Due to some last minute problems in our web servers we are obliged to postpone the opening of the orders to tomorrow. We are very sorry for this inconvenience.
Stay tuned and go back here tomorrow for amazing news.
Archive for July, 2008
Something in the air for tomorrow…
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Progress report
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008A small post to summarize the work done until now. Because of some legal problems we have delayed the opening of the orders. But now we will focus all our efforts to be able to accept orders on the 31th of July. The final product photos and videos will be presented on this date too.
On the software side we have solved a lot of bug and have quite finished the driving directions support.
Many have asked the following questions:
- Will this software be compatible with firmware 2.0 ? Yes it will be.
- Will the software be on the AppStore: No. Because of the very restrictive conditions of use of the Apple SDK. Moreover the serial port is not accessible anymore on non-jail-broken devices.
- Will the software be free: Yes.
- To which countries are you shipping: Worldwide.
- Does driving directions work in my country ? Check on Google Maps. If it works on Google Maps, it will work in xGPS.
Thank you for your interest in the project.
First public software preview available
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
From the last time we wrote, a lot of work has been done.
First a little word about the hardware. We are still waiting some crucial components to finalize the product but it should be (and MUST be) finished next week. We will then open the orders.
We have worked a lot on the software side. It is not still finished but it is at least somehow usable. You can scroll a map, download a map, get driving directions to a place / address and get your GPS position showed on the map. There is even voice support. It means that driving directions are spoken into your earphones. Just try to push the Go To button and enter the desired driving directions. Then click on Go To and listen to. You should hear the first driving direction.
As you will see there is still some work to do. There is no way to go to a place by entering its name. Driving directions should change according to the GPS position but it’s not currently the case and finally scrolling the map is really hard. It will be improved. And last things: to zoom in / zoom out, double tap the map with one / two fingers. It should be also improved 
.
You will also notice the ability to download maps to be used offline, without any Internet connection. To use this feature, just tap on the Maps button. Then use your two fingers to select an area of the map you want to download. Click on download and the map is downloaded and can then be used offline. You have to know that the maps are downloaded at the deepest zoom level only (the zoom level which is set at the launch of the software).
How to test this first version:
- Just use the Installer and add the following repository: http://irepo.xwaves.net
- Refresh your sources and then go to the Xwaves category and install the xGPS software.
- Exit the installer and launch the new xGPS software that appears on your home screen. It will work even if you have no GPS and should work both on iPod touch and iPhone.
Please notice that there is no support for this version of the software. It is only proposed for testing purpose.
Stay in touch for hot news, next week.
Here is the main screen. Thank you to the iSpazio team for the screenshots of this article.
