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I like this idea a lot. I remember there used to be apps on Facebook that listed the states someone had been to. They were fairly popular for a while.

If this can tap into that same urge, I think it could do pretty well.

I love this concept, I already think about maps this way in my head, I'd love a way to externalize it!

Unfortunately though I don't want it on game center, I want it in some sort of open exportable data that I can access, perhaps make a widget for my website out of, or update from other devices.

This is a wonderful idea. It would be really interesting if you could "ally" someone else to combine mini-maps. With this feature, you wouldn't just know where everyone has been, but you can also map their social graph!
Great idea! Please do android next. And make the data open and exportable.
I love the concept but $4.99 is a bit much.
Yikes, "love" isn't even worth $5 anymore? Glad I'm not in the flower industry.
This is truly one of those simple great ideas that we all should have come up with.
In fact, I did came up with this idea one year ago.

My idea was to cover the whole world with fog of war, and to make people team up to discover the world. There would be challenges, where you would pay like 0.50$ to participate, and then big reward for the first team achieving the challenge.

My idea was a free app with paying challenges. Uncovering 25% of the world ? $1 challenge, 20k$ reward. It's a really easy win. People tend to like these kind of idea, they would contact their friend abroad to team up with them, then pay to join the challenge, etc.

I finally decided, after 3months of thoughts, not to realize this project. It's currently impossible to rely confidently on geolocalisation data from any mobile device. People could cheat from iPhone dev. simulator, etc.

Well, kudos to people who did it ! Different from my idea, but anyway. Now that it's been done, I can finally explain the idea I had ! :)

25% of the world is a lot of travelling and expenses for a $1 payoff.
Reversely, paying 1$ in not much when you'll be travelling 25% of the world.

In my very basic example it was 20 000$ payoff for travelling 25% of the world. Let's make it 1 000 000$. I'm still winning.

Covering 25% of the world's surface is almost impossible. Yet, with my app idea, people would have most probably paid for taking the 1$ challenge (i.e. paying 1$ to participate, winning 1M$ for being the first to achieve the goal).

To expand on my concept, there would have been teams, anyone could create a new team, creating teams would have been free, people could have joined as many team as they wanted.

It's easy to go viral on these stuff. Every participant would probably call their friend oversea to tell them to join their team on this particular challenge, i.e. paying 1$ with the 1M$ reward in sight. The reward would be splitted between participants of the winning team (pro rata the surface covered).

Are you going to go through with it? I'm looking for a good excuse to just gtfo of dodge for a while
No, I'm not. As I said, when acquiring geolocalization data on a mobile device, I have no way to decide if they're genuine or not.

If you want a good excuse to just gtfo, come to Switzerland exchange business cards with me.

Uncanny. I can claim in true honesty that I had a remarkably similar vision for a comprehensive life 'experience quotient' app not even 2-3 weeks ago. The travel portion looked very similar: GPS enabled tracing of a global map space with percent coverage. But travel would be but one table in a comprehensive database of life experience: financial, relationships, science, arts, drugs, sex and everything else worth living for. An algorithm would tally a grand 'statistic'. It's the stuff of Borges' wildest fantasies, n'est-ce pas?
Love the idea, now I hope they made sure to not eat all my battery :)
What is this thing? Achievement badges for going places? I don't know the "Fog of War" strategy game reference which would likely contextualize it.
When playing a rts game, the map is revealed once you discover it. Fog of war refers to not being able to view the game map.
In strategy games, there is a fog over areas where you have no vision (ie places you dont have any units that can see exactly what is happening at that moment). This introduces uncertainty and allows for more strategy based on positioning and vision.

This is based on a real military concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war

In (particularly real-time) strategy games the map is often hidden or grayed out at the beginning of a match beneath a "fog of war". As you move your units around the map the area in their vision is revealed. This is particularly important as there may be enemies/objectives in sections of the map which are unexplored.
While people have described this in regards to RTS games, I feel that it might be more appropriate to link it to RPG games where unexplored parts of the map are obscured by a fog until you visit them.

It's worth also noting that some gamers who are real completists love visiting every location to remove the fog, and there's often achievements linked to this.

very cool, though that Explored Area status bar is probably going to be stuck at 0.001% (or less) for a while... I wonder what surface you "discover" when you're standing in place - I'm guessing around 300 m^2?
It's actually only tens of square meters.
I would love to pay $.99 for this, but at $5.49 it's too expensive for me recommend to all my friends.
Just out of curiosity, would you be willing to say what your hourly wage is?
I am always curious why when people say that $x.xx (or any app that is not $.99) is too expensive for an app.

A meal (burger, fries and a drink) in McDonalds will cost you at least $5~$9 depending on the size of the meal you get. Would you say that is expensive? Yet, when an app is anywhere from $2~$10, people will deem it as "expensive". It astounds me when people don't give a thought about spending $10 on food but when it comes to any software-related stuff, the same $10 is "too much".

It comes down to risk.

I know exactly what I'm getting for $5 worth of McDonalds. $5 for an app feels more risky because I have no idea if there will be any value.

You only know what you are getting from McDonalds because you have bought it before, well what about your first time eating at McDonalds? You certainly did not know what you were getting then.
I suspect that for most people in the US their first meal at McDonalds was purchased by their parents. And they probably know quite a few people in real life that would endorse McDonalds.
That is a pretty much irrelevant point though, use any other example of buying a meal from somewhere that is not as common as McDonalds. On the point of endorsing, people can endorse an app as well so I am still not sure how that applies.
I don't go to McDonalds any more since prices went up from $2.... If I'm spending $10 I'll buy something good.
There's a difference between buying food, a necessity, and an app, a luxury. And when you use your McDonald's example, you're assuming that the person you're conversing with is willing to pay $5-$9 for a meal at McDonald's. Many people who won't pay more than a buck for an app won't be spending more than a couple bucks on a meal at McDonald's anyway.
Whenever I see comments like this my first instinct is that their own products, if they have any, are priced too low.

The difference between 99cents and a higher price making the same profit is a significant difference in number of sales. Maybe if they get featured it would be worth it to lower the price to ensure it stays in the charts, but if it's not ranked it does not make sense to have a lower price.

People say what they wish for and then do another thing. People complain about prices, and then buy anyway if the product is right for them. And if the product is exactly made for them they will sense the value and know that the price is great. $5.49 for something you will potentially use for years? I have no trouble seeing the value. Though I only use Android devices.

Sorry, I should have made my point clearer.

What I'm saying is the price is too expensive for me to get a large sample of my social group to try it out.

This will hinder the app's growth.

It could, but that doesn't mean it will. It's a cool enough thing that people will talk about it.

I have done pricing experiments. For apps which are not ranked, and have no ads driving extra traffic, 99cents vs even $6.99 usually equals the same number of sales. Lower prices don't matter as much as people think they do. When you talk about risk, do you mean that you do not believe your social circle will find this interesting enough to even know about it? If you did then price wouldn't matter... have you ever recommended anything higher than 99cents to anyone? That 99cents is a popular price for "apps" does not matter. Devs should still charge more when it makes sense to.

Cool idea, but I think my life will be way longer than the lifetime of this app.

I think I could do something similar in an open format that will still be accessible in 50 years: an image of the world map, with an alpha channel that has pixels where I've been made opaque.

In case the dev is reading these: typo in bullet 6 at bottom

>It is recommended to use a separate GPS device to record your tracks. This would save beattery life of your iOS device and avoid GPS signal loss when Internet connection is unavailable.

Otherwise, looks batteful.

Thanks. We already fixed that. ;)
This looks really nice. I recently switched to Android (which, in my mind, with version 4.1 finally is able to compete with iOS in smoothness/stability while vastly surpassing it in features and usability), so I'm hopeful for an Android version.

An Android version would also bring added benefits of smarter/less battery intensive background operation which could make this run all the time. Constant GPS-monitoring like Latitude or this seems to run way better on Android for some reason.

* An Android version would also bring added benefits of smarter/less battery intensive background operation which could make this run all the time. Constant GPS-monitoring like Latitude or this seems to run way better on Android for some reason. *

I'm curious, what makes you think this would more power efficient on Android?

This is purely speculative, but I think there are a couple of reasons why apps like this runs better on Android.

I think it mainly boils down to the fact that app developers on Android have much more freedom than on iOS, for example - instead of having to run the whole app in the background they can just run a small daemon. Android apps don't resort to weird workarounds, like in regular intervals doing something that requires some CPU power, in order to not get autokilled/paused like inactive apps often are on iOS.

On Android they can also do stuff like only using the GPS (which is very battery intensive) if they notice that the cell phone antenna/wifi reception is changing (indicating that you're not standing/sitting still) while GPS background logging on iOS requires constant GPS-logging.

Limits like that makes iOS use way more battery for background location tracking, in my experience at least. Another reason may be simply that Android phones tend to have larger batteries (in mAh) than iPhones do (the iPhone 5 has a 1440mAh battery, the Samsung Galaxy S3 has 2100mAh battery).

While the iPhone 5 is generally more power efficient than the S3 (due to slower CPU with less cores, smaller display and a more optimized OS), I'd imagine that their GPS chips uses approximately the same power, draining the iPhone battery faster since it simply has less power stored.

Foursquare's experience developing apps that use background location has been the exact opposite.

The iOS background location APIs are so restrictive precisely so that you can't drain the battery. The OS, which is running anyway, can listen for major changes in location and start your app only if the location change is relevant to your application.

On Android, your app has to be running in the background always, to constantly check for such changes itself, which significantly drains the battery. If several such apps are running...

> On Android, your app has to be running in the background always, to constantly check for such changes itself, which significantly drains the battery. If several such apps are running...

Strictly false. Your app may still have a daemon in the "running" state in the background, but Android supports the exact same "sleep until significant changes are detected by the OS" method that iOS uses. I have multiple applications that can take action of some form or another based on changes to my location, and unless I have my phone screen turned on and actively running the UI for those apps, they never even appear in the list of applications using the most battery.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, almost everything you said regarding background apps using location services is possible in iOS 6 (or even iOS 5).
It's quite simple: most iPhone apps just leave the GPS turned on 100% of the time when in the background, as it's complicated to do otherwise (or you can use the borderline-useless 'significant change' cell-tower location api's).

Android gives you the option of leaving it turned off for 10 mins, fire your app up for a minute, turn the GPS on, then turn it off again and go to sleep for 10 mins again. Huge battery savings. You can technically do this on iOS, but it's a challenge and kinda-sorta breaking the background running rules so big companies like google don't tend to do it in their apps.

There you go :)

We should have hints on titles like "Apple only" so we don't have to read for 5 minutes and then see that it was a total waste of time, having no Android version.
This is neat, I wish Google Latitude had it. For that matter, I wish Google Latitude had any useful visual representation of the 2+ years' worth of location data I've been feeding it. =|
I suggest you check out google latitude - dashboard feature, its shows some amazing stats along with automatically detecting trips for you.
Some new importing sources are considering. Google Latitude is no doubt one of them. Stay tuned.
Um, have you actually tried using the Web interface?

Here's a screenshot from my vacation a few days ago.

http://greggman.com/downloads/examples/latitude-maps.png

That completely sucks in comparison to the app posted here, unfortunately.
That may be true but my response wasn't to compare it to the app. It was in response to For that matter, I wish Google Latitude had any useful visual representation of the 2+ years' worth of location data I've been feeding it.

Latitude does have a useful visual representation. It also makes all the data available for you to do any other representation you'd like. See links in screenshot for downloading the data.

Right, it only lets you view up to 30 days at a time. I want to see it all at once, and I wouldn't even mind if it's just a messy pile of incomprehensible lines. Something like this fog of war idea would be even better, though.
When I used to live in SF, I would always go on walks and explore the city. I found that it would take several visits before I could fully remember the details of a new route or area, but once I knew that place I would move onto a new area. This was enjoyable and I got to see the innards of a beautiful city.

Now this? Congratulations, you have turned a peaceful and enjoyable experience into a slot machine. Now rather than enjoying where I am, I can enjoy hearing my phone go DING! You will lose all connection to the places you go. Rather than rely on my own memory, which takes a few trips, I will just go to a neighborhood once, cross it off my checklist and probably never go back. Because going back wont give me the exp I need to level up and release endorphins.

Gamifaction is the public relations term for addiction.

Anyway, get off my lawn, yada yada...

> Congratulations, you have turned a peaceful and enjoyable experience into a slot machine.

So don't use it?

well obviously. But I want others to see gamification for what it really is. The decision to use gamification in your products is similar to the decision to add fiberglass to cigarettes in the mid 20th century. Executives at tobacco companies didnt think it was bad, they just knew it would increase profits.

Obviously this app does not have the same scope as cigarettes. But slowly more and more products/games are moving towards this model. The AAA game industry very quickly adopted zynga-esque addiction mechanics rather than 'fun' mechanics.

edit: before I get downvoted for what might seem like a ridiculous comparison, let me give some context.

About a month ago, one of my favorite MMOs ever, and imo the greatest MMO ever made, Vanguard:SOH was changed from subscription to F2P by its owner SOE. VG:SOH is the deepest, most complex MMO ever created and has a huge world. However once it went F2P, SOE turned it into essentially a zynga game. It changed from an rpg to an item-driven grind fest (ie keep grinding these same quests and you can get epic loot). Then you can buy xp potions to make leveling go by faster. In short they turned it from a rpg into slot machine. With a consistent and easy path to get your endorphin bursts.

Now this isn't that different than what every other AAA game studio is doing to their games (except maybe Valve). The path is clear to them. The term gamification exists because non-game companies want to take advantage of this model. But what they don't understand is that they are making shallow, heartless products that guide you towards their goals rather than making something fun and enjoyable. In other words, the cigarette analogy is perfectly apt. Cigarettes have been made optimally efficient to cause addiction whereas previously they had just been an enjoyable experience and not nearly as addictive. Addiction profit is a gold mine.

I don't see this as gamification. This is just an automatic way of putting pins on a map.
It fills up your progress bar as you perform their actions. That is the definition of gamification.
Perhaps it fits yours, but not mine. I consider gamification as adding mechanisms to some other activity (such as participating in a community) to turn it into a game. While the idea was inspired by a game, I don't see any more "gamification" here than I do in keeping track of, say, how many friends one has on Facebook. There's no reward system, no leader boards. It's just a record of travel.
>I consider gamification as adding mechanisms to some other activity (such as participating in a community) to turn it into a game.

Perform action, receive reward, repeat, collect more rewards.

That in a lot of definitions is a game. Fog of World, you perform an action by travelling, unlock badges, repeat, collect more badges. That sounds like the very definition of gamification.

In the case of vanguard, you don't have the option to have the old, ungamified, version. (Can a game not be gamified?) In the case of walking around, you can still do it the same way you always have, if you prefer. What's the problem here?
A game can be fun; it can be deep and complex...or it can be like farmville. The problem is that companies are moving in droves towards Farmville type products because addiction is more profitable. I would like this community, as the vanguard of tech development, to see that there is a problem with this.
Not to pick a fight, but is there something specific about this product that you feel crosses the line? To me your complaint has a similar ring to Plato's on writing (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/museum/plato.html). My point is that technologies such as this app have a long lineage, have faced similar complaints, and eventually the complaints disappear as we incorporate the technologies and move on. You might be right that a certain magic is lost, but overall the trend is strongly towards cognitive efficiency at the expense of magic. Or am I missing your point?
Thats why I made the 'get off my lawn' comment, because I know I was coming off as a bit of a crank :)

In response to evan_'s comment, I give an explanation that describes in a bit more detail why I feel gamification is bad in general. So the first paragraph I wrote was a 'the magic is lost' rant, and the second is an angry rant at gamification. I think it is bad and you can see in my other comment for a partial reason why.

I have nothing against this particular product other than the progress bars. If the magic is lost, its lost. But the addictive mechanics that are springing up in more and more web/mobile applications are a disturbing trend. We, the business class, have found out how to make slot machines cool and we're all slapping each other on the back as we make money hand over fist while turning countless customers into addicts.

(I dont believe this product will turn anyone into an addict and I may be making comments that seem extreme when taken out of context. This may be a deeper issue than can be discussed on a internet forum)

Time to go for 100% map completion...
Thank God this costs $5 dollars. I might have even gone as high as $10. To all those that think 5 bucks is too much: for you to actually get any value out of this app you have to use it over a non-significant portion of your life. We're talking on the timescale of years; I find it hilarious that 1 dollar is fine but 5 whole dollars is outrageous.
You and I might be able to justify the price, but 99% of the people I know will not.

That means this is not a product I would be able to get most of my social group to use.

You mean people who travel around the world can't spend 5 bucks on an iPhone app, makes sense :-)
What he means is that most people, including those in his social circle, are irrational about paying for apps, and so won't use it.
Are they being irrational?

Most apps are opened once, twice at most. A small percentage of apps downloaded are used at all after the first day on the user's device. A very few make it into daily use; and most of those are on the device the day it's purchased.

This is because most apps are not compelling experiences.

If you factor in the risk that this app, like most of the ones they have seen so far; will not be in their life for more than 10 minutes... I would say they are being rational in their pricing bias.

There are two ways around this. You can communicate your value ahead of time to your potential customers, which Fog Of World does fairly well. Or you can build a business model that has usage based pricing through in-app purchases, so that people who are regular users are paying their way.

All good points. I was mostly responding to the GGP's snark.
Just curious, are there any sites which show most-used apps?
It makes perfect sense.

Probably my most well-traveled friend is far from well-off. She just prioritizes travel over many other things in her life, like $5 mobile apps that don't solve any specific problem.

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I suspect this would be better as a membership with an annual fee and a free app.
I think apprehension comes from never realizing $5 worth of value. Myself and others have come to spend money on many apps only to be dissapointed. Theres more times that I will use a free app and pay for the premium version after realizing the value. $1 is a simple impulse buy, $5 not as much.
So it's just an app that keeps track of where you've been?
Yep. And know the percentage of area you have explored around the world, around a continent, and around a country.
Looks great, although I'm to worried of my iPhone's battery to install..
Nice concept.

Some feedback on the site itself: I'm having trouble reading the text due to the low contrast. (Maybe my monitor isn't setup properly?)

I love this idea.

Unfortunately my GPX export from Foursquare doesn't seem to show up in the application.

I used this utility for what it's worth: http://etgps.net/gps/4sq/

The utility treats each checked-in locations as part of a track. But you don't actually follow the route to visit each places, right? That's why those locations won't be imported. You need to find a tool to convert those locations to tracks. Each track only contains one location. That will work.
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Sweet, just purchased.

I travel internationally quite a bit, actually feeling a bit bummed this didn't exist a couple of years ago :(

Hopefully doesn't eat so much battery that my phone dies before the day is over.

Couple of questions if anyone has bought it and can answer: 1) Extending the fog of war metaphor, do places gradually 'fade' or 'grey-out' or similar the longer you are away from the area? Or is it a case of once-seen always seen? 2) This seems great for the devices that have GPS, but I'm sceptical of it's value on say, my iPod Touch, which IIRC relies entirely on Wi-Fi triangulation.
(1) It's once-seen, always seen. (2) You can use a separate GPS logger to record your tracks and import them back to the app. A dedicated GPS logger is usually small, light-weight, long battery life, and better for receiving GPS signal when there is no Internet connection.
Cool! I can't wait to load the last two years of my running tracks!