Woophoo outage

We appologize for woophoo.com is not beeing available for a little time, we had a problem caused by our ISP. We identified and fixed it, woophoo.com is available again - however, nameservers have to follow up the change, so it can happen that woophoo.com seems to be down for a further short time, sorry again, we tried our best to keep the downtime minimal.

Woophoo Client 1.0.4

The upload of the client version 1.0.4 to the Woophoo server is currently running. 271Megs (2 languages, 225 devices, 900 files) so I have some time to write about the new release:

Predictably under the beta test: this is a 'pull yourself together' release which means that the main focus was on usability: We added only essential functionalities but a lot of usability improvements:

• Context sensitive help
• Welcome screen at the first start with basic information about Woophoo, the technical requirements and internet costs.
• Place search functionality which should be the first implemented feature in a mapping application. It's done by using the Open Street Map Name Finder - a good starting point with nice syntax like 'main st, new york' or 'restaurants, budapest'. Integration with local search providers and 'near me' search is coming in the next release.
  
  
  
  
  
• Heads Up Display (HUD) with speed, current time and arrival time - (The truth is that this is an On Screen Display (OSD) but the name HUD is much more hotter. Sorry for that...)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The HUD wants to be unobtrusive: It is translucent and comes up automatically if you don't touch the phone for a while but hides when you press a key. It moves on the screen so that it always tries to shadow the least interesting map areas. The info on the HUD and its behavior will be configurable in the next version.
  
• Some minor improvements like 'loading...' alerts, icons on the vehicle selection screen, better command priorities in the menus, better and safer settings page (no more password on the screen when you lost the phone - however no stars while you enter the password), distance information on the bunch page and the most important: screen transition effects.

That's it. We need at least one more run to achieve a really viable state but this one is a huge step that way. Try it!

First steps of chat

Have you ever seen the new 'Chat' item in the client menu? Yes, we implemented Jabber instant messaging to allow chat not only between Woophoo users but towards outer space too.

Jabber had ca. 90 million users in 2007, (according to Wikipedia, based on the calculations of Process-One) but if you have a Gmail account you are one of them, because GTalk - the chat at the left of Gmail - uses jabber too.

That's nice, but you have at least three IM accounts and maybe you don't want to have a fourth one at Woophoo. A solution to this problem is that you could log in into your favorite IM account using the Woophoo client. We are working on this! Notice that not only technical difficulties are in the process but our constant will is to protect your privacy: we just don't want to know your IM account.

Experimental Traffic Map

One of the main goals of Woophoo is to provide traffic maps. The task is quite simple: visualize current traffic situation on a map, to enable proper routing decisions. 

We use anonimised measurements provided by Woophoo users as input information - this can be directly used for visualization, or, if we do not have up-to-date information of a given area, we can try inferring, predicting current situation based on historical data of the given area. A lots of algorithms can be used both for prediction and for visualization, including data mining and knowledge discovery algorithms. However, we have to present a scalable method, that can provide fast answers for lots of concurrent users asking for maps of different areas.

Our new, experimental traffic map service produces something like the next figure, which is the current traffic map of Budapest.

The map is available both on client side and on the web site, however, Woophoo users currently provide data mostly only for Hungary. Color codes refer to the average car speed of the area, the strength of coloring relates to the accuracy of the prediction. The speed is relative, red indicates deceleration against the average speed of a given user on a given route. I personally prefer this kind of speed values, because it blures driving skill differences. Accuracy basicly depends on the user activity of Budapest; if we have more accurate data, then we can infer the current situation more precisely. 

Keep in mind, that as a prototype service, we keep on developing both prediction and visualization - new visualization techniques, better prediction algorithms are expected. And, of course, to have proper maps, keep on using Woophoo - if more and more use Woophoo, traffic maps become more and more accurate.

Woophoo Beta

I'm glad to introduce: Woophoo Beta! 

According to our schedule, we made some major enhancements, fixed bugs, wrote documentation, completed initial tests, designed pages etc. -- and we found, that Woophoo is the best integrated GPS service and tool-set available today for free, and is ready to open up.

To summarize, Woophoo can currently provide reliable 

• traditional map-based navigation,
• GPS vehicle or personal tracking,
• buddy tracking (fleets),
• chat (via Jabber),
• route planning (via OpenStreetMap Gosmore),
• traffic map

on the mobile client side, and

• interface to handle tracks, track statistics, comments, tags, 
• search interfaces for tracks,
• interface to handle and administer bunches (fleets),
• bunch tracking,
• traffic map,
• interface to embed bunches, tracks in foreign web pages

on the web side, and there are are lots of fancy new features under development.

The main goal of the beta stage is to test and enhance the services and tools while they are public and open. We tried our best to make Woophoo useful and comfortable - now we need feedback from independent users. If you find a bug, have a feature request or just want to contact us, you can 

• leave a comment on this blog,
  
• visit Woophoo Agora,
• or write an email.

Try it, use it, and don't hesitate to write feature requests, bug reports or general comments.

Attach images to your tracks!

If you want to document a moving event like the Critical Mass, or you just want to have a sweet memory of your trip, it's a good idea to attach photos to your track.

Here is the track of Critical Mass Budapest on 22 September, 2008:



To attach photos to a track, first you must upload them somewhere on the internet because we don't store images. Just upload them to your favorite image sharing site! Our favorite is Picasa so we have nice integration with it but you can attach any images available on the internet to your tracks.

So simply click the "Attach Picasa image to this track" or the "Attach image from URL to this track" link to start the attaching process. A new window opens up and you can select the image to attach (by entering the url of the image, or by selecting it from your Picasa albums). You must point at the location where you took this photo. It's easy to use our location selection tool: If you move the mouse over the map, an arrow follows it on the track. The arrow never leaves the track, it is always at the nearest point to the mouse so you don't need to click a precise location on the track. If you see that the arrow is at the place where the photo is taken, just click on the map and the location will be selected.
Of course you can add a comment to the image if you want.




Note: Please consider the copyrights when attaching images from the internet. All the images attached to our sample tracks are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Beta test in two weeks!

Big news: Beta test starts on October 20!

Beta test is not just a fashionable label on the logo. It means that Woophoo isn't perfect but usable now, and we need your help to improve it.

Why participate in the test? Because Woophoo is in its current state one of the best free gps trackers on the Earth.

Note that you don't even need to wait for the beta if you want to try Woophoo. Woophoo is up now, you can jump in!

Woophoo client 0.9 is out!

It makes me very happy to introduce version 0.9 of the Woophoo client which is the last feature release before the beta test.
There are some shiny features and a lot of usability improvements in this release so let us take a look at the highlights:

• Redesigned menu system
  The main menu is less fancy but more usable now. There is no separated map-menu so if you press the menu button on the map you will get to the main menu. The main menu has two columns for faster access and we throw out the icons because they used a lot of space on the display. I personally think that icon-based menus are less usable anyway.
  
  
• State icons on the map display
  Small icons indicate the state of the software on the top-right corner. You can see if the tracking is active, if your fleet is visible, and the vehicle you use.
• Notifying system
  We added a little notifier to the map, similar to the one on the site: it notifies you about every event in the client. It shows events like "loading you bunch" and errors like "cannot log in". We hope that it can shorten the learning curve of the key mapping too.
  
• Experimental route planning
  We integrated the client with the Open Street Map based route planner at http://yournavigation.org.
  
  You can generate a route plan by pressing '6' on the map if you specified a destination. The route plan is displayed as a simple blue trackline yet. You can redesign the plan by pressing '6' twice. (The first press hides the plan, the second loads a new one)
  
  Note that this feature is experimental now, we just want to see the usability of the OSM-based route planning. If we found it usable we will enhance the look-and-feel and start our own route planner server.
  

You can download the client from the Woophoo site or using this direct link: http://woophoo.com/d

Woophoo Agora launched

We just launched Woophoo Agora, the place of the Woophoo community. If you have a question, opinion, bug report, feature request or you just want to have a conversation about Woophoo, try it out!

You can find the link Community Place at the top of the Woophoo site.

Note that the Agora is hosted by Lefora. You can learn more here: free forum hosting by lefora

Track tagging

Tags are simply words you use to describe tracks like 'sightseeing' or 'Paris'. Tagging is a very nice tool for organizing and searching tracks.

You can attach a tag to a track by entering the tag into the 'Add new tag' field and pressing enter. You can do this on your tracks and even on every track you see.

If you just want to browse tracks in a topic just click on 'Search by tag' in the basic search section to open our tag cloud. You will get a lot of tags, and the size of each tags show you their popularity. If you click on a tag, you will get a list of tracks associated with that tag.

There is a 'Display my tags only' checkbox under the tag cloud, if you check that box you will see only the tags you added to tracks. This is an easy way to organize your tracks.

Just try it!

How to embed your Woophoo bunch on your blog

It's easy to embed a public Woophoo bunch on your blog or site.

If you are a member of a public bunch, just click the 'Embed this bunch on your blog' link. You will get a window with some html code and a preview. The html code is now auto-copied to your clipboard so you just need to paste it into your blog. To accomplish this go to your blog post, switch to html view (In Blogger: 'Edit Html') and paste the html code by right-clicking and selecting 'Paste' from the drop-down menu.

In all probability, your blog system is unable to display the bunch while editing so you must change to preview or publish the post to see the result. Because of this my practice is just to embed the bunch when the posts's text is done.

Nameserver problem

We apologize for woophoo.com is not beeing reachable from time to time. We do not own the DNS servers responsible for woophoo.com, which turned out to be a bad decision - the site is always up, however, we can not reach it by name. If you can't see our nice logo above - as I can't see it at this moment - then this is what is going on.

On the other hand, this is a case why we keep this blog separately - which turned out to be a good decision.

We resolve the problem in the next few days, and no more outage.

-- Update: Name server problem resolved; our own nameservers work well.

New functionality added: Bunches

Bunches are groups of users - we could name them fleets, groups, sets or anything like these. It's a primary expectation to enable users to form such groups, and to track members - where they are, when have we last seen them.

We only added basic functionality yet:
- we can form a new bunch,
- we can invite users to our bunch,
- we can join bunches if we have an invitation,
- we can query real time locations of our bunches.

Privileges are adaptable enough to handle such cases, like 'I'm creating a bunch for my employees, but I don't want to be viewable by them'; such functionalities of the web interface will be added soon.

Try it, position your bunches!

Woophoo blog launched

This blog is set up in conjunction with woophoo.com. We will discuss new releases, features, bugs and all related topics. The main goal is to inform all of our users and everyone interested in Woophoo.

Feel free to comment.