Terrabrowser Open Source

The time has finally come to open source one of Chimoosoft's largest and oldest projects: Terrabrowser. Terrabrowser has a long history with the first version appearing back in 2003. I have unfortunately not had as much time to work on the project as I would have liked, and hence the code base for Terrabrowser has more or less languished for the last three or four years.

Since it was (at one time) an interesting project which a lot of people were excited about, it seems only fair to release it as open source in the hopes that some other programmers will have time to improve the software. It would be nice to see the GPS waypoint/tracklog/route support improved, improved GPX file support, and possibly the addition of other mapping sources such as Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. In many ways, Terrabrowser was one of the first Mac equivalents of currently popular (but then unavailable) software such as Google Earth. I feel that the product had a lot of potential, so it has been somewhat sad to see it live by the wayside as other products have overtaken it. Let's hope this gives the old boy a fresh breath of life!

Terrabrowser Universal Binary and TubeTV

Terrabrowser is now a universal binary internally (not yet released) - after reworking the GPX file handling to make it more compatible with a wider range of GPX files, a new beta will be released. Also, a new program called TubeTV is almost finished which will allow exporting YouTube and Google Video videos to formats for Apple TV and iPod. Stay tuned.

Terrabrowser

Don't despair - work continues to progress on Terrabrowser albeit at a slow rate. The next release will add a menu of waypoint icons to choose from in the waypoint window and fixes a problem with illegal characters in waypoint names. Look for this release in the next few weeks.

Terrabrowser Alpha 7

New alpha release of Terrabrowser (alpha 7) which adds an often requested feature - search by zipcode and address! Want to find your house? It's easy now - just choose the Search for Location option from the Actions menu.

Cocoa Terrabrowser alpha 5 is now available.  This version adds a super zoom feature - you can now zoom in twice as far on color urban area maps - this is far enough to see people playing tennis! (41.785079, -87.996685)Built in internet update checking (under the Terrabrowser menu) is now working correctly, so use this feature to make sure you have the most up to date alpha.

Cocoa Terrabrowser

Work continues on the new Cocoa version of Terrabrowser. The new version is coming along nicely and can already read GPX files, perform caching, and list waypoints on the map. It appears to be much faster than the old Terrabrowser - so if you feel the need for speed you have something to look forward to. A beta version should be available for testing in the next month or two.