

Just Landed for iPhone helps you pick someone up from the airport. - jgrall
http://www.getjustlanded.com
Just Landed is a new iPhone app that makes it easy to pick someone up at the airport on time - just enter their flight number and we'll alert you when you need to leave for the airport. We take into consideration your location, current traffic conditions, and real-time flight data to remind you to leave at just the right time.
======
duiker101
automatic music, no stop or volume button immediatly in line of sight, closed.
I am sorry from that glance i gave it looked good but the music totally killed
it for me.

~~~
partlysean
Valid points. FWIW, you can click anywhere on the iPhone to pause the video
(and music, for that matter). We should probably make this clearer.

~~~
ghurlman
You should probably not automatically play audio. Or, if you must have audio,
don't automatically play the video.

------
dwynings
I'm not a fan of the music playing automatically. The app looks great though!

~~~
jgrall
Hopefully the mellow Garage Band loop on the website wasn't too offensive ;)

~~~
dwynings
Not offensive, but annoying when you have multiple tabs open and you don't
know which one the music is coming from ;)

~~~
jaredsohn
I hope it isn't inappropriate to post this here: I've built a Chrome extension
that could help you find it. <http://www.mutetab.com/>

Unfortunately, the current version requires that you have the extension prior
to opening the tab that plays sound. (But it is fixed in my developer builds
and will be available in the next version.)

------
casca
This could be very useful, but it doesn't install on a 3GS because it requires
a gyroscope? Seems a curious requirement given the functionality.

~~~
jgrall
We didn't support 3GS because creating 2X the artwork would have been a lot of
work for a relatively small % of iPhone users that will soon be upgrading to
retina. Consider your comment a +1 for 3GS.

~~~
shaggyfrog
I also have a 3GS and I find this response a little baffling. It can't be
_that_ much work for you to produce non-retina artwork, can it?

~~~
10dpd
iOS app dev these days is all about increasing what I like to term the ARPH
(average revenue per hour), a function of the revenue generated per hour spent
working on the app. The best strategy IMHO is to get something out there ASAP,
validate the market, and then expand if the data suggests a viable product
that people will pay for.

~~~
jgrall
Our thoughts exactly.

------
pivo
I assume that you try to limit the number of queries to FlightAware in order
to save yourselves money. So I wonder how many you make for a given flight.
Obviously you make one when the user enters the flight number, but what about
after that?

What if the plane has to circle? Would you be able to tell the user that the
flight hadn't landed or is the landing time based solely on the initial
FlightAware query?

~~~
jgrall
We know about updates to the flight if it gets delayed and has to circle, and
yes we do additional queries to FlightAware on the user's behalf even if the
app is closed. We spent a lot of time getting this right, as well as building
a good caching system to improve performance and save money. Incoming flight
alerts (delays, cancellations etc.) invalidate the cache for the affected
flights.

------
mahyarm
Could you enable this for all appstores? I sent a link to a family member in
canada and he couldn't download it.

Generalizing this into a flight tracker while your travelling app would be
pretty awesome too. You can swipe between flights like kayak's flight tracker.

Who did you use for the graphic design? Did you contract it out or are you
working together?

~~~
jgrall
We'll support other countries in the future once we've licensed the necessary
international data to get good coverage in other countries. Sorry your family
member wasn't able to grab it.

We've thought about other ways to build on the app... like tackling leaving
for the airport to catch a flight. We might add multi-flight tracking too with
swiping between flights as you suggest in the future if enough people want
that.

The graphic design was done by my buddies Graham Beer (@grahambeer) and Sean
Nelson (@partlysean).

------
Garwor
Looks great; downloaded it to give it a try.

This app is a great concept, but it's going to be interesting to see whether
I'll let myself trust it enough to be useful. If I end up double-checking
behind it anyway, then there's no point.

~~~
jgrall
Totally understand. If it's any comfort we put a lot of effort into making it
reliable, including fallback services for push notifications and route
information in case our data providers go down. We also play it safe and get
you there with a little time to spare. Hopefully we'll win your trust after a
few successful pickups.

------
PhrosTT
How did you make that awesome demo? Is that just js + 100 hours of labor or
what?

~~~
partlysean
Glad you like it!

To record the footage, I used the app Reflection (reflectionapp.com) to
AirPlay my iPhone's screen to my MacBook Pro.

Everything was edited using Final Cut Pro X. The trickiest part was the status
bar. When you AirPlay an iOS device, the status bar changes to a blue color,
and I just wouldn't have it. I made a custom black status bar in Photoshop and
keyframed the crap out of it to cover the blue one.

Then I exported the video from FCPX, compressed and converted it with
Handbrake (handbrake.fr), and embedded it into the webpage using the HTML5
<video> tag.

Originally, the iPhone image I used on the homepage was angled rather than
head-on. Using some clever CSS transforms, I skewed the video to fit perfectly
in the angled iPhone. Unfortunately, transforming the video left us with poor
aliasing and we opted for the head-on approach to keep the quality high.

If there's anything else you'd like to know, feel free to ask!

~~~
degenerate
Very cool! It looks like your CSS is still referencing one of the old, skewed
screenshots:
[http://www.getjustlanded.com/static/images/homepage/app_scre...](http://www.getjustlanded.com/static/images/homepage/app_screenshot.png?v=-133100619)

~~~
partlysean
Oh snap! Nice catch there. I'll have to push an update. Thanks!

------
tomkarlo
This is great - there have been a lot of times over the past few years I wish
I had this app. One suggestion - is the travel time to the airport static or
variable based on traffic? Here in SF, it can vary by a factor of 2X-3X,
turning a 20 minute drive into an hour. You could get traffic data from Google
or somewhere and cover that (if you don't.)

~~~
felideon
I would also like to know how well this would work with international flights,
when picking up non-US citizens. I presume there's no way to know this, so one
should still have to ballpark 30-60min buffer time for immigration.

------
RobMcCullough
I love the idea and the design work! When I was younger, my father would pay
me the equivalent of a taxi to get him to and from the airport. Driving slow
laps around the SFO terminal, wondering if the plane is even on the ground
yet, was definitely a big problem.

~~~
jgrall
Glad to hear we found a problem that matters to you :)

------
hiraki9
I just downloaded the app, and the designer made _excellent_ design choices.
There's an elegant balance of playfulness and utility, tasteful color scheme
and font choices and a healthy amount of animated sizzle. Well done!

~~~
jgrall
Props to @grahambeer he was responsible for much of the app design.

------
shaggyfrog
Since the video can take a while to load, you should have something other than
a black screen for the iPhone image (perhaps even "Loading Video..."), so it
doesn't look like your app is... nothing :)

~~~
jgrall
I think there is a placeholder image but not all browsers handle the <video>
tag the same way. Good point though.

------
daemon13
/Get the App/ button is a bit confusing.

I wanted to look at the app in the AppStore, and pressed the button, but :-)
no iTunes on my Ubuntu...

Also, the app is not available in other countries except US.

I would suggest - may be have two buttons?

Button 1 (BIG) - Download/Purchase/Get the App

... for those who want to purchase

Button 2 (smaller) - see in AppStore

... for those who want to check or save link to app in AppStore

P.S.: i personally dont like Get

------
zenocon
fyi: got prompted with DivX plugin wants to run -- big black video box skewed
off to the side of the phone looking out of place...clicked to allow it to
run, chrome becomes unresponsive and crashes.

granted that may be the divx plugin problem, but it seems easier to host the
video in something like youtube or vimeo and embed it if you must use video.

~~~
gbeer
Thanks for the feedback! I have similar errors with divx in Chrome, my bet is
on divx being finnicky :D

~~~
TenJack
+1

------
arpit
This is pretty cool. Are you using the data apis from FlightWise or FlightTest
or something you built yourself?

~~~
jgrall
We're using FlightAware's Flight XML api, among other data sources. Their API
is pretty decent and their data is complete for US inbound/outbound and
domestic flights. They are also really responsive on the forums to questions
and feature requests. See here: <http://flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/>

------
psadauskas
I tried adding my flight for tomorrow, Frontier 662 "F9 662", and I can't find
any combination that lets it find that flight. Is the "9" in the airline
abbreviation messing it up?

~~~
jgrall
We just added support for 1000 additional airline codes. Some of the two
digits codes were not supported by our data provider because they conflict
with airlines in other countries. Anyway this is resolved now, you should be
able to find Frontier flights.

------
nsxwolf
I love that flying animation with the parallax clouds.

~~~
jgrall
That's @partlysean handiwork.

------
onlyup
Looks great but I am outside the US and use Android.

~~~
jgrall
Yeah I'm afraid you'll be waiting for a little while. We will do international
soon tho and Android if there is enough demand.

------
jurre
Looks great, I can't seem to get it in my country though (I guess apple thinks
I live in the Netherlands), is this US only?

~~~
jgrall
Yeah I should have clarified, it's in the US app store only for now. Licensing
all the international data is quite a bit more expensive, so we wanted to test
demand before doing that. We'll also translate the app in the future.

------
ChuckMcM
Cool, now if it could do a lattitude like thing and let you know where on the
sidewalk they were, that would be epic.

~~~
jgrall
Yeah totally, we were thinking of setting up a geo fence around the airport
and automatically sending a text with their location or notifying the person
being picked up that their ride has arrived.

~~~
nsxwolf
This would be awesome. Does iOS let you do trigger this event if the app is in
the background?

~~~
jgrall
Yes it does with the newer iOS APIs for significant location change monitoring
and geofencing.

------
freshfey
It looks beautiful, congratulations. Which airports do you monitor? I couldn't
see that on first sight.

~~~
jgrall
All US airports. It works internationally too (I recently tested it in Turkey)
but we aren't advertising international airport support because our
international data is incomplete. If there's enough demand we'll add global
airport support in the future.

------
willfarrell
Looks awesome, but not available to Canadians. Why does this keep happening?

------
nsxwolf
Well your app is so popular you just blew your quota!!

~~~
jgrall
Lol yeah, we blew our bandwidth quota :) Service restored.

------
godisdad
Your website is profoundly slick and aesthetically appealing.

~~~
partlysean
Thank you! Glad you like it :)

