My Badges App

The Scout Association has launched the My Badges app which contains all the information and requirements for each badge and award from Beavers through to Network. This is an excellent idea which means we can have all the badge requirements available in our pockets on our mobile devices. I think the BSA have had some of their information available electronically for a while now (The Boy Scouts Handbook?), so we are now catching up with them!

This app costs £1.19, which isn’t too bad when you consider that to print out all the info or to buy the relevant books would cost a lot more.

However, the SA have goofed by only releasing it as an iPhone / iPod touch app. Now, I don’t have an iProduct, I have an Android phone. OK, that’s not strictly true, Carol has an iPod touch and has bought the app for me, but its not  MINE!
Quite why they decided to release it just on the iOS platform is beyond me. There are far more Android users and Blackberry users aren’t far behind the iOS users – see here for a rough idea.

The slightly worrying thing is that Chris James, the Creative & Brand Advisor for the SA has said –

we will gauge interest before looking at developing on other platforms.

Hmm. I’m not too impressed about that. I think they’ve missed a great opportunity to release the app across multiple platforms to ensure that it can get to the widest possible audience.

What do you think readers?

12 Replies to “My Badges App”

  1. I think your right Nick an example of the SA shooting itself in the foot, It surely would have been better to launch on all platforms

  2. Hehehe!
    To be honest, I admit that I’m not the world’s greatest Apple fan (although if we talk about Apple Corps then that’s totally different!), however, I do like the iPod touch and the iPhone (just could do without iTunes) and Rachael was very generous and bought her Mum an iPod for Christmas.
    The app itself is great and I can see that it will be extremely useful, especially when something needs to be looked up quickly and you don’t happen to have the relevant book around.
    The thing that annoys me is that it was released on iOS and nothing else. There are more Android, Blackberry, Symbian & Windows Phone (not really!) users out there and we seem to have been ignored for the sake of iProducts being ‘cool and trendy’!

  3. I think you have to look at the Scouting Market, is there is more other iOS about with older Generation, it seem that the scout, explorer generation who they want to use the books to get more badges all have or want an Iphone.

    Also I believe it is easier to cross from IProduct code to other iOS code.

    YiS
    K

  4. I’ve just given up waiting on the android app and copied the webpages into .epub files for aldiko to read on my android phone. No bells and whistles, but it’s cross-platform. http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/rl201/ – download the epub file to your PC and the copy across to your android ‘phone. (Mail me with any problems frank ‘at’ newnhamscouts.org.uk)

  5. Thanks for that Frank. I’d seen the post you’d made on Escouts, but not quite got round to downloading the docs!
    I’m not holding out much hope for the Android version in the near future to be honest. It’s a shame the SA launched the iPhone app without considering the majority of people who don’t have an iPhone! But then all Apple stuff is kewl isn’t it?

  6. Hi, I’ve recently been looking into making apps, as I do my explorer group’s website, and have made a few, I will try and get these eBooks all together as one mobile html5 website, and then turn it into an apk file for android. I don’t know for definite if it will work, but I’ll give it a go over this half term. 🙂

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