In the time between finishing the ride and starting a new job, I finally finished what I’d intended to have available for the ride: a Warm Showers app on my phone. If I were on iPhone or Android I could have downloaded someone else’s Warm Showers app, but what’s the fun in that?
Warm Showers is an international reciprocal hospitality organization for touring cyclists. Sign up and offer to host cyclists at your home, then when on your own tour you have all kinds of options for free lodging and like-minded contact throughout the world. We met some wonderful hosts on our ride and have hosted one amazing adventurer (so far) at our home in Boise.
The app helps you discover, locate, and coordinate with nearby hosts. This would have come in really handy on the ride. With it, I’m certain we would have availed ourselves of Warm Showers more often.
Oh well. Now every touring cyclist with a Windows phone can download the Warm Showers app. All three of you.
TransAmerican Trike Adventure 2012 
Congratulations on completing it! 🙂
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As the developer of the Android app I wholeheartedly agree – what’s the fun in using someone else’s app 🙂
Congratulations, let’s hope WP increases its market share soon!
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cool! definately worth doing. except, you’ll have to show me how it works on YOUR windows phone..
mz
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Thanks! You guys should check out the iPhone and Android apps. Christopher Meyer did a nice job on the first Warm Showers app, on iPhone/iPad/iPod. As you’d expect, my app is similar. I don’t have access to an Android device so haven’t played with Johannes’ app, but from what I’ve read it looks good. I know he’s been doing a lot of work on it to take advantage of some improvements in the web service we’re all using. Being the latecomer, I got these improvements for free. If not now, I think soon all three apps will be at feature parity.
As a note, the one tester I recruited from the Warm Showers site lives in Poland. There is no way for me to tell, but my guess is that the majority of my app downloads so far come from Europe, where there is some semblance of a market for WP.
About a month in, 18 non-testers have downloaded the app. At a price of USD $0 it will take a while to recoup the NRE. And it doesn’t look like I’ll be making it up in volume :).
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