PCF iPhone App

[Cory_lover]

Wouldn't it be great if there was a Planet Catfish iPhone App out there?

I know it'd be mega useful when I'm at the LFS and I spot something i haven't seen before, and it's so special and so rare that I just had to have it!! But alas, being unsure of the species, temperament and husbandry requirements, there's been uncountable times when I've had to return home to look up this website for more detailed information than supplied at the LFS.

But all that could disappear if we could just whip out our iphones and check online!!!! Now if only I know someone who knows how to make these apps

[Jools]

It's been talked about before, at least in terms of forum access. Interest was limited. You can browse the catelog log quite easily using safari in landscape orientation for the kind of app you're talking about.

Aside from the cost, I'm a decent programmer and could do it, just wonder if 200 folks would buy it. I've only ever met one person wandering around a fish store with an iphone and I wander around a lot of fish stores!

Don't get me wrong, I agree there's big potential, but there is a huge "thing" lurking in in my mind as to where this will go and I need to get the back end web site ready before I can truly harness the iPlatforms.

Jools

[Cory_lover]

Ahh right fair enough then. Thanks though, Jools!

[Jools]

Ahh right fair enough then. Thanks though, Jools!

Do you use the catelog "in-store"? Happy to consider what changes to that might be useful meantime.

Jools

[MatsP]

The Cat-eLog appears to work fine on my Nokia N97 too (using the "standard" browser) - the screen is a bit small, which makes everything tiny [unless you zoom in, at which point you only see half a picture at a time], but aside from having something larger to carry around (e.g. iPad or one of them 7-10" lap-tap computers), there isn't much that can be done about that - the iPhone up to 3G has a 320 x 480 pixel screen, the N97 has a 360 x 640, so a bit more. The iPhone 4 has 640 x 960 pixels - but the size of the screen is the same, so the pixels are just smaller.

I'd like to understand what an application does that the web-browser can't do?

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Mats

[Cory_lover]

Yeah i have, mostly to ID a species, or to find a picture to show the LFS of the fish I'm referring to, or to find more specific info like max size and pH range tolerable etc...

[Cory_lover]

Mats,

I think the iphone app (if it exists) would have a more 'accessible' layout, rather than the original website layout on a browser, which doubtless has such extensive information, that isn't really practical "on the go", with all that link-clicking and zooming in and out. I think the main benefit of the app would be to have equal access (especially to species info) right at the fingertips, and with the click of as little links as possible.

[Jools]

I'd like to understand what an application does that the web-browser can't do?

Well, a lot. Loads of GL stuff, geo positioning, camera integration, the GUI device stuff (try googling cocoa touch layer), much, much more. Also, there is a lot of difference in how it does as opposed to what. With a web app you've got to develop for all manner of viewers, with an iPhone app you're on one framework and a lot of the cross browser pain is simply removed.

That said, I'm no iphone app developer, I spend several hours in March or April reading up on this to understand how much work it would take to do what has been kicking around in the back of my mind for a few years.

Jools

[Jools]

with all that link-clicking and zooming in and out. I think the main benefit of the app would be to have equal access (especially to species info) right at the fingertips, and with the click of as little links as possible.

Providing you know the name or common name, you can get to any species in the cat-elog with one click using the quick find box at the top right of any pages. Never tried it on mobile mind you.

Jools

[MatsP]

Ok, that's understandable - but also fairly vague in terms of "what do you get, and what do you NOT get with such an app". And if so, is it really worth the effort for Jools (or someone else) to do this, bearing in mind that the very minimum to do this work would be to get an iPhone to try it out on - you may also need to get some development tools and such - I haven't really looked into it (I do realize that the iPhone developers kit is free - but to do a complete app, you sometimes need OTHER components than what comes in the developers kit).

I'm so used to navigating the site that I don't really find it difficult to look up a species of fish. Of course, it depends on exactly what you want to do and know...

Jools: I know what you can do with the phone software - we have similar things in Symbian OS - what I meant is what the difference would be to the user, not the developer.

And the quick-find works fine on a Nokia default browser.

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Mats

[Jools]

It might be able to tell you if you drop your phone in a tank too.

Costs are $99 for the app SDK, and I would need to buy a Mac and an iPhone or iPod. So, not something to do lightly...

Jools

[TP]

The catalog on the iphone in landscape mode is actually very good indeed, its width is perfect so you see the whole page and just have to scroll up and down.

Here's a couple of photos, taken with my laptops webcam (which doesn't appear to focus this close) so you can sort of see what's going on!

As mentioned before you can get to this info in one click using the quick find box.

[CanadaPleco]

I use my iPhone regularly to browse both these forums and the catelog.

An iphone app would be even better, but like stated would require a lot of work and upfront $ especially since Jools doesn't currently have a mac. An iphone/itouch/ipad isn't actually needed to test the app it can all be done on the pc. I would gladly pay for such an app, and I believe many users would. However would enough people buy it to cover the the dev. time I kind of doubt it.

There is a large user base here in PC, who knows there may be some coders right here that would be willing to donate their time to such an app.

[andywoolloo]

I've only ever met one person wandering around a fish store with an iphone and I wander around a lot of fish stores!

I use my iphone at the LFS to identify, or attempt to, the pl*cos/synos that are wrongly labeled or are properly labeled (miracle) I check PC to see how big what requirements temp food etc

But I 've never seen anyone else doing it.

I would buy the iphone app, gladly.

[MatsP]

May have little to do with things, but I checked the number of members that have visited the forum of this site in the last 24 hours: 105. Two of them have shown direct interest in the iPhone app - add Martin S that asked for it some time back.

Sure, leave the topic here for some time, but in the past week 270 or so members have visited [that is, if we sort the list by "most recent visit"] it take 270 members before we are out of the previous week. And if we go back to the beginning of June, it's been 540 different users that have visited the site. It's quite amazing, because there doesn't appear to be that many users that actually take part - but there are obviously a huge amount of lurkers that come to the site every now and again to check out what's up. [And 800 different users since 1st of May].

Note: This is forum users - I don't have any statistics for Cat-eLog views or usage outside of the forum. Jools can probably dig out more info. It would probably be possible to figure out from the IP address if it's a mobile phone or a "regular PC" for each access, but I don't know if Jools [or the web hosting service] stores the IP address when registering Cat-eLog visits, nor if it's that easy to determine - after all, for every country, there would be about 3-4 different operators, each of which may have more than one group of IP addresses.

[It would also be possible to check the OS variant reported by the browser to see how much iPhone or mobile phone traffic the site gets...]

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Mats

[CanadaPleco]

With regards to the forum there is a great plugin that can be added to the site for free, which allows blackberry and iphone users a native app to view the forum through, which is actually really nice. - http://www.tapatalk.com/

[PlecoCrazy]

While an iphone app may be nice you still have to consider all the people running android, blackberries, and windows mobile. While windows mobile seems pretty dead at the moment I'm sure it will gain steam again once its new version is out. That tapatalk seemed like a very good option in the regards for an app that is multiple os capable, doesn't cost PC any money, does cost some time, and it is inexpensive to free for users. While tapatalk isn't windows mobile compatible they had this on their site.

Q: What about a client for Windows Mobile?
A: We are currently no plan for Windows Mobile but will revisit it when Windows Mobile 7 is released.

Good recommendation CanadaPleco. Of course Jools know best as to what is good for the site but I think it looks pretty good option.

[Jools]

Tapatalk looks good but it only gives forum access. Blackberry access is beta. You can get native mobile forum read only access using any old RSS reader on your mobile which is roughly the same as the tapatalk freebie. I guess I'd have to try the full app (I am a blackberry user) and see what the functionality gap is beyond being able to post/reply to pms.

Meantime, I will look into how much work it would be to deploy here.

Jools

[Jools]

Measuring site access in the month of May, 2.6% of site access is from a mobile device, the incomplete figure for June is very similar. The breakdown for May is as follows, but the summary is that around 1% of site traffice is on an iPlatform, less than .5% on google, blackberry usgae was probably just me:

No., O/S, Hits, Avg Pages/Visi,t New Visitor, Bounce Rate
1. iPhone 1,646 3.72 00:03:01 35.48% 50.30%
2. Android 304 4.58 00:05:13 63.16% 55.59%
3. iPod 249 2.82 00:02:44 55.82% 59.44%
4. BlackBerry 125 2.50 00:04:02 74.40% 53.60%
5. SymbianOS 116 6.72 00:09:27 97.41% 40.52%
6. iPad 43 4.60 00:01:51 65.12% 53.49%
7. Sony 23 2.00 00:02:40 65.22% 73.91%
8. Windows 23 4.30 00:04:27 69.57% 34.78%
9. Danger Hiptop 13 1.15 00:00:02 100.00% 92.31%
10. Samsung 12 1.50 00:00:22 83.33% 83.33%

And that made me go find out what a Danger Hiptop was. Seems it's a Microsoft backed smartphone.

All in all, it's a question of "build it and they'll come" Vs "sit on the bench". As with Safari compatibility, I'll wait until it reaches 5% and then do something about it I think.

Jools

[MatsP]

And the SymbianOS hits are probably largely me... ;) After all, I have been given my phone for the purpose of "testing all its features" - if it's not able to access Planet Catfish when I want to, how good is it... ;)

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Mats

[CanadaPleco]

Tapatalk looks good but it only gives forum access. Blackberry access is beta. You can get native mobile forum read only access using any old RSS reader on your mobile which is roughly the same as the tapatalk freebie. I guess I'd have to try the full app (I am a blackberry user) and see what the functionality gap is beyond being able to post/reply to pms.

Meantime, I will look into how much work it would be to deploy here.

Jools

Its 2 lines of code in the footer basically if X os detected, start up tapatalk.

[Cory_lover]

Hey Jools, wow 1000plus visitors in May and that's 1% of visitors?? Thats awesome for PCF, yet disappointing rates for mobile platforms!:P

Btw what are Bounce Rates?

[Jools]

Visits, not visitors.

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left the site from the entrance (landing) page. It's used as a metric for visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant. The more compelling a landing page, the more visitors will stay on site and convert.

Jools

[andywoolloo]

interesting.

[Jools]

Tapatalk enabled, more here - http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 62#p212762

Jools