Unpleasent surprises

Our blog has been attacked by hackers last week and unfortunately, they really managed to penetrate the Word Press system.

Of course things like that are always very annoying and we would have well done without it. In the end it was not as bad as we had feared though and as you can see – everything is up again, our blog is online available for everybody. A big thanks to our tech-team, which had everything under control in a very short time. However, we hope that such an ‘emergency operation’ won’t be necessary in the future.

The share/help button

In the main menu of our app you’ll find in the left down corner the button “Share/Help”. Here you find help, you can report bugs, send an e-mail or you can share with your friends on facebook, where you are at the moment and to which place you are navigating with skobbler. Take a picture and tell the world, where skobbler takes you. We think it’s a pretty cool feature and we’d love to see some posts where you made use of our facebook-share-button. Of course you can also mark us in your posts. Just go to facebook, follow us and let us know, where the GPS Nav 2 leads you.

The skobbler team wishes you a great week.

In our view, competing with the pre-installed navigation of Google Maps on Android makes no longer sense. If we wanted to remain competitive, we would have to develop a product similar to our GPS Navigation 2 on iOS, which offers either offline or hybrid navigation. This would lead to a huge development effort, also because of the rising fragmentation of Google Android devices. On this account, the development for Apple devices is a lot more efficient.

Thus, considering the high amount of work that would have to be put into development, the current limitations that we see in the Android Market (and in general for the Android app stores) lead us to stop the further development of our navigation app no this platform. Unfortunately, it is still very hard to have commercial success with a paid app on Android.

Please don’t get us wrong: Android is and will remain an important development platform for skobbler. Shutting down our navigation app does not translate into us abandoning Android by any means. Quite the opposite is true: our currently most exciting development project is one for Google Android. We will focus on further improving our map technology and on customer projects for the platform. Who knows, we might well be seen re-entering the ring with a geared-up navigation app at a later point in time, if conditions change. Naturally, we will keep a close eye on the further development of the Android market.

Please have a look at our press release for more information.

skobbler’s development department is based in the Romanian city Cluj. So whenever a big event is taking place, we want to be part of it.

Therefore it comes natural to skobbler to support the Startup Weekend in Cluj which will happen from 17th – 19th February 2012.

Startup Weekend Cluj is a 54-hour event designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs. The event is centered on action, innovation, and education.

The purspose is to build a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people.

We’re very proud that skobbler is a gold sponsor and sustains the organization of the event.

If you want to find out more, visit the website of the Startup Weekend Cluj.

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.

The entire skobbler Team wishes you a happy and successful 2012. Let the fun begin!

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.

This is something we couldn’t foresee or test and we are very sorry for any inconvenience.

Here’s how to solve the issue: Just delete the app and re-install it. The app should run smoothly again afterwards.

Already purchased upgrades (e.g. maps) can be easily downloaded again at no in the “Upgrades” section in the main menu:

Either click on “Available for download” or repeat the steps of your initial purchase. You will not be billed in any case.

We are already working on an update which should solve the essetial startup problem and we hope, it will be approved by Apple soon.