Saturday, July 31, 2010

PDX Bus is getting a new icon



Here is the stylish new icon for PDX Bus!  It was designed by Rob Alan, a designer I met at the Civic Apps Awards Ceremony.

I really like how it has some of the colors and design from an actual TriMet bus, and is much more dynamic and detailed than the old icons.  Compare to the previous icons below...

Here is the old one - I made it from a public domain image of a bus superimposed over a photograph of the sky over Crater Lake.   I'm no graphics designer!

The first one was really bad!  I was in a hurry and I forgot all about the icon until the end.

While I was there I also changed the template for the blog to something cleaner and better!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

PDX Bus wins award!

Yesterday PDX Bus was awarded two awards at the Greater Portand Civic Apps Awards - Most Appealing App and Best in Show!  I'm still in a daze.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me and offered helpful feedback to make the app better in the last two years - without the feedback PDX Bus would not have become the useful app that it is today.

Friday, July 2, 2010

PDX Bus 4.2 is finally available!

Lots of small changes - get it while it's hot!

- Support for iOS4 and fast switching between apps.  Regular features are designed to work on all models of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch running OS version 3.0 and above.
- The current location "blue dot" is now shown on all maps.
- The tip planner map now shows the actual route of the busses and trains.
- Fixed usability issue with bookmarks - the bookmark icon can be used to edit or delete an existing bookmark was well as to add one.
- Routes, directions and stop names are cached until the end of each day (or optionally until the end of the week).  (TriMet tells me that routes only change at midnight - mostly they change weekly on Sunday but occasionally they change mid-week).
- Multiple bug fixes and tweaks (e.g.  fixed iPhone font issues introduced when adding iPad support, fixed different behavior of home button).