In the blog of Pantha Corp, we share with our readers the personal view and insights we have on developments in the technology sector. And as that is nowadays quite a broad sector, we set our eyes on many diferent topics and questions facing society. We also post entries on recent developments of Pantha Corp as a company. For us, it is a part of an ongoing collaboration and communication with colleagues, clients and friends.
We are very happy with the initial feedback received for version 2 of Show the Loo, three weeks after its launch. Which dear reader if you haven't downloaded it already, can be accessed here on the iTunes App Store. Some updates on its overall placement, ratings and a visualisation of all (!) the loos across Australia we are covering in this entry...
Just happy to see our product become popular :-)
I must admit I am probably one of the biggest fan of the SURFit app. First thing I do when I wake up in the morning ? Fire-up SURFit ...
We are incredibly psyched that SURFit iPhone has launched, bringing you the worlds first LIVE interactive surfcams.
You can download it here from the app store.
The initial release is packed full of features already. The available surfcams stream live to your iPhone - either over Wifi or 3G - and can all be remote controlled. Following an overview of the apps features in detail.
Show the Loo was rebuilt from the ground up, offering an overall improved user experience and first and foremost drastically increased speed.!
We have unfortunately received a negative response from the 'Commonwealth Copyright Administration' that will not grant us a license for the government funded project toiletmap.gov.au. Based on the reply, there do not seem to be any hard, conclusive reasons for not granting Pantha Corp with a license other than that information should be always "correct and up to date"
There are a number of different ways to get in touch with us to provide feedback for 'Show the Loo'.
No toilets in your area? Anything in the user interface/ interaction with the app you dislike?Did the application crash unexpectedly? Found loo's you had no idea of existed before? Do you have great ideas on what you would like us to add in future releases?
We want to know from you and can be reached via our support site and on Twitter under the id panthacorp. Soon we will open up the blog for comments as well.
We are quite pleased with the first reactions we've received and are certainly not going to sit still for very long in making adjustments where necessary and adding some features that we felt would risk the necessary perfectioning phase of version 1.
Testing prior to the release showed that the update to iPhone firmware 2.2 improved stability drastically as we are relying on Firefox for the time being to display the map. For future releases, we plan to have a native Objectice-C implementation. We recommend anyone who might not have yet updated to move to the version 2.2 which also brings along many other nifty new iPhone features alongside improved overall stability.
In the coming days we will approach the Department of Health and Ageing once more with an official (this time) request for a license of the toiletmap.gov.au data. We have always meant for this app to remain free and there theoretically shouldn't be a compelling reason to reject our request. It appears however that we are not the first to try and fail, judging by this blog entry by Joshua Gans on CoreEcon. I fully agree that data that was created by public funding should be accessible to all Australians and am looking forward to being in touch with the Commonwealth copyright administration to discuss the matter.
After many days of waiting for Apple's approval, 'Show the Loo' can now be downloaded for free in the App store! We also launched a mini-site under showtheloo.com for product support.
Ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone SDK roadmap (talk about goosebumps), we have been keeping a keen eye on the evolution of the iPhone ecosphere. Due to other commitments we haven't been able so far to dive into developing an application but we are certainly going to give it a try at some point. Allowing transLucidonline customers to manage their sites and comments is one of the possibilities of delving into this space.
It is clearly fascinating to see how fast the market for iPhone application seems to be maturing. If we were to get into this space now as a provider, only seven months after the launch of the SDK and app store, we could be considered opportunistic rather than cutting-edge and early adopters.
Nonetheless, it is good to see that there are still segments that - even though they seem obvious to launch an app in - have not yet been well catered for. Example: Surfers. Living in Australia and having an office at the beach must sensitize me to this particular lack in solid offerings. :) Here a good overview from MobileCrunch describing the recent launch of an app by Oakley providing surf forecasts around the globe.
We'll see what the future will bring. Surely it's going to stay an exciting market and maybe we'll decide to get into it as well.
We have not added an entry in a very long time. I guess it goes on to show that we have been a little surprised by the sudden increase in additional work and have been under heavy workload for the whole year.
There's some really exciting changes and great projects we'll be launching in 2011 but for now let's at least list the projects we completed in 2010.
