiagps.com. We have a few more slots in our beta test group to fill, so we can send a few of you the new code.

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Gaia GPS

Mile Chime in Gaia v1.3

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

By user request, in v1.3 of Gaia GPS we are adding a feature that will chime at regular intervals when you are recording a track. It will default to chime every mile, and you can adjust this to whatever you’d like (or turn it off).

Here are three candidate sounds for this feature, created by
friend-of-the-company Dave Rullo. If you are a Gaia GPS user, email me at andrew@gaiagps.com and let me know which you prefer:

If you are interested to see what else is coming up in V1.3, check out
our roadmap/buglist.

And if you want to hear some electronica from Dave, check out his
bands: Architects of
the Atmosphere and Centrale Electrique.

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Gaia GPS

What’s New in V1.2

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

Anna, Tim, and I are pretty excited about the 1.2 version of Gaia GPS. This release really tightens up the code, particularly on 3G phones, and includes a bunch of user-requested features. As a small company, we have very limited resources when it comes to testing pre-release, but now that Gaia GPS is out in the wild, we’re really been able to hone the feature-set and stability of the app to meet the needs of our users.

We now have a really active group of beta testers who are giving us constant feedback and using the app for everything from hiking and trail running, to hunting and horse-back riding. This version is in review by Apple now, and we are hoping it comes out some time next week. Here’s what’s new in 1.2:

New Features

  • pause/resume, last track remembered at start-up, resume any old track
  • guide to waypoint
  • use Decimal, DMS, and UTM coordinates
  • type in coordinates to make map bookmarks manually, in any format
  • OpenCycle maps
  • help button for first screen
  • full-screen map button
  • “me-marker” is now an arrow that shows your bearing (or heading on 3GS phones)
  • app continues recording while locked

Improvements and Bug Fixes

  • more settings are remembered (lock contrast, waypoints, labels)
  • export full-resolution photos, and photos are now truly geo-tagged
  • much faster and more stable on 3G phones
  • fixed various UI inconsistencies reported by users
  • sounds no longer turn off iPod

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Gaia GPS

Pause/Resume in v1.2

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

This week (and weekend) we are preparing our v1.2 release. This release will include some bug fixes, internationalization, different kinds of coordinates, OpenCycle maps, a map Lock button, and several other improvements users have requested.

Probably the biggest feature for v1.2 is the ability to Pause/Resume tracks. We have this mostly up and running, and we distributed it to a couple of beta testers to play with and give us feedback. For the rest of you, here is a sneak peek at the revised Trip Screen that includes the Pause/Resume functionality and a new Help button.

With the new Pause/Resume functionality, you can stop and start the current track, as well as reload an old track to continue recording. The app also remembers the last track you were working on, and loads it up when you start the app. In the screenshot above, you press the Plus button to start a new track, and you press the Record/Pause button underneath to start and stop recording. This is all explained by the new Help button.

We’re planning to push v1.2 to the store on Sunday, so it should be ready in a couple of weeks. We have made the decision to not include GPX imports for this release, so that we can get Pause/Resume out the door. But, we’ll finish that in the intervening two weeks and hopefully get it out to users by the end of October. I like Apple products and the App Store ecosystem, but it does bug me that we have to wait two weeks to get new features and bug fixes out.

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Gaia GPS

How to Avoid the Installation Bug in Gaia GPS v1.1

by Staff Reports
written by Staff Reports

If you are a user of Gaia GPS, please read the following before updating to v1.1, which came out on October 1, 2009.

Before updating to v1.1, you should delete any Waypoints you have saved. If you have a Waypoint saved at the time of the update, the app will crash on start-up until you reinstall. Tracks, photos, and maps are not a problem, and after the update, you can save Waypoints again.

To delete all of your Waypoints:

  1. Click the 4th Menu button on bottom.
  2. Click the Wrench.
  3. Click “Clear All Waypoints.”

If you have already upgraded, then you will need to delete and reinstall the app.

We apologize if you have lost any data. We have now created a specific test that will prevent bugs like these in future releases.

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