A record number of voters participated in this year’s final Hugo ballot, a total of 2100 voters from 33 countries. As I noted in a post a few days ago, participation in the final ballot was just over 1000 the two previous years. Both the increased numbers and the international involvement are encouraging developments. Kudos to the Renovation organization for creating an excellent Hugo voters packet and for their marketing efforts as well.We’re looking forward to going to Renovation, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, to begin in just over a week in Reno, Nevada. We will have five members of the immediate and extended SF Strangelove family on board for the long drive from Southern California.
The convention program is available in a variety of formats:
Introduction and facilities grid
A searchable database
PDF format
For the first time there are versions of the program for mobile devices: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android. I’ve used it on an iPhone 3GS and an iPad 2 and it is definitely handy. To obtain the free app, go the the App Store, search for "Renovation" and download. The app allows searching the program by day or by participant. It also incorporates Twitter. The best feature is “My Program,” a custom list of favorite program items that you create. Select a program item by touching the “plus” symbol in the upper right corner and that item is added to your favorites list.
The added screen real estate for the iPad is wonderful, especially for viewing maps of the facilities. The trade-off is the handy size and portability of a phone.
After spending some time using the iPhone 3GS and switching from vertical to horizontal format several times the graphics freaked out and made the visuals and navigation difficult to use. The solution was to restart the phone. After restarting I was able to add duplicate copies of the same program item to “My Program.” It was easy to undo by touching the “X” symbol in the upper right corner.
Congratulations to Renovation and Viafo for creating this convenient tool for working with the convention program.
Related links:
Hi - just a word of warning. There's a bug in the current available version of the iPhone and iPad app that means the app crashes if you delete something from the "My Program" - we've fixed the bug for Android but we're waiting for Apple to approve the new version.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that update. I have deleted items from "My Program" without an immediate crash, which suggests it is an intermittent problem. Glad to hear that there is an updated version on the way. Let us know when it is available.
ReplyDelete