The Daily Scribulist

Automatic updating, mobile support, and a lack of sleep

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:20:36 -0400

JourneyCast 1.2 is now available for your iPhone. As usual, it’s a free update for people who already own the app. This version includes a bunch of improvements:

If you are auto-posting a journey, sleeping will be disabled. This means you no longer have to worry about turning off auto-lock on your iPhone when using JourneyCast. Note, however, that if you manually press the power button on the top of your iPhone, you will not be broadcasting your location until you wake the phone back up.
When viewing a journey on a computer web browser, the page will now automatically update itself. No more clicking reload! Just leave a JourneyCast tab open, and you’ll see the page update whenever a new location post comes in.
In the emails you send out from the app, we now include a link to a mobile verison of your journey. This should be used on (non-iPhone) mobile devices, like Blackberrys. (Or is that Blackberries? Hmmm.)
JourneyCast sports an improved (and more green!) interface.

Enjoy!

—rob

JourneyCasting famous movie locations

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:43:15 -0500

John Couture, of movie fan site VideoETA, is starting the new year with a trip to a bunch of famous movie locations around California. Of particular interest to us, is that he’s using JourneyCast to document it! For example, just two hours ago, John posted from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco: “I’m on the Rock. Where’s Sean Connery?”. His journey so far includes locations such as the church from The Graduate, Twin Pines Mall from Back to the Future, and Donnie Darko’s house.

He’s also keeping us updated with the occasional non-movie-related post. Two days ago, John, who’s from Tennessee, “just had [his] first In N Out burger ever. Not bad.” (Not bad?! John, those puppies are delicious!)

His journey’s still happening, and VideoETA wants you to email suggested locations for him to hit up.

—rob

Introducing JourneyCast

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:01:11 -0500

Last week, we released our second iPhone app, JourneyCast.

JourneyCast is a super easy way to let your family and friends know where you are. It was inspired by the road trips I sometimes take down to LA to visit my parents. I wanted a dead-simple way to let them know where I was on my journey. I’m actually travelling down to visit my parents today, so, just for fun, I thought I might JourneyCast my trip to the whole wide web:

http://scribular.com/journey/4x8jubss487

Jeez, I better get moving…I’m late!

—rob

Scribular expands to more countries

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:25:25 -0400

Scribular is now available on Apple’s App Store in six countries—Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. More countries to come!

—rob

The marriage proposal update

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:27:00 -0400

Today, the Sacramento Bee ran a story on ddeeble’s Scribular marriage proposal:

“Crystal Gardner said yes, the old-fashioned way, with tears, but their story is yet another example of how people are incorporating modern technology into their lives – sometimes bending it to unpredicted, and unpredictable purposes.

…

When the latest version of Apple’s iPhone came out this summer, [Dan Deeble] bought one for himself and another for Gardner and began searching for a way to send notes.

He found Scribular.”

By the way, I’ve compiled a list of Dan’s scribs in the order that he arranged for Crystal to find them (which is not the order in which he left them).

Update: Wired ran a story on it too.

P.S. I love you.

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:04:00 -0400

Scribulist ddeeble (aka Dan) proposed to Crystal yesterday on Scribular. I don’t know either of these people, but they definitely have my attention. Dan has left a number of notes in the Sacramento and surrounding areas proclaiming his love for Crystal. Yesterday, Dan ended his first heartfelt scrib with these words: “With the blessing of your Mom and Sister and your son by our side, I ask if you will grant me the greatest privilege of my life and marry me. Forever yours, Dan p.s. - I love you.” Earlier today, Dan left a note at Maria’s Mexican restaurant in Marysville: “I love this place - you know every time we’ve been there since I still look at ‘our’ booth and think about the first time we went there? That has to be the most surreal lunch I’ve ever had!”

I asked Dan, in a reply to his original proposal, “So…did Crystal say yes?”. Dan responded, “We’ll find out tonight at about 7:30pm - I’ll post again with her response. Thank you so much!”

We wish you all the best, Dan and Crystal. We’ll be eagerly awaiting tonight’s news.

Update: Crystal said yes! Dan writes, “At 6:55 I popped ‘the question’ (with the help of her family, friends and Scribular!) and received an enthusiastic and teary-eyed, “Yes!” Dreams do come true! :)”

—rob

Scribular Launches!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:11:00 -0400

Today, we are pleased to announce that, with the availability of Scribular 1.1 on Apple’s App Store, Scribular has officially launched! For those of you using our iPhone/iPod Touch app, make sure to update to version 1.1 by running App Store from your device, and then going to the Updates tab. We think you’ll really like the new version.

Don’t forget that we have a website too—http://scribular.com. When you’re at your computer, it’s a great way to keep tabs on the Scribular universe.

Thanks to everyone who has used Scribular over the past few months. It’s really been a lot of fun exploring and sharing the world with you folks. As Scribular continues to grow, it’ll be in no small part thanks to you “OGs”. ;)

Of course, this launch means we have only just begun. We’ve got a bunch of cool things in the pipeline here at Scribular, so stay tuned. We’ll be updating this blog with Scribular news (hey, why not subscribe to our RSS feed?), and we’ll be posting on Twitter too.

Oh, and one more thing. Scribular got a shout-out in the Forbes article, “How To Build A Great iPhone App”. Neat!

—rob

Scheme for god sake!

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:19:00 -0400

Monday’s iPhone Meetup was fun. There were lots of people to talk to, and everyone was really excited about the iPhone platform. In this photo of the panelists, I’m the guy in the center. I wasn’t sure what the internet situation was going to be like, so I was running a Scribular server on the laptop sitting in front of me, and my iPod Touch was connecting to it.

Jeffrey Fredrick has a nice post about the event in which he writes, “Rob [me] wrote his backend web service in Scheme for god sake.” This is true. Scribular’s backend is written in LeftParen, which is a framework written on top of PLT Scheme. Scheme isn’t too common a choice for web apps these days, but I think it’s a good one.

—rob

Scribular to Present at iPhone Meetup

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:01:00 -0400

This Monday evening (June 23) in Cupertino, I will be giving a short presentation on Scribular at the Silicon Valley iPhone Developers’ Meetup. I’ll be on a panel with at least 4 other startups, each of which is developing for iPhone. It’s free to attend, and right now there are still 12 spots left. Hope to see you there!

—rob