Shutting down Tech Comm on a Map
Hallo folks, I’ve decided to take down Tech Comm on a Map—this means I’ll remove the web page and unpublish the Android app. The web page will remain available until the end of November, to give people time to fix up any pages that are using it. The Android app will remain installed on your device if you’ve previously installed it, but it won’t be available for new installations.
Why am I taking them down? I don’t have bandwidth to look after them any more. The web app is suffering from a technical problem that I can’t fix, despite quite a bit of effort. On the Android side, I don’t currently use Android technology, and it therefore takes quite a bit of effort to get back into the swing of things each time I need to make a change to the app.
The usage stats for the apps are reasonable, but not huge. The web page gets a max of 50 visitors per day, measured over the last 6 months. There are 27 active installations of the Android app.
I’ll leave the code available in GitHub (web app, Android app) at least for a while, for those people who want to try it out.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed data and code to this project! It’s been a rewarding experience developing the apps and working with contributors to the code and the data.
If my taking down the apps will cause you any trouble, please do let me know.
Posted on 14 October 2018, in technical writing. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
ffeathers 
Hi Sarah. Perhaps your problems stem from the Google Script, rather than the app itself? See here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52157158/new-google-script-version-throwing-javascript-error.
Very willing to have a look at the script, if you wish.
Hallo Mark
That’s interesting, thanks! I hadn’t seen that report, as I stopped looking for answers a few weeks ago. Here’s what the script looks like (though the real one inside the sheet has the proper spreadsheet ID):
https://github.com/sarahmaddox/techcomm-map/blob/gh-pages/appscript/Code.gs
If it looks like something fixable, and you’re happy to take it on, I’ll give you access to the spreadsheet, using the email address that accompanied your comment on this post.
If you can fix this, I’d like to keep the Tech Comm on a Map website running (although I’ll still unpublish the Android app). I’ll update the app and spreadsheet to allow for 2019 entries too.
Let me know what you think.
Many thanks
Sarah
Hallo all, I’ve just removed the map from the web app, replacing it with a message saying that Tech Comm on a Map is no longer available.
If you’re looking for techcomm (and related) conferences, check out the KeyContent calendar of events (keycontent.org) with 100s of #techcomm, #ux, #a11y, etc conferences around the world.
Hello, Sarah
Great project!
My name is Victor. I’m a student and I’m just starting to study programming. I’m trying to understand how your Tech Comm on a Map Android app works. Do you have any technical documentation with algorithms, diagrams and explanations?
Hallo Victor
It’s great to hear you’re starting out on a programming career. I think the best place for you to find detailed information is in the docs for the Google Maps APIs. My summary page has links to the relevant docs, as well as links to my code on GitHub.
Have fun!
Cheers
Sarah