Some more utterly blue-sky long term goals for the app. Some of them depend entirely on what the phone can do, and I don’t know if it can or not yet.
- Attach a photo from the library as an icon for the aircraft. Maybe for locations as well, and/or a link to the Maps application. Link people (other crew and passengers) to Contact app, so you can display a picture, and even look up a phone number to call them to go flying!
- Import from google docs – or a server to do it if the phone can’t. Or maybe direct import from a SQLite database through iTunes? Don’t know – just need a way to get hundreds of records from a previous log book like AvLogBook.
- Carry forward totals from previous log books.
- Checkpoint and export – everything before a certain date is exported and deleted, and running totals (ie carry forward) updated.
An idea: How about using location services? For example, you could have a “Start Flight” button that made the app use GPS to figure out where you are, and record it, then later you click an “End Flight” button, and the app creates a new log record with the From and To fields already populated with the airport codes.
You know, I never think about location services because I’ve got a iPod Touch instead of an iPhone, so I’m thinking in terms of how it works when you’re not connected to wifi. The location services on the Touch use world’s biggest wardriving database to figure out where you are based on the wifi connection you made. But that’s not a bad idea.
I could even query my navaid.com server to find the nearest airport/seaplane base/heliport/etc.
As for your import from Google Docs. Look under the google api’s and you will find one’s for Objective-C. They have almost all of their interfaces ported in there and examples on how to pull from the server.