Inclusion of extra cameras did slow down performance of 1.x versions so we’ve optimised the start-up performance for both main map screen and camera screens.
Cameras that are physically close together will be grouped together so that they can be seen and activated without need to zoom-in:
Single cameras can now be pinned to start screen and will create a two-sided tile that will display traffic congestion information around that camera. These cameras will be updated every 30 minutes as long as battery saver mode is not active and there’s network connection. Activating this tile will take you to the Camera screen, which is much faster to load then whole map screen:
We’ve also optimized the main live tile image to reduce data consumption, new image is 18~19KB, compared with previous 28KB image, decreasing maximum data consumption from 99 MB/month to 66MB/month.
Each pinned camera image will also consume about 20KB for each update, consuming maximum of 29 MB/month per pinned camera image.
We would love to see your reviews of our app and please drop us any suggestions of what you might want to see in next update of Auckland Traffic.
We’ve been informed that congestion data for SH20, SH20A and SH20B will be available starting November 1st 2011.
Hopefully this will not cause any problems with Auckland Traffic (full version) except for some performance hit during loading.
In the other news, Auckland Traffic 2.0, with Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) support is being tested as we speak, and we’re hoping for update to become available to all later this week.
Since Beta 1 has expired, Beta 2 is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. If you would like to participate, please send us your Windows Live Id to nzbee@live.com and we’ll send you the link to Beta in the marketplace.
Good news is that it will no longer require a free developer slot on your phone and that anyone with Mango will be able to participate.
Last night we’ve submitted a 1.9 update to Auckland Traffic Free, hoping that this will be our last update before Mango arrives to NZ Windows Phones. Today, however, we’ve received update from New Zealand Transport Authority which states that service that provides our apps with traffic camera information will be updated on 2nd of September 2011 to also include extra data, including traffic cameras for:
Hamilton
Central North Island
Wellington
Christchurch
Dunedin
We are testing impact of these changes to existing versions, but according to preliminary results existing versions of Auckland Traffic should, on 2nd of September, load without problems, but scrolling the map to any of the places listed above will give you access to those cameras as well.
We are also considering renaming the “Auckland Traffic” to “NZ Traffic”.
Today we’re making public first beta of Auckland Traffic for Mango version of Windows Phone 7.
Since marketplace, at the time of writing, does not accept Mango apps, I’ve uploaded the XAP to SkyDrive: Auckland Traffic Mango Beta 1
Deployment
To install it, you’ll need a PC with WP7 Mango SDK and you can use “Application Deployment” app that comes as part of SDK:
Unfortunately, this will take one of your 3 developer deployments slots.
What’s New
Mango version has been updated to support:
Fast Application Switching
Multiple and Two Sided Live Tiles
Background Task
System Tray
Fast Application Switching
In practice this means that pressing back button to return to the Auckland Traffic app will be instant, as well as task switching back to the app.
Multiple and Two Sided Live Tiles
Camera pop-up has new check-box in the top right corner:
Pressing this check-box will pin that camera:
Background Task
App installs task agent to update secondary tiles every 30 minutes.
System Tray
New System Tray Progress Bar in Mango allows us to use more of screen space for the map by removing additional band that was displayed below the system tray in NoDo.
Progress messages will appear now in System Tray and swiping down on it will display your standard data:
Feedback
You can post your feedback in comments or e-mail us.
Note
This is updated version of our published app, Auckland Traffic, please try it out, rate it and spread the word: