If you have checked the Nuno™ website lately you may have noticed a link on the main menu bar entitled ‘Mongolia’. We are supporting a team of young lads (Josh, Dan, Oli, Ollie & Rory) who are driving across Mongolia. This is a thoroughly worthy endeavor on its own. The guys have 10,000 miles or so of deserts and mountains to cross in a small underpowered van that they put together themselves. Nominally it’s a competition but really it’s about the sense of adventure, tackling the difficult and working as a team. The guys are also raising money for charity and if that were not enough they will also be donating what is left of the van and their equipment to the local communities around UlaanBaatar (assuming they get there).

 

The Mongolian dessert has some remarkable similarities with the open ocean. It is a vast undulating expanse where you can go days without seeing even a hint of another person. Another commonality is that your cell phone won’t work. What has this got to do with Nuno™? Well we have fitted the team’s car with a Skywave satellite transceiver. This is nifty bit of kit which combines a GPS with a mechanism for sending and receiving data, worldwide, via satellite in a very cost effective way. There is an awful lot you can do with this and we are working at integrating it with Nuno™. For now the Mongolian Rally is a trial. The unit is set up to send back a position every few hours so we can track their position. They can also send and receive short messages. The Inmarsat ground station passes data back and forth to a CherSoft server and then we can make good things happen.

Here are some of the features we are planning:

When you are on-board you can connect Nuno™ to the Skywave box and use it as a positioning device. You will also be able to send and receive short messages - like a global SMS facility. Friends will be able to track your position on a dedicated web page – you only give the password to the people you want to see this.

When you leave your vessel you will still be able to track its position, on Nuno, using messages via the satellite network and the Internet. So straight away we can set up a virtual boundary fence and send an alert (SMS/email) if your anchor drags or someone moves your boat.

The unit supports a variety of sensors and these can be configured to keep an eye on things while you are away. Messages will be sent at regular intervals or immediately if an alarm is triggered:

Battery voltage with a trigger if it drops too low

Bilge alarm

Entry alarm triggered on doors or hatchways

Smoke/fire/gas alarm

Ignition alarm if someone tries to start the engine

 

There is a lot of useful functionality here. Can’t tell you any exact prices at the moment but despite the high-end sophisticated monitoring and messaging it will not be high-end prices.

In the meantime one of our trial units has just crossed Europe and is now bouncing its way into Asia. You can check their progress here. Good luck Josh, Dan, Oli, Ollie & Rory. Be safe and have fun.

We discussed software licenses in general a while ago. This was followed by a blog which explained how the license for Nuno works. Now that the UK version of Nuno is launched we are keeping the license mechanism pretty much the same but it seems worthwhile to run over it again. Just what does it cost and what do you get?

Software licenses can be a bit of a minefield. With Nuno we have tried to keep everything simple and sensible. We are also trying to provide a deal which is fair, understandable and does not contain any ‘gotcha’ clauses that mean you end up paying more than you expected.

The US version of Nuno sells for $100, the UK version sells for £120 inc. VAT. The UK version costs a bit more because we need to add VAT and also because we have to pay for the chart data. Here is how it all works. UK prices are in brackets (like this) and include VAT.

Summary

For an initial outlay of $100 (£120) you can have a license for a state of the art navigation system and a one year subscription to full support and update services. After a year you can choose to renew your subscription for a further $50 (£60).

If you want to know more; keep reading.

How to buy Nuno

On the Nuno website you create an account and pay for Nuno with your credit card, debit card or PayPal. This gets you a license to use Nuno and a subscription for a year.

How to get Nuno and Install it

You may have already downloaded Nuno to try it out before you bought it. If not you can download it now. This will be the very latest version. As soon as Nuno starts up on your computer it will ask you for your account logon credentials. This is the same email address and password you used to create your account. Nuno will use these to activate over the Internet. Once activated Nuno is fully functional.

You can have Nuno installed and activated on two computers at the same time. This is so that you can have one PC for route planning and another, maybe a laptop, for use at sea.

You can install Nuno onto a new computer. If you are lucky enough to upgrade your computer then remove Nuno from the old one, install it on the new one, set up your logon as before and you are away. Use the Import/Export facilities to transfer your overlays.

During the next year

The subscription is valid for a year and entitles you to the following:

You will be able to use our chart updating service. This is basically just one click to update all your charts.

You will be notified of any updates to Nuno.

Occasionally we find bugs or problems in the code. More often we want to roll out a bunch of usability and implementation improvements. You will be able to download, install and use the new version of Nuno with these fixes and improvements.

In the next year we are planning to add several new features including AIS support, S63 (commercial, encrypted ENC), auto-helm and a rolling road (whatever that is). You will be able to download, install and use the new versions of Nuno with these new features. Recently we added support for Active Captain to Nuno and all registered users got this as a free upgrade.

If you encounter any problems or have any issues you will be able to contact us directly and probably have your question answered by one of the programming team.

After a year

The subscription expires in a year.

At the end of the year we will invite you to renew your subscription. This will cost just $50 (£60). If you renew your subscription then you can carry on with all the good things I have just described for another year.

Expired subscription

You can still use Nuno. It is yours to keep and use whenever you want.

If you ever lose your copy of Nuno you will be able to log into your account and download a fresh copy.

You can still update your charts but not via the update service. You will need to download updates directly from NOAA and then install them manually.

You will not be able to upgrade Nuno. Activation will be frozen at the latest version on the date that your subscription expired.

Small Print

This prices are all correct as of July 2011. We reserve the right to alter them at any time. This does not mean we are going to suddenly start charging a fortune but it does mean that there may occasionally be some changes to account for inflation and the likes.

Marine IT & Electronics (MITE) is a bi-monthly journal published by The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology. The Institute is an august professional body. Established in London in 1889, they claim to be the leading international membership body and learned society for marine professionals. Over 15,000 members worldwide.

Certainly they get my vote because they have been reading the Nuno™ blog. The other month we were ruminating on big screensand Kevin, the editor of MITE, picked up on this to produce a very nice article interestingly entitled "How to fit an elephant on a 19-inch screen” for the June/July edition.

We are always happy to have visitors at the CherSoft offices. Today we got to meet ‘Storm’, a 10 week old German Shepherd.

Naturally we were keen to show him around and make him feel welcome.

 

Emily explained some of the basics about Nuno.

 

 

 

Storm evaluated how Nuno performs on a laptop while also checking out just how robust the keyboard was.

Does this count as animal testing?

 

 

 

 

Mitsi, the CherSoft guard dog, discussed life at the office and explained some of the career options for a smart German Shepherd in the modern world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We offered him some tea and attempted to pose a situation that we could have labeled ‘Storm in a teacup’.

 

He had other plans.

 

 

 

 

Only puppies can really do the ‘lost puppy dog’ look properly.

 

 

 

 

 

In puppy terms, it was a long day.

ActiveCaptain? - and just what is that you may ask. Well it is a chart overlay, a crowd sourced data resource, a website and a community. Any the wiser yet?

Let’s start with what it means in Nuno™ where you can see additional information on your chart. Here is what it looks like.

Those extra little symbols are points of interest (POI) from the ActiveCaptain database. POIs are associated with marinas, anchorages, local knowledge, features and hazards. Useful little snippets of extra information which could be just the sort of thing you need especially when visiting an area for the first time. If you inspect the POI you will find a description, notes and other useful things. Where does this information come from? That is what the crowd sourcing bit is about. As Jeff Siegel, creator of ActiveCaptain explains:

ActiveCaptain allows boaters to share the knowledge and experience that each Captain has gained. The key to ActiveCaptain's content is the ability of registered users to communicate corrections, update information, and create reviews. Fellow cruisers can provide information about fuel pricing, slip fees, a favorite anchorage, or some local knowledge. As a registered Captain you can read marina reviews written by other Captains, write your own review, add a new point of interest, or correct inaccurate information. You add to the content and benefit from the content provided by others.

So not only do you have access to a wealth of information but you can also contribute by way of updates, additions and corrections:

The sharing of your knowledge and information creates an online community of fellow boaters - people from around the country or even around the world who share your love of the water and provide information, opinions, and insight. Registration on the ActiveCaptain web site is free. We feel this is critical to building the community. We also feel that it is important to acknowledge the contributions of our Captains in making this community successful.

And there you have the community aspect as well.

The Active Captain website is here. The ‘Interactive Cruising Guidebook’ tab gives you another way of looking at the information using maps and images from Microsoft Virtual Earth. Clearly with many people contributing to this project the information is going to be constantly updated. To handle this we have introduced an update facility within Nuno™ which will grab all the latest data for you so that it is to hand on your boat even when no Internet connection is available.

In the first release of ActiveCaptain you will be able to view all the information however we are planning to allow editing in the near future so that if you find something that you think should be changed then you will be able to make the changes right in Nuno™ and the corrections will be dealt with automatically.

The last part of the article from Andy about soundings

 

There are a lot of numbers to display in a small space – even on a paper chart 40” wide.

Conventionally, soundings are displayed...

	without thousands separators or units
	with a single decimal digit displaced ½ a line down instead of with a decimal point (if less than about 30 feet)
	with a bar under the number for drying heights, instead of using a minus sign

Units are implied by the chart – in the UK, non-metric charts were black and white and metric charts are colored. Everything is done to try and prevent someone misreading a dangerous depth for a safe one.

Sounding Units in S-57 (ENC)

ENC is one of several chart products based on the S-57 chart standard. Part of the ENC specification is that all depths and heights be specified in metric units (meters).

But the surveys in the US have been done in English units (feet). When a sounding in feet is converted to meters to be stored in the ENC format and is then converted back to feet for display, rounding errors creep in...

Original depth recorded in survey in feet	Stored in ENC in meters (to 1 decimal)	Displayed on chart in feet (to one decimal)
3	0.9	3.0
6	1.8	5.9
9	2.7	8.9
12	3.7	12.1

We could argue that 0.1’ here and there does not make the chart useless, but it does make the chart significantly more crowded with all those decimal digits. In Nuno Navigator, depths from US sourced chart data are rounded to whole feet, on the assumption that the survey was in feet in the first place.

Soundings can also be very crowded – clutter on the chart, particularly when the chart is displayed at a less detailed scale than it was intended for. The ECDIS display standard (ISO 61174) also specifies rather large text and symbols – larger than are needed on a modern LCD display. The standard S-57(ENC) presentation draws sounding values using turtle graphic symbols instead of text – symbols cannot benefit from clear-type etc.

Taking all this together the display of soundings changes from

	to
Orignal S-57(ENC)		Nuno Navigator

At a smaller scale the difference is even more marked

	to
Orignal S-57(ENC)		Nuno Navigator

The Nuno Navigators soundings might be a bit small to read, but the original is too crowded to read and the existence of small text is the clue you need to know that there is something there – all you have to do is zoom in a bit to read it. Everything else about the chart remains intelligible – you can still see the contours clearly for instance.

Highlighting Soundings

The “Properties at Point” display is an important element of an ENC chart. It shows all the detail of the last thing you clicked on and is one of the big advantages of a vector chart.

It is important to know what you actually clicked on.

	We highlight this on the chart. Here, I clicked on a buoy.
	But it didn’t work so well for soundings, which by a quirk of the S-57 design are grouped together. Here I clicked on the 11.5m sounding lop left.
	But, by remembering the depth of the sounding that was actually clicked on, we can now make it work much better

Choosing a tag line

A tag line is that little piece of text associated with a product and much loved by the marketing people. ‘Just do it’, ‘Where’s the beef?’, ‘Think different’. That type of thing. Catchy brief phrases that sort of make you feel good and, hopefully, remind you of the product.

So at the Nuno philosophers meeting it was generally agreed that we should have a tag line. Why not? Everyone else seemed to have one. That was the easy bit. Next problem, where to get a tagline from? I thought that maybe I could get the ball rolling and suggested ‘really good navigation software’. This seemed, to me, quite clear and to the point but everyone else laughed and said it was rubbish. None the less, even from this naïve attempt we learnt some important things:

· Thinking up a tag line can be difficult

· Thinking up a good tag line is harder

· If you are going to think up tag lines and share them with your colleagues then you need to be quite thick skinned

Next attempt was to throw the net a bit wider and see if any of the developers could dream up anything. We stoked them with extra pizza and coffee and they came back with ‘notepad of the seas’. This is quite a nice idea but needs some explanation for non-programmers. Notepad is a small text editor which has been shipped with Windows since forever. It just does one job; editing plain text. The thing is that it does this job really well, it is always there, it is reliable, it is predictable and it is easy to use. I doubt there is a sys admin or coder alive who has not used it sometime to modify a configuration and save the IT infrastructure. There are some people that even use it to write code, although this is generally considered a bit hard core. So, nice identification but too much of an explanation for a tag line.

Doing some background research I came across some useful pointers such as

· Keep it believable, succinct and interesting

· Make it thought provoking, unique and memorable

Which is all very well, but how? I also found an automated tag line generator but this mostly just seemed to quote Star Trek and I did not think ‘beam me up Nuno’ was going to cut it.

We needed to get everyone on the job, management, testers, coders, interns, even the janitor. Then things began to buzz. We started with ‘nav and go’. Then there was ‘show me the way home’, ‘software like mom used to make’, ‘be where you want to be’ and ‘you know Nuno knows’. Everyone was getting into the swing of this now, especially when we offered a bottle of wine for the best one. ‘ocean knowledge’ is one we might use for CherSoft. There was a rather blunt suggestion of ‘just buy the f**g thing’ which was tempting but inappropriate. Other little gems included the song inspired ‘it’s a greater navigator’ and ‘smooth navigator’. There were also little puns like ‘it’s all a plot’ and ‘useful in a fix’. My favorites included ‘life is too short for getting lost’, ‘navigator in a box’ and ‘just add water’.

Having got to over 50 candidate tag lines we thought we’d better put it to a vote. This proved interesting because there was no clear consensus at all. It would seem that the notion of what makes a good tag line is very subjective. In the end, through the use of a slightly implausible transferable vote system we arrived at ‘it’s all on the chart’. This has the comfortable feel of time served salt encrusted wisdom and a slightly subtle double meaning. With Nuno we try and make all the user interactions directly on the chart. There are no dialogs or status panels instead everything is, as far as possible, right there on the chart.

So there we have it, ‘it’s all on the chart’. Will this herald a new age in the development of Nuno? I doubt it but it was kind of fun.

 

My company, CherSoft, has just launched a new product called Nuno Navigator. This is a whole new direction for us. Sure we have written lots of marine software before but this time it is different, this time we are trying to sell directly to our end users. Previously, by which I mean the last 15 years, we have mostly just operated business to business. We wrote the software and someone else would sell it. Sometimes they would use their own badge and branding and sell it as their own. This is quite normal, much of the software you use is not written by the company on the box. One particular company even attended a lavish ceremony and dinner to accept an industry award for our software. We only found out about this much later.

Working as a back office company has quite suited us for quite a while. It meant that we could get on with writing software which is what we like best. It meant that we didn’t have to get too involved with things like sales and marketing which was fine too because we didn’t really like that too much anyhow. Of course there was a down side. We spent a fair bit of time worrying about contracts and specifications. We spent far too much time quibbling about how to write the software or what it should do or what it should look like. So all the time there has been that temptation to strike out on our own and actually create a software application start to finish that we can call our own.

Anyhow, we’ve decided to step out of the shadows and face the harsh and unforgiving glare of end users directly. This is a bit daunting but hopefully we are not completely unprepared. The code is pretty solid, we know a fair bit about marine navigation and we have cobbled together a website. Well ok, I know there is a bit more to it and that is what this blog is about. I’d love to say it will be a ‘how to’ on launching a new software product or a better navigation system but the reality is that we’ve still got a lot to learn and a lot to find out. So instead it is going to be ‘stuff’ with a vague theme of things associated with software and navigation. I guess it is also going to be about facing the great and wonderful public directly and probably about some of the things that happen to us along the way.