THE PROBLEM

Most of the current iOS apps that provide information for the London Underground are all pretty much the same. They have a status board, departure information, route [...]]]> Commuter Pal is a new iOS app that is aiming to take a different approach to a Londoner’s commute than other existing London Underground iOS apps.

THE PROBLEM

Most of the current iOS apps that provide information for the London Underground are all pretty much the same. They have a status board, departure information, route planning and the a map of the tube. I’m not saying that these apps aren’t useful. In fact, some of them are really useful and I’ve relied upon one of them in particular for years. My problem with these apps is that they provide too much information.

The reality is that most commuters in London follow a pretty consistent route. In the morning they enter the network at one station, use the same two or three lines and exist the network at another location. In the evening they perform the same journey in reverse. I’d be willing to wager that this pattern applies to > 90% of London’s commuters.

MY TAKE

Rather than overload the user with information about the entire London underground network, Commuter Pal aims to provide them only with information relevant to their commute. In addition to just the line information, Commuter Pal will also give you the status of the stations you use. Here is an example.

Only the information pertinent to the route you take is shown. The button in the bottom right will let you reverse your route, so you can see the status for your journey home.

Swiping a cell to the right will give you more detailed status information about the line or station in question.

I’m also planning on adding departure information to the app, which can be access by swiping to the left. This will give you the departure times of the next trains from your chosen station.

I also want to add detailed push notifications of delays, as well as including buses, overground and National Rail trains into your journey.

The app is in beta at the moment, but I’m looking for more people to test it out. If you’re interested in taking a look, please visit http://commuterpal.cloudapp.net or sign up here http://tflig.ht/vTaR0n

To try and boost downloads, I decided to [...]]]> In the last few weeks I’ve decided to dust off my Roomr app code and start working on a small update to it. Whilst I’m writing some new code, I decided I best start trying to drive some sales of the app, which haven’t been very strong.

To try and boost downloads, I decided to rework the marketing site (www.roomrapp.com), simplifying it beyond all recognition and just concentrating on the main features with some simple screenshots. No need to be clever. I think the app has some useful features and with a simple site explaining those features, things should improve in the sales department.

In addition to revamping the sales site, I signed up for Distimo, a site which gives you lots of metrics and statistics for your app, including sales information, ratings and rankings.

Whilst reviewing this data, I came across a negative comment that a user left.

“So I have to know the name of a list of rooms before I can see… any rooms? How does this make sense?”

As the Apple AppStore gives me no-way to reply to a user’s comment, I thought I might try and address it here.

Yes, you do need to specify the list of rooms to my app. However, if you’re using Exchange 2010, you can use a Room List, which will download a list of rooms automatically. I’m sorry that the process is so manual, but the Exchange Web Services provided by Microsoft, don’t give me a way to automatically access this information.

I know the user that left that comment will probably never read this, but it’s the best I can do. I will add this information to the FAQ on www.roomrapp.com so that nobody else runs into this problem.

On a more positive note, reworking the marketing site has resulted in a 6 day stretch of downloads (totalling 7!), but the longest stretch to date.

I think this app is something that people most likely find useful because there were almost 400 sessions in the past month, so people are definitely using it.

I’ve got to figure out if the downloads from the App Store are being driven from my improved marketing site or because of some other reason.  In the last month I’ve had fewer visits on average than other months, but more sales, so it’s hard to see a correlation!

Also, I’d like to make a shout-out to the Swedish people as they are my best customers!

I want the game to be based in London and it [...]]]> I’ve had an idea in my head for the past few months so I decided it was time to put it down on paper and share it. So it’s a game. A game where you assume the role of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes.

I want the game to be based in London and it will involve the player and possibly their Dr. Watson companion, solving fictional crimes in London.

One a player signs up, I would see them receiving a text message from Inspector Lestrade. They would then have to make their way to Scotland Yard. Using the Smartphone app, the game would detect that the player was at Scotland Yard and the game would continue.

I would like the clues delivered to Sherlock using email, text and voicemail. The game would involve the user following the clues using a mixture of location and solving riddles etc.

The technology behind such a game would be simple enough for me to create, but what I really need is a simple story line to drive Sherlock’s first case. I have the option of trying to adapt some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories into my game’s format, but I’m not very creative when it comes to this sort of thing.

I’m therefore calling out to all fiction writers to see who would be interested in fleshing out such a concept into an actual prototype. If you’re interested in exploring this concept I’d love to chat with you about it.

Please get in touch – I’m @tomasmcguinness on twitter and can be reached at tomas@tomasmcguinness.com

Thanks!

I humbly present [...]]]> Earlier this week I was chatting with somebody on Twitter about how they had lots of barcodes that they’d like to get added into their Passbook on iOS6. Since Passbook doesn’t officially support 1 dimensional barcodes, this is a problem. Whilst thinking about the problem I came up with a simple alternative.

I humbly present http://makemeapass.azurewebsites.net

Rather than using the standard Passbook barcode location, I generate a new barcode and place it as an image directly into the pass. This gives you your Tesco ClubCard barcode, but within a Passbook pass. I went one step further and also allow you to select a particular Tesco store location. This means the pass will appear on your lock screen when you’re near this store!

Check it out and give it a go. I’ve had success using this pass in Tesco, but others have reported problems. This is down to the type of scanner being used. Some of them just can’t read glass very well.

Please let me know in the comments section what you think and if you do try it, let me know if you have any success!

Tom

My current PC is an Alienware rig and it is 5.5 years old, but it is really beginning to show its age. After upgrading to Windows 8 I can no longer put the machine to [...]]]> After some faffin’ with courier companies (I’m looking at you UPS), all the parts of my new PC have arrived!

My current PC is an Alienware rig and it is 5.5 years old, but it is really beginning to show its age. After upgrading to Windows 8 I can no longer put the machine to sleep. This is due to some driver problem and unfortunately, I just cannot identify the faulty driver. Since Alienware have since folded into Dell, there are no more BIOS updates or anything available. I’m also beginning to feel the effects of only 4GB of RAM. As I do a lot of development work my memory usage is always up in the 80%-90%. The finally thing that annoys me about my machine is the noise. Four fans running 100% all the time makes quite the ruckus.

So, I decided last week to retire my old workhorse and I set about picking the components to replace it.

I settled on:

Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Black
Corsair H80 Hydro Series High Performance Cooler
Intel Core i7 3820, S 2011
16GB (4x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance
2GB EVGA GTX 680
Asus P9X79 Pro

I’m hoping for something that’s quiet, reasonable efficient but powerful to play Half Life 3 when it’s finally released. I’ll upload some pictures and blog about my experience putting the machine together over the next week, time permitting. Otherwise it will be after Christmas before I take a look.

Have you got any experience building your own machine?

Here [...]]]> To demonstrate how simple the PassVerse pass designer is to use, I’d put together a small walkthrough of the Passbook designer that I have created. Whilst Cineworld don’t offer tickets in Passbook fashion, this video shows how you might build a pass.

Here is the completed pass, visible on the phone. It’s not 100% perfect, but I think it demonstrates how useful Passbook could really be.

If you’re interested in using Passbook to help your business, please get in touch – tomas@passverse.com

This is an important step toward the first version of my UShadow [...]]]> During my last few lunch hours at work, I have been using the DotNetOpenAuth library to build myself an OpenID provider. Today, with some luck, I got StackOverflow to recognise my provider and allow me to sign-in using it!

This is an important step toward the first version of my UShadow project.

I want to connect my OpenID provider directly with my iPhone using an app. I want to try and find a way to make OpenID easier to use for the common user by completely eliminating the need for usernames and passwords and instead focussing on the use of a simple PIN number in combination with an iPhone.

The key to this, I believe, lies in QR Codes.

Registration will be as easy as downloading the app and snapping a QR code presented on a registration page. The Provider and App will then negotiate between themselves and the App will send a public key to the Provider. The provider will then use this to verify and trust the iPhone app.

When a user wishes to sign-in to an application or site, they will just need to scan another QR code and confirm using a PIN codes. The App will signal that authentication has been completed and will send the OpenID token to the provider which will then forward it to the requesting site.

That’s my theory anyway

By just using an iPhone device and the a pin, it will hopefully make OpenID far more attractive to the average, non-technical user.

I’ll be blogging a little more about this idea in the coming months as I finish off the MVP. If you’re interested in helping me test UShadow, please shoot me an email at tomas@tomasmcguinness.com

Stay frosty!

Roomr is an app for iOS that allows you to view and book meeting rooms within Microsoft Exchange.

What’s new?

There were several small changes in this release based on user feedback.

Most interesting thing…I got complaints about my latest release of Roomr! This can only mean that people really care about the [...]]]> After getting married and spending time away on my honeymoon I’m back in front of a PC! I’ve gotten a few emails whilst I’ve been away, so I’ll be working through them slowly.

Most interesting thing…I got complaints about my latest release of Roomr! This can only mean that people really care about the app, so that’s very positive. I’ve got a few changes in the pipeline which I’ll be working on straight away!

Even though I’m happy to be home, I could probably have done with another few days away