WSLI in CW4 2012

Since the unexpected appearance of a rascal at our office,  which was immediately named skobbli and appointed our new company mascot by some, the “office animal” question has gained a momentum of its own. There seem to be two camps: the dog and the rascal corner. While the former has remarkably detailed conceptions about race, gender, age, holding requirements etc., the latter seems to be rather oblivious to any of these topics. The ultimate argument always seems to be: “Rascals are way cooler and besides: skobbli was just cute.” There simply isn’t any reply to this. Let’s see where this’ll go and when the first T-shirts will be created.

Practical tip of the week: How to make a trip abroad

Today’s support section covers a topic that can be a real pain: the error code “API 683″.

It appears whenever you want to navigate “through water”, e.g. from the UK to France. The reason for this error message is that the app cannot calculate routes through water, meaning the channel between mainland and islands. As we don’t want you to  forgo a spontaneous city trip to Paris, here’s our simple solution for this problem.

Just split your route in two parts. For example: If you want to go from your home in London to a hotel in Paris you first calculate the route from your home address to the last destination in the UK, where you take the ferry or a tunnel to set over to Europe. Then you can start the app again in France and search for the address in Paris you want to get to and skobbler will guide you there safely – for sure.

The skobbler team wishes you always safe (and dry) trips and a great weekend.

WSLI in CW2 2012

skobbler has finally finished its hibernation this week and started to get back to working on the next versions of our apps. On the iOS side, we’re preparing the next update of GPS Navigation 2, while the Android team has ForeverMap 2 in the works. We’ve pledged to enhance our current product line with the features that have been required the most by you guys. That’ll be quite a handful, but we’re confident to offer you some really useful improvements in all of our upcoming updates.  We’ll also try to repeat the tremendous success our app has seen over the past months in a variety of new countries. With GPS Navi 2 currently topping the navigation category in 8 countries, it seems as if we’re not too far off.

Practical tip of the week: How to make a trip abroad

As you know, one of the major new features in our GPS Nav 2 is that you have the possibility to navigate offline. For this purpose you need to download and install the countries or continents you want to navigate in.
If you are abroad and want to use the offline navigation you have to choose the map you want to search for an adress in. Just go to Navigation, then to Dest. address and click here on the little country flag in the right upper corner. In the next screen, choose the country where you wish to search for an address. Please note, however, that the maps you want to use offline need to be already downloaded and installed so that you can pick them in this section.

We wish you a nice and pleasent weekend.

Today we want to start with very good news: The first, great GPS Navigation 2 update is on its way! While it was already release in the UK and Ireland, it will be released in the US next Tuesday. We are very much looking forward to presenting you several significant improvements like pedestrian navigation, additional funny voices and much better performance and stability. We hope you will like it as much as we do.

We wish you a superb week.

For all those questions we have a new FAQ section in our forum now.

So whenever you have problems with GPS Navigation 2 or questions regarding the app, take a look at the FAQs. Perhaps you’ll already find all the answers you need.

We wish you a nice weekend.

• GPS Navigation 2 is on rank 1 rank in the UK overall download charts.
• GPS Navigation 2 is on rank 1 in the Irish overall download charts.
• GPS Navigation 2 was in the top 3 of the German overall-download-charts (currently on 5th rank).
• GPS Navigation 2 is on rank 1 in the top grossing charts.
• GPS Navigation 2 is in the top 3 of the navigation download charts in the USA

Thank you very much for such great feedback! We’re absolutely overwhelmed by this awesome interim result. We have worked on Nav 2 more than a year and had to cope with a lot of things before and also after the release (especially with the simultanesously released iOS 5).

We really appreciate your thoughts and are greatful that most of you are happy with the new app. That said, we know that there are still some of you who have problems with crashes or other inadequacies. We are currently working on the next update which should bring along some essential improvements. We hope that we’ll be able to send it to Apple for approval early next week.

And it won’t stop there: GPS Navigation 2 will improve fast and constantly – we promise.

It will be available on Wednesday, October 12 in the US and in the UK/ROI.

All our current users will get the usually paid-for next generation app as a complimentary upgrade. In order to be eligible for this free upgrade, new customers can download the current version in US store for free. As outlined before, all UK/ROI customers are strongly encouraged to download the currently free premium version including speed cams from the UK App Store. The former skobbler Lite version will be discontinued on October 12. Find more info on the discontinuation of skobbler Lite in our previous blog posts.

Find out more

Philipp Kandal – our CTO and leader of the whole development-team – breaks the first ground:

Philipp, the new app is (almost) completed. What are you especially proud of?

Basically there are three things: above all the hybrid navigation. We will be offering navigation online AND offline – depending on what the customer wants to use. Besides, we have worldwide maps for the first time. This means, the new skobbler version can be used all over the world without expensive roaming charges, as you can use the already-mentioned offline maps.

But I’m also proud of the completely new user interface. It looks simply awesome, works on all iOS devices (iPhone, iPhone Retina, iPad..) and you can use it either in the portrait- or in the landscape mode.

What has been improved in the new app?

First of all: the navigation. Naturally, our focus was to improve the navigation – we hopefully succeeded in that. The routing is much faster (especially on-board), even with a bad GPS-signal the app works properly and also the quality of the routes has been significantly improved. But I also want to mention the map display. Especially the “map mode” is a real highlight, as we’re able to display the map in all imaginable zoom levels now.

Which market environment and technical circumstances have been considered for the conception and development?

There are many things you have to consider when developing a new app. It was important to us to support all Apple devices with GPS. This means an iPhone 3G as well as an iPad 2 with 3G. When our last nav app hit the market, Apple hadn’t invented the retina display – now we have to support it. You always have to adapt to the latest technical innovations, if you want to develop a new app.

Another thing that naturally has to be considered is the OpenStreetMap. It grows at blistering pace and becomes more and more detailed. The consequence: Our rendering engine had to be tuned notably to be able to cope with the mass of data.

Last but not least – the price. The price shall be affordable. Consequently, we have to keep the costs for our server infrastructure at a reasonable level.  It was a challenge to provide all our 1.5 million customers with the few servers we have – but fortunately we’ve been successful.

Thanks for the interesting interview, Philipp.

There is one important thing to take into account for our UK users though: We will have to discontinue the free app (skobbler Lite)! Only the premium version will be continued and updated However, all users will be able to get the premium version FOR FREE, until Navigation 2 is available. The best thing: this will secure anybody who switches a free upgrade to Navigation 2 as well.

Here is how it works:

From today on, the premium skobbler will be available FOR FREE in the AppStore.

All you have to do is:

1. Go to the Appstore
2. Install the premium version (and benefit from stationary speed cam warnings!)
3. Wait for your upgrade to Navigation 2 (here you can get a glimpse of how it looks like)

As soon as Navigation 2 is launched, the Lite version will be withdrawn from the AppStore. It will not work anymore! So take your chance, switch the version and ensure to be part of the next skobbler generation.

An early version of Navigation 2 - the next generation

To let you catch a glimpse of our skobbler Navigation 2 we kept looking over our Quality Control Team’s shoulder who did a test drive today:

An early glimpse at an unfinished test version of skobbler Navigation 2 during a test drive in Berlin, Germany.