MobileTree Lite 1.3

The “Lite” version of MobileTree, MobileTree Lite, has been updated to version 1.3 today.

There are only a few changes:
- FamilySearch has given MobileTree the okay to store the username and password for new.familysearch.org. The username and password are stored securely on the device.
- Bug fixes.

Note: You may need to be a member of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in order to use this iPhone or iPod Touch app – it uses their genealogy database and this app requires login credentials for New.FamilySearch.org

Link to Apple iTunes store

GedView 2.10 Released, iPad Supported

GedView, a genealogy application for the iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, has undergone a significant upgrade as of the 2.10 release. It’s now the first GEDCOM-based genealogy application running on the iPhone OS that allows for full-screen mode on the iPad. Note that this is not the 2x upscaling that Apps written for the iPhone or iPod touch employ when used on an iPad.

GedView offers quite a few advantages over other genealogy apps on the iPhone platform. It allows you to import GEDCOM files through several means (WiFi, 3G, etc.) as well as exporting either through email or through a built-in webserver. It can handle the importing of multiple GEDCOM files into multiple database and you can easily switch back and forth between databases. You can also create new databases/GEDCOMs within GedView. It is not tied to any Mac OS X applications.

Changes:
- Improved date parsing, now handles month names in any language supported by the OS.
- Now makes use of _PLAC_DEFN as used by Legacy to add latitude/longitude information to places. Also supports reading latitude/longitude incorrectly placed on an address record
- Support running full screen on iPad.
- Numerous bug fixes.

It’s available for $3.99 USD (or £2.39 / €2.99) ($4.99 AU) at Apple’s iTunes Music Store

Metes and Bounds 1.4.1 Adds iPad Support

Metes and Bounds (Universal) has now added support for Apple’s new iPad, in addition to supporting iPhone and iPod touches.

Metes and Bounds is an application that can be quite useful for some genealogists – it allows you to take a property deed or other such land description that you may come across in your genealogy research, and turn it into an actual plat drawing.

It does support quite a few units of measurement, and can even plot out with older measurements you might come across such as rods, chains, and spans. It does not (as of now) support plotting based on section calls. The desktop version allows you to set latitude and longitude points as well as layers (if you have multiple deeds centered on a certain piece of land).

The iPhone/iPad version allows you to email the file to your desktop or laptop Mac or Windows PC to be loaded into the Mac OS X or Windows version of Metes and Bounds.

Changes:
* Added iPad support.
* No longer crashes if adding a call with no length.

It’s $4.99 and is available through Apple’s iTunes Music Store

Adobe Flash and the iPhone/iPad

Somebody who knows my fondness for gadgets asked me the other day about the whole Adobe Flash thing on the iPhone (or rather the lack of). They wanted to know if it would be a problem, since they were considering purchasing an iPhone.

In my view, it hasn’t been a problem and I’ve been an iPhone owner for quite a while now. There are 50 million iPhones and half a million iPads floating around that don’t run Flash, and none of the iPhone’s current competitors support Flash either. I’ve had an iPhone for quite a while now, and it’s been a long time since I ran into a site that wouldn’t work on an iPhone. As a Windows Mobile and a Palm user in the past, I hated visiting certain sites on those devices simply because there was no thought given to mobile users and a lot of sites wouldn’t work on those devices. With the popularity of the iPhone, that’s all changed, and it benefits everybody on a mobile platform, because website designers and maintainers now take mobile devices into account. It helps that the mobile data networks have gotten better as well.

The majority of genealogy-related sites I visit on my iPhone are blogs anyways and usually have little to no Flash. I tied to shy away from some genealogy sites that are heavy on the bandwidth as my connection is usually not the best for dealing with such sites. Here in 2009-2010, we have it incredibly good though – we are getting browsers and screen resolutions that allow us to actually be able to browse the web in a productive manner.

As to why it’s not allowed, I think it boils down to Apple doesn’t want another company to build a development layer on top of the iPhone, because at that point it stops being an Apple mobile platform and it becomes an Adobe mobile platform. I think there are plenty of other solid reasons – HTML5 (Wikipedia) would be better in the long run since it’s an open standard, and most of us have probably suffered through problems involving Adobe’s Flash plug-in. I’m well aware that Adobe has been working to fix those problems on Windows and Mac OS X with the latest major releases, but I really like the idea of HTML5 getting rid of the need for third party plug-ins. I don’t play Flash-based games though, so my experiences are definitely not going to be the same as others.

I’ve read both sides of the argument, and both make valid points, but I would rather a lot of sites move to HTML5, because I like the idea of not worrying about what mobile device I’m using and whether I have this or that level of plug-in.

Being a genealogist I’m always a fan of open standards as well which would firmly put me in the HTML5 camp, and I’m a fan of anything that causes web designers to take a step back and look at things from the point of view of somebody on a small mobile device whether it’s an iPhone, Android, Palm, or Windows Mobile (Windows Phone 7).

G.L.

iPhone OS 4.0 Details

Earlier today, Apple discussed its highly-anticipated iPhone OS 4, the next major software upgrade to hit the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad lines. It will ship this summer for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and later in the fall for the iPad. Pay attention: It’s only going to be available for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 2nd generation (late 2008), iPod touch 3rd generation (late 2009 – 32GB/64GB) and eventually the iPad. Yes, the original iPhone is not showing up in that availability list. Apple is touting 100 new features for users and 1500 new APIs for developers in creating their apps.

Was it everything that everybody wanted? No and these kinds of things never will be.

Was it everything that I expected and wanted? Mostly.

There are four major new features that most of us will come into contact with. You could throw in iAd, a new mobile advertising platform for the iPhone OS line as well as gaming additions and enterprise additions, but I’m going to ignore those for now. The major additions, as far as I’m concerned are:
1) Multitasking – this is going to be beneficial to those of us wanting to run VOIP or instant messaging apps while we are doing other things. To me, it’s actually not a big deal, but I think the platform as a whole was in need of it. Yes, you could be messing around in a genealogy application, and assuming everything is coded properly, you could get on Voice-Over-IP or IM and call up a relative or check something out without losing your place.
2) Folders – this is a bigger thing to me – organizing your apps into folders. It allows you to go past the current limit of 180 apps, which is a huge deal, since it’s actually easy to rack up that many apps. For me, it’ll be nice to have my genealogy and genealogy-related iPhone apps all in one folder. Yes, there’s not much difference between going into a folder and say flipping to another screenful of apps, but I was started to run out of slots for more apps.
3) Mail – a unified inbox and the ability to switch between inboxes, organize messages by threads, and open attachments in third-party apps.
4) iBooks – It will be yet another way to read books on an iPhone or iPod touch, and this is just bringing the iPad’s bookstore down to the level of those devices. This joins the Kindle in things that are cool to have, but may not necessarily be practical in real-world usage, depending on your tolerance for reading on mobile devices.
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