Wirelessly posted (8700g: BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

With my location set to my home street address in Panama City, Florida, Toucans in Mexico Beach shows up as 0.97 miles away. The Tocans address shows Mexico Beach, but the map shows it on HWY 98 in Panama City (near my location), when Toucans is on HWY 98 in Mexico Beach. I've since uninstalled Find It so can't give more detail or other examples. Anyway, as I said, I remember this error when I tried the infospace website.

UPDATE: I installed the app again to double check something related to the above. I searched for other categories near my location (my home). It isn't just Toucan's that is incorrect. Other sites (ATM's, groceries, etc.) on HWY 98 in Mexico Beach show up as near my location (within a mile or two). The street address for the site plainly states Mexico Beach, however. I'm sure this isn't the app but rather Infospace.

Torgerson - I have a Pearl on Cingular, obviously no native GPS chip. Is it possible to download a version of infospace that will pick up my location by defaulting to triangular or the location of a cell tower? I notice that installing the version for the pearl doesn't even offer me the opportunity to locate myself, but that, if I donwload other versions of the software (e.g., 8800, 8703, or 7100i), it gives me the option to locate myself, but then doesn't actually find me.

If there was a version of this that would automatically default to a cell tower location (i.e., no need for GPS), that would be fantastic.

Thanks in advance for your help.

For some reason whenever I browse through categories the InfoSpace crashes and returns an error "Uncaught exception: java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException" I'm using an 8703e on Sprint. Any suggestions? Otherwise, this is an amazing program - Thanks!

O have had this happen a couple of times to me too. Also the my location does not seem to want to work. It worked once but that was it. The uncaugher error comes after trying the my location a couple of times.

Here's one scenario where it will always crash (2) Browse by category then press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and * after trying to get into the * menu it crashes every time.

Quick message to all, I have not had time today to respond, i will get to your messages tonight. In the mean time.. I am going to take these repro steps you have provided to our QA and have them dig into it. Thanks a ton for taking the time to provide steps, this is so valuable.

Just to report, the current location will not work if one chooses that. So I tried the Directions and slected from curent location then went back to current location and that wokrd. One thing I would like to also recomend, the ability to zoom in fron teh standard view screen I can't seem to be able to do that and that would make things a bit clearer. Remember these are smaller screens and to read the info on the map one might need to zoom a bit more.

I'd be interested in knowing (if you are willing to provide this) what screen you were on exactly, what you saw and what your expectations were. (more detail is better on your expectations). We are diligent about usability studies on product features.. and while this is not an official study, it could almost act as a great forum for consolidated feedback that we could integrate into the product. Mapping is one key area of focus for us that we would like to expand on in the future releases.

Thanks again for your time to provide feedback already, we truly appreciate it.

That was under maps and directions, option 1: view map enlarged screen. The same would need to apply for the direction map.

Another reoprt is the Spoken Turn-by-turn, have tried it several times (at variuos locations) and it comes back with "Unable to perform requested action. Try again or exit infospace and try later".

OK.. playing catch up tonight on the forums..

On the spoken turn by turn directions, has it ever worked for you? Was this on your 8100 or 8700?

As far as the mapping improvements, just to be clear.. you just are looking/expecting a clear way to get a large map immediately? or you expect a default larger map? Sorry for the extra clarification.. i just want to be clear on your request.

OK.. I will explain this one at a technical level at least, so you can see why this is happening. (and this actually applies to a few of the relevancy issues you see here)

I believe what you are seeing here is a decision we made on the backend dealing with the geo-coding of addresses from a provider. Based on an address, and piping that to the mapping system, we have confidence levels (hidden from you) that let us know how confident we are in the plotting on the map. If we are lower in confidence, in some cases, we decide to NOT plot based on the thresholds in our system. Check out the example on our web site for the same query you provided..

CLICK HERE TO SEE EXAMPLE: DATA SAMPLE


Notice how it shows an Asterisk next to the address. This means, at least on the web side, we are not plotting because we felt that based on the confidence threshold, we could not plot this accurately. On the mobile side, we err on the side of providing a map, where at least you can get your bearings. This is obviously an example where the plotting on the map did not occur correctly based on the geo-coded data.

Now, with all that said, and not sounding like an excuse, we are always trying to improve the data in the system. This is a prime example (and thanks for providing the details for this) where we can shoot for improvements. As you can see, we are commited to making this work as well as we can for our users. Great feedback like you are all giving on this forum is second to none. You are a great community for honest feedback and we appreciate it.

OK, sorry for the long-winded response.. but i wanted to at least give you an understanding of WHY it was happening. (if you cared enough to read all of this)

Moving on to hopefully a shorter response on the next one.

Great response Spamdumpster

One thing we are focused on is ensuring the user experience is best, without causing confusion.On the 8100, although RIM states that it has GPS support, or could at least fall back to cell tower triangulation, it does not work in our testing. Due to this, I asked our dev team to disable GPS on the 8100 series. I have tried on several Cingular and T-Mobile phones with no luck.

Now, the 8703e should definitely work on the sprint network. That is our showcase phone for GPS support. Nothing we have tried works better. The 8800 on cingular has worked for us, and we have had limited success with the 7100i. I say limited because we have also seen some phones not working.

One thing you are probably all interested in is the GPS Puck support. Rest assured that it is a feature I also am very interested in. My guess is you will see it first in the 8100/8800 series. The 4.2 OS is supposed to make GPS puck transparent to code.. and work as any other LBS provider. That is something we still have yet to see working, and are actively working with RIM to solve issues here. Stand by for more here, I am excited to get this out.

OK.. I did a couple tests on other phones, and could not repro this. the two 8703 phones I have are both out in others hands right now, when I get back to the office I will try to get them back and run a test. Our QA king is actively trying to repro this on test labs, and virtual developer labs. No luck yet.

Stay tuned.. truly appreciate the repro steps. If anyone else can repro this on another device, please send me an email. Crashes are something we want to address immediately.

btw, my first name is Jeff. My work email is Firstname.lastname and the domain is infospace.com (I am sure the crew here will figure this out without me getting spam by typing in my email here)

Sorry, I should have updated. This is on the 8800 and I ws not able to get spoken turn by turn to work at all. As to the screen, what I am recommending is for the ability to zoom in from the larger map so one can read the street names. If you look at how BB maps work it zooms in and then in 10 seconds it reverts back to the original size

Thanks for the clarification on the map feature.. I will investigate. I dont have the 8800 on me today to try it out, but I will get it back on Monday.

As for the no audio, we will dig in to that. Thanks!

Will it work with a bluetooth GPS receiver?

I downloaded it to my VZW 8703e but it says "Near: Enter Location". How did you get the GPS to work?

I am unable to download the 8800 version.
I get following error.
907 Invalid COD
HTTP Error 413: Request Entity Too Large
I have tried 8700c ver also same error.

On my new 8800 I get the following error when trying to launch:

Unable to start Infospace Find It! Possible network problems, try again.

Are you using the internet browser? Also check the settings when in thte browser and make sure it is set to emulate IE.

Jeff, I need to point something out to all here. it is highly recomended to wait a couple of minutes once the app starts as it seems it tries to find the current location first. SO one should leave it at its home screen then start attmpting to go into the my location and so on or else one would get an error. Still no luck with the voice turn by turn command.

I'm sorry I left out an important step. clicking down once on the scroll wheel otherwise it wont even crash for me

Browse by Category > then press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, *, and one click down on the scroll wheel.

I was using Internet Browser but didn't have emulate IE, that did it. Thanks hf1khal

It is interesting you would get an error if you start doing something initially.

We designed it from the start to try to get location in the background (if possible) and allow you to start searching/browsing. Once you get to where you need a location, you can either wait for location to be returned by hitting WHERE I AM, or you can choose a new location and just enter it. Did it crash when you tried this? or just returned an error?

Excellent Tip.. I did not know that.

On Verizon, you wont get GPS back. The 8703e on Sprint does. I think all developers are begging Verizon to get their API's out soon. In the mean time, we are still shooting for a puck supported version.

Not yet BabaBerry, that is something we are going to work on, just did not have time for this release. We are trying to work through a couple of issues with RIM on the APIs they have that don't appear to be working.

What I meant if one dives into it imediately it ends up giving ghe error and saying to either go abck and do adina or restart.

I am using internet browser and have set the browser option to emulate IE. I still get the error "Unable to start InfoSpace Find It! Possible network problems, try again." I am on a BES in an enterprise. I am the BES admin and can change IT policies anyway I want. Any other suggestions.

Hey guys,

I was wondering if the Infospace is compatible with 8100?? He says 8800 but I was wondering if it would work on the 8100

InfoSpace Find It! | The Boy Genius Report

update, i rebooted the device and now with the settings from above. It tries to start for a much longer time then gets the same error.

I don't think it'll work. The 8100 doesn't have GPS.

nevermind, works pretty well actually. Except I have to input locations, but works great.

It is working on Sprint 7130e with internal GPS. It took me less than a minute to email myself the link and download the OTA application. I like the interface, very clear and simple. The loading speed was very fast. I haven't try out the direction yet, but I notice that I cannot change the speaker volume? I am sitting in my cubicle and people are coming around to check where "Turn right on Blah blah blah street" came from. Oh and the voice direction has text to speech. It is a male voice though... I prefer female voice.

I think I found a bug though. On many of the screens, the top line "Near: <my current address>" is being covered up by other contents. I think this is probably a screen size or font size issue. Oh and I like the fact that it will try to guess your current address, even it was wrong for my case. My sitting location in the building is closer to the steet in the back than the actual front entrance.

I will test out the direction this afternoon on my way home. I have to stop by a Costco, I will see if it will find it. ;)

It will actually work fine on phones that don't have GPS, you will just have to put in your location manually. (it is designed to work with both types of phones)

The volume is controlled by the phone currently. We are going to add in a feature at some point to control the volume within the application.

The font size bug above, we will look into this, have not seen it personally. Good luck at Costco, it is usually crazy busy after work!

Got it loaded and working once on my 8800 now it says "Unable to start Infospace Find IT! Possible network problems, try again...OK"

The error is on both of my devices using BES.

Okay, tested the direction feature on my way to Costco from work. The direction was accurate, but the way it worked was not exactly what I expected. I thought it would be a full feature GPS navigation software with re-routing like TeleNav or MapQuest Navigator. But actually it is more like google direction but with voice. The only time it uses the GPS is at the start point to calculate current address. After that, you have to press Next everytime you finished a step. The program doesn't update your location, and if you go off course you will have to start over manually to re-calculate new route.

The map loading is fast, but it only loads one map at a time. It loads a sectional route map and when you click next, it will load the next map and audio (if you pick voice).

It is a good tool for finding things nearby though. I guess that's why it is called Find IT! The interface is probably the quickest and easiest of all the GPS software I tried. I wish the find gas stations would have search by price like TeleNav but it doesn't.

Very good point. I completely agree.

I still can not get the voice turn by turn to work. I keep on getting the same as I di before. I realy do like this application and would like to see it grow and continue to get better.