I'm very proud to announce that my fourth iPhone application and third city in the City Metro Apps Delhi City Metro has had a successful first week in the app store; it is now ranked as the #1 paid navigation app in the Indian App Store. Although the raw sales data show the Indian marketplace is incredibly small compared to the US, Australia or even Korea the statistic alone is quite exciting!

It was hard work gathering accurate GPS coordinates, route length and timetables for the Delhi Metro - but the most complete version of the data available is included with the app and I have developed a high resolution custom map too.

The Delhi metro is moving at an incredible pace, so I expect to be updating it quite often.

There's a temporary webpage with some screenshots over at delhi.citymetroapps.com and I'm updating the @delhimetroapp twitter feed with minor bits and pieces.

Delhi City Metro is available on the App Store .

As it turns out it wasn't as difficult as I thought; There were already a couple of elegant solutions out and about. The first example I found was by Oliver Dropnik, which talked about altering an existing solution posted on git hub by user devindoty called EGOTablePullViewRefresh.

Oliver's code looked like it was a good addition to devindoty's because he had decided to subclass UITableViewController which leads to a much more complete solution that's easier to move between projects. My only issue with Oliver's code was (apart from not supplying a some working source doe) that it refactored a lot of the underlying implementation, where I didn't see too much wrong with it.

I decided to come up with a half way measure; I moved the majority of the grunt work into a subclass of UITableViewController, cleaned up the XCode Demo project included with the source code and pushed it all back up to git hub. If you're at at all interested in this, I'd suggest checking out my fork of the EGOTablePullViewRefresh project on Git Hub.

Get a pull-to-refresh effect like Tweetie 2 and foursuare

New stations on line 3

As weeks moved on I was feeling increasingly  like my apps were out of date, and the SMRT maps still hadn't been updated to reflect the new stations. So yesterday I just had had enough and pushed new stations, updated timetables and a manually modified map to both Seoul City Metro, and Seoul City Metro Lite. I was reluctant to manually update the maps because I don't have them in vector format but I was quite happy with the end result. Both updates were approved for sale in under 11 hours - and are available for download das you read this. (iTunes link)

I also managed to include one minor tweak to the route interface, allowing easier access to the timetables for a particular route. Although the timetables are far from where I want them, this is a step in the right direction. Also, the door side is now shown for the destination station the same as it is with transfers. (See screen shot below)

You can click the blue disclosure button on route start and transfers to see the next trains departing.

In other news:

Custom Map to scale in early stages

I've been building my own custom subway map for Seoul that will appear in upcoming versions of Seoul City Metro that will release me from the constraints of the SMRT map. It's well on it's way, you can see images of it's progress via @seoulmetroapp and here.

Busan City Metro is on sale this week too, I've reduced it to $0 as more of a test of the waters. (iTunes Link)

Oh, and I'm back in Melbourne for the time being.

From iLounge:

This limit now appears to have been increased to 20MB in both the App Store and iTunes Store on the device, allowing users to download larger applications and video content.

The reason why might be timed to get users used to downloading bigger apps before before the iPad arrives, or it could be a quiet response to an increasing demand for apps on the run over 10MB.

Whatever the reason it's good to see some relaxing on an arbitrary restriction. Seoul City Metro weighs in at 9.6 MB so I approve of this relaxing in restrictions.

There's still lots to do, and since Saturday morning I have already sent for approval Seoul City Metro Lite, and Seoul City Metro V1.1.1 wich contains a few small bug fixes.

Busan City Metro is also in the works, I expect that to be running on the Seoul City Metro V1.1.1 code in the coming days and up for sale soon.

There's lots more to write on the extended development period of SCM 1.1, but for now I'll let everyone get the update and I'll take a deep breath!

Current iTunes Connect status

My opinion: I want one.

Apple iPad hands on from Wired.com Gadget Lab

Demonstations of the device appearing all over the web show the iPad with a multi column layout, orientating to however you hold the device. I can't wait to see what developers make of the new UI elements and SDK APIs.

As far as my development goes - all my current work on Seoul City Metro 1.1 appears to be compatible and runs just fine in the iPad's simulator in it's 1x and 2x zoom mode. Anyway, just a few screenshots that I've already posted on twitter - time to get back to work.

iPad Simulator with Seoul City Metro 1.1 Installed

Seoul City Metro V1.1 running in the iPad Simulator

I'm not worried about implementing MapKit because I have previously mapped all 440 stations and their GPS coordinates - but it's been managing the almost half a million pieces of time table data that has taken so much more time that I had originally anticipated. Although the details of the timetable data are relatively boring, I find the statistics quite interesting.

• 468,000 individual trains mapped equalling 17MB of SQL data.
• 1,600 pages scraped, totalling 48 MB.
• The addition of this data almost quadruples the total size of the app (originally 5.7MB)

This leads to an interesting problem with the app bundle size. Apple limit the maximum size of an App you can download over 3G to 10MB. Personally I think keeping an app (if possible) below 10MB is really important, as it allows your app to capture the impulse purchase. I'm currently considering several options about how to manage this, including providing only the basic data with the app and allowing users to download the additional data as an SQLite adon-on, or by providing a web service that can be queried from within the app. There's advantages and disadvantages in each case (which I might outline in a later post) but in my opinion, most people will only need the first and last trains departing each station anyway.

New SCM Branding

In other news, I've been working with Steven Miller (@yargalot and from TheNetocracy) on some new branding and a new website for SCM and I have to say I'm pretty chuffed at what he's come up with. I had pretty specific ideas in mind when he asked me if he could help design a website and he met all expectations when he came up with a clean, stylish design almost instantly. We spent more time making sure we had the markup optimised for search engines that we did on design elements - and it looks great. The website now exists at http://www.seoulcitymetro.com (previously http://seoulmetroapp.com) and is hosted with a swish new slice purchased the other day from Slicehost (Slicehost Referral link).

With the idea in my mind that I would possibly serve 17MB downloads to SCM customers or provide a XML/JSON feed for individual station timetables - I had upgrade the hosting to something more flexible. Enter Slicehost. With the help of Jacob (@jacobch) we now have seoulcitymetro.com and our git repositories running on a speedy clean Ubuntu Karmic Koala slice. So far we're totally impressed with both Slicehost and Ubuntu and we hope to run more services from this in the future.  I can definitely envision a public bug tracker and documentation wiki for SCM and other upcoming projects.

There's heaps of work to be done! I'm hoping to have the next SCM version 1.1 submitted to Apple by 1/1/10. Watch this space! To the minute updates can be found on twitter by following @seoulmetroapp . Seoul City Metro is available on iTunes for $1.99  iTunes Store (iTunes link)

Seoul City Metro

I'm excited to report that Seoul City Metro has gone live on the Apple App Store!

You can purchase a copy on the world wide store right here for $1.99 US.

Now that the iPhone Application development cycle has been completed - it's time to start some promotions to drum up some sales! I have @yargalot and myself working on a proper website, and I'm looking into promotions on Facebook, and around Seoul itself.!

I've been working with a pile of transport apps leading up to Seoul City Metro and I've noticed a lot of similar transport apps fall into the trap of implementing too many non standard UI elements or offer too many different ways to do the same thing at the cost of consistency.

Non standard interfaces are not uncommon as developers decide not to adhere to the apple Human Interface Guidelines and roll their own half baked Us. I I have found some great examples of non-scalable, non standard implementations that are so bland and basic (or crazy and complex) that it's hard to know what you're doing or what you just did. The time required to lean these UIs is frustrating to say the least.

Great example of very non-standard UI

My second issue with the current state of transport apps is the compromise made to consistency to offer multiple ways of accessing the same functionality.

Most transport apps provide you with a list of stations you can select via searching or scrolling through via a 'Stations' Tab Bar icon. This interface is then repeated via a 'Routes' Tab bar icon and quite often you can also access the 'Stations' via the 'Lines' Tab Bar icon. My problem with this solution is when the selection of a station name in a list looks the same and behaves differently.

Two ways to begin a route visible here.

As is often the case, selecting a station from the 'Stations' tab gives you a detailed overview of the station. In the case of the 'Route' tab it skips the details and provides you with the same interface over again to select another station.

A lot of apps have about 3 ways you can enter into the 'route calculation loop' and I find this overlap pointless and confusing.

Another example is when applications let you tap on a map and use the selection as a 'route start' or 'route end' and then take you to a list or an overlay of the route you've selected. This can be a great feature except when you can get to the same map that behaves differenty via three other Tab Bar icons.

In the case of applications with a tab bar interface you can end up with the same screen of information appearing on all or most of the tabs at once by navigating through each Tab Bar icon independently. This is not a good user experience because clicking on a tab bar icon saying 'Stations' can be showing a map if thats how the user haphazardly left it.

My approach to a transport app (although only in it's first iteration) focuses on the soul purpose of directing the user towards selecting stations. The user will be given ways to select a station by map, name, or nearby then be presented with the detailed view of the station in order to decide what to do with it. After the user has completed an action their selected station (set as route start, or route end), the user navigates back to the main menu to select a second station. Only when a route has been completed are they presented with a 'view route' option.

Straight forward navigation structure

So rather than a Tab Bar I have used a single navigation structure to direct the user down a single path at a time to select a station. This provides the user with a linear way of working, keeping them from getting confused between 5 or more tabs that all do similar, overlapping things (and could all be displaying a map at that particular point in time).

I think it saves the user mental processing too. The maximum menu depth a user can get to to view a calculated route is only three screens deep, and if they have used a route before they can get to the calculated route in only two steps. The worst case in the application above (London Tube) can require you to navigate through 5 different screens to view a route and then you need to go back through the whole 5 to start again.

I think simplifying transport apps is the way to go, working and thinking about how to do this all the time.

If you've read this far - thank you! This post just touches on my thoughts about current transport apps and their inconsistencies, I'm keen on posting more of my thoughts as development of my transport apps continue.

Seoul City Metro should be hitting the App Store around December 14th. Follow @seoulmetroapp on twitter for updates!

It really was about 10 times more stressful than I had planned.

Here I was plodding along with the development of Seoul City Metro (@soulmetroapp) thinking I had another couple of months but all of a sudden the iPhone was approved for sale and then released in South Korea in the same two week period! I had to push everything forward...

So over the last couple of weeks I have more or less shut myself off from everyone except my twitter feed and a few friends keen to test some development releases (thanks to @jacobch for some great feedback). Due to the announcement of imminent iPhone release in South Korea I just had to try and get everything running ASAP.

Unfortunately Seoul City Metro missed being ready for sale on iPhone launch day (it was never going to happen) but as a consilation I managed to make it to TEDxSeoul at the last minute  for a day of eye opening talks from a wide range of awesome Korean innovators. I had no expectations for TEDxSeoul (how did I not know about TED ?)  but it left me with a mind spinning with excitement and positiveness about releasing software in South Korea. I wish I had had some business cards to hand around and some infomation on the app ready - but getting to go was just a bonus.

Seoul City Metro

But I'm now happy to write that I have finally got there! As of Tuesday morning I have completed an initial working version of an iPhone app and submitted it to the App Store. With submission only four days after the release date in South Korea I am pretty happy with my efforts. This is  is a really  important milestone because it's taken me so long to get past being completely overwhelmed by the whole process of becoming an iPhone developer. In fact it's taken me  two trips to WWDC, two iPhone releases (3G , 3GS release), two new computers (a laptop and a Mac Mini) and countless days and weeks of feeling overwhelmed and lost at where to start.

New Business Card (back)

Regardless of the outcome (approved or not) I'm feeling like I have reached my goal. While I wait for approval from Apple I'm running at a slightly slower 80 km/h getting promotional material ready for it's launch. I'm hoping with some relevant, informative tweeting on my behalf via I can rustle up some interest over Twitter and Facebook, there's also a website up at seoulmetroapp.com and I have printed flyers and business cards for some real life promotions.

I'm attending the Seoul Writer's Workshop Masquerade Ball this Saturday night in Itaewon and hope to bump into some people there.

Watch this space for all kinds of things I've learnt over the iPhone development process, and updates on what I'm calling the City Metro Ecosystem - a suite of apps encapsulating apps for Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.

More details coming soon