Tell HN: We launched Gaia GPS on Android today | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: We launched Gaia GPS on Android today

gaiagps.com

Just bought it and trying it out. Very nice app! It runs pretty well on my slowish MyTouch. Everything works as expected (better than expected actually). The map download is particularly nicely implemented (well, I somewhat take that back. A download progress bar would be nice :).

If you click Saved Maps from the menu, then the table will show the progress of each map :)

Thanks for the compliments! One nice thing about the Android app is we have already been working on the iPhone app for many moons, so there were a lot of lessons learned. The biggest one I think is that we launched a very minimal feature set at first - on the iPhone we included tracking, waypoints, and all kinds of stuff right of the bat.

Because of this, our iPhone app started out buggy and we have had to do significant refactoring over time. Also, we later cut some features we originally viewed as important.

I always thought I understood the credo of launch a "mimimum viable product," but I really didn't until after launching something that WASN'T it.

Hmmm... I see it now. I guess I just found a bug as the first time I tried downloading the app. I clicked save and it just stalled for a long while until I clicked cancel.

But I still don't see any download indicator in the notification drop-down which is typical for Android apps.

Ok, would you mind emailing me at andrew@gaiagps.com?

I'd like to ask a couple questions, and then we'll fix it.

I had no idea this product existed, thanks for the heads up. I'm skeptical of installing anything on my clunky G1 but will keep it in mind for my next backpacking trip. Storing cached map images locally is great. I used the heck out of Topo! back in the day, nice to see a mobile device equivalent.

Gaia is a great product and the beta has been fun. The different maps you can use, offline maps, and just the all around ease of use is great. Hope others try it out.

Also, we're still looking for more beta testers, so if you would like to get early releases and such, drop me a line at the email in my profile.

it's $5 bucks for the anrdoid version (99c for iphone). QR Code to android market: http://bit.ly/9PEzjs

FYI... the iPhone app will also be 4.99 as soon as Apple approves v3.2... hopefully today :)

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