Skateway is Here!

The whole thing is a bit like passing through the eye of a needle.  Hard to believe, but this is the first time in over 20 years of professional software development where I've done anything really "independent" of any substance.

Click Here to view Skateway in the iTunes Store.  If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, I'd definitely appreciate it if you could download the app and leave a review in iTunes.

Here's a mockup of what the app looks like on the iPad.

 

Here's a mockup of what the iPhone version looks like.

There's An(other) App for That

Once upon a time when I started on this Stupidity Project™, I wanted to write the app because there wasn't one around, and I wanted to have one for my own purposes.  So far so good, but that doesn't mean that someone else didn't also have the same idea.  Around the time I started to recruit testers, one of my testers messaged me to say that there was already an app in the store for canal conditions.  I took a look at the app, and decided that it was a bit simplistic, and I could still do a better job.  It was also from a small independent developer, so no advantage there for promotion, etc.

Things went along like this for a couple of weeks, and I'd progressed far enough along to have the app in testing with some beta testers.  I decided to look up when Winterlude was, thinking it would be nice to finish the app before Winterlude.  When I went on the Winterlude site, the first thing I saw was a big link to "Download the official Rideau Canal Conditions App".  Oh crap, I wasn't expecting that.  Now that there was an official app from the NCC for canal conditions, my app would be pretty much consigned to obscurity no matter what.  I briefly considered stopping work on Skateway, but decided to finish things because I was pretty close to being finished, or so I thought anyway.

So in one skating season, we've gone from having no iPhone apps for Rideau Canal Conditions to having three to pick from.  It's interesting to see that even in a really small problem like this, there is still lots of room for apps to have different strengths, weaknesses, and "personalities".  The NCC app is chock full of information that would be good for tourists, whereas my app is aimed squarely at people who already know the canal and just want to find the conditions with no hassle.  Skateway also supports offline access to conditions you've already downloaded...handy if you're on an iPod Touch and don't have wifi when you want to look again at conditions.  Skateway is also the only one of he three apps to have a native iPad interface.  Since I mostly use the iPad, that part was important to me.  And none of the three apps implement one feature I think would be very useful...so I guess I'll look into that at least for next season.

 

A Family Affair

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention all the help I got from Jane on screen layouts, drawing icons/logos, and the many tweaks to the colour scheme to get to where we are.  Maddy also helped me with some preliminary graphics, though this was when I was starting out and didn't have a clear idea of what I needed.

 

Cobblers' Children Syndrome

Making the app has taken so much time and energy, that there was actually no need for the app, since there was no time for skating :-)  Fear not, the canal is still open...and I'll have to have a little on-ice celebration of being "done".