Where To? 2.0.1 has been approved after 13 days. It comes with the following improvements:
Grab the update while it’s hot. It’s free for all Where To 2.x customers.
Today, Apple approved Where To 2.0. The new version greatly enhances the user experience by making use of several iPhone OS 3.0 features. It uses a built-in map to display the results right within the app. To find out more about a specific location, a call can be initiated or the homepage can be displayed using the integrated web viewer. Then, the user can get driving directions using maps, add the destination to his contacts or share it using email, SMS or the clipboard.
When I acquired Where To in December last year, I had a clear vision of how to evolve the app into an integrated location finder. While there are still more things to come in the future, we feel the 2.0 release is a great step towards that vision.
We also implemented a lot of thoughtful little details: When the user taps the locate-me button, the map auto-follows the current GPS position and auto-reloads new results while moving. If desired, the automatic screen lock is prevented.
When we transferred the app into our account, I promised we would work on a solution to sweeten the upgrade path for existing customers. Now, we’re delivering on that promise by reducing the price to 99¢ (US) until August 23. This is 66% off the original price and we feel the offer’s more than fair for existing customers given the multitude of new features.
While we had all our loyal existing customers in mind, the price cut is not limited to them. (The App Store does not support upgrade pricing as of now.) So it’s also a great opportunity for everybody to get hold of Where To at an unbeatable price!
All customers who bought Where To after June 23 get the update for free.
Update: Have a look on our upgrade notes for existing Where To customers, too.
Upcoming in an App Store near you.
Today, we finally transferred Where To? to our own iTunes account. From now on, the vendor name is not incorrectly stated as “Sophiestication Software” anymore. After more than 6 months of waiting for Apple (and after numerous discussions with various Apple folks) to resolve the issue of transferring an iPhone App in the App Store, we finally resorted to publishing Where To as a new app under our account and removing it from sale of Sophia’s account. This procedure unfortunately causes the purchaser history to be lost since Apple does not provide any buyer details to us.
Why not wait until the next version?
Good question. Obviously it would make perfect sense to wait with the transfer until the upcoming Where To 2.0 with exciting new functionality is out. Unfortunately, this was not an option because our contract with Sophia to use her iTunes vendor account expires by end of this month. Sophia was not willing to negotiate the expiration date. So we are in a position of either killing Where To completely or doing this. Clearly, this isn’t the way I prefer to do things because it’s against my understanding of respecting customers, but I simply had no choice in this situation, unfortunately.
What does this mean for me as a (potential) new customer?
New customers who purchase Where To from now on will automatically be eligible for a free upgrade to the upcoming Where To 2.0. Think of it as a grace period for a free upgrade that begins now.
What does this mean for me as an existing customer?
First, the existing version of Where To in the FutureTap account is exactly the same as the version in the “Sophiestication Software” account.
Second, we are working to offer a price-reduced upgrade path to version 2.0 for current Where To owners who purchased it from the seller tap tap tap or Sophiestication Software.
While we know this is surprising and nasty for you, we had to take this unevitable step at some time although we delayed it as much as possible. So depending on your purchase date, you received a whole lot of updates for free. Only the next major version will be a paid upgrade. Please subscribe to this blog and/or follow us on Twitter to stay informed.
You mentioned Where To 2.0. Will it be cool?
Absolutely! We integrated a ton of new features in Where To 2.0. Most requested, the map will be built-in leveraging iPhone OS 3.0. Switching apps is no longer necessary. Then, the results automatically update while moving. Overall we think it’ll be an amazing update that you’ll absolutely love! Follow us on Twitter to watch some sneak peeks from our labs soon and to be the 1st to know when it’s available!
Probably due to the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 the approval took a bit longer (17 days) than usual. But finally by today, Where To 1.7.3 got approved. It comes with the following features and fixes:
All current owners of Where To? get the free update in the App Store.
Today, Where To? 1.7.2 featuring a Dutch localization was published in the App Store. Named “Waarheen?” in Dutch, Where To? finally comes to the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium. As in the other countries, it includes a large number of local brands and the search terms are optimized for Dutch.
Kudos to Michiel Houtman, he made an amazing job with the Dutch localization.
Alongside the Dutch localization, Where To 1.7.2 adds some category and brand improvements.
All current owners of Where To? get the free update in the App Store.
Many iPhone developers are monitoring their app’s ranking and reviews. There are some tools to automatically retrieve the ranking (MajicRank) and the reviews (Erica Sadun’s perl script) for all country-specific App Stores using web scraping.
What is missing so far is a solution to retrieve information about feature entries on the App Store start page such as “New and noteworthy”, “What’s hot” and “Staff favorites”. Mentions on the start page have a considerable influence on sales. To avoid monitoring the different country-specific stores manually in iTunes, I wrote a Perl script that can be scheduled to run daily. The script is launched with the app’s iTunes ID (the numeric ID at the end of the iTunes URL you can copy in iTunes using right click on your app title) as a parameter and puts out the current date, country and the type of the mention:
./iTunesFeatured.pl 284940039 29.04.2009 AT Home page, NEW AND NOTEWORTHY 29.04.2009 DE Home page, NEW AND NOTEWORTHY 29.04.2009 GB Home page, STAFF FAVORITES
The script takes a while (~5m) to complete because it needs to fetch 8 pages per country. The output is in tab-delimited format to facilitate post processing of the data. In our case, we’re importing the data into a FileMaker database that allows an easy graphic representation (colors to indicate trends) and the creation of all kinds of reports.
So, let’s get to the meat: Download iTunesFeatured.pl
Do you find this useful? I’d love to know your feedback in the comments or via Twitter!
I’m happy to announce that Where To? 1.7 is now officially released in the App Store. In this release we’ve put our focus beside numerous category and brands improvements on internationalization.
We’ve added the following languages:
Together with English and German, Where To? is now localized in 8 languages. The nice thing about the added localizations: Even if you don’t speak one of these languages, you’ll still profit when traveling into such countries. Where To automatically uses local search terms depending on your current position. As an example, when you’re speaking English and are traveling to Montreal in Canada, Where To will automatically use French search terms although the user interface will remain English. We call this “on-the-fly translation” and we think it’s a huge improvement for travelers.
To make things even better, we have reworked our brands database of more than 1100 worldwide brands to display each brand only in the countries where it’s available. So, all you British users won’t be overwhelmed with US-only brands anymore.
Where To 1.7 is available as a free download for all current Where To owners.
Special note for French and Italian users: In version 1.7 we have an issue that the categories are localized correctly but the labels are still in English. This will be fixed in the next update that is currently waiting for Apple’s approval.
The localization of Where To wouldn’t have been possible without the help of these fine people from all over the world:
A big Thank You to all of you guys, you did an incredible job!
After reading the How-To on CrunchGear to enable tethering on iPhone with 3.0 beta firmware, I immediately tried this with my iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, T-Mobile Germany doesn’t appear in the list of ipcc carrier description files that can be grabbed with:
curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | grep -i carrier
So I had to create my own ipcc file based on the bundle found on a 2.2.1 jailbroken phone under /System/Library/Carrier Bundles/TMobile_Germany.bundle.
Here is a walkthrough on how to enable tethering with T-Mobile Germany:
Step 1: Copy the T-Mobile bundle from an iPhone running 2.2.1 with SSH enabled:
scp -r root@iPhone.local.:"/System/Library/Carrier\ Bundles/TMobile_Germany.bundle" /tmp
Step 2: Right click on it and select Show Package Contents. You will find two plist files and two images.
Step 3: In Info.plist, change the BundleVersion from 2.9 to 5.0 and change DTSDKName to (SDK_NAME). Delete MinimumOSVersion. I recommend using Property List Editor for these changes. Save.
Step 4: In carrier.plist do the following and then save:
(a) Add a new Dictionary to the apns Array:
apn = internet
password = password
username = iphone
(b) In the Dictionary with apn internet.t-mobile add the key type-mask with type Number and value -2.
(c) Add a new pair at the top level Dictionary of the carrier.plist file with key AllowEDGEEditing, type BOOLEAN and value YES.
Step 5: grab http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iPhone/CarrierBundles/061-4732.20090203.gj3ef/ATT_US.ipcc using Safari and copy version.plist from the bundle into the TMobile_Germany.bundle. Change the CFBundleVersion from 3.1 to 5.0 and save.
Step 6: Create a folder named Payload and copy the TMobile_Germany.bundle into it. Compress Payload using the context menu. Then in the “Get Info” window of Payload.zip change the name to TMobile_Germany.ipcc.
Step 7: Connect your phone and upload the ipcc file via iTunes: Option-click on the Update Button and select the TMobile_Germany.ipcc file. Then eject the phone and reboot it.
Step 8: Now, a new entry appears under Preferences > General > Network. On my first attempt, I received an error to consult T-Mobile on how to setup tethering. On the second attempt though, I was able to successfully enable Internet Tethering.
Step 9: When connected via USB, Mac OS X automatically detects a new Ethernet adapter and the connection comes up using DHCP just flawlessly. One drawback: I have not been able to connect via Bluetooth so far. I attribute this mainly to pairing problems. The Mac thinks it is successfully paired but the iPhone thinks not. I’ll continue investigating this and update the post when I find a solution.
If you think this is useful, please digg it. Many thanks to Steven Troughton Smith and Erica Sadun who discovered it!
Update 2: Beta 5 users, beware: iTunes 8.2b10 no longer accepts IPCC files. Phones running 3.0b5 can still have carrier settings updated from iTunes 8.2b7 (part of 3.0b4).
Update 3: easier than installing an IPCC via iTunes is the download of a profile right from the iPhone. http://www.iphone-notes.de/mobileconfig/ provides config files for various carriers around the world. They work with the released version of iPhone OS 3.0.
Update 4: iPhone OS 3.1 disabled the use of unsigned IPCC profiles. There is a solution to re-enable Tethering by jailbreaking with Blacksn0w.
In this release we’ve put our focus on fine-tuning the search results for some popular categories. These are the actual changes in this version:
The update is available as a free download for all current Where To owners.