dualsportmaps.com - Android App

Jeremy - Beginning to think its the charger itself rattling to death. I will try the Burnsmoto.

I did try trapping the cable next to the phone but no go.

Ultimate Addon doesn't seem to have a case for my phone. Thx

<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dkX4h_eChdo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I haven't had any issues with the one I bought from Warm and Safe.

Crafty, great app been working well for the last year +, no troubles. I have "download my map" many times. But tonight I am unable to download any maps except one. I did "delete all maps" to test the download , no luck. It will download the first single map,new or with changes each time. I did upload photobucket last night but i have since removed it from the casio commando c771. Not sure what i have going. any ideas? Thanks again for all your hard work. Check my page if you would. the only map it will download is the 03 green river to hite. andy

I just gave it a test on my phone. I have 70 "My Maps" and they all just downloaded fine. Can you confirm that you have your login and password setup (if you are getting 1 map I'm sure you do but its worth a double check). Go ahead and "Force Stop" the app (or reboot your phone) and try again. One thing to check is that your device has space free in the user data area. I don't actually know how to do this. I store the DSM Maps in a "protected" user space (which is not inspectable) but it is very possible that you have filled it up with other apps. If you can find an app that is consuming a ton of space on disk and uninstalling (and wiping its data) it that may solve your problem as well (Android Settings -> App Management -> *App* -> Storage -> Data). My 70 maps use about 8MB of storage space, and I have a TON map data. Over a million track points. Sorry I don't have more ideas for you.

Crafty, just as you instructed: I did move ds data to the sd card, force stopped the app, rebooted the phone, reset log in and password. Able to retrive all of the maps again.... Nicely done.. I have a great time with this app and the map making is a great time and quite entertaining. I don't know about other users but I would gladly make donations too your cause, just let us know. Thanks again. Andy

Woot!
I have yet to figure out how to fund this project. The website is expensive and the app does not cover the costs. I don't like advertising. I don't like memberships. The best course of action I have come up with is an NPR like semi annual fund drive. The problem with that is that if it fails I'd feel obliged to shut down the site to punish the users who chose not to support it. I'm not ready to do that either... Technology is easy, business is hard.

Add a donate button via PayPal to your website.

I put up a Donate Button (top right near the login link) which goes to a $10/month subscription page a Paypal. We shall see how this goes.

I suppose now is as good a time as any spill the beans on this. Google has decided to shutdown the Maps API V2 that the website uses to render and edit maps. This means that the website needs a complete rewrite to stay online past the summer. This affects the Android users as much as the website users because the app has such a tight connection to the website. The donate button I added to the site which sets up a subscription will keep the website online going forward but we also need a pile of cash to rewrite the thing too. I setup a page to try to collect enough money get it done. Help out if you can.


UPDATE 3/19/2013
***I cancelled the fundraiser and refunded everyone. Not enough money was coming in and the cost to refund the money was 10% so every dollar I did raise was just money I was burning. I also tried to get a Kickstarter page up but it was turned down.***

The Google end of life notice.

Does this have to do with Andy Rubin's resignation as CEO for Google and possibly changes within the android platform??
I have bee using your application side by side with my Garmin Montana and quite frankly your application is easier to use while riding.

Unrelated issues. The site is built with Google Web Toolkit and when I built it Google Maps API V3 was new and was not supported by GWT so I decided to use V2 assuming that GWT would eventually support Maps V3. Well, Maps V2 is being shutdown in May and still there is no GWT support for V3 (and there wont be, Google doesn't give a crap). I now have a mountain of really shitty work to do to make the website work by May.

Yesterday's donations were not very encouraging but there is still time to offer support and get the word out. This is an interesting experiment to me. Either people are going kick down a pile of cash and I will make time to rewrite the website or they won't and it dies in May. I've invested A LOT of time, money, and effort into the website and app and I gained a lot of valuable experience doing it. I just don't have the time to work for free anymore though (more kids, big mortgage, questionable job security). If the site was not going to require such a large investment to continue I'd be agreeable to the status quo (and in fact just last November I got a new $8000ish server online for this to run on for the next few years) but that is not the new reality. Google is shutting us down and soon. We need to make the investment now or say goodbye.

Before anyone starts to offer suggestions that include them not ponying up dough, I'd like to make a few things clear. I'm not interested in the site being anything but free to use. A fee defeats the purpose of having an open track database which is large and growing. At the same time it costs a lot to run the site and even more to write. That means it needs revenue. Advertisements are very offensive to my sense of aesthetic, so they are out. That means the future of the site falls on the shoulders of its users who can choose to support it or not at their leisure.

I know that isn't "fair" because some people will have to pay so that others get it for free. That is to all our benefit though. This is a rather typical tragedy of the commons situation. It is in EVERYONE's best interest to not send me a nickel so they can have the website for free, but there will be no website unless EVERYONE kicks in $10 without coercion. I wonder how it will shake out? Maybe we all get lucky and some rich benefactor will step in and sponsor the work for all our benefit.

The app is great though, I agree with you Pepe. I made it because the Montana was not yet released and the Garmin I had just didn't cut the mustard. I made my own and it works EXACTLY how I want it to. Had the Montana been for sale I'd probably have just got one but for myself and learned to live with it. I'm glad I was too impatient and made my own. It was a worthy endeavor.

How much cash are we talking about here? Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Give us a target and we can make an informed decision on our support level.

Great question. I've been wondering if anyone would ask it. We are talking about at least solid month of work here for the rewrite. That costs $15,000 when you include the tax man's piece. I also would like to see enough regular revenue coming in to help defer the ongoing and recurring expenses which are about $1500/month roughly. That includes database servers, web servers, storage, bandwidth only; none of my time is included in that number. The app brings in about $500. Those recurring costs are not my main concern at the moment though. I've been eating that for the last few years and I can manage that in the near term while I come up with a solution to that rather fundamental imbalance. What doesn't feel appropriate to me is me taking the month off from working for money so I can rebuild the site. I'm sure everyone can understand that.

I'm sort of pissed at Google for this but I understand and respect their choice to shut down the V2 API. I do not forgive them not making the V3 Maps API GWT compatible though. I've been yelling at them about this for years because I knew this day would come and I REALLY wanted it to not be such a giant pain in the ass. It's going to be harder to write the site the second time than it was the first. This is why I've been stalling for so long to move to the Maps API V3 though. I just couldn't believe they were going to burn all of us GWT/Maps people like this. There are a lot of people like me scrambling to figure out what to do right now.

Dammit. I just ordered a Nexus 7 yesterday, primarily to use this app and now I see this. Well, I've chipped in $10 for now, and will be keeping my fingers crossed.

Hey Crafty, I haven't even begun to use this app to its full potential, but your commitment to the webpage and app since the conception has been 2nd to none and it would really be a shame to see it go away. I really hate to hear that the re-write is going to be so difficult and time consuming.

I contributed a bit now and hope to contribute more in the near future.

Let's hope you get some support from all the users that really enjoy this application.

Thanks,

Dan

Crafty-

Is the PayPal link from the DSM website a $10 one time donation or a $10/month reoccurring donation?

The PayPal terms say "$10.00 USD for each month".

I definitely want to donate more than $10, but a $10/month might be more than I want to do.

I think you have addressed this previously, but have you considered a Kickstarter?

I have seen it work on some very niche products. My wife is in to sewing historic dresses and a woman who makes very elaborate patterns put up a Kickstarter for a new dress pattern with a $7500 (to fund initial print runs of pattern) goal and a 2 month timeline. She met the goal in 12 hours and doubled it in 2 weeks.

Just a thought, really want to see this work out, but completely understand your need to do little things like feed your kids and pay the mortgage.

George

It is a $10/month button. The site costs about $1500/month to keep online. The "high" cost is because of some rather expensive choices I made at the very beginning because I did not really consider the cost at all when I started and it just sort of took on a life of it's own with the baked in high cost structures. The kind of help the site needs is regular so the donation link was setup to be regular. If the site is not worth it to you or you cannot afford it please do not invest in it. I cannot stress enough how completely voluntary this entire project is and has been (for me and everyone else).

We are facing two issues currently. The primary issue is that the site goes offline in late May unless it is rewritten. That requires a lot of effort to do which translates roughly (though not directly) to money. The second issue is the fact that dualsportmaps.com is not trivially expensive to operate. I've been supporting it for years now because I really felt our community needed a tool like this. I'm not very good about asking for help but when I finally decided to face the fact that the site needs to be rewritten a few days ago I realized how one-sided this entire relationship between DSM, its users, and myself is. My financial and temporal subjugation has been completely voluntary though. Whatever "fault" exists is mine alone.

The Kickstarter idea isn't a terrible one. I am not exactly "comfortable" with accepting donations while not being committed to actually doing the work. Having raised a mere $140 toward the rewrite fund is not encouraging. A Kickstarter would allow the money to be returned without incurring fees if the goal is not met. This seems like a much better system actually because it spares the hard feelings or the 10% the donations are costing me currently if we don't raise the money needed to do the work. As I mentioned a few days ago though, if I set a goal and we don't meet it I will feel obliged to kill the site (choices must have consequences). An outcome I'm not sure I'm ready to accept. Conveniently, the reality is what it is and my acceptance of it is not going to change it.

Rock - :huh - Hard place

Clearly, I've not really thought any of this through. I got the memo from Google around Christmas telling me that the site was going offline in May but ignored it because I was putting in 80 hour work weeks and I didn't have the energy to deal with it. I somehow convinced myself it was a summer time problem and I still had time. I checked the date a couple days ago and realized its a May problem. May is RIGHT around the corner which explains my new sense of urgency.

I don't know the right answer. You inmates are the people I wrote the website for in the first place. Perhaps you guys should tell me. Would you be more inclined to contribute if I setup a Kickstarter and "promised" to do the requisite labor if the requested money came in? (As opposed to the system now where I just have my hat in my hand but am making no promises.)

Crafty-

I think you hit the nail on the head with your thoughts about a Kickstarter. I am much more likely to pony up more money if it is "guarantied" to keep the project going. Kickstarter also has the potential to put it out in front of a larger audience. It also gives you a place to lay out your case for the site and explain the costs.

I really hope you will consider doing this and then those of us who have been using the site and the app can be out promoting the Kickstarter to others. It is possible that we really can raise the kind of support needed to keep things going. It might take a few months and the site may have to go offline for a bit if the money does not come in quickly. As much of a bummer as that would be it would give all of the current users a kick in the ass to help get more supporters.

Would it be possible to keep a version of the site online with a place to download popular tracks, but without the track creation function? It could act as a placeholder and be another venue to promote the Kickstarter.

Have you considered reaching out to vendors as part of a Kickstarter? Kickstarters usually have a tiered set of rewards for supporters and one of the higher ones could be geared toward commercial support. Perhaps a $1000 contribution gets you an ad for a fixed amount of time and discount on future ads to reward the support of the Kickstarter.

Yes I said ad. I think the reality is that you are going to need to seek some kind of continuing revenue if the site is to keep going after the update. Ads could form the base of that with voluntary user support shoring that up.

Please let those of us who have been benefitting from the site do our part by giving us a chance to evangelize/fundraise for you with a Kickstarter. You have done all the heavy lifting so far and now the users of this "free" site need to step up.

And if you have to throw in the towel for personal and financial reasons do not see it as a failure, just as an inspiration of what is possible to serve the riding community.

My $.02,

George

Crafty, I love the app and use it a lot. Count me in on the PayPal thing because of how much I use it and if you launch a kickstarter campaign, I'll help there too.

Bill

Sent from my Samsung Note 2