TacLogic News

Even More TSAwaiting

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:34:16 -0500

It has now been two weeks since the TSA has updated their master wait time file. We’ve never seen a gap like this. Hopefully they will get back to updating it on a more regular schedule soon. We are checking for that elusive update hourly and will push it out as soon as it finally shows up.

Update: We were working on our backup plan to update our feed with data from the interactive part of the TSA web site. Unfortunately, all of our testing so far has shown that (despite indications to the contrary), the manual web site information is no more up to date (or at least no different) than the feed we were using. We’re still willing to go this route, but there isn’t much point until there is new data somewhere. There are other aspects of the TSA site that aren’t working as well, so hopefully they will get the whole site back to full functionality soon.

TSAwait Updates

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:07:03 -0500

Now that TSAwait has gone live, the TSA data feed has been tormenting us with data oddities and inconsistent updates these last few days. Until this week, things had been a lot more consistent with the feed, but the last couple days they are running a day or so behind. In addition, a few glitches have slipped into the processed data that may impact some users. For the most part, they should be cleared up when you do the next update. If you were unlucky enough to update this morning (9/13), you may now be seeing a data date of “(null)”, which may impact your ability to update in the future. In that case, you will need to delete the application on your device, and reinstall a fresh copy from iTunes or the App Store (you won’t be charged again).

That reinstall process can be done in any case to get back to the original/older data file which can then be updated with the freshest set. Normally, the application will only do an update if the data are a week or more old, which is a bit of a problem if it doesn’t know how old it actually is (or if there was some unforeseen glitch with the info).

Sorry for the inconvenience, and both our back-end updater and the next release of TSAwait are being hardened to better deal with these sorts of glitches in the future.

TSAwait Released

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 22:17:10 -0500

Well it was a longer time coming than we had anticipated, but what was actually our first travel-related iPhone app in development is finally out on the App Store. This is a companion of sorts to FAAwait (hence the similarity of names), in that it provide more information on another aspect of travel delays: the wait times at TSA security checkpoints. Obviously bundling up the TSA statistics is not quite the same as reporting real-time data from the FAA, but it it still can be a useful planning tool, particularly when traveling to new and unfamiliar airports. See the product page for all the other boring disclaimers.

This one was a little more complicated in that we had to get a bit more infrastructure in place to support the data feeds, and we wanted to make sure that we (hopefully) got it all right. Because the raw feed from the TSA is a bit much to digest on an iPhone (at least if you want to have the whole data set ready and available at any time), we process the TSA information and then provide it to the app for its updates. Once loaded, it has all the data for every airport in the system, and requires no further internet access for actual use.

We also have a “Lite” version heading for the App Store. The Full version actually beat it out there (we kind of expected it to be the other way around), so if you are on the fence save your $1 until you can play with the free one. Being free, it only has a subset of the airports, and is not able to do updates over the internet.

FAAwait 1.2 on the way

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:37:59 -0500

Sure, 1.1 just made it out the other day, but we’ve already submitted 1.2 to Apple and hopefully should have it out there within the week. The big change with 1.2 is that we are fully supporting closed airport information. We never had any actual closures pop up during development, and were wary of releasing it without a real world test (especially given how inconsistent the FAA data can be). Thanks to tropical storm Fay, we finally got that and should be good to go now. Closures will show up in the list as their own category, and they also have a new icon for the map should one of the big ones ever close down.

We’ve also tossed in a few more tweaks, along with a suggestion or two from the users. So we’re trying to earn your 99 cents.

Also in the pipeline is the first/lite/free version of our next travel-related app. More news when that gets officially released on the App Store.

FAAwait 1.1 released

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:50:11 -0500

Well it took a bit longer to make it through the Apple approval process than expected, but FAAwait 1.1 was finally released to the iTunes App Store this afternoon.

The changes aren’t huge and pretty much covered in the App Store notes: a more complete airport list, even more reason descriptions, and some improved in-app documentation. The documentation now includes a small glossary of terms to help out when the app is not able to interpret them by itself. It should illuminate some of the less obvious terms (like ASP and MINIT) that tend to show up. Since the descriptions themselves aren’t that highly structured, you may have to resort to deciphering them yourself sometimes.

Those of you who already bought FAAwait should be able to get the update (for free) through iTunes right about now...