Adventures in Navigation Down Along the Boarder

Or how CoPilot lost its place on my iPhone.

Mobile Navigator for iPhone

Let this serve as a kind of Public Service Announcement for any of you who have been following my reviews of turn-by-turn navigaion apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch. I have own three at this point: Navigon MobileNavigator, CoPilot Live 8, and MotionX GPS Drive.

MotionX is a great little app. I may do a full fledged review one of these days, but suffice it to say here that it does an excellent job of getting me where I want to go, has what I consider an very good UI, and is certainly a bargain with it’s purchase as you need it voice guidance (which includes live traffic info for routing). It has, at least were I have traveled so far, the most accruate and up-to-date map set of any of the apps I have tried (an opinion only slightly modified by my recent experience: see below). However, given that AT&T is my provider, and that I travel extensivley at the fringes of cell phone coverage, I would not want to to totally rely on a navigation app that requires an internet connection to download maps or calculate routes (especially not to recalculate routes…something my GPS has occasion to do at least once a trip in my experience (I do sometimes miss a turn or think I know better than the machine…). MotionX’s Drive does cache maps and routes (with a user selectable cache allotment), which is good…but I still have a trust issue when the maps are not resident on my machine. I consider it my back up nav app, and I do use it from time to time, especially for really difficult addresses (see below)…often enough to keep my voice guidance subscription up to date (at least until Google Nav hits the iPhone), but it will never be my full time nav app while AT&T still has the iPhone locked in.

Now, I only have a 16gig iPhone 3G, and I do have an extensive music collection, and quite a few other apps, so I only have room for one resident map nav app on my device at a time. I was using CoPilot Live, for all the reasons outlined in the review. I really like it, and it has some features that are still pretty unique among the iPhone nav apps: return routing, extended poi search, touch map addition of interum destinations, etc. etc. And they are right on the verge of adding live traffic. It is a good solid app, and I enjoy it.

However, this past week I was preparing for a trip to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, right along the Mexican Boarder. I have been there before often enough to know that the area is a real challenge for GPS navigation. I don’t know why, maybe because it is barely in the US at all, but even by dedicated Magellian struggles there, and often provides inaccurate turn info, especially along the perpetually under reconstruction main valley route, Expressway 83, through Harlingen, McAllen, Mission, etc. Also, I am a birder, and I frequent some locations that are pretty far out, and do not really have complete addresses (PO Boxes don’t help). So…just to be safe, I decided to preprogram some of my destinations in before I left. I had 4 in mind: Bensten Rio Grande State Park, Estero Lano Grande State Park, Edinburg Senic Wetlands, and Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. I have been to each before, several times, so I do kind of know where they are, but, I am only there once a year and I do forget…and as I am often on a tight schedule, I like to use the GPS to gage drive times, etc. I always find that having the GPS on makes for less stress on the road anyway.

It saddens me to report that CoPilot Live could not find a single one of my destinations. In most cases it could not even get me close. Some of the roads/streets were simply not on the map, or in the data base, so there was no way to enter the address. And even roads that were there, did not have address numbers for the areas I wanted to go. In one case the CoPilot street numbers ended in the 700s and my address was in the 2800s. Not close enough to matter. Add this to the fact that, despite my submitting corrections three times, CoPilot Live is still off a full block on my home address, and totally misses my worst case test in Freeport Maine, and I decided to reinstall Navigon to see if it could do better.

It could. It found, with a little effort, all my target destinations and placed them correctly on the map. I had to enter the nearest intersection for one, since it too lacked street numbers for that section of road, but it got me close enough to see the intersection. And, I was totally amazed that my fresh install showed little of the sluggish behavior I had noted in my CoPilot review. It is not as snappy as CoPilot, but is usable. I have since upgraded to v1.3 (which introduces in app purchase of live traffic ($24.99 lifetime), and that is behaving just as well. What is more, my home is correctly placed, and Navigon found and correctly placed my Freeport wct. So, there you have it. CoPilot fail. Navigon as regained it’s place on my iPhone! I will miss the features that are still unique to CoPilot, and computer Frank’s helpful instructions, but, in the end, a nav app is all about getting you there!

(I discovered an interesting Navigon feature while trying to program a really remote location…if you can get close using road intersections Navigon opens a small map view with a tack at your programed destination. You can pick the tack up and replace it on the map! This makes really precise nav possible even when you can’t directly enter the address. I like it!)

Let me say that MotionX Drive was the only nav app to find and correctly place all 4 locations without any intervention or help on my part. I intend to test it on the perpeptually under construction valley route too. I will report.

[Report: unbelievably, the live download maps that MotionX uses are at least 2, maybe 3 years out of date on Expressway 83. Exits are placed incorrectly the majority of the time. Exits are pre-reconstruction. That means they are sometimes off by as much as a mile! During the reconstruction of the route, they switched on and off ramps, for one thing. Off ramps are beyond the overpass now...but MotionX has them where they used to be...before the overpasses. Ramps that are still before the overpasses were moved well back, sometimes as much as 2 miles, from the exit road, so that you go a ways on the frontage road. MotionX totally misses those ramps and exits. Not good. Unfortunately the Navigon maps are no better. They are also considerably out of date. In fact the only exits between Harlingen and McAllen that they have right are the few that did not change in the past 3 years. I find this hard to understand, and even harder to forgive. Major fail...not so much of any given nav app, since they all seem to have the same errors...but of the main mapping data bases all the apps use. Conclusion: If you are driving using GPS nav in South Texas...keep your wits about you!]

One general observation on iPhone nav apps. All the apps that I have tested have Contacts integration…and none of them work reliably to find an address from your contacts list. Even if you find a location and add it to your contacts from Google Maps, very often all three of my nav apps will fail to find it if I select it in Contacts from within the app. I suspect, in all cases, that it is something in the routine that translates the Contacts address to the fields the nav app needs, since, in all cases, the nav app is likely to dump you somewhere on the correct road, or at least somewhere in the correct city…but not at the location you expect. In every case so far, manually inputing the same address in the nav app has allowed the app to find the correct location and place it on the map. Very strange. However it makes me very hesitant to use the Contacts integration on any iPhone nav app, especially since, when the location does fail, none of them give you any indication that they are routing you to a compromise location. This can be very disconcerting in actual use! I know this from experience.

And, second general observation: I really like having a reliable turn-by-turn nav app on my phone. One less thing to carry. Relatively easy intergration with other apps on the device. Just a good experience, for me, all around.

I have no problem recommending Navigon MobileNavigator. Great app. I have no problem recommending MotionX Drive. Great app, and such a bargain! I would really like to be able to recommend CoPilot…but until they upgrade the maps a few more times…I just can’t do it. I will continue to test it with each map upgrade…unless of course Navigon works in those few really unique features and removes the temptation.

Are you listening Navigon…are you listening CoPilot?

CoPilot Live 8 Updated

CoPilot Live 8

[Please see the updated take on Nav apps here to see why my opinion on CoPilot has changed.]

Just a quick note to say that CoPilot just released an update that, most noticeably, adds iPod controls within the app.

They are also saying improved GPS performance…but I never noticed any lack in that area in the previous version.

One thing I did note is that computer text to speech voice now says three tents of a mile instead of point three miles…the point often got swallowed in the previous version. It is now crystal clear.

The iPod controls are handy…but they promise auto-muting during voice instructions in the next update. That will actually make it work.

It is good to see that the CoPilot folks are keeping up their end. They are certainly on track to be the last paid alternative navigation app standing when Google Navigation blows everything else off the iPhone. After all, a few of us will still want on device maps…especially if Apple sticks with AT&T. CoPilot, on the basis of cost and a growing feature set, is the navigation app to own.

For the full review see CoPilot Live 8.

WordPress 2 for iPhone/iPod Touch

Okay. I tried to use the first version of WordPress for iPhone a few times, and though it was superior to the other blogging apps I tried, it was not all that usable.

Version 2 (a new app, not an automatic upgrade from the first version) is much improved. I still might not choose to create a complete blog entry on it: it still lacks essential features like links, easily styled text, the ability to embed images by URL, the ability to easily place images within the body of the text (or anywhere but at the end of the post), etc. etc. But for someone like me who does a lot of iPhone app reviews, or anyone caught without a computer and with the need to build a WordPress blog post, it works well enough.

For instance, when blogging a new iPhone app review I have always, in the past, had to email screen shots from my iPhone to my laptop, or send them via USB cable, and then upload then to WordPress to illustrate the review. With WordPress 2 I can simply start a draft on the iPhone, add the screen shots directly from the iPhone’s image library and save the whole thing to my blog as a draft.

I can then open the draft from WordPress.com and put the finishing touches on it: put the images where I want them, add links and format text. I save a significant amount of time!

I could even, in a pinch, compose a Pic of the Day post by saving an image from my smugmug site to my iPhone image library and composing the text on the phone. In a pinch.

You can also manage comments and pages from your iPhone with WordPress 2.

And, of course, just to make the point this post is being done completely on the iPhone using WordPress 2.

I even figured out how to move an image to the top of the post, or anywhere you want it: you just have to cut and paste the code after saving the draft to WordPress the first time! You can even edit the class statement in the HTML to align the image within the text. It is set to alignnone. Change that to aligncenter or alignleft or whatever you want and…just like magic!

And of course, if you know just a little HTML you can style text too as I did above.

Now if only the next version of WordPress for the iPhone makes it easier. That would be really useful!

To see what one composed on the iPhone and adjusted on WordPress.com looks like, take a look at the previous post on MobileRSS.

MobileRSS: great “one trick” app

MobileRSS from Nibirutech

One of the best features, IMHO, of the iPhone platform is that it encourages simple little one trick apps. MobileRSS from Nibirutech is a simple client for Google Reader. That’s it. That is all it does. But it does it’s one trick so well that I am actually using Google Reader on my iPhone and enjoying the experience.

And of course, managing, and enjoying your Google Reader subscriptions is, in actuality, no simple thing. The fact that MobileRSS makes it simple is a testimony to just how good the app is!

MobileRSS does anything and everything you might want to do with your Google Reader account, and does it all with admirable speed and ease. (Or almost…actual feed management tools will come in the next update.) Your subscription folders appear as they do on the web client, with badges to let you know how many unread items you have in each. When you touch a subscription folder, it opens in list view with all it content subscriptions, each with their own badge for unreads. You can open the whole folder and see all the unreads from all you subscriptions, or you can open individual feeds. Unread items are marked with the little blue unread circle common to many iPhone apps.

Touching an unread feed opens the item in MobileRSS’s reading view…an elegant implementation that includes images and lays out the text in an easy to read on the iPhone fashion. You even have the option of opening the original in the browser module without leaving the MobileRSS app. So fine.

There is an action button the bottom of the screen that in list view allows you to mark all as unread. With the reading view open you have icons for adding a note, opening the item in Safari (will exit app), favoring the item, sharing the item, and an action icon that allows you to email, tweet, or send the item to Instapaper or ReedItLater. Excellent!

Did I say all this is done with admirable speed. Marking all items read, for instance, takes far less time on MobileRSS than it does on the web client.

All in all, I can no imagine a better Google Reader client…and, in fact, I can not imagine a better Google Reader experience. I find myself using my iPhone just as often as I use the web client…and I suspect I will come to actually prefer interacting with Google Reader via iPhone, the more I use the app.

I should mention that MobileRSS is available in two versions: free and paid. Free is, of course, ad supported, and lacks the share function. I tried the free version and liked it so well that I bought the paid version. My theory is that Nibirutech has done such a good job on the app that I want to keep them in business…just to see what they come up with next!

Just a simple one trick app…but what an excellent trick it is! iTunes link: MobileRSS

[By the way: I created this post in record time using the new WordPress 2 app on the iPhone in conjunction with the web WordPress composition page. More on that in another post.]

SimplyTweet 2.5: Whoo! Isn’t this a whole new app?!

SimplyTweet's Full Landscape views

Okay. Come on now. SimplyTweet 2.5 is a whole new app, right? This has to be more than a free version update. It takes the amazingly rich SimTw feature set and the refined interface and adds some significantly awesome new features (like full TextExtender integration!) while providing a major UI overhaul that makes for what amounts to a whole new (and improved) user experience. This has to be SimplyTweet Plus, or SimTweet Ultra, or something. Right?

I mean, didn’t someone just justify (and rightly so in my opinion) adding a 2 to his app’s name and charging as though it were new based on similar changes? (And that was without push!)

Mentions view in Landscape

SimplyTweet 2.5 is not just an improvement on what I consider the best Twitter app for the iPhone and iPod Touch…it is that, of course…but as I see it, version 2.5 qualifies as a whole new app. What we have in SimplyTweet 2.5 goes beyond the accumulation of all the little (and bigger) enhansenents and refinements in the 5 versions since push was introduced with 2.0. In fact, a user who has not looked at SimplyTweet since 2.0 would be completely justified in thinking they had discovered a new Twitter client…one with all the advanced features, push, saved views, multiple accounts, etc. etc. that were there in SimplyTweet 2.0, but one that presented such a different (read better!) user experience that it could not, certainly, be the same app.

Saved Lists in SimplyTweet

As I have noted before here, SimplyTweet is a Twitter client for the iPhone and iPod Touch which is in rapid development. What is rapid?…how about a new version every two to three weeks…or just about as fast as the App Store approval process allows. The developer is continuously adding features and tweaking the UI based on customer feedback and expressed needs. It is actually kind of fun to watch. You can follow his Twitter timeline (@simplytweet) and get some real insight into how a responsive programmer develops an app for the iPhone. Every version adds significantly useful features and refines the user experience.

The primary reason for the new user experience in 2.5 is the full and smooth implimentation of landscape mode. SimplyTweet missed beating Tweetie 2 to full landscape by a week or so, but even if it had not, it still would not have been the first iPhone Twitter client with landscape views of your timeline, @s, and DMs. That honor goes, of course, to Landscape Tweets. However SimTweets implimentation is just about seamless.

Landscape compose, and a saved draft/note.

And it is a surprisingly useful feature. I have always used landscape compose where availabe, but until version 2.4 landscape compose in SimTweet was (as it still is in many apps) a compromise. When tipped to landscape some of the features of the compose view disappeared. (This seems to be inherent in Apple’s implimentation of the landscape keyboard and any programer who wants different has to figure out his or her own way around the limitation.) That problem was solved in SimTweet 2.4. With full integration of landscape in all views, though, I find myself using SimTweet in landscape most of the time. Somehow it is just more comfortable…maybe easier on the eyes…maybe not as cramped and confined. I like it!

Hidden behind the Action icon in Compose View

The second change that makes the app feel different is, in reality, not much more than a name change. SimTweet’s Saved Views has always been a powerful feature. With 2.5 Saved Views are now renamed Saved Lists to better reflect their true nature and the coming Twitter native lists. Oh, and the Edit Lists menu item is moved from the main More menu to the Misc menu under More.

The name change only emphasizes how good the implementation is in SimTweet. You can create new lists in the Edit List view and then choose contacts from your friends and followers list, one at at time, but the easiest way to add friends and followers to any existing list is to open their profiles and choose Add to List from the Actions Menu (envelope with swoosh) at the bottom right of the view. This brings up the standard picker roll with the names of all your existing lists. Folks who are already on a list have a little list icon next to their atvars on their profile views. A list can consist of a single twit who you want to follow closely among all those you follow, or it can be a group of twits related in some way in you mind. I have a list, for instance, of Twitter app developers, and another list that just has SimTweet’s developer on it. And, of course, I have a Family list, and list of my collegues, etc., etc.

Until Twitter fully implements its own List schema and the API to go with it, SimTweet uses Twitter search to populate your lists with the tweets attached to those twits. This has the advantage of calling up tweets you would not have wanted to miss, even if they are buried well back your own timeline.

You can also use a Saved List to hide a group of those you follow from your main timeline. This is a kind of filtering function for those with massive follow lists. Hiding a list can be turned on and off in the Edit Lists view.

Another nice feature of 2.5 is that Drafts are now saved as Notes, so you can access them and work with them at any time. SimTweet has saved the current draft when you cancel at tweet in the compose screen (and choose Save Draft instead of Discard) for several versions. The draft just sort of magically appeared the next time you opened the compose screen…and you could only have one draft saved at a time.

SimplyTweet has also had Notes for many versions. Until 2.5, a Note was attached to a profile. 2.5 integrates the two functions. You can still attach notes to profiles, but now, when you cancel a tweet, if you choose to save it, it will appear in your Notes list. Notes can be opened, edited, posted as tweet, posted as DM, or emailed. Saved drafts. Multiple saved drafts. Multiple applications for Saved Drafts (er…Notes).  There you go. What more could you ask?

If I type "i" now, it is one of my TextExpander snippets, and will auto expend to "Case U missed it:"

Then there is full integration of TextExpander. TextExpander is a app for the Mac that automatically expands snippets of text into full words or phrases. It runs in the background on the Mac and works wherever you are processing words. On the iPhone TextExpander can’t run in the background (not allowed by the OS). Therefore you have your choice of typing up your message in the TextExpander compose box and sending it to one of the twitter clients they support (which you set in TextExpander’s settings) or, if your app is TextExpander aware, you can use the snippets right in the compose view of the app. SimplyTweet offers both options. TextExpander is a separate purchase in the app store, but I am finding that it saves me significant time. If you tweet a lot, and use the same phrase frequently, then you can type the whole phrase in a couple of keystrokes as a snippet and it will magically (and musically, I might add) expand right in the SimplyTweet compose view. You have to create your snippets in TextExpander, and set TextExpander to be friendly with other apps, but once you have a set of snippets, text entry in SimplyTweet can go a lot faster. I like it.

Account Picker: available by tapping @account where it appears in List and Compose Views

Another small touch that I have come to appreciate more and more  is the way SimTweet handles multiple accounts. This is not new in 2.5. It was developed and refined over the first few updates after 2.0. There is an Accounts View, which allows you, of course, to view, select, and add accounts. But switching accounts is much easier than opening the Accounts view. On every list view, at the top, under the title, is the @account name. Touch it, and you get the OS picker roller with all your accounts listed. Choose.

And, say you open open a tweet from one account, and want to repost it as though it came from one of your other accounts? No problem. Touch the @account title in the header of the compose view and choose another account. Or you are posting a tweet and realize it really should come from another account. Same thing. Easy.

And, of course, SimTweet 2.5, as it has since 2.0, pushes @s and DMs from all your accounts. It automatically loads new @s and DMs if you have them when you open SimTweet. And it alerts you to incoming @s and DMs while the app is running too. Push works. Push works really well in SimplyTweet.

Then there are little SimplyTweet only touches: the # symbol on the compose screen that allows you to insert the # character without opening the extended keyboard, the way recent tweets are displayed in account views, the Between Us button on account views that calls up recent public exchanges with that follow/follower, the easy conversation views accessible from any tweet (and from the swipe pop-up icon bar), the ability to reply to  multiple tweets (and twits) by selecting them in your time-line list view (great for building #followfriday tweets, among other things), the ability to customize the contents of the swipe icon bar, and to choose one of several themes for the whole app, etc, etc.

SimplyTweet is a great twitter client. It is the one that is always on my iPhone and that I use every day. It simply does more of what I need a client to do, and does it remarkably well. In my opinion SimplyTweet is the best twitter client on the iPhone by a good margin. Version 2.5 only reinforces that opinion, by, once more, significantly improving the user experience. The developer, we are told, has even bigger things in mind for 2.6. If you are not using SimplyTweet I have one question for you. Why not? Get on board. It is a great twitter client and it is only going to get better.