Week 9

Dear Blog,

So over the break Dan Attig has been doing some significant work on the interface, trying to mimic the navigation style and interactions of other successful applications.
There has been a significant update to the design of the main navigation bar below the map interface, and we have eliminated the curl up animation from the map interface, as it just does not degrade at all gracefully. 

We have been looking at Stanfords lecture slides again, in and out of class, looking at how to better manage our memory in the application, the reference counting seems similar to C in Linux, but a little more cumbersome here, no reference to a direct look-up of each variables current ref count means manually tracking them, which is manageable at the moment, but as the application grows to meet the scope this could become a fair bit more difficult.

I have also spent a bit of time this week working on background images, logos and icons to use in the app. The icons that overlay on the application are actually quiet difficult, we are trying to design something that is clear to read, but doesn't distract from the map and keeping with the look and feel of the app. It seems everything we come up with just doesn't work.

Anyways that is it for now until next time,
Daniel T.

Week 8

Dear Blog,

Mid semester review and demo!
The presentation went really well! I polished up the slides over the last few days, and have been practicing to make sure I know it all back the front. The guys have been working hard to finish up polishing the application and I don't want to let them down in my area of this assessment. Missing that time in development with Emily sick really hurt my input on coding for the last week, so I pretty much did the presentation solo, it ran really well thou, it ran smoothly and we had answers to all any of the questions the examiners & guests had.

The key feedback we recieved on the app from the demo were

• Ability to save
• Station Favorites
• Routes
• Traffic Overlays
• Push Notifications when a cheap fuel price is discovered for all users in the vicinity.
• Ads for the specific stations listed in the application.
• Eliminate stations with the highest (worst) prices.
• Being able to stipulate a brand preference when searching fuels, for users that may have loyalty cards, discounts or company cards. 

Its good to have another piece of assessment out of the way, and it seems we are on the right track for the app so far. Time to delve back into the code and catch up on what I missed.

Cheers,
Dan T

Week 7

Dear Blog,

With the mid semester application demo looming next week we have had to jump head first into polishing some of the key aspects of the application.

We have been working heavily on the look and feel of the app this week, trying to mimic the style of other utility applications available from apple, the ways they represent / display their data, ways of implementing options screens, use of apple transitions between views, positioning of buttons / navigation when using the mapview.

Other then that we have been just chipping away at the presentation for next week. I have designed my own PowerPoint presentation template to try and get a more professional feel to the presentation, and since I missed last week of development due to Em being in hospital all week, I have volunteered to do the majority of the presentation for the mid semester review to even the workload between the group.

See you next week,
Dan T.