Bluyah Development Blog

We’ve posted our first draft of the Bluyah Product Roadmap to the Bluyah User’s Guide Wiki.

Let us know if your feature request is not listed.

You may have noticed that it’s been a week since our last release.  This delay doesn’t mean we haven’t been working hard - quite the opposite in fact.  

Version 0.4.4 will introduce two significant features and we want to make sure that they function perfectly (especially with each other) before we push the code out the door.  We were going to push the release on Wednesday, but at the last moment discovered a minor ‘glitch’ that took a little longer to trace back to it’s roots than we anticipated.  

So what’s coming?

First off : The Google Docs connector.  Unlike most online tools that allow you to access data in your Google Docs spreadsheet, Bluyah does not require that you make your spreadsheet publicly available (what Google calls “published”).  You can keep your spreadsheet private and still report against it.  And all reporting is done in real-time.  You make a change to your spreadsheet, the next time you view your Bluyah chart export built against it you’ll see the results.  

We feel this will be  a huge win for Bluyah users, as we’ve been receiving a ton of feedback that this is where a lot of IT teams are doing their ad hoc data analysis.

Second Off:  Enhanced Google Maps.  This release will allow you to custom design the pop-up windows that display when users click on a map icon.  Additionally, since we realize only the truest of geeks have geocoded data sets, Map Exports will now allow you to convert a street address to a plot on a map on-the-fly.  

Best of all, because Bluyah Exports work the same regardless of the data source, you’ll be able to create maps as easily from a geocoded XML feed (ie: The US Geological Society) or from a Google Docs spreadsheet (ala: our list of pizzerias in Fremont).  

I’ll post some data samples when the release goes live so you can compare them yourself.

Until then, keep following us on Twitter to stay abreast of the latest features and release dates.

We’ve been putting a ton of work into simplifying Google Maps exports.  Phase II should be ready for release within the next two weeks.  Besides including a WYSIWYG-esqe editing interface, it will allow users to group, order, and better organize their map data into logical groupings (like colored markers for like-minded data).

Oh - and did we mention that geocoding will be included?  You’ll no longer need to include latitude/longitude data in your reports.  A geocodable address will be sufficient.

Here’s a preliminary screenshot.

Let us know what you think.

Mockup of Maps 2

Welcome to the Bluyah Blog.

Here is where we will talk about upcoming features, the development life-cycle, things that may be going on with the company, etc., et al.

If you don’t see a post for a while, don’t worry.  It only means we’re heads-down coding the next great set of features for Bluyah!