So for all the people who like it and are planning to or already downloaded it here is a description and a user guide for the app.
When you first launch the app you are presented with the "Locations" view which will be empty obviously and will look like this (barring the time/carrier information in the status bar)
So to create a new location entry simply invoke the Camera by touching Camera icon in the bottom right of the toolbar. The first time you invoke the camera, it may take just a little while due to what we programmers call lazy initialization. But it should be just fine after the first time. You may also notice the Activity Indicator doing its spin in the center of the toolbar. This indicates that GPS is trying to get a fix as well as trying to determine the name of the place and country you are at right now. This is important to mention here because if some how the place and country name cannot be reverse geocoded, invoking the camera will result in an error message being displayed. The reason behind this is that taking a picture is the only way of creating a location entry and if your current location cannot be reverse coded then there is no real point in creating the entry.
Anyways, I am sure the chances of that happening are negligible. So once you launch the camera you are pretty much ready to create a new entry by simply snapping a picture. Taking pictures in landscape mode will not make a lot of us happy currently, I will be working on this pretty soon though. So just take a picture of the place you would like to create an entry for, once you have taken the picture you will see a new entry created. Every new entry created from here onwards will be added to the top of the list.
Also note that, a spinning GPS fix indicator does not mean you should wait for it to stop spinning before you can start creating entries. It will keep on spinning until it has accurately nailed your position down to atleast 11 meter radius. Some users have reported that they wait for the spinner to stop before they start creating new entries. I would convey this message from one of my mates to such users ... "Don't Panic !"
(However I shall try to implement a better way to convey this message in the app itself)
Here is what it may end up looking like depending on the picture you take and where you take the picture, however the text description of a newly created location entry defaults to "One of my favorite places"
The list of locations is sorted in the ascending order of proximity thus it is only logical that the latest location entry you have created to be added right on top of the list of locations. This ordering will change if you move or if you are constantly moving then you will see the list change as you move.
Now you would want to change the description text of the newly created location. For that, touch the little blue Detail Disclosure button which will take you to the Edit Location screen. The Edit Location screen will allow you to change the description text for the location.
The Edit Location screen looks like ...
Touch anywhere on the dark gray rounded rectangle where the text is displayed and this will happen ...
Edit the location description, tap on the Done button on the Navigation Bar and then tap on the Save button to save the description. Now if you go back to the Locations screen you will see the updated description like this ...
After the snapping and the editing efforts you might want to tap on the location entry itself rather than the Detail Disclosure button which will take you to the Details screen. The Details screen allows you to see the picture of the location on full screen (the status bar still remains there and the image is displayed on the remaining entire area of the screen). You will also see some information over layed on the image which will show you the town/place and the country name of the location where the picture was taken. You will also see the description of the location. The description is actually rendered in a multi-line text area so you can scroll down to read more if you had been verbose with the description. Simply touch scroll through the description to read more if there is more description text.
Here is what Details screen will look like ...
You will definitely be curious about that little blue square thing trying to smile at you. That is a button which when tapped on will invoke the Maps app to show you the way from your current location to the point where this entry is ! Try it.
I mentioned viewing the picture on full screen, but this only shows full screen obstructed by the overlay of information. You might have already guessed but for the sake of it I will explicitly instruct you to touch anywhere on the image not obstructed by the overlay and you shall see the image in full screen. Like this ...
And to view the overlay information again, yes ... touch the picture anywhere again and the overlay information will be displayed again.
You may also want to delete some location entries as well and that is not difficult. In the Locations view, scroll up/down to the entry you want to delete. Touch slide on the entry (as in the Mail app where you touch slide on an entry to delete it) and the red Delete button will appear for that entry and tapping the Delete button will delete the location entry.
You must have also noticed the Refresh button on the left corner of the tool bar in Locations screen. The purpose of that button is force a reordering of the entries according to the latest location. You may find yourself never ever using this button at all as the location updates detected by the GPS also forces a reordering of the entries. However there may be certain instances where the application is trying to negotiate a GPS fix and during that the underlying model for the table data is reordered but the GPS resolution was not good enough to force a reorder of the displayed entries. In that case what may happen is that you select an entry for viewing/editing but end up viewing/editing a completely different entry. In that case going back to the Locations list and tapping the Refresh button will sync the displayed entries in the right order. BUT as I said earlier, you may actually never ever face this situation.
So, this is the rough user guide for the BeenThere app. Please try to use the app and post your feedback or change requests and I shall try my best to comply.
PS : My knowledge of the fauna is rather limited but I thought Tiger Teddy sounds a bit more composed than Lion Teddy :)
