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This looks really, really useful to boaters. I'm not a boater at all, but I am a hobbyist pilot that flies maybe once a month on small trips. I frequently use F

This looks really, really useful to boaters. I'm not a boater at all, but I am a hobbyist pilot that flies maybe once a month on small trips. I frequently use Foreflight (http://www.foreflight.com/ http://www.foreflight.com/) for navigation, planning, information, etc (while also calling the FSS Briefer to be safe!) for flights. To download the app is free but the service costs $99 per year. Your pricing model is very forgiving. If you've got the features to support offline caching and downloading of charts ahead of time, $.99 download and $11.99/yr is a no-brainer. It's nice too that you guys didn't go crazy on design and looks like you focused on functionality and features, which is the most important for a tool like this. Is this something your company does regularly or was it a "hey we have a few boaters let's knock out an app" sort of project?

andrewljohnson 13y ago
Couple of comments: 1) We started out long ago making a hiking website, which led to hiking iPhone apps, which led us to make all sorts of mapping apps, everything from Burning Man to hiking to driving. We basically now specialize in anything that takes an offline map. 2) The pricing model is based on some other successful apps - for examples, Wing-X in the aviation space and Motion-X GPS Drive. The .99 is not to make money, it's basically just to make sure you are a boater and are interested, and it helps keep costs under control for serving the data and using the APIs we pay for. We plan to eventually increase the 11.99 subscription fee, but people who subscribe early on will get to keep the same cost. 3) We did this now because Skipper is the forerunner of the next version of Gaia GPS, version 8. We have been working for many moons to overhaul our core code, and it will lead to 3 app releases. Skipper, Gaia 8, and one more for a partner I can't name.
- monkey_slap 13y ago
  Super smart. Congrats on the release.
- instaheat 13y ago
  I would love to see a partnership for all the major music festivals being mapped out. Sure, they hand out maps but it would so much better to whip out my phone. I went to Bonnaroo this year and would have appreciated something like this. Hiking, great idea also. How about, INSIDE GROCERY STORES? I don't do much of the shopping in my household but when I do, it is usually a frustrating process finding everything on my (her) list. It could be crowd sourced like Waze whereby if Big Box stores do a floor move, you could report on it. "Crepes got moved to Aisle 3" "The Sale section is now here" and look at a visualization of this data. Categorize it by color, etc. The answer to "Where do they keep the...?" How's that for a killer app idea. FUCKING IKEA! I'll work on this with someone. Please give me an excuse to quit my day job.
  - andrewljohnson 13y ago
    1) If you ever go to Burning Man, we do the free, open source app for that: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iburn-2012-burning-man-map/id388169740?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iburn-2012-burning-man-map/i... 2) Hiking is where we started. We make the top selling hiking GPS app, the one that people consider to be the true Garmin analog, with all the benefits of the network connected smart phone: http://www.gaiagps.com/ http://www.gaiagps.com/ 3) Inside grocery stores is tricky because GPS doesn't work in doors. There is nascent tech that does work, though.
    - instaheat 13y ago
      Very cool! I will download it prior to my next hiking trip. http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/microsoft-motorola-nokia-and-rim-to-battle-google-over-indoor-location-market/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/micros...
  - pigscantfly 13y ago
    A partnership between app developers and event production companies would be great; I was at EDC Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and the promotion company, Insomniac Events, produced their own app for the festival. Sounds great, right? Only problem was that their app refused to display the event map and set times without a live network connection. With 300,000+ people in one place, you can forget about 4g, so despite downloading the app in advance, I ended up just using paper maps/set lists the whole weekend. Huge waste of paper and time.

andrewljohnson 13y ago

Couple of comments: 1) We started out long ago making a hiking website, which led to hiking iPhone apps, which led us to make all sorts of mapping apps, everything from Burning Man to hiking to driving. We basically now specialize in anything that takes an offline map. 2) The pricing model is based on some other successful apps - for examples, Wing-X in the aviation space and Motion-X GPS Drive. The .99 is not to make money, it's basically just to make sure you are a boater and are interested, and it helps keep costs under control for serving the data and using the APIs we pay for. We plan to eventually increase the 11.99 subscription fee, but people who subscribe early on will get to keep the same cost. 3) We did this now because Skipper is the forerunner of the next version of Gaia GPS, version 8. We have been working for many moons to overhaul our core code, and it will lead to 3 app releases. Skipper, Gaia 8, and one more for a partner I can't name.

monkey_slap 13y ago
Super smart. Congrats on the release.
instaheat 13y ago
I would love to see a partnership for all the major music festivals being mapped out. Sure, they hand out maps but it would so much better to whip out my phone. I went to Bonnaroo this year and would have appreciated something like this. Hiking, great idea also. How about, INSIDE GROCERY STORES? I don't do much of the shopping in my household but when I do, it is usually a frustrating process finding everything on my (her) list. It could be crowd sourced like Waze whereby if Big Box stores do a floor move, you could report on it. "Crepes got moved to Aisle 3" "The Sale section is now here" and look at a visualization of this data. Categorize it by color, etc. The answer to "Where do they keep the...?" How's that for a killer app idea. FUCKING IKEA! I'll work on this with someone. Please give me an excuse to quit my day job.
- andrewljohnson 13y ago
  1) If you ever go to Burning Man, we do the free, open source app for that: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iburn-2012-burning-man-map/id388169740?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iburn-2012-burning-man-map/i... 2) Hiking is where we started. We make the top selling hiking GPS app, the one that people consider to be the true Garmin analog, with all the benefits of the network connected smart phone: http://www.gaiagps.com/ http://www.gaiagps.com/ 3) Inside grocery stores is tricky because GPS doesn't work in doors. There is nascent tech that does work, though.
  - instaheat 13y ago
    Very cool! I will download it prior to my next hiking trip. http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/microsoft-motorola-nokia-and-rim-to-battle-google-over-indoor-location-market/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/micros...
- pigscantfly 13y ago
  A partnership between app developers and event production companies would be great; I was at EDC Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and the promotion company, Insomniac Events, produced their own app for the festival. Sounds great, right? Only problem was that their app refused to display the event map and set times without a live network connection. With 300,000+ people in one place, you can forget about 4g, so despite downloading the app in advance, I ended up just using paper maps/set lists the whole weekend. Huge waste of paper and time.