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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
In February Microsoft presented the successor of Windows Mobile 6 to the public, the new Windows Phone 7 Series. Last week they told the developer story at the Mix10 conference, and now I can write something about my plans for Diving Log for Phones.
First of all I’m very impressed about the new Windows Phone 7, it’s a brand new platform and something they should have done already 2 years ago. First devices will not show up before end of this year (“to the holiday season”) and the developer tools are still very early builds (pre beta). But it goes definitely into the right direction. The UI is different than any other Smartphone platform currently available:
Even if the UI looks great, behind the scenes are still many limitations and two of them are a big deal for a logbook app: currently there is no database accessible, so it’s difficult – but not impossible – to store the logbook data. And the 2nd issue is that there is currently no way to sync the logbook data locally to the phone. Even local WiFi, which we use for the iPhone sync, is not possible for now. The only way to get data onto the phone is from the “cloud”, which is just a geek word for internet. I’m pretty sure that these limitations will be fixed in future updates, but for now we must get used to it.
Anyways, I have already some ideas to get around those problems and still integrate with Diving Log on the desktop. It’s too early to tell any details or even release dates, but I try to have something out at the launch. Apps can only be distributed via an App Store, just like on the iPhone. I think this is also an improvement for everyone, given the fact that it was sometimes a real pain to install something on a Windows Mobile phone. And old apps won’t run on Windows Phone 7, so everyone will have to recreate their apps. These are the facts so far.
So what about Windows Mobile 6 and older devices? No existing device will be upgradable to Phone 7, including the new HTC HD2. But do not fear, I’ve already started working on an update for the legacy platform (renamed soon by Microsoft to “Windows Phone Classic”). The next version “Diving Log 5.0 Phone” will be optimized for touch with a fresh interface similar to the iPhone Dive Log. Microsoft will continue to support Windows Mobile 6.x for quite some time and existing devices won’t stop working of course with the release of Phone 7 Series.
Generally said I will focus this year on the mobile experience, but also continue to improve the desktop version (the final version 5.0 should be available next week). So stay tuned!
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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:
