I poured my heart into creating the mobile mapper but there are still some issues that still seem to crop up and there's not much I can do about it. Network speed of the phone connection and the performance of the watertribe servers will determine if the app works or not. So please keep this in mind and don't rely on the mapper because it won't work when connections are shakey.
Last night the network was real slow and it took me many tries to get the map to load. I even went in and cleared the app cache on my phone. Eventually I got it to work but I imagine these problems will crop up during the race. Be patient and keep trying. I did the best I could to speed it up.
There is a new critical update I uploaded for the iphone/ipad's. The update is already in place for android phones and you should be running version 2.0.4-6 There were problems with the refresh button not working correctly. See the following screenshot to make sure your app is running the correct version.
It's been quite a challenge doing the iphone version because you must upload the app to the itunes store with a macintosh. I've been paying someone to do this for me but they were very unreliable. As the EC is coming up soon, I was stressed out that they didn't do what they should have so I ended up having to go out and buy a mac last week just to upload the upgraded app in time for the EC. So hopefully Wednesday 2/27 will have the new iphone/ipad version available after apple approves it. They take exactly one week to approve (or not) any updates.
Last night, a spectator downloaded the app to his iphone and then complained to me about how the app got stuck when he went into the mobile mapper and tried to use the mapper to browse the internet. He figured out a way to do it. While in the mapper he clicked on the about screen then clicked the http://www.watertribe.com link and it opened a browser. Then he went a blog and it crashed when a large picture loaded. The iphone browser that loaded didn't have any back up buttons so he was stuck and had to delete the app and then reinstall it. He had a real good point in telling me this. If you're on the water and then decide to try to use the iphone mobile mapper app as an internet browser then you'll get stuck and have to reinstall. Not something you want to do on the water.
So in future versions I'll close that up but there's not enough time before the EC. So don't go to the about screen and click on the watertribe link if you have an iphone. The android versions are fine because android has a backup button on all phones. But on iphone, you won't be able to back up.
One last thing about the mapper I want to talk about is the help button. If you click your help button on the spot it means you're dropping out or DNF. I light up the mapper with the following help icon instead of the challengers icon. 90 minutes after the help was pressed, the icon greys out and that icon stays on the mobile mapper. That way you can look at the mapper and notice who is still active in the race. The help button “might” mean a racer is in trouble too. If it's lit up out at sea possibly. But there's no real way to know what the issue is. Just something to be aware of.
Hopefully the mapper will work most of the time but I anticipate problems during the race with heavy server loads. Please be patient and keep trying it if it doesn't load right off. I have done everything I know of to make it work efficiently.
