Have you ever wondered what that historical marker says that you just passed while driving down the road? Well, there’s an app for that, if you live in Texas.
Please cut to the chase and give me the links
- WP7 Fanboys - Open in the WP7 Marketplace
- iPhone/iPad Fanboys - Open in the App Store
Texas Road Side History was first thought up by my colleague Derek Martin as one of four applications our Slalom Consulting Dallas office developed during a one day Windows Phone 7 “lock in”.
One of our goals was to learn how to make use of Microsoft’s SQL Azure and Azure Web roles. Using SQL Azure, we took advantage of the Geography data type and the STDistance function to query for historical markers by proximity. We next exposed a WCF Web service for executing the proximity query. And lastly, generated an OData endpoint using WCF Data Services for all of our basic data access needs.
After several iterations of submissions and rejections to the WP7 Marketplace, Texas Road Side History was finally approved. Microsoft’s approval process was very impressive. Each time we received a rejection, it came with a very thorough report with the reasoning and the exact steps needed in order to make the application comply. It is clear that Microsoft is focused not on the quantity of apps in the Marketplace, but on the quality.
After our “lock-in”, I caught the mobile bug and wanted to see what iOS was all about. Dabbling a bit with Objective-C, I quickly turned to MonoTouch - which left me with just iOS APIs to ramp up on. For some of the details on consuming the WCF and OData services, read my previous two posts here and here.
Submission to the Apple App Store via iTunes Connect was a bit less impressive, albeit, faster time to market (4 days after submitting). The iTunes Connect site took a bit of getting used to. Fortunately, the app was approved on first submission; which is unfortunate in the sense that I can not report on the quality of an App Store rejection report.
Texas Road Side History has proved to be a well-rounded mobile app for getting our feet wet in the mobility space. Whether you are a history nut or just curious to see what our first mobile app looks like, I hope you’d give it a spin and let me know what you think.
I like the app - it’s a great idea, and it works well.
Hey Trent,
I am posting here (out of place) cause I couldn’t find your email address. Anyway, I love the Gallerific and was wondering if you could help me out. I would like the user to click on a thumbnail and the detail picture appears in a modal popup. I think this would be a very elegant feature that many people would like. Can you help please? Thanks, Jonny.
Hi!
Sorry for commenting here, but I can’t find you e-mail, som writing here. As you receive this please del it and mail your answer to the baf -at- bafff.ru
I’ve found you amazing Galleriffic but I need your help to integrate it with my personal blog on the WordPress and NextGen Gallery. Can you help me?
I like to travel and do MTB and have many galleries (here are some of them http://bafff.ru/blog/?cat=61 )that I would like to show to the world, but now I can’t do this as I wish :\
I can give you some $ but I think that you have a job and experience that is not for my capabilities
But if you can help to some ordinary IT specialist from Russia that can’t do coding - you would be great! 😉
Any plans for an Android version? Also, I see many comments requesting help on your Gallerific script site. Do you actually help people with questions there?
Good tone
hello!,I love your writing very so much! proportion we keep up a correspondence extra approximately your post on AOL? I need a specialist on this space to solve my problem. May be that is you! Having a look forward to see you.
Hey, when I was a little kid I enjoyed listening to twospy, and now I just found the music on your personal blog, do you have any pictures of the album cover work for Wrong Way To Look. I had the cd when I was about 7 but I’ve lost it. Even if you don’t have the cover work I just want you to know that your music has made a difference in my life and I still enjoy listening to it