Posts Tagged ‘Windows Phone’

Diving Log for Windows Phone update

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

Today Diving Log 3.1 for Windows Phone has been released to the marketplace. It contains the following new features:

  • Search function for lists (dive sites, buddies, etc…)
  • Retrieve dive site coordinates from GPS
  • Buddy signature for dives
  • Dive site map
  • Navigation features within the map

Your buddy can now sign your dives on the phone and the signature will sync back to the PC. The signature will also sync to the iOS Dive Log and Dive Log Manager:

The integrated dive map experience will show all your dive sites with GPS coordinates (like the PC version). When you tap on a flag the name will be shown. Another tap on the label will navigate to the dive site details page. Additionally the map can show your current position on the map and calculate navigation data like speed, distance to the selected dive site and ETA (estimated time of arrival). You can pin the map right on your WP start screen and if you have a dive site selected, it will automatically zoom to that region. That way you can quickly access your favorite dive sites or the island of your next trip right from the start screen:

Tap on the new search button in the app bar to filter countries, cities, dive sites, etc. In the dive site editor, the position button will retrieve your current position and store it in the coordinate fields. The background color shows you the accuracy (red = bad, yellow = average, green = good):

Diving Log 3.0 for Windows Phone released

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

The marketplace testing team was really quick and approved version 3.0 of Diving Log for Windows Phone (you should get the update notification in the next few hours on your 7.5 device). This is a big update and brings finally the long awaited editing functionality to your phone. Now you can add, edit and delete the following logbook data right on your phone:

  • Dives
  • Countries
  • Cities
  • Dive sites
  • Buddies
  • Equipment
  • Shops and dive centers
  • Trips
  • Personal data and certifications

I’ve implemented many data pickers, so you won’t have to type a lot of text. You can also add photos from the pictures hub or right from the camera and store them within your logbook. You can upload the changes to your Dropbox and import them to the Diving Log desktop version, where you could merge your dive data with profiles and other data from your dive computer. When you’re done you sync everything back to your phone.

In the next couple of minor updates I’ll add things like GPS coordinate picker for dive sites, buddy signature, equipment items used for a dive and more.


Diving Log 2.2 for Windows Phone released

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

You should see the update notification on your Windows Phone 7.5 within the next few hours, and it contains some great new features:

  • Secondary Live Tiles
  • More dive data
  • Navigate through your logbook with linked items
  • Tap-to-dive support in the statistics
  • Landscape support on all pages

You can now pin parts of your logbook data right onto the start screen of your phone, e.g. a dive, equipment item, dive site, buddy, your next trip or your certifications for quick and easy access. When you tap on the tile you get straight to that item within your logbook. Most of the tiles are 2-sided and display further information on the back, e.g. the next service date of your equipment or the GPS coordinates of that dive site.

You can tap now on any section on the dive overview page to navigate to a detailed page with more data. Now almost the complete logbook data from your desktop logbook is supported on Windows Phone (editing of that data will be possible early next year). When you tap on linked items like country, city, place, trip and dive center, you can navigate right to that item. You can also tap on the statistics page on any of the highlighted numbers to navigate to that particular dive. That gives you a nice and fluent navigation through your logbook data.


Windows Phone update released

Friday, October 28th, 2011

I’ve released a minor update of Diving Log for Windows Phone, which should show up on your phone within the next few hours. Diving Log is now optimized for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and supports fast app switching for better multitasking. There are also some performance improvements, Bing Maps integration for addresses and dive site coordinates and a new star-rating control.

When the text within your logbook data is colored in the accent color of the phone, you can tap on it to launch the corresponding task, e.g. view a location in maps, call a phone number, visit a website or launch the email app, etc. Please note that the update will only be available for phones which are already updated to OS version 7.5.

Diving Log for Windows Phone beta now available

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

The beta version of the next update of Diving Log for Windows Phone 7 is now available. If you want to join the beta test, please send me your Windows Live ID (email address) associated with your Windows Phone to info (at) divinglog.de. You will then receive an email with a link, that you can open on your phone to download the beta version from the marketplace. The beta will run for 3 month (expires on December 9) and runs on WP 7.0 (NoDo) or 7.5 (Mango) devices. You will also need a Dropbox account to sync your logbook to the phone and the Dropbox client application has to be installed on your PC. When you use the beta version, please provide feedback and report any problems.

Sneak peek at upcoming Windows Phone update

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

It has been a little silent around the Windows Phone 7 version of Diving Log during the last time, but today I want to show you some of the upcoming great new features of the next big update. Below you can see the new logbook hub, which is the main interface and gives you access to your most important logbook data on your phone:

For those who are not familiar with the Windows Phone hub concept: hubs are the main interface for data on the phone where you have your most important information right at your fingertips. You can swipe left and right and it serves as starting point to dig deeper into your data. You can change the background image and pick your favorite photo from the picture library. When you tap on the arrow symbol in the top right corner of the dive list, you will get to a jump list to navigate quickly to any dive. When you tap on one of the tiles on the right side, you’ll get another jump list with your detailed data, e.g. all your dive sites.

 

To get the logbook file(s) onto your phone you will use the Dropbox sync function, already implemented in Diving Log on the desktop. The update will be available in 2nd half of October and will likely target the new Mango version of Windows Phone. In September you can join a beta test for this version. If you are interested to participate, please write me a short email. Data editing and uploading to Dropbox will unfortunately not yet be implemented in this version.

Diving Log for Windows Phone promoted in Marketplace

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

That’s a nice move from the marketplace team at Microsoft – they currently promote Diving Log in the German Zune software and on the phone. Thank you very much!

Diving Log recommended in Zune

Dropbox Sync

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

The next update of Diving Log will also contain the ability to synchronize logbooks across multiple Windows PC’s, Mac’s and Smartphones using the new Dropbox sync function. Dropbox is a very popular, free and multi-platform online storage and sync service. Once you’ve installed the Dropbox client on all your PC’s and Mac’s you can exchange easily any file between your computers by simply coping the file into the special Dropbox folder on your disk. Note: The Dropbox client application has to be installed on the PC to use this sync function!

Dropbox Sync

But Diving Log does not simply copy your desktop logbook file, because the Access database format is not really platform independent and could not be read on the Mac or on smartphones. The new Dropbox sync will export your logbook into the SQLite format and also import any changes from other computers back into your logbook. The sync function can manage different logbook files and also additional information like the last sync date and time and from which computer the logbook was last updated.

I will add support for Dropbox sync in future to the Windows Phone 7 version, so you can seamlessly exchange logbook data between any device running WP7, Windows or Mac OS. This feature provides you additionally an online backup system, so you can easily get your dives back when your hard drive crashed.

Diving Log for Windows Phone 7

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

You probably already have heard from Microsoft’s brand new Windows Phone 7 smartphone, the successor of Windows Mobile. WP7 is a complete new mobile OS including an app store called “Marketplace” accessible through the Zune software. During the past few weeks I’ve created a new version of Diving Log for WP7, which is now available in the Marketplace:

Dive List

Dive Details

Today I want to show you some screenshots of the UI and details about the features of the first version. WP7 has a special UI design – a very simplified design which follows the motto “content, not chrome”. It offers also a dark and light theme and several user selectable “accent colors”. Diving Log integrates nicely into the phone design and supports the dark and light theme, as well as the accent color.

Light theme

Orange accent color

Profile full screen view

Because local synchronization is not so easy on Windows Phone 7 at the moment, the sync works currently via one of the 3 supported online logbooks Divelogs, YourDiveBook or Dilogs. So you would upload your dives with Diving Log to one of these online logbooks, and then you can download the dive data onto the phone. In future I will add also a local sync via WiFi.

Statistics

Sync Settings

In this first version you unfortunately can’t edit the data yet on your phone. The possibility to add, edit and upload dives will be added early 2011 in an update. So at the moment it is “view only”. Due to the way the sync works at the moment, not all data will be synced to your phone in this version (just the data which is supported by the online logbook you choose). But these things will be improved over time.

Nitrox Calculator

SAC Calculator

Read more in this tutorial >>>

Diving Log gets GPS

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Finally, this is something I wanted to add for quite a long time: GPS support. I’ve added now GPS functionality to both, Windows Mobile and Diving Log 5.0 on the desktop. In this blog post I cover the Diving Log GPS Tool for Windows Mobile which is now available. I’ll post soon an update for Diving Log 5.0 which allows you to download coordinates directly from a connected GPS device and adds also support for several coordinate formats in the dive site dialog.

Diving Log GPS

The GPS Tool for Windows Mobile is touch optimized (finger friendly) and can be downloaded here (copy to the device and tap on it).

It requires .NET Compact Framework 3.5 and runs as a standalone tool in addition to Diving Log 4.5 for Windows Mobile. If you have Diving Log 4.5 installed on your phone, the GPS Tool will connect to your logbook on the device and allows you to store coordinates into existing dive sites or as a new dive site. You can later sync these dive sites with coordinates back into your desktop logbook and Diving Log 5.0.

The tool has also basic navigation features, which can be handy when you are on a dive boat. You can select any dive site from your logbook and it will display the distance from your current position, the travel speed, course, time and ETA (estimated time of arrival). You can select between several unit types in the menu.

During the implementation of the GPS functionality I’ve found also an interesting tutorial how to connect your Windows Mobile phone to your PC and using the phone GPS as an external GPS device for your desktop. This way you can use the upcoming GPS functionality in Diving Log 5.0 without the need for a separate GPS device when you have a Windows Mobile phone with built in GPS.

Save as new site

Update dive site