Release Notes - GeoChat: 1.4

The Help button in the Toolbar now opens a popup with contextual help from http://www.geochathelp.com. Not every page has help content written yet. We have also added the possibility for linking help icons or links from any place in the page to help topics in the help site.

The PhoneConfiguration page is now separated (but linked) from the My Profile page. You can still view your configured phones in your profile, but the verification process takes place in a separate window. This simplifies the interactions involved and results in a cleaner interface in the profile page.

A Help page was created with configuration instructions for a Local Gateway

Several performance and stability improvements were made on the Local Gateway.

When a user has not sent any message that appears in the streamview, we will still show his icon in the map with the last known location. If the user has sent a message and he is being displayed in the map with that bubble, but he has reported a newer location, we will also show his icon in the new location. That last icon is now included in the sequencenumbering scheme having the (1)

In the Public Group section , after requesting to join a public group that requires aproval, a withdraw button allows the user to remove the request.

Public groups are now sorted by proximity to the user. The first results the user gets now are groups nearby his last known location or the location he specified during the signup process.

If several user icons overlap in a certain zoom level on the map, a generic “multi-user” icon is displayed containing all the different conversations in its bubble.

Inside a clustered multi-user icon, the bubble now shows tabs for each conversation contained in the cluster.

Any user can add a mobile phone to his profile by sending ”#I am [user|mobile|mail] PASSWORD” from his mobile phone. This switches over the current phone to the phone being use to sent the #iam.

Sending #bye from a phone removes that device from the user's account. This can be used in conjunction with #iam. If I run out of battery and I borrow someone's phone, I can send ”#iam user password”, do what I need to do and then send ”#bye”. The phone owner won't have access to my geochat account if I deleted the ”#iam” message containing my password. This was added as a response to several Ghana/Changefusion requests.

Sending #whereis USERNAME or #whereis DISPLAYNAME returns a message with the last known location for the user: “John Doe said 2 days ago he was in Accra, Ghana (lat:123, lon:234)”

Twitter configuration page has been moved to a separate page (as phone page was). The information can still be seen in the profile page but the whole validation and confirmation process takes place outside the profile page. This results in a cleaner profile page and simpler interactions.

Mail configuration form has been moved out from the Profile page. The information can still be seen there but the configuration takes place in a separate page.

A user can now specify the way he wants to be contacted in each group via each protocal (mail, sms, twitter). Available configurations are: full (receive every message always), daytime (receive messages during the user's daytime), disabled (don't send updates through that protocol). This configuration can be different in each group. This was a ChangeFusion request.

A user can now configure multiple cellphones, only one cellphone is active at a time, but just sending a message through an already configured cellphone makes it active and routes new messages to that phone. This was a Ghana request.

A message like this: N 10° 33' 0*W 120° 28' 0 is now supported to update location.

A bug was solved that was causing the Update Icon button to display wrong.

After changing his password, the user is now redirected to the profile page with a message letting him know his password was correctly changed.

The 'correct' SMS gateway phone number is now displayed once the user selects his country and provider.

At first login, user will be redirected to a welcome page suggesting him to join a group or create an own group, and to connect to Twitter if he hasn't configured a Twitter account yet.

Geochathelp.com was configured and kicked-off as the single point wiki for help content and training materials for Geochat. The content is still under construction and it's being linked from the Geochat website.

Registration message now contains user Display Name and his Login.

Group alias where allowed to contain blanks. This caused some problems when sending messages from the website. Group Alias cannot contain blanks anymore but the messaging from the website works anyway.

If the user unchecks the group with a message window open for that group, the windows is now hidden.

A bug was fixed that caused errors with the bar that shows the percentage of chars available in a message sent from the website.

The publication date is now used to display in RSS alerts.

Add timezone property was added to the profile page that is used to determine what “daytime” means for a user.

Syntax for blast messages is now: #b GROUPALIAS MESSAGE

The resending of an invitation to join a group was displaying a page with no graphic design. Fixed.

Display name with foreign character sets were not supported. Display names can now use any character like Thai or Khmer.

A number of predefined user icons where uploaded that allow users to override the user icon of other members.

Blank messages were allowed from the website. Send button is now disabled when nothing is typed in the textbox.

Blocked users in membership tab had a graphic glitch that was hiding the Add User area. Fixed.

Rejecting a pending request to join a private group created a graphic glitch that hided the Add Member section.