OpenAPRS for iPhone - 2.1 Is Just Around the Corner

OpenAPRS for iPhone 2.1 is in pre-release stages and will offer several user suggested feature improvements and additions.

Here is what is coming...

• 04/28/2010 - Change default Google map type from settings (street, satellite hybrid).
• 04/28/2010 - Ability to change Google map type from map console.
• 04/28/2010 - Increased console icon size.
• 04/28/2010 - Detailed information for stations on map.
• 04/28/2010 - Tracking mode will show previous stations breadcrums.
• 04/28/2010 - WX Stations show weather conditions in station detail view.
• 04/28/2010 - Object creation and deletion.

Outages

Some of you may have noticed that for a week in August OpenAPRS was unreachable. Our internet connection had an unfortunate failure which knocked us out for about 5 days completely. We are currently back up and running and everything seems to be back to normal.

We are working on replacing a lot of our main code with some new development code which should enhance our current services quite a bit. For most browsers (excluding Internet Explorer) there should be a pretty good speed enhancement. IE doesn't seem to parse Javascript very quickly so unfortunately there isn't much I can do about that. Live updates will happen more frequently, at high zooms a cluster map of activity will be displayed and APRS stations displayed won't be just limited to the visible screen instead limited to a larger radius around the center.

At this time some functionality still needs to be worked on in the development code, such as the ability to specify a map center or callsign tracking from the URL which is currently supported in our live environment. I'm also working on a replacement for the Ham's Near You functionality since Google's API doesn't allow a flood of reverse address requests which makes snagging 70+ addresses and showing them on a map very difficult.

For those of you darring enough to take on some fun, point your browser here. I make no warranty on the development code until I can finish it and debug it a bit but I'd love to here your comments either on the blog or privately through OpenAPRS's contact page.

Tactical Callsigns

We've had tactical callsign support for a couple of weeks now but I've moved it to the tools window. Before tactical callsign support was under the Options menu where you could specify a list of callsigns and their translated tactical calls through a commas and pipe separated list. Now in order to use tactical callsign support you must have an account and be logged in. The advantage is that your callsign list will be saved to your username and password instead of your browsers cookies. Whatever browser you happen to use in the future now all you must do is login and your tactical list of callsigns becomes active.

Under the tactical callsign list any calls listed will be automatically detected and displayed on the map with their associated tac callsign. This list can also be used to see when a station is actually advertising packets on the APRS network.

We're in an ARRL article!

While viewing our webstats earlier this week I noticed that our attendance rate went up to about 30 users at a time all at once and found that ARRL started referring users to our site. A little further investigation and I found out that Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU wrote a nice article about us. Thanks for the wonderful article Stan!

I haven't written any updates on the blog recently because I've been adding some new and exciting features, but they aren't quite ready for announcement yet. See if you notice the new features that are in beta testing before I announce them! :)