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 Page 1 of 4. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 75
Author
Arapiles Selected Climbs comes to iPhone
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
8:46:33 AM
howdy,
After many years of effort in our spare time, I'm happy to announce that Arapiles Selected Climbs by Mentz and Tempest is now available in an interactive digital form for the iPhone / iPod touch.

Here's a video of it in action:



Our website (http://icragguides.com) has an overview of the app etc. The web site is a work in progress, so please excuse any issues with it.

The actual app is available directly from:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icrag-arapiles/id460930171?ls=1&mt=8

25% discount off physical guide books if you buy an app (unfortunately we can't discount in the other direction due to Apple shenanigans).

cheers
Cam
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
9:24:34 AM
On 6/10/2011 davidn wrote:
>I don't have an iPhone, so excuse if I ask anything a dyed-in-the-wool
>applehead would know...
>
>Is there connectivity back to a central repository of information for
>this kind of app? I.e. you tear a bolt off a climb or manage to fix some
>gear - can this be communicated back to a central server and apps updated
>automagically through a subscription?

The app is completely self contained. All the information (images, climb details) etc. are stored on the phone itself, rather than downloaded from a repository. So, no, if you rip off a hold, or a pull out a bolt, or a climb falls down, you can shoot us an email and we'll update the app and then a new version will be pushed out to the app store.

In a perfect world this data would just get synched up to the app over the internet, but this complicates matters significantly and requires and infrastructure of hardware that we don't have (and can't afford).


>
>Will there be/is there an aim to achieve portability to non-proprietary
>software, i.e. that any non-iPhone could use? (is that possible or would
>you have to write a different app for each brand of phone?)

Unfortunately this is not an option, each phone runs a different operating system which has its own way of doing stuff. The next logical step would be to implement an Android version of the app given that it is the only serious competition to the iPhone. This does require a complete rewrite essentially though. If the app actually sells a few copies and there's a demand for an Android version we'd consider doing one.

>
>And as a more general question to the ether, is there an intention in
>the wide climbingverse to integrate ACA/thecrag/thesarvo/27crags/mountainproject/whatever
>with these kinds of apps? I've often opined that it would be wonderful
>if we saw more integrated solutions to climbing guides in the future, but
>things often seem to be heading the opposite direction - more guides, more
>online data repositories, and a lack of cross-linkage.

No idea, we deliberately avoided climb logging for the initial release and focussed on just making a guide. Given that all of the websites you've mentioned contain user generated content it would be very difficult to map climbs in our app to climbs on those web sites for tracking purposes. It would be nice though.

>
>By the way, is there a button for 'I'm sketching, what piece of gear do
>I need to place right at this spot in the climb'??

I'm sure it will be in version 1.1

>
>Those questions aside, it looks very good. :)

cheers

dimpet
6-Oct-2011
9:25:37 AM
When is the android version coming out?

ajfclark
6-Oct-2011
9:27:38 AM
Thesarvo already has an app.

IPhone is different to Android. You need to write two different versions of a app though there's probably a fair amount of overlap in the code bases if you plan for it.

Portability between these kinds of systems is difficult because the schema used by the various databases are all different. There's some overlap, but the differences get in the way of complete information exchange. Until people formalise and standardise the information about routes it won't happen.
maxdacat
6-Oct-2011
9:38:35 AM
Well done for putting the effort into a new platform....i can't see the video (at work) but could you tell me if it's possible to put ticks for completed climbs as you would with a paper guide?
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
9:41:23 AM
>When is the android version coming out?

No idea. Depends how much demand there is for it. This is just something we've been doing in our rather limited spare time, so, we'll see how the iPhone version goes and take it from there.
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
9:42:53 AM
On 6/10/2011 maxdacat wrote:
>Well done for putting the effort into a new platform....i can't see the
>video (at work) but could you tell me if it's possible to put ticks for
>completed climbs as you would with a paper guide?

Cheers. There's not climb logging for the time being as we wanted to focus on making something that was a good guidebook as a priority. If there's a demand for climb logging then we'll probably implement it, but I figured that given that there are already truck loads of websites that people use for this stuff that they'd probably just prefer to stick them there rather than have yet another place to update.

StuckNut
6-Oct-2011
10:05:26 AM
A better option IMO would be to to partner with an existing climb logging site for the purpose of logging.
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
10:07:49 AM
On 6/10/2011 StuckNut wrote:
>A better option IMO would be to to partner with an existing climb logging
>site for the purpose of logging.

I agree, but which one?

I used to use theCrag.com, but haven't used anything since they went offline for a while (I known they're back online again now). No idea what other people use now days.

kuu
6-Oct-2011
10:09:27 AM
On 6/10/2011 Cam McKenzie wrote:
>howdy,
>After many years of effort in our spare time, I'm happy to announce that
>Arapiles Selected Climbs by Mentz and Tempest is now available in an interactive
>digital form for the iPhone / iPod touch.
>
>cheers
>Cam

Thanks to all who've put in the time to produce this App. I've purchased it from iTunes and installed it on an iPad1, iPod Touch and iPhone4.

Given the device's smaller/thinner profile and minimal weight I'm more likely to carry the iPod version with me on a climb (fits easily into a shirt pocket).
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
10:29:59 AM

>Thanks to all who've put in the time to produce this App. I've purchased
>it from iTunes and installed it on an iPad1, iPod Touch and iPhone4.
>
>Given the device's smaller/thinner profile and minimal weight I'm more
>likely to carry the iPod version with me on a climb (fits easily into a
>shirt pocket).

Much appreciated,
Not sure how it will go on the iPad as it hasn't been optimised (or tested) on that. Something else for the future. I imagine that it would look pretty nice on a big screen.

StuckNut
6-Oct-2011
10:56:23 AM
On 6/10/2011 Cam McKenzie wrote:
>
>I agree, but which one?
>
>I used to use theCrag.com, but haven't used anything since they went offline
>for a while (I known they're back online again now). No idea what other
>people use now days.

Yeah I use TheCrag.com and really like it. I know they are still actively developing it as there have been a few improvements and changes lately. Thats always a good thing! Plus they are based in Melb I believe?

nmonteith
6-Oct-2011
11:15:26 AM
Firstly, well done on the online guide! I hope to use it in a few weeks time.

thecrag.com is massively improved over the older version and is certainly the #1 spot to tick routes, and now to make online guides. Check it out if you haven't looked at it in recent years.

I've used thesarvo iphone guide in Tassie and it was very useful.

BoulderBaby
6-Oct-2011
11:20:52 AM
This is great! Pity I've got an android...

ajfclark
6-Oct-2011
11:22:46 AM
On 6/10/2011 davidn wrote:
>While climb.org.au is commonly used for guide-building, I don't recall hearing of any other Aussie-based climb recording site being commonly used other than thecrag.com (climb.org.au has the capability, but it's not the most lovely thing to use). And with the new mapping/topo capabilities, it's possible to build guides on thecrag in any case.

There's backend software for thesarvo stuff to produce guides. The PDFs you can download from there are all magically generated using the site as the datasource and some templates and so on.
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
11:29:38 AM
On 6/10/2011 ajfclark wrote:
>
>There's backend software for thesarvo stuff to produce guides. The PDFs
>you can download from there are all magically generated using the site
>as the datasource and some templates and so on.

This has been very well done by Jon and the tassie crew. The iPhone app is very good also. A huge amount of data in there.
rightarmbad
6-Oct-2011
11:30:49 AM
I just went to buy it, but baulked at the price.

Maxo
6-Oct-2011
11:47:24 AM
Holy moly, the future is now.

I think I might stick to print. One of the best things about climbing is getting away from those infernal devices.
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
12:03:31 PM
On 6/10/2011 rightarmbad wrote:
>I just went to buy it, but baulked at the price.

Out of interest, what would you expect to pay (taking into consideration that the physical guide is $60)?
Cam McKenzie
6-Oct-2011
12:17:57 PM
On 6/10/2011 davidn wrote:
>I think thesarvo has set a bit of a (possibly unfortunate) precedent -
>isn't it $4?

Completely different application though, and a completely different source of data. Jon, theSarvo and the crew in Tassie have done a fantastic job in creating a large database of the majority (if not all) the routes in Tassie. This was done based on the work of Roger Parkyn and Matt Perchard's various volumes of 'Craglets'. This information is all in the public domain (not sure what the license setup is).

The app that they have created is good, and functional, but is also quite static. There's no interaction with images, no way to navigate around other than by the hierachical lists, and no means of searching for particular climbs. This is not a dig at the app at all. It does exactly what I would have implemented given the data set that they have (a large static one).

We were in a position where we could provide much more dynamic functionality (based on the set of data that we had access to) and chose to go down this path.

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There are 75 messages in this topic.

 

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