A more accurate “X for X” comparison may be “filters for maps” because the app will not have social networking features.
The map is centered on Manhattan by default. There are many interesting features in the New York area to immediately start experimenting with the app. There is no search option to navigate to a specific location. Standard pinch/zoom/slide navigation can be used to go anywhere in the world.
There are currently 5 map styles. They range from artistic to satellite imagery.
There are currently 5 map filters. There are colour filters and abstract filters.
This limited set of functionality should be enough to gather initial feedback on whether the app is a good idea.
The next version additions are: location search, more map styles and more filters.
If you are interested in experimenting with the app, please get in touch.
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It has been written using the Beta versions of Xcode 8 using Swift 3. It is configured with a deployment target of iOS 10. So I had not used in on a device until this week. As its a simple interface there were no real surprises or glitches. The filters perform much faster on the device than in the simulator, as expected. The intermittent crash on UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum, has been resolved.
The next step will be to get a crash free version deployed to TestFlight. I’m using BuddyBuild for building and deployment. Even on the free tier, it does so much heavy lifting and handling of provisioning profiles that it’s a timesaver. I’ve also installed the BuddyBuild SDK for crash reporting and these are created as issues in Github.
I’m also trying the use of Slack for handling notifications from Github and BuddyBuild. This allows me to keep all my dev alerts in Slack and out of email. Some may call overkill, but they’d be wrong. As an indie dev, I need my workflow to be as tight as possible. My time is my money.
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Created from GPX at: GaiaGPS by Nathan Nguyen
]]>Created from GPX at: GaiaGPS by Louisa Cheung
]]>A great session on Open Data with Nottingham City Council. Appropriately open in their discussion with the developer community as to the best way to progress. An interesting project to extend their data past the already superb Nottingham Insight project. Follow @nottsopendata for more updates. It’s inspired me to take another look at CartoDB which is a great mapping playground with some amazing recent projects on their blog.
Interesting retrospective on the running of GeekUp Nottingham. It sounds as though its struggling with usual Nottingham meetup problem – “where the hell is everyone!”
Great night, great community, great future. If you’re a Nottingham techie you should be part of it!
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