Gen Con LLC Community

My bet is Tuesday. MAYBE monday. {sigh} Perhaps if im lucky, i'll get to play with it on my flight over.

You lose, Kats!!

I'm happy to announce that the LaViaz Gen Con Mobile app for the iPhone is NOW AVAILABLE in the iTunes App Store! Woo-hoo!

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323870865&mt=8

Get it while it's hot!

I grabbed it already!  It looks very well put together.  All the maps are really a nice touch!  Excellent work Chris!

My friend just got his shiny new iPhone yesterday.. just in time to download this and then flaunt the thing the whole time we're at the con!

 

I have AT&T too, so no switching would be required (and the refurbished iPhone is cheap now), I just can't afford the monthly bill on the dang data upgrade they require...

Downloading the app now, along with an OS update. Wheee!

For the people who were wondering if a version for jailbroken iPhones might be available if Apple hadn't release the app on time, I'm guessing there is no possibility ever.  (I'm guessing that is what Derek was saying "No" to).  Why?

1. It looks like development was sponsered by several companies.  Jailbreaking an iPhone is technically a crime according to the DMCA.* It would be very high risk for any company to be sponsoring something that required breaking the law.  It might expose them to liability and might tarnish their reputation among some people.

2.  Getting caught shipping an application for a jailbroken iPhone would almost certainly get them kicked out of Apple's development program, probably forever.  He would never be able to offer a future application to non-jailbroken iPhones.  If he makes or plans to make money selling iPhone apps, he loses that ability.  That's a lot to potentially lose to give something away.

 

* If this should be the law is a very different question.

 It is most certainly NOT againt the law to "unlock" a device you OWN.  This is why Apple had such a hard time in Europe because it is againt the law for them to lock it in any way there.

 The DMCA is meant to prevent copyrights infringements...I'm not some Chinese knock off company that is going to clone the phone's guts and sell it here.

 In fact The DMCA explicitly provides an exemption for cell phone unlocking. The only way to unlock an iPhone is through a jailbreak. Therefore, by extension, the DMCA implicitly (but very clearly) provides an exemption for jailbreaking the iPhone.

 But your point 2 is valid..they would totally kick them off the app store and kill their developer license.  Now seeing the app on my phone I see now that is was a sponsored app and it most definatly would not have been advantageous to release it via Cydia.

 I'm just glad Qik fixed their video streaming app in time for gencon :)  I'm streaming video back to the guys at home that could not get to come.

 

 Oh and by the way..don't forget you update your event lists in the app.  I did today and it made over a hundred changes!!!

 

I am limiting my discussion to US law, since that's where I, the app's developer, and Gen Con are all located. I am happy to hear that things are less insane on this matter in Europe.

While I wish that jailbreaking an iPhone was clearly legal, it's not legally clear. Apple certainly thinks it's illegal. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, who certainly feel that it should be legal, agree with Apple and are working to add an exemption legalizing it.  The gist of the argument is that the iPhone does implement a DRM system for locking down applications, music, and videos purchased from their store, and that the system relies on the absolute control of the iPhone starting with the bootloader.  If the bootloader has been compromised (and jailbreaking must do so), Apple can no longer trust the remaining system.  This is fair enough.  Of course, this cuts to one of the many problems with DRM: for DRM to work, publishers must take control of your very computer at the lowest level, removing control from you, the person who paid for the computer.  This sickens me, but it's the current state of the law.

Maybe in an actual court of law it would be found legal.  But until that happens, I don't forsee many companies being eager to sponser an application that requires doing something that Apple claims is illegal.

Regardless I'm glad the app was approves and being a gencon first timer I hope it will help me out finding things to get into.... It's 130am and I can't sleep to excited

Using the iPhone app, I tried logging in so I could see my events, and it failed.  I didn't give an error message or anything, I just got empty lists.  Turns out that I had entered the wrong email address. I had to change the email address. The only way I could find to do this was to delete the app and reinstall it.  Now I can see my events.

 Wishlist for the future:

- Sort my events by start time.

- Some sort of graphic schedule (similar to most calendering software) for events I have tickets for would be nice.

- Alarms or something for events I have tickets for would be nice.

- Make the location a link to the relevant map.  (Bonus points, but admittedly hard: offer to route me there from where I am now.)

- When I click on the "Exp Req" graphic, show me what it means.  The top and bottom ones are pretty obvious, but even as the guy who implemented a custom web interface to the database, I don't remember all of the intermediate levels.

- You might want to better sell what agreeing to OpenFeint gives me. The summary isn't all that enlightening.

All in all, I'm impressed.

The app is available on the Canadian I-Tunes site, too!

My husband got his hands on my iTouch, and after playing around with the app, told me it was almost enough to convince him to get his own iTouch.

Thanks LaViaz!

 

 Awesome app.  Way more useful than the offical Comic Con app.

My events were also missing, but my fix was rather simple. For some reason, when you "log in" after installation, it seems that 1) the app asks for your email address, but what is actually required is your gencon reg system user name and 2) the app doesn't tell you that you've failed to log in and instead of displaying an error message of any sort, grants access to the non user-specific data (maps, etc).

Since there's no way that I can tell of logging out from the app, I uninstalled, then reinstalled, after which I was asked to log in upon accessing the app again. This time I logged in with my user i.d. (not email address), and my events showed up.

I hope this works for you (and gives me some thoughts for obvious, easy to implement updates for the next version of the app, though overall, I too am impressed).

Cheers,

Elliot

I tried that but it still doesn't work. However, I am only using a itouch. Would that make a difference ?

 

 Does anyone know if there is a way to see the events that have changed.  There were 46 updates from last night to this morning and I was just curious if you could "see" those updates so we can know if a game we were interested in moved or opened up more slots.

 

 

How often will the "sold out" status update? There were lots of folks in the Event Registration line around 12:30 -- if something sells out today, when will that be reflected in the iPhone app? BTW -- I love the app, and I'm excited about how it will improve next yer. It's nice having the whole Gen Con program right on my phone. Thanks, Doug

hauntedcity:

How often will the "sold out" status update?

As often as you tap the "Update" button and update your event listings.

 

No, I'm having the same problem on my iphone. I have deleted/reinstalled over a dozen times now. I've tried:

• email name
• gencon registration ID
• I've changed my password, in hopes that would kickstart something - I confirmed the password worked by logging into the Gencon registration page
• retried both email name and the gencon registration ID with the new password

At this point, I have no idea, and no clue how to make it work. It was still extremely valuable to me because I used it while waiting in the LINE OF DOOM to check the events I wanted to see if any were going away. After years of coming here and getting 1/10 hits, and having to go through the line multiple times, I got everything I asked for the first time. It was amazing.