Updates April 2021

By Josh Willuhn

April 2021 flew by and now it's May but I'll write the April update.

What happened in April? oh yeah! navigation/trip mode/directions and weather happened!! That's right, this humble app was seriously updates in April.

There's also a new web dashboard you gotta see! It has support messaging and payments built in, stats about your data use and is the base for the next big round of updates to the web app.

But the directions and navigation features are probably some of the best updates on the app side, ever. It also means the beta run is coming to an end.

I've said it a few months in a row but this is it. By June there will be no more completely free accounts beyond the current testers.

It happens with every app and motorift is by no means a gold mine but I can't pay the bill myself forever. I'd like to earn some money from this app I've created and at the same time I wish it were free forever. To that end there's a generous free tier I hope you'll enjoy using.

If motorift is to last I need to launch this sucker! Sink or swim. Fall or fly.

But I'm not slowing development. Just the opposite really. What can you expect? A new trip mode navigation app for one thing. It's a dedicated navigation app but it works with the normal motorift app. Trip planning and weather go hand in hand, or at least they should.

Next up is the long awaited spare phone bike alarm. It's still in testing and development but my goal is to develop a dedicated hardware device for GPS logging and an alarm but it makes the most sense (for motorift) to go about it one step at a time.

Following the bike alarm? More motorift. I don't want to give away all my plans but the end of the beta is just the beginning of the next phase.

I have some big plans for this little app and April got me significantly closer to my goals.

The website is getting some updates as well. I'm slowly transitioning from a beta blog (this...) to a legit help site for the app. Trying to write help articles while the app is in a development phase is difficult because the app keeps changing. That makes these blog articles a bit stale because I'm just repeating the same thing every month 😂 "progress progressed but not as far as I wanted it to". Pretty much the theme for all these blog articles.

Nonetheless I appreciate everyone who reads these and I hope the help articles I have planned will help!

Independent Software FTW

Motorift is independently developed free from other corporations and their goals. It's how software should be developed. But it also means it takes a little longer to develop and it might feel rough around the edges compared to more corporate developed software. That's on purpose, it's supposed to look unique. What's normal isn't always best and motorift is a representation of that.

Well, thanks for reading!