Our friend Guillaume Bolo, the first in France to have offered for many years a very elaborate web interface presenting SHOM predictions – tide.info – is also the developer of the excellent app marée info for iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch. Copied but never equaled by SHOM itself, who ended up giving up, he will soon offer us a superb evolution… Read more …
Category : Applications
All applications
iOS 11 and navigation apps
Among the many new features brought by iOS 11, I particularly appreciated the improvement in the multitasking functions. The addition of a retractable "Dock" in the MacOS way, the "SlideOver" function combined with the "SplitView" function already present in iOS 10. This will greatly improve the use of navigation apps. Read more …
Weather4D 2.0.20 The unlimited charting
We had been hoping for it for months, were expected, We waited - or we grew impatient, it depends – well, There she is : the latest update of Weather4D 2.0.20 is finally available ! On the menu, a major improvement : Assisted charting download and unlimited storage size. To which is added a small number of highly requested features and some bug fixed…
Iridium Mail & Web app : GRIB weather files on iPhone and iPad in open sea [Update-2]
[Update 15 February 2019] The recent update of the application Iridium Mail & Web app gives me the opportunity to refresh this post originally written in December 2011.
The Wi-Fi Gateway Optimizer from RedPort allows owners of a mobile satellite phone to make requests and receive GRIB weather files from an iPad or iPhone on the high seas, into the wild, anywhere on the world.
After implementing and testing this solution On a long journey, It proved to be perfectly operational. However, it is limited to the receipt of the forecasts of the GFS weather model worldwide, and the wave pattern WW3, obtained by the American server's autoresponder Saildocs.
Update iNavX 5.0.7 [Update-2]
[Update] Following the update 5.0.6 the charts were again no more reachable. A release 5.0.7 delivered in the night of May 15 until 16 has solved the problem. But alas, the Fugawi/Chart website was made unavailable for a few hours, and therefore no more access to accounts to retrieve charts. Definitely, fate persists !
You can now resume the procedure :
- Select the “Maps” page > “My cards” tab
- Select each chart folder you have purchased
- Type “Update Map List”
- Activate and download the folder again
To make it work, may be you need to logout/login to your Fugawi account. You will notice however that the French translation has been completed, at least one positive thing !
[Update-2]
To restore your cards in the “My cards” page, you have to pull the page down by sliding it with your finger, your purchases need to be refreshed.
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The new division of the NV Charts
I had presented in May 2015 the excellent raster charts NV Charts by the German Publisher NV Verlag. In 2016, the previous cutting in 4 areas for France - Channel and Atlantic coasts - has been split into 8 areas for 49,90$ apiece. It should be noted that each year a new edition replaces the previous one, there is no update.
Bounderies in 2015
Guide Escales 2017
I have mentioned last July the "Stopovers" Guide, digital version of Bloc Marine published by the Figaro Group. It seems that the remarks I made on the excessively fragmented division of these guides were heard : The version 2017 has the number of modules reduced by 17 down to 12 for the Channel-Atlantic coast, and 13 down to 10 for the Mediterranean. It is a welcome initiative !
iNavX 5.0 from Charybde to Scylla
The major update 5.0 of iNavX, issued late August, was unfortunately a long and painful labor for new developers, and a succession of whirlpools and reefs for users. Among the many bugs and regressions laboriously fixed by successive builds, the worst part was the total loss of charts for almost all of us. This is, repeatedly. To top it all off the recent migration, this month, of charting server X-Traverse to a new website Fugawi much more user-friendly, didn't make things easy. Some explanations are necessary. Read more …
The Weather4D 2.0 new is arrived
No developer vacations ! I talked about testing the new features to come during our Long journey from Corsica to Normandy last May. After several weeks of finalization, and mainly to adapt early to future iOS 10 Available this fall, here is the delivery of the new version 2.0.15 in Weather4D 2.0. An addition of long-awaited new features.
Read more …
stairs – the digital version of Bloc Marine
At the beginning of this year I wrote the greatest good I thought of the Digital Almanac, the digitized version of Reed’s Nautical Almanac. The Figaro group, Publisher of the website www.figaronautisme.fr, owner of Météo-Consult / The Weather Channel and Logbook – Marine Block, Published since the end 2014 "Stopover Guides", the digitized version of the Marine Block on the iBook Store. Read more …