Gaia GPS user Johnny4Runner posted his OHV track on Everytrail, with pictures and stats from the Prosser Hills OHV area.  Looks like a beautiful area to explore, located near Lake Tahoe, California:

Here's an excellent review from BackcountryRebels.com:

"Gaia GPS, by far the best GPS app IMO. Maps are free world wide, simply grab an area before you head out, it downloads to your phone, no need for cell service.

Oh yeah, it's only $10, works on IOS or Android."

Couldn't have said it better ourselves!

Here's an honorable mention from a Gaia user on the HuntingPA.com forum:

"For those younger tech using, iPhone owning bear hunters, there is a great app called Gaia Gps. This app will track your movements, you can plot points, navigate to them, record pictures at specific locations, etc, etc. it's great. Check it out of your looking for an option to help with navigation."

We have now had multiple reports from users that their external GPS devices (such as the Dual XGPS150 and Bad Elf) fail to connect with apps under iOS6. This includes Gaia GPS and any other GPS apps.

If you are having this issue, please see this blog post by another app developer that outlines steps to fix the bug with external GPS devices under iOS6. Our users tell us this corrects the issue for them. Quote from the blog:

1. Go to the main iPad Settings app.
2. Tap on “Privacy”.
3. Tap on “Location Services”.
4. Toggle the top row to “Off”.  This will turn off location services for all of your apps.
5. Reboot your iPad (press-and-hold the top button for 5 seconds, slide the red slider to power off, wait 5 seconds, then press the top button to turn your iPad back on).
6. Go back to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services and turn location services to “On” for your iPad.  Also make sure that location services are set to “On” for ForeFlight Mobile.
7. Leave your iPad connected the Internet for a few hours (the screen can be off).  This might not be necessary, but we have encountered a few rare cases where this fixed the problem.

Gaia GPS v7.1 is now live on the App Store. The new version of Gaia includes integration with Theodolite, the ability to create URLs that will open Gaia GPS to a given location (gaiagps://map?lat=37.8354&lng=-122.0828&z=14 - tap on your iPhone/iPad to open Gaia), and various bug fixes.

In addition, we have introduced a new premium subscription called Gaia Green. The Green add-on gives you access to layered map downloads, grid overlays, datum-shifting, and premium user support - see the Gaia Green option in Settings for video descriptions of the features.

We are already working on Gaia GPS 7.2 as well, which we think will surprise and delight!

A couple months ago, we stood up a clone of the open source New York Public Library (NYPL) Map Warper site, for use in our app Gaia GPS. However, we don't have any Ruby skills in-house, and we need some help fixing and improving the site.

For this gig, you will be paid on contract, and your work will remain open source. We will under no circumstances close any improvements we make to the warper.

You can view the warper here: warper.gaiagps.com

You can download the source code here: github.com/trailbehind/Gaia-Map-Warper

For the main things we want to fix, you don't need any GIS/map knowledge - you can probably observe some of these bugs just by looking at the warper site. However, if you are also good with maps, we will likely ask you to make more interesting improvements to the warper. Extra bonus points if you are good with sysadmin and deployment on Amazon EC2, but this is also not a requirement.

If you are interested in this gig, please send me an email at andrew@gaiagps.com

If you need a handy man in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, or anywhere else in the Bay Area, I recommend my neighbor Oscar Ramirez. He's done all sorts of work for me, from painting, to installing a doggie door, to hanging white boards at our new offices.

He is super-friendly, competent, and doesn't charge an arm and a leg. He thinks things through and comes up with the right solution, and the work is high-quality and lasting. What more do you want?

Gaia GPS and Offline Topo Maps have a temporary issue for people upgrading from iOS5->iOS6.

None of your data has been lost, but when you update your operating system, the apps misplace your tracks and maps. This is because we have a bit of fragile code, and it broke when Apple changed a "hash" function in iOS6.

To address this issue:

• if you start fresh on iOS6, you are fine
• if you upgraded from iOS5 to iOS6, sit tight - our next update will restore all of your tracks and maps
• if you don't have tracks or maps you care about, just delete and reinstall the app

Our update should be approved sometime next week. Unfortunately, we had a big release in review, but we found this bug and had to pull it. We imagine it will take Apple 2-10 days to approve our update.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. While we had been working with the new iOS6 developer kit, we totally missed this issue. As a result, we are trying to determine how to improve our QA process around operating system updates.

This blog post should tell you all you need to know about iBurn 2012. Thanks to everyone who helped make the app happen this year, especially new iBurner David Brodsky, who made a full-fledged Android version. iBurn has a lot of community support this year!

• Password - The password to unlock the app is "venus" - to honor the Roman goddess of fertility, and in accordance with the Burning Man theme for 2012!
• iPhone/iPad - Download iBurn from iTunes.
• Android - Download iBurn from the Google Play store, or download the APK directly.
• Burning Man Map for Gaia GPS - Follow this link to add the map to Gaia GPS.
• Source Code
  • Download the iPhone source code here.
• Meet iBurners - Drop by the Burning Man Earth camp to meet many of the people who worked on iBurn. Head for center camp, and look behind "Earth Guardians" and next to "Ranger HQ." Ask for Haggis, Chris, David, or Savannah.

I did a quick interview about Gaia GPS and our company with GPS Bites.

I open sourced a new way to monetize a mobile app, called PledgeWall.

PledgeWall is a widget that lets users write a message on a public wall, and their messages get styled and placed more prominently based on how much money they pledge. I consider this to be an alternative to traditional methods of app monetization.

I built PledgeWall using Parse, because it's the easiest thing ever. In the past, I'd usually fire up a Django/AppEngine instance, and do any simple server-side stuff there, but Parse is easily 100X as fast from a cold start - and I really didn't want to spend more time than most of a Saturday on this app release.

PledgeWall in StopWatch+

Let me back up - I built this PledgeWall widget for v1.2 of my timer app, StopWatch+ (source code) (download free from iTunes).

StopWatch+ is my experiment in what happens if I pick a common, easy-to-build app with established market leaders, and try and beat them simply by having the best app in the genre.

v1.0 of StopWatch was:

• biggest possible button is my key differentiator - no button at all
• countdown with multiple modes
• remember all of your times; export, and delete
• Tweet a time (only added this because Apple wouldn't approve another simple stopwatch app - I got rejected the first time)

In v1.1, I still didn't add anything server-side, but I did try and monetize it:

• added countdown timer
• added prompt to buy "Bowser Skin" - a red/yellow theme for the app for .99
• iPad universal

Which brings me to v1.2. Unhappy with making $1/day from selling Bowser Skins, yet getting 400 downloads/day, I decided I needed a creative way to monetize the app. I didn't want to be another schlocky ad-riddled app, which would make $2/day instead. So, v1.2 is some graphical improvements, bug fixes, and PledgeWall.

How to Monetize StopWatch+ and Make it Fun for Users

PledgeWall is inspired by a couple of things. One is the age old concept of published listing of sponsors - like when you go to a play, the program always includes the rich people who donated in the back, with prominent placement for the biggest donors.

I am also an NPR fan, and I love the kind of content that gets produced by their similar model of having people donate. My complaint with NPR has always been that once you pledge, the station still bombards you with the pledge drive. PledgeWall only nags you until you pledge!

Finally, it's inspired by modern day companies like KickStarter and Indiegogo - these start-ups have given me greater faith in users to participate in voluntary funding of app development.

Going Serverless with Parse

My company has a great many servers, which thankfully my wife/co-founder Anna tends, along with our gracious friends who help us bring back dead Amazon machines when storms strike and corrupt our RAID. This happened to us the same weekend I was working on StopWatch+ v1.2.

So, when I needed to add a server-side component to my app, StopWatch+, I decided it was a perfect opportunity to save myself a lot of now-time and future-time, by using Parse. You can find all of this in the complete source code, but here are the bits where I used the API:

1) Never-ending tableview

Someday, I hope the Pledge Wall has millions of posts, and I wanted to make sure it would handle any number of posts. So, I have a never-ending tableView that lets you "Load More" after each 1000 entries. Here's a screenshot and the Parse code:

I'm not sure if this is the "idiomatic" way to do this in Parse, or if such a thing even exists, but here's my implementation:

// if we have never loaded pledges or we need to fresh, load pledges
- (void) viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
  [super viewDidAppear:animated];
  if ([self.pledges count] == 0 || self.pledgeCount == FLAGGED_FOR_REFRESH) {    
    self.pledges = [NSMutableArray array];
    [self loadMorePledges];
    [[self.view viewWithTag:LOADING_VIEW_TAG]removeFromSuperview];
  }
}

// fetch up to PLEDGES_PER_CHUNK more pledges to show on the server 
- (void) loadMorePledges {
  PFQuery *query = [PFQuery queryWithClassName:@"Pledge"];
  // great syntax for cascading sorts
  [query orderByDescending:@"level"];
  [query addDescendingOrder:@"createdOnDevice"];
  query.limit = PLEDGES_PER_CHUNK;
  query.skip = [pledges count];
  [query findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock:^(NSArray *objects, NSError *error) {
    if (!error) {
      if ([objects count] < PLEDGES_PER_CHUNK) {
        self.pledgeCount = NO_PLEDGES_TO_FETCH;
      } else {        
        self.pledgeCount = PLEDGES_TO_FETCH;
      }
      self.pledges = [self.pledges arrayByAddingObjectsFromArray:objects];
      [self.tableView reloadData];
    } else {
      NSLog(@"Error: %@ %@", error, [error userInfo]);
    }
  }];  
}

And here's a look at the UI where you buy the pledges too:

The Parse code for saving a pledge is canonically simple, goodbye server:

- (void) addPledge {
  PFObject *pledge = [PFObject objectWithClassName:@"Pledge"];
  [pledge setObject:N(buyRow) forKey:@"level"];
  [pledge setObject:pledgeField.text forKey:@"message"];
  [pledge setObject:[NSDate date] forKey:@"createdOnDevice"];
  [pledge save];
  …
}

2) added ability to control events serverside

Right when I was about to ship the app, I decided I wanted to be able to control how often I prompted users to pledge from the server-side. I wanted to launch it with the same frequency StopWatch+ now uses for prompting the user to buy a "bowser color pack," and see if prompting people to pledge at the same rate resulted in different revenue. Then, I want to be able to adjust the prompt frequency and measure the results from that.

I estimate it's 100 times faster to do this with Parse than with AppEngine/Django. Even if you already have an instance set up, it's still more than 10X faster to write the following code, than to write a view, edit urls.py, and deploy an update.

#define BUG_ME_DAYS_DEFAULT 10
// prompt the user to pledge, control time between prompts via Parse dashboard
- (void) comeOnPromptMeMaybe {
  SavingDictionary *settingsDict = SETTINGS_DICT;    
  int launches = [[settingsDict objectForKey:@"LAUNCHES"]intValue];
  if (launches <=0) {
    launches = 1;
  } else {
    launches++;
  }
  PFQuery *query = [PFQuery queryWithClassName:@"NumberOfLoads"];
  [query findObjectsInBackgroundWithBlock:^(NSArray *objects, NSError *error) {
    int bugMeDays = BUG_ME_DAYS_DEFAULT;
    if (!error) {
      bugMeDays = [[[objects objectAtIndex:0]objectForKey:@"loads"]intValue];
    } else {
      NSLog(@"Error: %@ %@", error, [error userInfo]);
    }
    if (launches < bugMeDays) {
      [settingsDict setObject:N(launches) forKey:@"LAUNCHES"];        
    } else {
      [settingsDict setObject:N(0) forKey:@"LAUNCHES"];
      [self promptToBuy];
    }
  }];  
}

3) use the online spreadsheet view to do moderation

I am a bit worried people will scrawl obscenities all over the PledgeWall, but I really don't want to deal with the issue in a heavy-handed way until it either happens, or people start pledging in droves. So, I was delighted just to have the ability to go edit/delete posts on Parse's online dashboard, so I can do post facto moderation:

4) Serverless in-app purchases

Also, setting up IAP is typically a pain, but since I just used non-subscription purchases and had Parse to store the messages, it was super-simple. The app-building world is starting to be an easier place!

Conclusions

My takeaways from this project so far are:

• Hacking on the weekends fun - according to my Harvest app, I have 23.18 hours logged so far on StopWatch+ - right now, I'm making nickels per hour, but maybe PledgeWall will do the trick - I don't need to make much for this to be both fun and worthwhile!
• Parse is magic - hat tip to my friend Kevin for helping build the machine
• You can beat entrenched apps just by programming, but it takes some persistence. I'm looking at you Tim O' - you're going down!
• Maybe there's a company somewhere in PledgeWall, though it probably needs to grow past my implementation and not just use Apple In-App-Purchases.

Other than that, I don't yet know how well PledgeWall is working, since the release just launched, but I'll report on the numbers when I know. I hope to also conclude from this project that ads suck and PledgeWall is the future! If this works out at all, I have another app coming up where we think it will be much more suitable - a very philanthropic project.

Software License

I am including the full source code for my StopWatch+ app as part of this post, under the following license. If you have any questions about if you can use the code, email stopwatch@gaiagps.com.

You MAY copy/steal/use any one method or class file in the project - you MAY even use many methods or classes. However, you MAY NOT publish this code verbatim as another app, nor may you augment the code and publish it as another app.

Some things we intend you to do:

• use all the PledgeWall code in your own app
• use any view, including the main view, but write all other code yourself
• use this app as a template to make an identical Android app

Just don't copy my StopWatch app and publish it. That wouldn't be nice. I won't even sue you, but I'll make fun of you on the internet, and crush your app by programming better :P

UPDATE: On Thursday July 5, around 9pm PST, Apple re-pushed out the Gaia GPS v6.5 update, and presumably updates for all the affected apps. You should now be able to download the latest release, which will fix your app if you downloaded a corrupt binary.

ORIGINAL POST: Many people have emailed to say new installs and updates of Gaia GPS are crashing. This is an issue with the App Store itself, and affects many apps that had updates on July 4.

This blog provides steps to resolve the issue, background, and links to news articles and blogs.

How to Fix

1. Some people are still receiving corrupt binaries, and others are not. You may simply want to wait to update, until Apple issues a statement saying everything is fixed.
2. If you already updated and Gaia doesn’t work, you can delete the app, and try and download it again. Many people report this now works, though some are still receiving bad binaries as of 11am Thursday, July 5.
3. Some users report they can download a proper copy to iTunes on their computer, and load the new version to Gaia that way.
4. If you received a corrupt binary, and you need to recover your data, there are three options:
   1. Restore your phone from a backup from iCloud or iTunes, and wait to update.
   2. Wait for the next release of Gaia GPS, or for Apple to push a fix to this issue directly. Your data is still there, the app is just unloadable.
   3. Contact support@gaiagps.com, and we can help you get your data immediately, in a pinch. Please have mercy, because this is time-consuming for us.

Background

Apple reviewed and approved our latest update on July 4. Soon after, we began getting emails from people letting us know that Gaia would not boot – these emails came from both new users and people who updated. These reports were mostly, if not all, from people running iOS 5.1.1.

At that point, we checked our automatic crash logger, where we did not see any reported crashes. We then loaded up the app on to 7 devices. One of the devices, an iPhone running iOS 5.1.1, received a corrupt binary and would not boot Gaia. At that point, we ran the device under debug mode in XCode, booting from the build of our code we shipped to Apple. Again, we were not able to detect any crashes.

Finally, we began to suspect the issue was with the App Store itself. Soon, blog posts and confirmations emerged that other developers were having the same issue.

As of 11am on July 5, Apple is mum on the issue.

Other Links

1. You can read about affected apps and symptoms on the Instapaper blog.
2. TechCrunch is calling it a FairPlay DRM issue.
3. ZDNet is suggesting a way to get a non-corrupt binary via iTunes.
4. An app called GoodReader is providing this guidance to users.
5. There is also a discussion thread on Hacker News.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused during the holiday. We'll update our blog as we get more information.

At TrailBehind, we make apps that help people find their way – whether they’re hiking, flying, or going to Burning Man.

This summer, we’re looking for a paid intern to work on marketing our hit hiking app, Gaia GPS, and probably wear a dozen other hats. You will have the opportunity to work part-time all summer and into the fall. We are located in Berkeley, CA.

Here’s a list of things you may end up doing:

• Grow our online presence through Twitter, Facebook, and our blog
• Work with journalists to develop stories about our apps
• Create videos and other media
• Make our website better

Good candidates for this position are:

• Work without direction
• Come up with creative solutions to problems
• Might code a little bit sometimes, when it comes up
• Have a passion for maps and/or the outdoors

How to Apply

Please send an email to jobs@gaiagps.com with any information that you think would help distinguish you as a candidate.

About TrailBehind, Inc.

For more information about Gaia GPS, check out our website at www.gaiagps.com

• Crittercism- sends us anonymous crash reports from users, and tracks DAU and MAU - also has other features to communicate with users that we will soon integrate
  
• TestFlight- the only way to fly when it comes to managing test users - we beta test many apps with many groups of people, and TestFlight keeps it simple
  
• GitHub- The best hosted source control in the world. Every week it seems, they are coming out with new features that I actually use, while maintaining the site I know and love.
  
• UserVoice- absolutely the best way to solicit, sort, and act on user feedback. There are other similar services, but none
  
• Harvest- The easiest to use and most comprehensive time-tracking tool on the market. We end up doing custom apps for people based on our platform, and this is how we track and bill.
  
• Appirater- A dead simple, drop-in library for getting user reviews. Sure, we could make our own, but this has been doing the job for us since 2009.
  

• stellwagen.noaa.gov
• earthnc
• NOAA release
• Boing Boing article
• National Geographic article

1. Plug your device into iTunes
2. Select the device in the menu on the left

1. Select the Apps tab at the top

>

1. Select Gaia GPS from the list of apps at the bottom

1. Delete the file called "newSettings.txt" from Gaia (press the delete button on your keyboard) Then tap "Delete".

• The position is part-time to hire. Expect 20 hours of work per week to start, potential for full-time after 3 months.

• We are offering $15-25/hour, depending on your strength as a candidate.

• You can work from our office in Berkeley, and after the first week, you can choose to work at home instead.

• We would prefer you have a college degree or are working towards one, though it is not required.

The new version of Gaia GPS for Android, v3.2, should now work with devices that have been upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich. It's also must faster and more memory efficient.

if you have any issues with Gaia under the new operating system, please email us at android@gaiagps.com.

iTunes makes it hard for people to get refunds for apps they don't like - you have to send an email to Apple, and they won't always provide a refund. Android too - on the Android Market, you can only get a refund within 15 minutes of your download.

That's not how we think it should work though - if you don't like our apps for any reason, send us an email at gaia@gaiagps.com, and we're happy to provide a refund, no questions asked.

Despite all the shenanigans this week, we're back online with topo maps now.

In Gaia GPS, go to Settings->Help to show topo maps in the app. The default topo map source no longer works, but you can use topos by activating them in Settings->Help.

In addition, the new versions of Gaia GPS and Offline Topo Maps should be live next week, and they include our new topo server as the default source.

Here's a new video that explains how to record tracks using Gaia GPS.

You can also access this in Gaia's Help section in the app.

Update: We now have our own USGS topo server. It's live in our Android app now, and we're pushing an update to Apple today. Thanks to all of our users for the flood of supportive emails, and thanks to our partner EarthNC (maker of Marine Charts) for standing up the topo server literally overnight.

I'm sorry folks, but as of today the MyTopo maps are dead in Gaia GPS. We should have an alternate topo source up later this week, but for now, users will be limited to the OpenCycleMap topos.

This was a competitive move by Trimble, following their acquisition of MyTopo this summer. We were given no warning, and they did this intentionally in order to cripple our app, as well as a leading outdoor app on Android, Backcountry Navigator. We found out when maps stopped showing up in our apps - no email, no phone call, no nothing. Their purpose was to mow down the competition, so that they could dominate with their line of inferior apps.

I understand the cold-blooded reasoning that would lead to this course of action, but I could never imagine making such an unprofessional move, regardless of the money at stake. And it's much worse than just not warning us - they went as far as to lull us into believing this wouldn't happen. When MyTopo was acquired, we were told that we would be warned about impending changes in the usage of their tile server. Furthermore, I have spent the last month and a half discussing my company being acquired by Trimble, all the while they were systematically plotting to ruin us instead.

What is even more disturbing about this is that Trimble is jeopardizing people's lives, for money. I doubt it will work out that way, and I hope with all my soul and being that it will not, but it is simply irresponsible to pull maps from circulation with no warning. Despite our disclaimers and Terms of Use telling users that Gaia GPS can't be relied on, people still use the app for critical navigation. If this move strands someone in the woods or gets a traveler lost overseas, Trimble will regret these machinations dearly.

And look at this scummy image they are serving up instead

If Trimble thinks this is the end of Gaia GPS, they are sorely mistaken. I don't think they realize that my friends in the industry can replace the MyTopo server in a matter of days, and that they are coming to our aid to do just that. As we speak, our allies with expertise in maps and GIS are taking time away from their families and evenings to help us respond to this emergency and stand up a new topo server. While we'll take some lumps over the course of the next few days, in the end we'll go back to beating the tar out of Trimble on Android, iPhone, iPad, and everywhere else they try and compete with us. The end result of this move will simply be a black stain on the Trimble's corporate name and the wicked corporate suits who dreamed it up.

The sad truth is that despite having vast marketing resources, and tons of money to spend on development, Trimble makes inferior apps. They brand them with well-known logos (Backpacker and Cabella's), outsource development to people who don't care, and then use vicious moves like this when their apps get dominated by Gaia GPS. So if they want to fight dirty, bring it. It just makes me want to redouble my efforts and beat them all the more.

The latest in our series of how-to videos gives a quick tour of the Map Screen and goes over all of the main features you can use. This information will probably be old news to current Gaia users, but we hope it will get newcomers off to a quick start.

As always, we have linked the video under help in the app, and you can view it in Gaia by going to Settings->Help.

Our series of videos on how to use Gaia GPS is coming right along. The third video in the series demonstrates how you can get guidance to waypoints and tracks that you create or import.

You can watch it on YouTube, and it's included in Gaia's Help section as well.

I'm happy to say that I received an email from Apple tech support today, letting us know they reworked the "cleaning" behavior in iOS5 that hurt the type of apps we develop. This addresses the problems that I had blogged about and the developer of Instapaper blogged about prior.

Here is a snippet from the email:

"I'm happy to tell you that I have some new information that should resolve your issue.  Included in the newly released beta of iOS 5.0.1 is support for a new extended attribute that will allow you to exclude files from all backups on a per file basis."

As a stop-gap, we had moved our map caching to the directory that gets backed up to iCloud and included a view to tell people how to disable backups. This was the only way to get around maps being randomly deleted. Now, we can use this new method to save your maps locally without having to back up all the gigs of data to the cloud.

We'll be implementing this change as soon as the new iOS release goes out of beta. Hat tip to Apple for listening on this one.

We have finished our second video for Gaia GPS. This 50-second spot shows you how to download maps for offline use and how to center on the downloaded section later. It also talks a bit about how much space the maps take up.

You can watch it on YouTube, and it's included in Gaia's Help section too.