Version 1.2 of Dive Log on iPhone released in the app store today!

Apple surprised us this morning with an early approval in the app store - sometimes it happens! This new version of Dive Log has some great new features that we've been working on for 2 months now.

1. First, you can incorporate more photos into your logbook. You can attach a photo to each Dive Site entry and each Country entry. Take a picture of the Dive Master's map on the white board, or attach a photo from your favorite critter at the site. Lots of people are into flags so you can add a photo of the country flag to the country entry. You can also add your own smiling face to your personal information stored in the log. Or maybe a picture of the dog instead. Photo's can be taken with iPhone's built in camera or loaded from the Photo Library on IPhone or iPod touch. A quick note about photos in general - We have received a few requests from people who would like to manage the photos they took on a dive with their logbook. This is not something we currently support and general photo management is not likely to be a feature of Dive Log on iPhone. Remember, although Apple keeps increasing the memory size of its devices, it's still a phone! Adding images to your dive log will certainly increase the size of the database. There are applications that are better suited to manage your photos than Dive Log for iPhone.

2. Have your instructor, Dive Master, or Buddy sign your logbook to verify your dive. Each logbook entry can now be signed directly on your iPhone (using your finger as a "pen") on the new "signature pad" for each log entry. Now all we have to do is figure out what the modern version of an "stamp and ink pad" look like! Send us suggestions and don't "ink" your iPhone!

3. Quickly locate items such as Buddies, Dive Sites, Cities, Countries, and Time Zones using quick access indices. Some of us have added quite a bit of dive information to our logs and now we have the index down the right hand side of the screen to quickly navigate to the right place.

4. Search for a specific Buddy, Dive Site, Cities, Country, or Time Zone using the new search bar at the top of many of the lists. Sorry, we can't help you remember what it was you were searching for in the first place though!

5. Directly read your average depth for a dive from the Profile display. The profile graph now displays the average depth in feet or meters in addition to showing the average depth graphically.

6. You can now work with your logbook directly in Japanese. Dive Log for iPhone now supports the Japanese language in addition to English (and variants), German, French, and Spanish.

7. And last but definitely not least, we have done a multitude of interface enhancements, performance enhancements, and maybe even fixed 1 or 2 bugs.

We're very excited about this new release and know that you'll find it a great addition to both your iPhone and scuba diving experiences. Re-live your dives at any time by looking in your log!

Click here to see it in the app store.

VMWare Fusion 3.0, Windows 7, Diving Log 5.0 Beta, Snow Leopard - 'Tis the Season

There has certainly been plethora of new software releases in the last couple of weeks. I imagine that a lot of Mac users have wondered how all these new releases play together and if they work with Dive Log on iPhone. I've been running Diving Log 4.0 on my Mac using VMWare Fusion 2.x and Windows XP under MacOS 10.5.x (Leopard) to sync with my dive computers and Dive Log on iPhone for some time. The introduction of MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and more recently VMWare 3.0, Windows 7 and Diving Log 5.0 beta have created lots of possibilities for things to stop working. I'm please to say, that for the most part this has not been the case!

Snow Leopard looks like a pretty minor change to Leopard on the surface, but "under the covers" there are significant changes. The good news is that applications like MacDive and Mac DiveLog seem to be working just fine under Snow Leopard. I have been able to download my dive computers and sync with Dive Log on iPhone via Dive Log Manager without any problems on Snow Leopard. The one place where changes to the lowest levels of the OS can be a factor is with device driver support. I've been using Suunto's USB cable to sync my D9 with my Mac and the diver that I've been using works fine under Snow Leopard. I have been in contact with some users that have been using the CustomIdea cable and driver that have not been as lucky. The CustomIdea cable uses a chip and driver from Silicon Laboratories. A recent communication with Silicon Laboratories suggested that they were planning to support Snow Leopard and expected to have an schedule for that support around now. I'll let you know when I hear more details on their plans.

VMWare Fusion running Windows and Diving Log on Snow Leopard is also working very well. I've had no troubles importing dives from my dive computers (Suunto and Scubapro/Uwatec) and syncing the data to Dive Log on iPhone.

VMWare Fusion 3.0, Windows 7 (x64) and Diving Log 5.0 beta ... works great too! This was a pleasant surprise as everything worked without any drama. I must confess that I was a Windows Vista "skipper", so I had to approach the upgrade to Windows 7 as a clean install. This was probably for the best anyways (evan as a clean install my Windows 7 virtual machine is at least 2GB bigger than my existing Windows XP virtual machine). You may have to jump through a few hoops if you purchased Windows 7 as an upgrade to do a clean install on a new virtual machine. The catch is with activation (Microsoft is a little vague on how you are supposed to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7). I followed the steps suggested by "morrispe" in this thread and it worked very smoothly. I decided to try the 64 bit version of Windows 7 and it seems to be working without any problems. When you set up your virtual machine, remember that your network configuration needs to be set to "bridge mode" (the default is "NAT mode") in order to sync with Dive Log on iPhone. This is necessary because Bonjour (the Zero-administration networking configuration used by Diving Log 5.0 and Dive Log on iPhone) requires that both devices be on the same subnet. You can change this setting at any time and VMWare Fusion will remind you that you should install the included security software (which you should do regardless of your networking mode in my opinion) if you are going to run in bridge networking mode. Also, depending on how you set up your firewall configuration you may need to enable Diving Log and/or Bonjour to communicate on your network.

You will also need to install either Bonjour for Windows or iTunes into your virtual machine for Diving Log and Dive Log on iPhone to rendezvous. Since you probably use iTunes on your Mac already, you can just install Bonjour and save some space. If you installed the 64 bit version of Windows, you should install the 64 bit version of Bonjour for Windows (the link is on the Bonjour page, but here is the direct link to the x64 bit download). By the way, if you want to by pass Bonjour and establish you link manually you can do that using the steps in this tutorial.

You can install Diving Log 5.0 beta into your new virtual machine by downloading it from http://www.scuba-divelog.com/dl50. You don't need to install Dive Log 4.0 first (unless you want to) as you can just apply your 4.0 registration data to this build (press "r" in the info dialog). Your existing logbook data from Diving Log 4.0 will work with the 5.0 beta release.

I was able to import my Suunto D9 directly into Diving Log 5.0 under Windows 7 on VMWare 3.0. Once your cable is plugged into your Mac, you'll need to enable it in the virtual machine for Windows to use. If you are using the Suunto cable, you will get a message that Windows was unable to find a driver for this device at this point (no worries). You can download the appropriate driver from Suunto's website here. You could install the full Suunto Dive Manager release, but I choose to install just the USB driver (they are listed at the bottom of the page as being for "Suunto t6, G6, X9i, Dive Computers"). You'll want the appropriate driver for your Windows 7 install, either the 64 bit driver or the 32 bit driver. After you run the driver install application you should get all the appropriate "happy sounds" from Windows and your Suunto cable should be available as a COM port (probably COM3). You can always look in the Windows device manager to see which COM port the Suunto cable was assigned to. You should now be able to proceed with importing your dive computer into Diving Log 5.0.

VMWare 3.0 provides some pretty nice interface touches that makes Unity mode much easier to use (check out the new VMWare icon on the status bar). VMWare 3.0 also let you use all the new "Aero" UI features of Windows 7 if you are so inclined.

Diving Log 5.0 beta is looking great! There is a new version of Dive Log for iPhone that has already been submitted to Apple for review that will be able to take advantage of some of the new features in Diving Log 5.0. Keep an eye out for some more posts with information about the new version of Dive Log for iPhone.

Name My Tune on sale for lowest price

The latest version of Name My Tune is on sale for a limited time. It was accepted into the app store and immediately put on sale in the lowest price tier. (0.99 USD for example). We'll be putting it back up to regular price on Monday November 2, 2009. So use the opportunity to get it cheaper!

I'm still working on the next version which will have multiplayer capability over bluetooth. It's been fun! Hopefully I can finish it sooooooooon.

Dive Log 1.1.4 approved for sale

Dive Log version 1.1.4 was just approved for sale by Apple and should be showing up as an update in the App Store or iTunes within a day or so. You can also download the new version directly by clicking here [iTunes link].

This version now gives you the option of viewing your Total Dive Time on the Statistics tab in either Days:Hours:Minutes format (as before) or in Hours:Minutes format. You can switch back and forth by tapping on the Total Dive Time row in the Statistics tab or you can change the default setting in the Settings tab (either way you set the default your choice is retained the next time you start Dive Log). You will also notice a small change is the visual appearance of the Dive Site "rating" display.

This update also has an important fix for a problem that could cause the application to crash at unexpected times. While this issue only affected a very small number of users in their daily use of Dive Log it is an important fix that everyone should get.

We are hard at work on new features in Dive Log that should roll out before the end of the year. Your comments are important drivers for the changes that we make, so please feel free to keep sharing your input with us.

New Version of Name My Tune approved and released

The latest version of our app, Name My Tune, is now available in the app Store.

New in Version 1.1:
A settings page has been added with a new setting allowing you to exclude certain playlists from game play. I know that some of us have audio sources that are NOT songs that still show up as songs in our music library. (Some audio books and other recordings ripped directly from CD will show up as songs for example.) If you put them in a specific playlist and exclude it, then they will not be part of the game.

Features:
Name My Tune has 3 different rounds of game play and is probably the most challenging music quiz game currently in the App Store. Each of the 3 rounds is played twice giving you more variety and great entertainment.
* Ring The Bell - once the song is playing, shake the device to stop playback and then choose song. (Or you can touch the bell on the screen if you're out in public)
* Get A Clue - guess the song based on all the song meta data .... but it's scrambled! Uses more than just the audio to give you a clue and is probably the hardest of the 3 rounds. You'll need more than just your ears for this one.
* Just In Time - just like the TV show game of old. How many seconds do you need to "Name That Tune"? Use the music score to "dial in" to a maximum 9.9 seconds.

The more music you have in your library, the more points earned.
The less time you need to answer, the more points earned.
Use the iPod interface to choose your answer. Look up songs via Song Title, Artist, Playlist, Album, Compilation, Composer, or Genre! Take your time while selecting the song and peruse the library until the right one jumps out at you.
Sophisticated, professional graphics make it easy on the eye
You can quit the app any time and it will restart on the round you were on with your current point total in place.
Scores can be published at Geocade (a location aware social gaming network) so that you can compare against yourself, other players in your geographic area, or anywhere around the world!

We are committed to a great music experience. Please contact us with any suggestions or complaints about "Name My Tune". Software development is what we do, and so feedback on this or any of our other apps is not only welcome, but needed so that we can continue to do what we do!

Thanks for listening!
http://www.moremobilesoftware.com/

Dive Log Manager 1.2 Beta - adds JDiveLog importer

Dive Log Manager 1.2 beta is now available. Dive Log Manager is the free Mac OS companion application for Dive Log on iPhone. This release adds support for importing JDiveLog logbook files and improves the MacDive 1.5 importer. You can learn more about these changes and get a copy of the release by visiting:

http://www.moremobilesoftware.com/Dive_Log_Manager_-_Beta.html

If you'd prefer to stick with the current released version (1.1.1), you can find that at:

http://www.moremobilesoftware.com/Dive_Log_Manager.html

You may have also noticed that MacDive was recently updated to version 1.5.2. Dive Log Manager (both 1.1.1 and the new 1.2 Beta) can successfully import logbook from MacDive version 1.5.2 along with the previous 1.5.1 release.

Statistics and Databases 101

For those of us that continue to log our dives, one of the incentives and great rewards is to sit back and look at the results "in toto". It feels enormously satisfying being able to see all the total's of all our diving accomplishments in one place. So imagine looking at your total dive time on the statistics page of Dive Log on iPhone and seeing a smaller number than you expect. It's like getting "gypped" out of an experience.

Never fear, you didn't get gypped, it's all about notation. The time is expressed in days:hours:minutes. If you see 18:06:34 as your total dive time, this is not 18 hours, this is 18 days, 6 hours, and 34 mintues. Many people spend *a lot* of time underwater and so if we presented the time in hours, minutes and seconds, the hours number gets so large that it's impact is really lost. It makes more sense to display it in days first.

There is another implementation related issue in the Statistics section when you want to look at all the dives you've made in a particular place. In database parlance, a logbook entry can be a regular field, or it can be a pointer to another database that contains all the information about that field. So when you enter information into your log about Dive Site, City, and Country, Dive Log on iPhone will automatically enter the information into the Dive Site database, the City database, and the Country database and "point" to that information in your log. In the Windows desktop software, Diving Log 4.0, you have the option of entering this information in a linked/pointing way, or as a regular field on it's own. If you do the latter, it will *not* show up as a destination in your Statistics on the iPhone. If you are interested in your own Stats, always use the linking option in the desktop software. Why do we do it this way you ask? Simply speaking, performance. Using the built in database features allows your iPhone (remember, it *is* a phone not a desktop computer) to be much faster in answering your important Statistics questions.

So if you enter your Dive Site, City, Country information directly into your iPhone and then sync this information to your log on the desktop, you'll know exactly how many times you dove everywhere!