Water-Powered Ideas

Water-Powered Ideas is pleased to announce the release of Observation Lite for iPhone and iPod Touch. Observation Lite is a lightweight, more utilitarian version of Observation, a tool to help amateur astronomers record observation logs in the field by providing the NGC 2000.0 and Hipparcos catalogs of stars and objects and much more.

Observation Lite lets amateur astronomers enter observation logs on their iPhone or iPod Touch with automatic sky conditions and GPS coordinates, access to the entire NGC 2000.0 and partial Hipparcos catalog of objects, and custom lists of equipment. Custom objects can be created on the fly during observation, and the observed RA, declination, and magnitude of existing objects can be recorded.

Features Include:

• Automatic GPS & Conditions in log entries
• Stars and objects from the NGC 2000.0 and partial Hipparcos catalogs.
• Creation of new, custom objects on the fly.
• Custom Equipment entry for selection in log entries.
• Observed RA, declination, and magnitude entry in log entries.
• Log entries exported in CSV format.
• Ability to tint the entire app red for use when dark-adapted.

Device Requirements

• iPhone or iPod Touch with iPhone OS 3.0 or later

Pricing and Availability

Observation Lite is available for $1.99 USD exclusively on the App Store in the Utilities category.  Promo codes are available for qualified reviewers.

Water-Powered Ideas is pleased to announce the 1.3 release of Observationfor iPhone and iPod Touch.

Changes in Version 1.3:

Log Entry Fields: Fields Observation automatically fills in can now be changed from their automatic defaults. This includes the date, longitude & latitude, seeing, and transparency fields.

• Fixed a crash on launch when location services are enabled.
• Fixed a bug related to log entry notes and scrolling.

Why so soon after 1.2: This release comes hot on the heels of 1.2, but that’s not entirely on purpose. For reasons entirely unknown to me, 1.2 was stuck in review with Apple for almost 2 weeks. In that time, the work on 1.3 was completed and it was submitted. It was approved within 2 days. So, in case you missed it, here’s what changed in 1.2.

Observation is available in the United States and Canada for $4.99 USD/CAD exclusively on the App Store in the Utilities category.  Promo codes are available for qualified reviewers.

Water-Powered Ideas is pleased to announce the 1.2 release of Observation for iPhone and iPod Touch. This is a maintenance release that improves performance and stability.

Changes in Version 1.2:

• Substantial changes to Conditions data processing and location information handling.  This should fix some crashes related to the Conditions tab and should improve performance of the Conditions tab.
• Integrated PLCrashReporter.  If the app crashes, you’ll now see an alert the next time you run it asking if you wish to submit crash data back to Water-Powered Ideas anonymously.  We highly recommend you do so.
• Fixed issues with custom location coordinate parsing and added support for colon-separated values (DD:MM:SS.)

I’ve gotten a lot of positive and helpful feedback–look for future versions incorporating as much of it as we can!

Observation is available in the United States and Canada for $4.99 USD/CAD exclusively on the App Store in the Utilities category.  Promo codes are available for qualified reviewers.

Steve Sande over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog has reviewed Observation 1.1.  Read his review here.

Water-Powered Ideas is pleased to announce the 1.1 release of Observation for iPhone and iPod Touch.

New in Version 1.1:

Custom Location: Use the phone’s current location… or don’t. Observation will allow you to enter custom coordinates in one of three accepted formats instead of using the device’s current coordinates. This will be used to select nearby Clear Sky Charts and will be stored in Log Entries.

iPod Touch is now supported.

Changes in Version 1.1:

• Red Tint option renamed to Night Mode
• Better location error reporting and handling
• Fixed Conditions-related bugs that could cause stability problems.

Observation is available in the United States and Canada for $4.99 USD/CAD exclusively on the App Store in the Utilities category.  Promo codes are available for qualified reviewers.

Water-Powered Ideas is pleased to announce the 1.0 release of Observation for iPhone. Observation is a tool to help amateur astronomers record observation logs in the field, providing the latest weather conditions, the NGC 2000.0 and Hipparcos catalogs of stars and objects and much more.

Observation lets amateur astronomers enter observation logs on their iPhone with automatic sky conditions and GPS coordinates, access to the entire NGC 2000.0 and partial Hipparcos catalog of objects, and custom lists of equipment. Hourly conditions, including seeing and transparency can be browsed at sites nearby to select the optimal observing location. Custom objects can be created on the fly during observation, and the observed RA, declination, and magnitude of existing objects can be recorded.

Features Include:

• Hourly conditions including seeing and transparency.
• Automatic GPS & Conditions in log entries
• Stars and objects from the NGC 2000.0 and partial Hipparcos catalogs.
• Creation of new, custom objects on the fly.
• Custom Equipment entry for selection in log entries.
• Observed RA, declination, and magnitude entry in log entries.
• Log entries exported in CSV format.
• Ability to tint the entire app red for use when dark-adapted.

Device Requirements

• iPhone 3.0 or later

Pricing and Availability

Observation is available in the United States and Canada for $4.99 USD/CAD exclusively on the App Store in the Utilities category.  Promo codes are available for qualified reviewers.

Water-Powered Ideas has been around for a while as a place for a small group of people to collaborate on open source software.  That software is still here, and still as open as ever.  Additionally, Water-Powered Ideas is going to be developing some commercial software, as well as highlighting some of our more significant open source projects.  Our basic view of software development isn’t changing though.  Sometimes we reinvent wheels because we think we can make them just that bit more round.  We don’t over-engineer our designs, and strive for the core of a problem space.  And we document our code–two of our projects are systems to help with that.