If I had to think of a solution to start creating a bicycle routing system, I’d do exactly what The San Francisco County Transportation Authority has done: create smart phone apps, gather information where cyclists are riding, data mine those tracks and build route suggestions on top of that knowledge.
Bicycle routing is in my opinion far more complex than car routing. Car routing is mostly based on well known and documented rules, also known as road traffic regulations. Mix in estimated traffic figures, average speeds and fuel consumptions and you get pretty decent car directions.
For cyclists, a similar rule set exists, but it’s maybe a little more, let’s call it, elastic. Cyclists use short-cuts, turn where cars can’t, go against traffic, ride through parks and on poorly documented trails. High traffic doesn’t mean slowdown for cyclists. They ride by on the bike lane on the right side of a traffic jam at almost the same speed as without traffic. But high traffic creates a security risk some cyclists aren’t comfortable with taking and rather choose a different route.
A perfect route from A to B for speedy messengers doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also an ideal route for kids. For your daily commute you probably pick another route than for weekend rides, even though it connects the same points.
Bicycle routing criteria is manifold, sometimes psychological, hard to measure and to quantify. Researching how cyclists are going, for what purpose and under what conditions, is a very smart way to get started on that topic.
Mr Timoney pointed my attention to possible SVG support brought with the latest iPhone OS 2.1 update. Unfortunately I sold my iPod touch on eBay last week – got a brand new Nokia E71 instead and am totally happy with it. So I couldn’t verify or test SVG on the iPhone Safari myself and had to ask somebody for help. Richard was kind enough to quickly try and access a SVG site on his iPod touch and send me a screen shot.
Guess what, it works!
SVG is supposed to be the flash killer since its first appearance, and never really succeeded as we know very well. SVG is still a good choice for mapping applications in my opinion, for light-weighted thematic web mapping applications to be more precise. Vector graphics handled by an AJAX front-end, used to visualize statistical attribute data provide a user-friendly interface and are usually easy to develop. Mapping APIs like Google Maps or Open Layers support and use SVG. Web browsers like Firefox and Safari for instance natively support SVG elements, no “but you need an extra plugin discussion” anymore. There is good portion of potential users for SVG based mapping applications.
Anyways, the odd thing with the iPhone and SVG is now, that a quite popular and hyped platform supports SVG but doesn’t play Flash. That’s maybe the time SVG developers have waited for.
I haven’t had the chance yet to play with SVG on the iPhone by myself. But I’m curious how far SVG support goes, what functionality is possible and how the iPhone’s multi-touch gestures can be used in mapping applications. Maybe somebody else can offer more insights on that. I’m not expecting our clients moving to the iPhone, but I would like to see if our simple mapping applications work on the iPhone or can be easily ported to suit the iPhone dimensions – should be easy with *Scalable* Vector Graphics though. However, accessing interactive maps and dig into some regional data while being in meetings or on the way could be a valuable option sometimes.
1Password for iPhone/iPod was released today. It’s a life-saver on the desktop and I was waiting for the native mobile application.
Meanwhile I really believe it must be my karma or something, maybe I killed a fly by accident recently, I’m sorry!
Again, I downloaded the app, installed it, finished the initial setup and it kept crashing each time I tried to access my passwords. Not quite what I expect from software which holds a good part of my confidential information.
At the support forums I found the thread dealing with exactly the same problem. The developers already released version 1.1 and 1.2, both of them are sitting at Apple and waiting for approval:
Version 1.1/1.2 is a lot more stable and we’re just waiting for it to be approved in the App Store.
That’s good, basically, but we remember, the last time it took Apple 23 days to approve a 1.0 to 1.1 update containing a few bugfixes. Let’s see if they have speed up approval processes and will release an updated 1Password before summer ends…
I had the brilliant idea to use my iPod touch as eBook reader, since there are all those wonderful applications floating around after the firmware 2.0 update. So I decided to pick an eBook reader at the iTunes App Store, paid for it, downloaded it, and it crashed every time I tried to open an eBook. Sweet.
I emailed the developer about the bug. Within a few hours I received an answer telling me the bug is already fixed in version 1.1, but it’s stuck at Apple’s approval process and he has no information when Apple is going to release his application.
Today, a week later, still no luck reading eBooks. Instead I found a note at the developer’s website.
Just a quick update as many have asked. Version 1.1 of BookShelf was submitted to Apple on the morning of July 15th. It’s been listed as “In review” status since then. My emails to Apple have received either a tracking number or no response at all. I have no idea when 1.1 will be released by Apple.
Sorry that I don’t have more useful information on this. The AppStore experience has been incredibly frustrating so far.
This is indeed frustrating, for me as customer, who bought an unusable product, too. After MobileMess, Apple seems to create a bottleneck at the App Store. I’d recommend developers to release less and release major updates. Expect some time waiting at Apple’s App Store gates, the gate keeper is busy.
How is this going to work?
I’ve just heard in the All Points Blog podcast, that the iPhone SDK doesn’t allow access to the dock connector. That means some third party hardware developers, like Gomite and their locoGPS module, have to find such weird workarounds like transmitting a signal from the plugged-in GPS module over WiFi back to the iPhone application. Sounds pretty complicated (and battery intensive) to me.
By releasing Core Location as part of the iPhone SDK, Apple is actively promoting LBS on the iPhone. GPS or no GPS on mobile devices isn’t just black and white, there are shades of gray like A-GPS for instance. While cell tower triangulation might provide sufficient accuracy for some LBS (“find pizza nearby”) in urban areas, for others, like navigation, it doesn’t.
Seriously, why would you want to disable navigation on a mobile device with that screen and user interface?
To me, it doesn’t make sense. [via GPSLodge]
Garmin enters the smartphone market and announced Nuviphone (I especially like the NuviPhone detail):
Unlike the iPhone it comes with comprehensive GPS functionality like navigation and built-in geotagging, which is great and makes it a potential phone-upgrade-candidate! More information here, here and here. via [BlinkGeo]
Yet another application which makes the iPhone more appealing:
MobileScrobbler connects your Apple iPhone or iPod Touch with the Last.fm social music website.
The T-Mobile Austria EDGE network can carry data speeds up to 220 kbit/s. Last.fm radio uses an MP3 stream encoded at 128 kbit/s. So I guess this should basically work, but still depends on how reliable and stable EDGE is, where I don’t have any experiences with. A 3G iPhone connected to a broader bandwith would certainly do a better job on Last.fm radio.
The definition of flat-rate in most mobile phone contracts is another questionable point: a flat-rate ending at 200 MB per month (like offered in the T-Mobile Germany iPhone data package) wouldn’t allow me to enjoy Last.fm too much.
A quick example: my daily way to work, where I usually listen to my iPod, takes 25 minutes, one way. After 5 days, Monday to Friday going to work, listening to Last.fm radio only my way to work and back, streaming at 128 kbit/s, I would have already exceeded a flat-rate of 200 MB, without even using the internet on the iPhone for something else.
That wouldn’t make sense, and is in my opinion a gadget show stopper. [via macnotes]
Reason enough to reconsider my current minimalistic mobile gadget strategy: rumors say that TomTom is doing a GPS module for the iPhone.
Sweet, though, built-in would be sweeter than plugged-in. [via Geograffiti]
Update: the picture and news about the TomTom iPhone GPS module turned out to be fake, but today Engadget reports about another iPhone GPS hack. So I guess there is something cooking…
Oh yes, this is an iPhone post. It’s all over the news and I simply couldn’t resist because…
- iPod touch = 299,- EUR
- iPod touch + GSM chip + 2MP camera = 999,- EUR
The science of pricing policies or how to fool customers!
