Your Event Companion
Android
ConferenceGuide 1.1b1 for Android
Dec 20th
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:
ConferenceGuide 0.4 for Android
Dec 6th
Release 0.4 of ConferenceGuide for Android has been published on Android Market. New features include:
- Starring of conference sessions
- Venue information
- Conference search
- Speaker search
This is an intermediate release. The next major release will be in sync with the iPhone app that has been submitted to Apple’s approval process. For an overview of what will be new in that release, see the screencast.
Devoxx is Over
Nov 24th
It’s time for a summary. Devoxx was the first real-world test for Conference Guide and I have to say that Claes and I are pretty satisfied. Overall, the iPhone version was downloaded 299 times between its release and Sunday, November 22nd, while the Android version was downloaded 123 times on the same period.
For the iPhone version, we have some country-specific figures:
Sales by country
The Grails server held great, despite the fact that there is still no caching on the client side, leading to a lot of requests. Some people complained about the fact that they needed a network connection to use it, which is not the case with other similar apps. But contrary to those apps, we were able to update the server in real time when there were last minute changes:
- One university session and one conference session were canceled and replaced by others
- On Wednesday, when the sound mixer crashed, all sessions were delayed by 15 minutes and we could shift the timetable accordingly.
Now of course, we realize that this online solution is not ideal, and that’s why we are already working on a solution that will take the best of both worlds.
Given the success of this pilot project, we are already working on a new version. Our target is to be ready for the end of January to cover another Java event in Sweden: JFokus. This version should fix most of the limitations we’ve noticed in this version and add a few features, including:
- The ability to “star” sessions
- Venue information screen
- More filters on all screens to get directly to the information you are interested in
We will let you know when the new version is ready. And once again, if you are a conference organizer and you would like your event to be covered by Conference Guide, feel free to contact us.
New release of the Android app
Nov 16th
I have published a new release (0.3.1) of Conference Guide for Android. It contains two minor tweaks:
- The schedule automatically jumps to the current timeslot
- Time strings are now localized
Hopefully I will be able to add “starred” sessions for planning your conference schedule by tomorrow.
Here is the Android Market link and the QR Code again:
