Your Event Companion
ConferenceGuide 1.1b1 for Android
ConferenceGuide 1.1b1 for Android has just be published to Android Market. The new features are the same as those in the 1.1 version for the iPhone:
- Conference search
- Speaker search
- Schedule search
- Starred session view for helping you plan which sessions to attend (inspired by the Google I/O 2009 app)
During the last few weeks we have also added three new conferences to the database: Jfokus, DagsVara, and Macworld (schedule not added yet).
ConferenceGuide 1.1b1 is a first beta and has some UI glitches related to automatically expanding the schedule’s time slots. I will have a fix for that after the holidays. The rest of the app should work properly, but let me know if you discover any issues.
Here is a clickable QR-code for downloading the app from Android Market:
December 20, 2009 - 5:35 pm
Hi,
first of all a big thumbs up for your application. Unfortunately I bought my android after devoxx, so I haven’t had the chance to try it on the field yet, but I will do that soon.
Two questions:
- do you have plans to introduce caching? That would definitely be useful, since the majority of the conferences is abroad, and data plans are always punishing when you are in roaming.
- is there a way to signal to you (or even submit the appropriate documentation files for) upcoming conferences? I see your tool very useful not only to browse conference schedules, but also to discover new conferences
December 20, 2009 - 5:44 pm
Concerning upcoming conferences, we are definitely looking for more events to add to our calendar. So if you would like ConferenceGuide to cover a specific event, please feel free to send us everything you’ve got to info@conferencegui.de
We definitely have plans to introduce caching, as well as a few other very interesting features for attendees, like Twitter integration, schedule builder and others. The iPhone version should offer those features in a premium package for a very affordable price very soon. The Android version will follow as soon as we figure out how to sell these on the Android marketplace. What do you think?
December 20, 2009 - 7:37 pm
Cool!
I don’t see any problem in a commercial version, I think the application (especially with caching and social integration, why not flickr as well?) is worth it.
Another cool thing is to extend it to other technical events like user group meetings. There are already good lists out there, such as
http://www.jugevents.org/jugevents/
(for java user groups).
Final touch (I’m running fast, I know
would be cool to add geographic event search like what Alice does for music gigs:
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-citc-alice-zEqB.aspx
December 20, 2009 - 7:57 pm
Flickr integration is an excellent idea. You know what? I’ve created a community feedback account so that you or anyone else can submit feature requests like that, or vote for existing ones. The widget is in the sidebar of this blog. Feel free to add Flickr integration to it and to tell us more about how you imagine that feature.
Concerning covering other types of events, for now, we can cover all events that have a grid-like schedule, which certainly applies to events like JUG meetings. By the way, we are also working on an administration interface that will allow any event organizer to add their event to our database and thus promote it via ConferenceGuide. I’ve seen you are a JUG leader yourself. Would you be interested in such a possibility?
As for geographic event search, it’s an excellent idea too, it would make a great entry point as well. Please feel free to add it to the user feedback. By the way, I’ll try to add the features we have thought of ourselves to let people vote for them.
Thanks a lot for your feedback and your suggestions.
December 21, 2009 - 11:51 pm
Filippo,
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you like the app! Sorry for the delay in my reply, I’m on the road. As Sébastien has already replied, we realize an offline mode is a must-have feature. I’ll start working on that as soon as I’ve finished 1.1.