ColesSoft

British Hills - a small update

2012-08-11T12:07:00.004+01:00

As Hill-bagging.co.uk has changed their map page I thought it was a good time to include OS Maps directly in to the app (you'll still need to be online to view them). Please let me know of any problems you have caused by this.

I know some of you will be awaiting a database update to version 12.1. At the moment I'm unsure which way to go with this, whether to include the Irish hills and whether to rejig the database to match changes that the www.hills-database.co.uk team have made to the structure of theirs.

Note as of this version I can no longer support Android 1.6. As only around 80 of you are still using this version I hope you understand that certain features are not available at this level which I'll need going forward. Your app will still continue to work as it always has, but will not receive further updates.

Nearby Hills fixes

2012-02-18T12:18:00.002Z

Version 2.13 of British Hills is now released. This should fix the force close issues around the Nearby Hills option that many of you will have experienced.

These problems have been around since support for tablets was added and are to do with a situation where both the map and list elements are trying to use the database at the same time. While I've fixed the force closes it's still a bit of a hack which I need to re-write at some point in the future...

Quick Update

2012-02-04T19:31:00.001Z

Version 2.12 of British Hills has been published to the market. Mostly this is just a small fix to image searching on Android 4.0 phones and tablets.

Many of you have asked for the image search to show less "silly results". Have you no sense of fun? ;)
I am reliant on the vagaries of Google image search for this feature, so I can't guarantee good results but I have made a small change which I believe will see an improvement. Previously only the hill name was searched on, which led to strange results especially if the name was a common word (e.g. Pillar). I am now adding on the region for the hill to the search (e.g. this will now be a search for "Pillar Lake District - Central & Western Fells"). This seems to return slightly better results.

I've also added an "About" page, accessible from the Main Menu (look for the ? symbol in the top right or by pressing the menu button). This give some info on the application and also provides a way for you donate to show your support for the application.

I must stress that British Hills will remain free (as in beer) and without advertising. However if I had to guess I've probably spent about 150 hours developing and maintaining it so far, including making improvements and updates when new versions of Android are released. Anyway, if you feel like buying me a pint so I can forget all that (!) you can click on the Donate button either on this web page or in the About page of the application.

Best wishes,

Adam

British Hills 2.11 minor release

2011-12-19T22:09:00.000Z

British Hills 2.11 is a minor release to update the link to the source of the data, http://hills-database.co.uk/.

Currently the app uses version 11.6 of the database, but the next version will use version 12 which includes data for Irish hills and for British hills down to 600m with 20m of drop. Update in the new year!

A hill group by any other name...

2011-06-08T21:20:00.000+01:00

Just thought I'd respond to a couple of people who have asked why their favourite hill or hills don't appear in the British Hills app. First of all, I don't create the lists, I use the database created by Graham Jackson, Chris Crocker et al at http://www.biber.fsnet.co.uk.

This database is made up of a combination of Hill Lists. These lists are based around classifications of hills, not hill ranges. So you'll see Munros, Marilyns etc (the definitions are explained in the app). You won't see hill ranges such as Cheviots, Chilterns, Grampians etc - but the hills are probably there.

Secondly I only include the most used hill lists as classifiers - so you won't see a button for "HuMPs" etc. You may still see hills that don't belong to the main groups if you look at nearby hills or hills near another hill on the map. Hope that clears things up.

Adam

British Hills 2.0 released

2011-04-28T12:11:00.000+01:00

Now out, with all new design, Honeycomb and large screen support.

Get it here: http://t.co/b6tPy0v

A little preview of British Hills 2.0

2011-04-20T23:51:00.001+01:00

I'm currently hard at work at making British Hills work on large screen devices and tablets, both Honeycomb and older types. I've also taken the opportunity to change the appearance of the app as the old way looks a little too similar to a certain competitor operating system... Anyway here's a couple of shots of the app on a Honeycomb tablet using a new two-pane view. Hope you like them... If anyone has any suggestions for new features they'd like to see in the next version please leave a comment.

British Hills version 1.30 - Local Search

2011-02-24T19:58:00.000Z

British Hills now gives you the ability to search for businesses near to any selected hill. This could be a pub, a hotel or even pizza delivery....mmm pizza....:)

Just select "Local Search" from the menu options on the Hill detail page to see the nearest matches plotted on your hill map - click on a marker to select it and then on the name to open contact details. Searches are provided by Scoot.

G Reader Flickr Image Plus v1.35

2011-02-24T19:49:00.000Z

Note the new name due to Google's rules on trademarks ;)

New Feature - view EXIF data (where available) for photos by clicking the link:

British Hills version 1.25 - Backup and Restore

2011-01-08T17:50:00.000Z

The new 1.25 release lets you backup your list of "Bagged" hills to your sd card, and restore from this file or similar. The CSV file that is used has a very simple format - so if you already have a huge list of Bagged Hills, and you already store the British Hills Database id for those hills, it's pretty simple to produce a CSV file that you can restore into the British Hills app.

The CSV file format is as follows:

Hill id,Date Climbed [YYYY-MM-DD],Notes

Note each field should be surrounded by single quotes, e.g.:

'1','2010-5-20','Hill Fog'
'2','2008-3-14','Lost my packed lunch'
'3','2009-6-20','Weather changed. Broke arm in scramble'

If there are any other particular formats that you would like me to be able to import, let me know and I'll have a look.

British Hills Crashes

2010-12-23T15:34:00.001Z

Some of you have been having problems with the database in British Hills. Sorry I haven't been able to look at the problem recently, I hope to do so soon.

In the meantime, a workatound is to use a file browser such as Astro to delete the following directory : /sdcard/uk.colessoft.android.hillist and then restart the app.

Verson 1.2 - Hill Bagging

2010-11-29T19:18:00.000Z

This was always planned as a feature, and now it's finally here... Hill Bagging!

Basically you can now mark off the hills you've climbed, either singly or multiple hills from the list view. You can set the date you've climbed the hill as well as any notes on the climb. Change the date by pressing the date on the Hill Detail view and enter any notes there, making sure to click the save button. Dates will default to today's date.

Next I'll be working on allowing you to import the hills you've climbed from a file (e.g. csv) and export/backup those hills to the sd card. Hopefully this will help those of you who already maintain your own bagging lists in a spreadsheet.

v1.14 Released

2010-10-12T23:29:00.000+01:00

Hoping this is going to fix some Force Close problems, also includes some remote debugging. Please let me know if you're still getting Force Close on startup.

British Hills 1.13

2010-10-03T11:03:00.000+01:00

Sudden flurry of installations this morning. Not the nicest weather for it...

1.13 just adds an SD card not available warning. As internal memory on many phones is limited the database is expanded on to "external storage" when first ran. In older phones this will be a micro SD card, some modern phones have built in external storage (e.g. Galaxy S has 8-16GB onboard "external storage"). If anyone is getting this error, or any other force closures please tell me what phone model you're using.

British Hills 1.12 released

2010-10-03T00:03:00.000+01:00

1.12 is a maintenance release, most of the changes are behind the scenes. When you run for the first time you'll see an "Initializing Database" message which will last a few seconds. This is because I'm no longer packing the whole database in the application, instead it's constructed on first run. The advantage in doing this is a massive reduction in download size (and hence space required on your phone - 608KB versus over 5MB!) which should help out those of you who aren't yet on Android 2.2...

The other advantages to this are that it makes it much easier for me to upgrade the database without overwriting user data (which is coming in British Hills Pro - stay tuned!), as I'll be updating the main hills database whenever Chris et al. put out a new version.

There is one new bonus featurette - updating the database has fixed a bug in the original tables that didn't let me use the "Hill Bagger" site for OS map/info - this site is quicker to load and gives you lots of useful information on each hill including user comments. Access is from the menu button on the Hill Detail screen as before.

British Hills 1.11

2010-09-28T09:26:00.000+01:00

A little flurry of updates overnight as I dealt with some bug fixes and realised some things were wrong (like missing every hill in South Wales...). Anyway v1.11 is released.

Features:

Show all hills for a country
Isle of Man + NI (only Slieve Donard I believe because it is in the Trail 100)
Shows number of hills in hill lists and search results.

Fixes:

Shows correct number of Corbett Tops.
Shows correct number of Graham Tops.
Hill markers now positioned centrally over Lat/Long points.
Single Hill (purple) marker now positioned correctly.

British Hills v1.1 released

2010-09-25T20:31:00.000+01:00

Version 1.1 has a lot of UI improvements and a new option to list and view hills within a variable radius of your current position.

v1.1 Map Display

v1.1 Menu

v1.1 Nearby Hills List

v1.1 Detail Screen

British Hills - Screenshots

2010-09-22T19:33:00.000+01:00

Main Menu

Hill Lists

Search for a Hill

Satellite View

Map View

Select Hill

Hill Detail

Google Reader Flickr Image Plus

2010-09-22T18:46:00.000+01:00

A long name, will have to think of something shorter...

A Chrome extension for people who subscribe to Flickr RSS feeds in Google Reader.

****NEW - defaults to larger Flickr photo image - change to smaller size in options***

Changes the view in Google Reader to display an improved layout with black/grey background, further info about the image and thumbnails of the creators most recent images. Includes a larger, higher quality image than Flickr feeds normally show. Choice of dark (default) or light themes.

If you're a registered Flickr user you can authenticate the extension to Flickr (see extension options page) and make comments on Flickr images directly from Google Reader - just like you were making them on Flickr itself.

All comments and suggestions welcome.

Usage
===========================================================
Runs automatically when you browse to google.com/reader and for most other countries, e.g. google.co.uk. Let me know if it's not working for you.

If you have given the extension access to Flickr you'll see a small icon (like a speech bubble). Click on it to add your own comment.

Options (Change in Chrome Extensions Page)
===========================================================
Change Theme (dark or light).

Choose larger or standard image size (640/500px)

You can now choose to authenticate the extension to Flickr. Follow the instructions on screen to allow access.

You can remove access at any time by going to "My Apps" under your Flickr profile.
see http://www.flickr.com/services/auth/list.gne

Changelog
===========================================================
v1.29 Improved comment notification
v1.28 Buddy Icons
v1.27 Now supports Flickr's larger default photo.
v1.26 Added support for List View and image load fix.
v1.25 Switched to icon UI for international users, fixes.
v1.24 Added Dutch, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish.
v1.23 Bug fixes for internationalisation
v1.22 Added some internationalization of titles.
v1.21 Added choice of themes

British Hills 1.0 released

2010-09-21T22:57:00.001+01:00

British Hills 1.0 has been released to the marketplace. This version has quite a basic look and feel and is mostly a way of viewing the Database of British Hills.

Options:

Main Menu - View hills by country (major groups) or see lists for the whole of Great Britain. Press the menu key to change options (Height in metres/feet) or to search across all hills.

Hill List Screen - Press the menu key to search this list, display current results on a Google Map, list alphabetically or by height.

Hill Detail Screen - Press the menu key to show hill on Google Map or show an OS map at Streetmap.co.uk.

Single Hill Map - Press the menu key to show all other hills (including all Tops etc) within 25 miles of the selected hill.