Late last week we put the finishing touches to a very special project we’ve been wanting to share with you for a while now. After many weeks of burning the midnight oil at JAKOTAs ofice in an effort to squeeze into it every drop of spotting goodness, we’ve finally completed work on the Fleetmon mobile app for the iPhone and sent it over to the nice people at Apple.
And now guess what, we are talking about this not as a rumour, but an approved application in the Apple Store. So get your iPhone connected, or fire up iTunes and take a look yourself…
We thought it might be nice to show you a video of what we’ve built so far or you (still in the works, as of my writing…).
[+] added iPhone page with ScreenCast
[+] added iPhone ForumSection
[+] added Image Pager on VesselDetailPage
[+] added VesselThumbNail on ImageDetailPage
[-] removed pager on VesselDetailPage
[*] changed label speed of vessel from km/h to kn on VesselDetailPage
[*] fixed link to user profiles from ImageDetailPage
[*] finished API to database for external access
[*] base coding for site wide search created
Last weekend was tough. When adding six brand new harddrives to the server, the sync process took almost 12hours, which was quiet a burden for the server, when all of you came from the weekend, ready to start up Fleetmon in the morning. The database is in full effect, with lots of new opportunities. Now there is enough space and faster drives too and also some exciting new features implemented.
Over the last weeks Thomas worked on a zone scheme and alerting functions. We are taking snapshots of regions and ports the vessels are in, storing this into a new database.
We started using this new info by adding a “recent ports” list on the vessel detail page, running for a week now. Be prepared for more to come and tell us, how you like it.
Also our graphic skills got some chances due to new Vessel-Type-Icons. Streamlining them with the color-scheme of our friends at marinetraffic, should make it easy for users to learn reading charts here and on other sites. We will use this icons in the new Fleetmon Client and other apps.
One will be the new Fleetmon iPhone Client, which is about to be released at the apple website in the next two weeks. This is cool stuff, with a special “spotter” mode, we will give you the insides, as soon the approval was succesfullwith apple.
This really took some time to program, and now we can fully concentrate on the Site again, defining milestones for Fleetmon V2.
Thomas and me will take a short holiday break next week, some time to relax and write mails again.
All of you have a nice summer too.
We did not want to withhold some Fleetmon internas from you, since we attached great value to this matter. (screenshots of App)
Over the last week Thomas programmed a Flash-Application which makes monitoring quiet simple for us. Now we will get alerted about new sources, it calculates the coverage of antennas, shows the last reception and gives us values like: Raws/minute, range in Kilometers and stream quality.
It will make live easier for us with now more then 50 active AIS sources.
[+] added new internal tool for source monitoring, coverage measuring
[+] added new statistic tool, programmed in Flash
Today we crossed the amount of over 8400 ships in permanent AIS coverage (real time streams), which is also produced by new antennas established over the last week.
The busy port of Kiel right at the end of the Kiel-Kanal, which is connecting North and Baltic Sea, is covered now by Digital-Seas. With the help of Bernward at www.kielmonitor.de we now have a wide view from the tower of a high church, spanning almost 40sm radius.
A bit farer located in the East of Germany is the city of Wolgast. The small town has a larger yard, where cruiseships and military vessels are produced. The Antenna there is catching traffic up to the border to Poland.
PlanetInAction.com has released the first version of a free 3D simulation game which leverages the browser-based Google Earth plugin as the primary graphics engine. The game is called “Ships” and lets you take the helm on ships - barges, cargo ships, container ships, and even a cruise ship (the Queen Mary 2). Everything is in 3D, you can drive the ships anywhere in the world,
there are sound effects, physical modeling, and realistic visual effects that makes this a wonder to behold. Not only that, but the author - Paul van Dinther - has created some great camera tools to make it easier for people to follow the action and see the sights.
You can try Ships right now, click the “Play Now” button, and make sure you read about the keyboard shortcuts. You can also watch the video review of Ships by Frank Taylor, where you might learn more tips on how to use the simulator. Or, read Frank’s complete review at GearthBlog.com
