6 ms·

Building a location based iPhone App: from idea to my first users

89 points by ish_ish 16y ago

A blog post discussing my latest app release and some of the technical and design issues I had while building it.

BornInTheUSSR 16y ago
Congratulations on not only 'shipping' but documenting the process. I've been working on something technically similar, but with a very different application. Can't wait to share!
ahparikh 16y ago
Great details on how to be a great mobile location app.
middlegeek 16y ago
That's a great app. I have wanted something similar for android. It combines the ease of text messaging without the commitment and participation required for Latitude or the like.
threepointone 16y ago
The alert has a "Do it!" button. Reminded me of : http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Do_It.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...
jmtame 16y ago
does anyone know why the default location is cupertino in the ios simulator? i want to think it's because of speed (why take time to find your location during each run?), but i'm starting to wonder if it's because the difficulty in getting an accurate location lock on a wifi network for example. i've found that detecting geolocation on a non-mobile device such as a laptop (even using the latest w3c navigator.geolocation standard) is pretty unreliable. it took me some searching to figure out that the function has an infinite timeout by default, which makes debugging interesting. sometimes just doesn't get the location at all. a professor had expressed the same sentiments in more length here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3397585/navigator-geolocation-getcurrentposition-sometimes-works-sometimes-doesnt http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3397585/navigator-geoloca...
- andrewljohnson 16y ago
  I'm sure the reasons are just a) they wanted to hard-code a location for the simulator, since it doesn't have a GPS, and b) Apple is located in Cupertino. For my GPS-app, we have code to simulate fake GPS readings on the simulator.
- alexbell 16y ago
  I believe the simulator can also do location by wifi if possible.
GimmeDaAccess 16y ago
Isn't this basically Glympse minus the timer element? http://gigaom.com/2010/12/17/8-apps-for-the-new-smartphone-owner/ http://gigaom.com/2010/12/17/8-apps-for-the-new-smartphone-o...
- ish_ish 16y ago
  I mentioned that in the blog post under "The competitive scare"
stcredzero 16y ago
I think this is a great idea. I would add one feature: send a 2nd text message when you're within 1 mile. (Or whatever distance you choose.) My girlfriend wants me to notify her before I actually get to her apartment. Having my smartphone do this for me automatically would be awesome! (This way I don't need to use my phone while I'm driving.)
- ryanpetrich 16y ago
  A text message can't be sent without confirmation from the user on iOS.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Then a message should be sent to a server that forwards the SMS text.
prakster 16y ago
Awesome. You should partner with UberCab: www.uber.com
- ish_ish 16y ago
  That's a great idea I'll email them. I've also thought about approaching delivery-type services like Dominos.
  - hopeless 16y ago
    I wonder if you couldn't white-label the technology and sell it to those types of businesses. That way they could apply their own branding and incorporate it into their existing sites.
nico_h 16y ago
Hi ! Very nice idea, I like the app. A few comments : - Why the heck is it free ? I would have paid for it ! - Can you make the web page for your follower display nicely on a computer web browser ? - corollary : could you allow direct sending of emails ? (rather than copy + switch app + paste) - on the web site, you could show screens of the app, not just the client. Otherwise congratulations, it's quite nice and that would have been the next app I would have developed if I ever finish my current one;-)
- ish_ish 16y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I debated heavily between paid and free when I released it. I went with free initially because I felt I wanted to get a simple version of the product out there. At some point I might go the freemium root and offer a paid version with some additional features. - Emails are coming along with better formatting for desktop browsers - Thanks for feedback on the website!
nico_h 16y ago
Another point : it's an interesting developer's perspective, but its lacking in numbers. Maybe too young for that ? There are no ads on the client nor on the app, and the app is free. Do you have a monetization plan ?
geuis 16y ago
Let this be a lesson to anyone working on a product. I've been building an app that does exactly the same thing for the last couple of months. You have to be first to market.
- ish_ish 16y ago
  Hey -- neither of us is first to market on this one. I found out of others even as I was building it. I almost gave up but then figured I might as well go for it. I address this in the post -- the market it young and is ripe for plenty of products.
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - deleted 16y ago
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  - geuis 16y ago
    I wish you good luck with the app. Honestly, I started building mine because I keep running into situations where I need something like this. I was scratching my own itch, as it were.
  - lawrence 16y ago
    glympse? Ish, would like to connect with you. we build geo apps, and work out of the mission (in the us bank building on 22nd and Mission).
    - ish_ish 16y ago
      Sure we can meetup you can contact me at my twitter @ishish or email: ishish (at) gmail
- nickfromseattle 16y ago
  Did Apple make the first mp3 player? Did Google make the first search engine? The point is his app is nowhere near critical mass and there is likely a fair amount of room for competition. Think of his success as proof there is a demand for apps like his (and yours).
dkihanya 16y ago
awesome app! very useful for letting someone know where you are if you're running late for a meeting. Also cool to let friends know you are around if you're in their town travelling. Nice job!
dirtyaura 16y ago
Great article. His observations of location polling strategies and battery life are spot on, so if you are interested in location-based services, read them carefully. When developing Jaiku Mobile (always-on rich presence sharing with location and other data) we learned same things. There's actually two strategies that you've to manage: polling of the location (GPS usage) and sending it to the server (network usage). In 3G, there is a significant energy consumption cost, when you send small amount of data regularly to server, because the network stack has to be changed to higher-energy mode each time you send something over TCP/IP. Even if you stay in a same location and the location data doesn't changed, you might need to send the data to server. Why? To indicate freshness of the data, server has to pinged to indicate that location data is still fresh, even if it hasn't changed. Indicating data's freshness can be important in tracking situation (e.g. Geoshare).
- asmosoinio 16y ago
  Did you ever consider using CellID to detect whether location has changed, before checking more precisely from GPS? Haven't tested it in a real product myself, but found this strategy in an old Symbian app, and it seemed quite clever -- especially in a 3G (or 3.5/4/whatever) mobile network cell size should be small enough that if the user is really moving, the CellID will also change quite quickly. And energy consumption to poll this is almost 0, assuming the device is a phone that is connected to the mobile network anyways.
  - dirtyaura 16y ago
    Yes we used Cell ID and that was our main source of location data (GPS-enabled phones were quite rare back in 2006). But cell id can change quite a lot even if you stay in the same place, depending on your signal strength. Btw. did that old Symbian app happened to be called ContextPhone? It was a precursor of Jaiku Mobile.
    - asmosoinio 16y ago
      Thanks for your response. Was this all on Symbian platform? Does that platform give you access just to the active cell, or also the neighboring ones? I wonder if using the full list of neighboring cells could help, that's available at least via Android API. Nope, it was not ContextPhone. Something for basic phone tracking.
elvirs 16y ago
wait a second, so none of the existing apps do this? is it because they have not thought of a simple thing like texting location url to a contact or they tried to lock in new users using twitter, facebook, etc. contact list import thing?
T_S_ 16y ago
Been looking for this. Wonder why that doesn't happen more often.
akulkarni 16y ago
Awesome, well-thought post by a clear veteran. "With GeoShare I was consistently fighting against myself not to add more features that I knew would be useful. This was a difficult thing for me to resist since I myself used the product daily and had a sense what I wished it could do. But they say if you're not embarrased by your first product then you waited too long." 'nuf said.
asgupta 16y ago
Great article.

89 points by ish_ish 16y ago

A blog post discussing my latest app release and some of the technical and design issues I had while building it.

Congratulations on not only 'shipping' but documenting the process. I've been working on something technically similar, but with a very different application. Can't wait to share!

ahparikh 16y ago

Great details on how to be a great mobile location app.

middlegeek 16y ago

That's a great app. I have wanted something similar for android. It combines the ease of text messaging without the commitment and participation required for Latitude or the like.

threepointone 16y ago

The alert has a "Do it!" button. Reminded me of : http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Do_It.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

jmtame 16y ago

does anyone know why the default location is cupertino in the ios simulator? i want to think it's because of speed (why take time to find your location during each run?), but i'm starting to wonder if it's because the difficulty in getting an accurate location lock on a wifi network for example. i've found that detecting geolocation on a non-mobile device such as a laptop (even using the latest w3c navigator.geolocation standard) is pretty unreliable. it took me some searching to figure out that the function has an infinite timeout by default, which makes debugging interesting. sometimes just doesn't get the location at all. a professor had expressed the same sentiments in more length here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3397585/navigator-geolocation-getcurrentposition-sometimes-works-sometimes-doesnt http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3397585/navigator-geoloca...

andrewljohnson 16y ago
I'm sure the reasons are just a) they wanted to hard-code a location for the simulator, since it doesn't have a GPS, and b) Apple is located in Cupertino. For my GPS-app, we have code to simulate fake GPS readings on the simulator.
alexbell 16y ago
I believe the simulator can also do location by wifi if possible.

GimmeDaAccess 16y ago

Isn't this basically Glympse minus the timer element? http://gigaom.com/2010/12/17/8-apps-for-the-new-smartphone-owner/ http://gigaom.com/2010/12/17/8-apps-for-the-new-smartphone-o...

ish_ish 16y ago
I mentioned that in the blog post under "The competitive scare"

stcredzero 16y ago

I think this is a great idea. I would add one feature: send a 2nd text message when you're within 1 mile. (Or whatever distance you choose.) My girlfriend wants me to notify her before I actually get to her apartment. Having my smartphone do this for me automatically would be awesome! (This way I don't need to use my phone while I'm driving.)

ryanpetrich 16y ago
A text message can't be sent without confirmation from the user on iOS.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Then a message should be sent to a server that forwards the SMS text.

prakster 16y ago

Awesome. You should partner with UberCab: www.uber.com

ish_ish 16y ago
That's a great idea I'll email them. I've also thought about approaching delivery-type services like Dominos.
- hopeless 16y ago
  I wonder if you couldn't white-label the technology and sell it to those types of businesses. That way they could apply their own branding and incorporate it into their existing sites.

nico_h 16y ago

Hi ! Very nice idea, I like the app. A few comments : - Why the heck is it free ? I would have paid for it ! - Can you make the web page for your follower display nicely on a computer web browser ? - corollary : could you allow direct sending of emails ? (rather than copy + switch app + paste) - on the web site, you could show screens of the app, not just the client. Otherwise congratulations, it's quite nice and that would have been the next app I would have developed if I ever finish my current one;-)

ish_ish 16y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I debated heavily between paid and free when I released it. I went with free initially because I felt I wanted to get a simple version of the product out there. At some point I might go the freemium root and offer a paid version with some additional features. - Emails are coming along with better formatting for desktop browsers - Thanks for feedback on the website!

nico_h 16y ago

Another point : it's an interesting developer's perspective, but its lacking in numbers. Maybe too young for that ? There are no ads on the client nor on the app, and the app is free. Do you have a monetization plan ?

geuis 16y ago

Let this be a lesson to anyone working on a product. I've been building an app that does exactly the same thing for the last couple of months. You have to be first to market.

ish_ish 16y ago
Hey -- neither of us is first to market on this one. I found out of others even as I was building it. I almost gave up but then figured I might as well go for it. I address this in the post -- the market it young and is ripe for plenty of products.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- geuis 16y ago
  I wish you good luck with the app. Honestly, I started building mine because I keep running into situations where I need something like this. I was scratching my own itch, as it were.
- lawrence 16y ago
  glympse? Ish, would like to connect with you. we build geo apps, and work out of the mission (in the us bank building on 22nd and Mission).
  - ish_ish 16y ago
    Sure we can meetup you can contact me at my twitter @ishish or email: ishish (at) gmail
nickfromseattle 16y ago
Did Apple make the first mp3 player? Did Google make the first search engine? The point is his app is nowhere near critical mass and there is likely a fair amount of room for competition. Think of his success as proof there is a demand for apps like his (and yours).

dkihanya 16y ago

awesome app! very useful for letting someone know where you are if you're running late for a meeting. Also cool to let friends know you are around if you're in their town travelling. Nice job!

dirtyaura 16y ago

Great article. His observations of location polling strategies and battery life are spot on, so if you are interested in location-based services, read them carefully. When developing Jaiku Mobile (always-on rich presence sharing with location and other data) we learned same things. There's actually two strategies that you've to manage: polling of the location (GPS usage) and sending it to the server (network usage). In 3G, there is a significant energy consumption cost, when you send small amount of data regularly to server, because the network stack has to be changed to higher-energy mode each time you send something over TCP/IP. Even if you stay in a same location and the location data doesn't changed, you might need to send the data to server. Why? To indicate freshness of the data, server has to pinged to indicate that location data is still fresh, even if it hasn't changed. Indicating data's freshness can be important in tracking situation (e.g. Geoshare).

asmosoinio 16y ago
Did you ever consider using CellID to detect whether location has changed, before checking more precisely from GPS? Haven't tested it in a real product myself, but found this strategy in an old Symbian app, and it seemed quite clever -- especially in a 3G (or 3.5/4/whatever) mobile network cell size should be small enough that if the user is really moving, the CellID will also change quite quickly. And energy consumption to poll this is almost 0, assuming the device is a phone that is connected to the mobile network anyways.
- dirtyaura 16y ago
  Yes we used Cell ID and that was our main source of location data (GPS-enabled phones were quite rare back in 2006). But cell id can change quite a lot even if you stay in the same place, depending on your signal strength. Btw. did that old Symbian app happened to be called ContextPhone? It was a precursor of Jaiku Mobile.
  - asmosoinio 16y ago
    Thanks for your response. Was this all on Symbian platform? Does that platform give you access just to the active cell, or also the neighboring ones? I wonder if using the full list of neighboring cells could help, that's available at least via Android API. Nope, it was not ContextPhone. Something for basic phone tracking.

elvirs 16y ago

wait a second, so none of the existing apps do this? is it because they have not thought of a simple thing like texting location url to a contact or they tried to lock in new users using twitter, facebook, etc. contact list import thing?

T_S_ 16y ago

Been looking for this. Wonder why that doesn't happen more often.

akulkarni 16y ago

Awesome, well-thought post by a clear veteran. "With GeoShare I was consistently fighting against myself not to add more features that I knew would be useful. This was a difficult thing for me to resist since I myself used the product daily and had a sense what I wished it could do. But they say if you're not embarrased by your first product then you waited too long." 'nuf said.

asgupta 16y ago

Great article.