I've been working on an iPhone Web App for our upcoming SOE Fan Faire in Las Vegas. The goal of the app is to give iPhone users an easy-to-access reference for all information they might need while attending Fan Faire.
The app will have the following information:
- Full schedule of all events and panels browsable by game.
- A map of Bally's convention center
- Twitter feed from our @soefanfaire twitter account for up-to-the minute news
- Extensive list of restaurants around Bally's and Paris hotels.
- Travel information for getting around Vegas
I threw together the basics of the web app within a couple of evenings of work. Now I'm working on the polish features that make it really useful.
Being able to filter the schedule by game is a cool feature and will help attendees find panels without scrolling through the entire list of events.
Originally the list of restaurants was going to be very basic but my wife encouraged me to go the extra step and provide more info about the restaurants. So each restaurant now has a detail page that shows their location, hours, type of cuisine, cost and description. Clicking the phone number will initiate dialing on your iPhone. There's even a button to take you to the restaurants website if you're interested in browsing their menu. (Thanks Tiffany for typing all that data in!)
The news section fetches the RSS feed from twitter and displays the last several entries in a list. If the twitter entry contains a URL, clicking the row will open the browser to the web page.
There are still some things I need to finish before I can call it done but its coming together nicely. If you'd like to see it while its in development, you can check it out at http://www.gregsplace.com/fanfaire. Keep in mind it will only work in the Safari browser because it makes heavy use of their iPhone extensions.
Let me know what you think!
