As I wrote in this post, I recently took down the source code repository for the Google Code project I created which contained example code for creating .tqz files for the Trailer iOS application without using the web application. This was due to the original posted code relying on the Google Maps API, and the fact that with Apple's switch to use their own maps infrastructure in iOS6, the original code could no longer be claimed to fit in with Google's terms of service (which require users of this API to render the geocoded points on a map served from Google's infrastructure).
I have now modified the applications to use the geocoding API offered by www.cloudmade.com, and reset the Mercurial repository so that both the new implementation and all history including the prior implementation is available. The Google Code project page is at http://code.google.com/p/tl-trailer-tqz-creation-scripts/.
The Cloudmade servers take about 5 or 10 times as long to return results as the Google ones did, and some of the addresses which Google was able to geocode accurately are being resolved by Cloudmade to less accurate coordinates (presumably associated with the surrounding district). I'm looking into whether there are other alternatives which can either improve timing or accuracy performance.
Wednesday 17 October 2012
Wednesday 10 October 2012
Taking stock
Apologies for the gap since my last post, I needed to do some paperwork (mostly my family's tax returns for the year to June 2012), and then I had a short family holiday on Rottnest Island.
This blog and the two software applications associated with it have now been on public view for a bit over three months, so now is a good time for me to review how they're tracking relative to the my initial plan. As the plan has, up until today, been pretty much in my head, I spent a little time today writing up a page under the rather grandiose title 'Project Charter' which is now present here.
Looking at the blog component of the project first, I am reasonably happy with how this is going. The statistics provided through the Blogger service dashboard and through Google Analytics aren't particularly consistent, I'm guessing this is because I haven't integrated the analytics code snippets are integrated into the blog template correctly yet. The Blogger dashboard shows larger figures for the readership and suggests that there are readers across ten countries so far, with a total of 321 page views over all time (of which all but 61 are from outside Australia and are therefore presumably not related to myself). The page views over the last month are 180, of which only 11 are from Australia, so there appears to be a healthy pattern of audience growth (although there may be some web crawler robots included in this total). While I am quietly happy with the level and trajectory of the readership, I have to report that I haven't had a single comment on any of the posts, nor have I received any feedback by private emails or via my Google+ profile.
In relation to the iOS application, to date only myself and a single personal friend have purchased it from the iOS App Store. The offer I made in September to supply App Store redemption codes still stands, but to date no-one has contacted me to take advantage of it. I've taken a deliberate decision not to spam all my Facebook friends (nearly all in non-technical occupations) with an invitation to try the app out until I've established at least a small community of early adopters who I expect to be interested in the app from a software design point of view as well as a simple utility for use in daily life. I'm very grateful to the one friend I have enrolled (carefully chosen because I know we share skills and interests). I won't embarrass him by naming him, but his honest feedback has made it clear to me that I still have some way to go in getting my vision of what the app is for across to first time users who don't have the opportunity to talk directly to me about how I see it being used.
Although the low takeup of the iOS application (and hence near-zero revenue of the project when viewed as a business) are a mild concern, I am much more worried that the interest in the blog isn't yet flowing over to an exploration of the capabilities of the web application by users other than myself. Of course there is a chicken-and-egg problem between the web and iOS apps, and the problems I am having getting my vision for the iOS app across probably undermine potential users motivation to try the web app out even though there is no cost. I hope that by the end of the next three month period I have at least a few trails defined in the web application which I didn't create myself. I suspect that one of the things which may be holding potential contributors back may be the requirement to log in using a Google account. I plan to try to provide a means for users who are not logged in to create trails, although allowing this means that these trails won't have an owner and will presumably need to be open for any user to edit. Another possible source of friction may be the fact that there are definitely still soem rough edges on the site from both a cosmetic and functional point of view. As far as I am aware there are no reproducible errors in the app which cause loss of previously entered data (as opposed to failure to save new data entered on a single screen), but I obviously be doing what I can to smooth out the bumps (and maybe improve the look a little bit, although you can probably tell from this blog that I'm no visual design guru).
Anyway thanks for reading this, please come with me for the ride, and as always comments are very welcome.
This blog and the two software applications associated with it have now been on public view for a bit over three months, so now is a good time for me to review how they're tracking relative to the my initial plan. As the plan has, up until today, been pretty much in my head, I spent a little time today writing up a page under the rather grandiose title 'Project Charter' which is now present here.
Looking at the blog component of the project first, I am reasonably happy with how this is going. The statistics provided through the Blogger service dashboard and through Google Analytics aren't particularly consistent, I'm guessing this is because I haven't integrated the analytics code snippets are integrated into the blog template correctly yet. The Blogger dashboard shows larger figures for the readership and suggests that there are readers across ten countries so far, with a total of 321 page views over all time (of which all but 61 are from outside Australia and are therefore presumably not related to myself). The page views over the last month are 180, of which only 11 are from Australia, so there appears to be a healthy pattern of audience growth (although there may be some web crawler robots included in this total). While I am quietly happy with the level and trajectory of the readership, I have to report that I haven't had a single comment on any of the posts, nor have I received any feedback by private emails or via my Google+ profile.
In relation to the iOS application, to date only myself and a single personal friend have purchased it from the iOS App Store. The offer I made in September to supply App Store redemption codes still stands, but to date no-one has contacted me to take advantage of it. I've taken a deliberate decision not to spam all my Facebook friends (nearly all in non-technical occupations) with an invitation to try the app out until I've established at least a small community of early adopters who I expect to be interested in the app from a software design point of view as well as a simple utility for use in daily life. I'm very grateful to the one friend I have enrolled (carefully chosen because I know we share skills and interests). I won't embarrass him by naming him, but his honest feedback has made it clear to me that I still have some way to go in getting my vision of what the app is for across to first time users who don't have the opportunity to talk directly to me about how I see it being used.
Although the low takeup of the iOS application (and hence near-zero revenue of the project when viewed as a business) are a mild concern, I am much more worried that the interest in the blog isn't yet flowing over to an exploration of the capabilities of the web application by users other than myself. Of course there is a chicken-and-egg problem between the web and iOS apps, and the problems I am having getting my vision for the iOS app across probably undermine potential users motivation to try the web app out even though there is no cost. I hope that by the end of the next three month period I have at least a few trails defined in the web application which I didn't create myself. I suspect that one of the things which may be holding potential contributors back may be the requirement to log in using a Google account. I plan to try to provide a means for users who are not logged in to create trails, although allowing this means that these trails won't have an owner and will presumably need to be open for any user to edit. Another possible source of friction may be the fact that there are definitely still soem rough edges on the site from both a cosmetic and functional point of view. As far as I am aware there are no reproducible errors in the app which cause loss of previously entered data (as opposed to failure to save new data entered on a single screen), but I obviously be doing what I can to smooth out the bumps (and maybe improve the look a little bit, although you can probably tell from this blog that I'm no visual design guru).
Anyway thanks for reading this, please come with me for the ride, and as always comments are very welcome.
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