środa, 16 kwietnia 2014

GeoCoder 2.0 for BlackBerry 10 (BB10)

GeoCoder has been ported to BlackBerry 10 (native BB10 Cascades application), as a new version 2.0 providing a number of improvements and enhancements compared to Symbian and Harmattan versions.

GeoCoder is an application to provide A LOT of information about any location in the world, with just one tap. All you need to do is enter the desired location's data (either its adress - full or approximate, or its coordinates - in decimal or DMS format) or simply select it on a map, and the program will provide all the details listed below in just a few seconds. Additionally, the "Here" tab lets you quickly get all those details for your current location obtained from the GPS receiver.




Data provided by the program for ANY location include:

- precise GPS coordinates in decimal and DMS formats
- precise ground elevation above (or below at seas) the mean sea level (in meters and feet)
- full official address, and additionally
- country
- state
- county
- city district
- postal code
- road distance (from home location or current location) in km and miles
- estimated travel time (from home or current location), for either driving, biking or walking (selectable in Settings)
- time zone name and UTC offset
- Daylight saving time (Summer time) current status and offset
- current local time of a location
- sunrise, sunset and day length
- dusk, dawn and daylight duration
- moonrise and moonset
- current weather conditions (description, cloudiness, temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation).





Additionally, for any location you get a lot of additional information and functionality just by tapping on one of the seven color buttons located right below the textual information:




- Wikipedia button (White) - direct one-tap link to mobile Wikipedia page about the chosen location (place of interest, city, or county/area, depending on what is available) - contains rich information about location's history, population, economy, authorities, places of interest, and so on)

- Weather button (Blue) - provides 14-day weather forecast for the location (same details as for current weather, i.e. day/night temperatures, precipitation, humidity, cloudiness, wind speed/gust/direction, pressure, etc). Weather data comes from OpenWeatherMap.org and is updated in real time.





- Google Map button (Yellow) - provides fully functional Google Map of the location, with all map imagery types (Roadmap, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain), fully functional full screen Street View, and all important layers (overlays): Panoramio, Bicycling, Weather, Transit and Traffic.




The Street View layer shows persistent Street View coverage. Just tap on a location marked with blue color to get its Street View. Much easier to use than having to drag and drop the Pegman all the time, just to check if a given place is StreetView-enabled or not.




The Panoramio layer shows thousands of pictures uploaded by users and shown at locations they were taken at. In most cases they show the most interesting and beautiful things to be found at a given location. GeoCoder also provides a separate, very quick and easy to use Panoramio gallery for every location (see below).




The Bicycling layer shows all bike paths in a selected location.




The Weather layer shows temperatures and icons representing current weather conditions. Tap an icon to show daily data and a link to 10-day forecast at Weather.com. The Weather layer (once you zoom out to approximately country-level map zoom) also shows an overlay with clouds and thunderstorms.




The Transit layer shows all transit types in a selected location. It can be limited to show Subway, Bus, Train, or Tram only.




The Traffic layer shows current traffic conditions. The colors indicate the speed of traffic on the road compared to free-flowing conditions. For highways, green means there is a normal speed of traffic. The more red the roads become, the slower the speed of traffic on the road. Gray indicates there is no data available.




- Street View button (Purple) simply provides direct access to fully functional Street View of the selected location, so that you don't have to go through the Google Map to open it. Of course, it is active only where Street View is available.

- 360° Panorama button (Green) - shows static 360° panorama image of selected location, from Google Static Panorama API. It shows the same view as Street View and you can only turn around, but it's simply a quicker (and less data-consuming) way to just take a quick look of how a location looks like. Like Street View button, this button is only active where the imagery is available from Google. No screenshots here, as they simply look the same as an example Street View screenshot shown earlier.

- Route/Navigation button (Orange) - just press it to instantly get a route from your current (or home) location to the destination calculated and shown in the native BlackBerry Maps application, where with just one tap on the "Start" button you can instantly start navigating.





- Panoramio Gallery button (Light-Blue) - opens an easy to browse Panoramio gallery, which shows all images (i.e. often hundreds or thousands) tagged with GPS coordinates within the range of +/- 0.02 degrees latitude and longitude (i.e. a few kilometers) from the selected location, which assures that all pictures shown closely match the chosen location. The gallery shows 10 pictures per page, just press "More" to show another page and so on. Tap on an image to open its full-size original version in the web browser from where you can e.g. save it or set it as a wallpaper. Author's name is a link to author's page (with all his pictures) at Panoramio.com. Panoramio logo is a link to the picture's Panoramio page. For each picture its title is also shown.




The Settings screen lets you choose to either always obtain your current location from the GPS receiver, or you can enter a fixed home location. If a fixed location is enabled, certain data (e.g. road distance and travel time) is calculated between your home and the destination. Otherwise, if "Current GPS location" is selected, the program will always calculate road distance and travel time between the destination and your current location. If you spend most of your time in the same location (e.g. same city) entering fixed home coordinates may make the program work faster as it won't have to get your location from the GPS each time you're looking up a new location data... 




The Settings screen also lets you choose whether travel time should be calculated for driving, biking, or walking. The application comes with Help/About screen containing all the above information.

BlackBerry 10 version: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/48852899/



Previous version for Symbian and MeeGo (Nokia N9):
http://store.ovi.com/content/381250
http://store.ovi.com/content/379830

EasyStreetView 2.0 for BlackBerry 10 (BB10)

EasyStreetView, Google Maps and StreetView client application for Qt-based smartphone platforms, aimed at and optimized for quick and convenient Street View browsing (look here for full description) has received a major update on the BlackBerry 10 platform.

In addition to all features supported by the first version, the new release also provides:

- full screen Street View, both portrait and landscape - you can switch between the full screen and split screen mode at any time using the Maximize/Minimize icon in the lower right corner of the screen

- persistent Street View coverage layer can be displayed on the map using "C" button. You'll always know which locations Street View is available for, no 'hit & miss' anymore

- the application now preserves all settings when the user switches between screen orientations (portrait / landscape) or modes (full screen / split screen): map type, location, heading, Street View coverage layer on/off, etc.

- a number of fixes and improvements.

EasyStreetView for BB10 is a native BB10 Cascades application, smooth and very small (100 kB installer, 30 kB the actual executable).


























BlackBerry 10 version: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/36957888/



Previous version for Symbian and MeeGo (Nokia N9):

http://store.ovi.com/content/388042
http://store.ovi.com/content/386876