Friday, March 01, 2013

Try the ABC Vegie Guide iPhone app - just out

I'm excited to announce that an app I've been working on in recent months is now in the Australian Apple App store.

Vegie Guide includes great wisdom from the popular ABC Gardening Australia team.

Getting an app to this point is a team effort, combining the skills of content authors, artists, user experience designers and a touch of engineering (my bit).

The app looks at your location and the time of year and recommends the best plants to plant. Once planted you can record progress in the form of notes and photos. As well as a plant encyclopaedia there are useful fact sheets to read.

I hope you'll try the app (it's free) and tell your friends about it. Please let us know what you think.
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12 comments:

  1. John Hancock1:10 PM

    That is really cool Peter. Can't wait to try it out.

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  2. MarkD9:21 AM

    Interesting Peter. Is there going to be a version for Android? Gardening is another of my hobbies so I would like to try it but I fall into the Android camp so would need an app for Android to give it a go.
    Mark VK6WV

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  3. Peter Marks9:23 AM

    We are getting quotes on an Android version. I was surprised to learn that developing apps for Android is more expensive than iOS.

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  4. William L11:39 AM

    Perhaps the app should've been done using something like Xamarin Studio (http://xamarin.com) to make it easier/quicker to create apps that target multiple platforms much more easily (eg: iPhone/Android/Windows Phone/Windows 8 etc).

    I think these days, especially for an organisation like the ABC, being able to target and push mobile products to multiple platforms quickly would be of great importance.

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  5. Peter Marks12:02 PM

    Thanks William,

    looks like a C# development environment that can target iOS as well.

    I'm sure the ABC would love to do versions of everything for all platforms but budgets are limited and we must target the dominant platform first and then port to others.

    I'm a little skeptical about cross platform apps - the best experience comes from apps that honour the conventions of each platform.

    Thanks for writing in,

    Peter

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  6. William L1:00 PM

    Peter, yeah, development is in C# but it compiles down to native code using native APIs (with native bindings/hooks etc) on both Android and iOS.

    Here's a little bit more about it: http://www.slideshare.net/bryancostanich/cross-platform-development-with-xamarin

    Don't know if you've heard of the music streaming service rdio.com? Well, their mobile apps for Android/iOS and Windows Phone were done using Xamarin.

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  7. Peter Marks6:59 PM

    Hmm Xamarin is $1,000 - $2,000 per platform per year.

    Seems a little steep to me.

    But interesting reading.

    Peter

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  8. Anonymous8:17 PM

    Android has recently over taken market share. If you make apps these days you lose 50% or more of the market if you are under the false assumption that Apple is dominant.

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  9. Anonymous1:30 PM

    Ended up here looking for android version. Sadly this is the end of my search :(

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  10. Unknown3:32 AM

    Thanks, just downloaded it.

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  11. Anonymous7:49 PM

    +1 for the Droid

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  12. Unknown10:13 PM

    Disappointing, even now the ABC has chosen to ignore at least half its audience that use Android. Where is our version of vegie guide?

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