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New version of Locavore now available (1.01)

Here’s a list of the bug fixes and feature improvements for our first update since launching the app a couple weeks ago:

  1. Fixed Washington DC so it no longer crashes when you’re there.  Sorry for the oversight, DC!
  2. Improved seasonal availability information in Louisiana thanks to @unapologetic‘s help.  If anyone has updated information for their state, just link me to the sources via Get Satisfaction, or Twitter.
  3. Added “Bordering states” information to any state page that doesn’t have anything in season or coming into season soon.
  4. Fixed some time-calculation bugs so now the time left in season is a little more consistent across the app.
  5. Updated to the latest version of the Get Satisfaction remote component so that you can now sign up to the service from within my app and submit bugs, ideas, questions, and feedback.  It’s really awesome that this is possible, I think.  More apps should use this component.

What’s next?  Making local food social

I’ve begun design and development on the next set of major features for the app.  At the top of the list is the ability to share information about food in your area with other users near you, via Facebook Connect integration.  This will mean that, if you go to the market and see that something’s in season that’s not represented in the app, you can share this information with other people near you.  This will then help the app learn over time about true seasonality schedules and fluctuations season by season, and year by year.

I will be implementing this in the simplest way possible at first, and see if it’s useful.  If it is, I think this could really help us make the data more accurate over time. I think it’s realistic to think that this stuff should take about a month to develop.

Tell me what you want to see

I’m highly interested in hearing from people about ways that they think we can improve the app.  Does anyone want to use this information for their own?  Does anyone want to see this as a Facebook app?  Should there be an eat local game component?  What else that I haven’t thought of?

Purchase Locavore at the iTunes Store

This entry was posted by Buster on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 6:44 pm. It is filed under Locavore and has these tags: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “New version of Locavore now available (1.01)”

  1. I think a “what is being eaten locally now” feature would be good for people like me who have a CSA or other source of produce already and have the “what is in season locally” thing solved already. Stuff like sharing pictures of your food, listing what you got and where, and maybe even reviewing it (“Buster scored **** strawberries at Pike Place Market”, “Laurel got ***** arugula from Whistling Train CSA”).

    One way of making it more social might be to include farmer or grocery store blogs. I know spud (robot office fruit provider) has one, PCC has one, my CSA farm has one, there are probably lots more than we think.

    Here’s what I got this week:

    http://whistlingtrainfarm.blogspot.com/2009/04/spring-week-1-we-begin.html

    Incidentally, none of the stuff I got this week is on locavore for washington except garlic… This doesn’t necessarily mean that the data is bad, maybe just that the data is more focused on larger operations and not on niche CSA farms.

    This might be a good way for farms to “advertise” too. LocalHarvest already has an ecommerce store, but I’m sure a lot of farms don’t ship or don’t grow things that can be shipped cost effectively.

    As fruit season starts u-pick listings might be useful. There’s a site I’ve used: http://www.pickyourown.org/ but the design is not great and the content is kind of static (ie out of date). Could be part of the social/user generated stuff too.

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