Miscellaneous WowiArmory Statistics (October 7th, 2008// 11:43am)

My apologies for the lack of updates. School started and the sudden workload hit me quite hard, and it’s taken me quite a while to get on top of all my work. School is, as it should be, my top priority, and I’m hoping to maintain a high GPA throughout my college years. Unfortunately, that means this blog (and WoW) has to take a back seat whenever school work pops up. Fear not, I’ve got a few posts lined up, and I’ll be putting them up over the next few days.

Also, for those curious, here are some miscellaneous statistics pertaining to WowiArmory. Keep in mind that WowiArmory is still in private beta, and the audience is quite limited.

• WowiArmory is caching over 4,000 characters on every single WoW server.
• WowiArmory is caching over 24,000 items.
• WowiArmory’s database is optimized and takes up just under 25MB worth of disk space.
• WowiArmory uses more than 1GB of bandwidth each month.
• WowiArmory loads in an average of 1.31 seconds on a Wifi connection.
• WowiArmory loads in an average of 4.32 seconds on a 3G connection.
• WowiArmory loads in an average of 6.71 seconds on an EDGE connction.
• WowiArmory has an uptime of 99.97% since the first round of beta, going down only when my host switched servers.

There are AppStore alternatives to WowiArmory, but they all have their drawbacks.

1. They all require you to upgrade to 2.0 or higher. For iPod users, this means they have to pay the upgrade fee that Apple is asking for.
2. Several of the alternatives require you to buy them through iTunes.
3. Even after purchasing the application, you can only sync it to your specific iPhone/iPod. If your friend wants to look up characters, they’ll have to go through the whole process of buying the app and installing it themselves.

For all those who e-mailed me asking to test, please do not think I am ignoring you. I have a very large update planned for WowiArmory, and with this update, I’m going to release WowiArmory to the public. I’ll release the URL here on my blog, and you can give it to any and all of your friends.

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WowiArmory Update (July 31st, 2008// 2:01pm)

Hello again!

It’s been a while since I’ve written about WowiArmory, but I was mentioned on WowInsider again today, and as such I’m getting a large surge of people who are interested in WowiArmory. Additionally, I’m getting many questions that I would like to address here.

First of all, if you are new, then I am still accepting testers! Send me an e-mail via the contact page and let me know that you’re interested, and any other information you may think is relevant. I’ll add you to the mailing list and send you an e-mail with further instructions.

Second, I have contacted Rudi from rudi.blog, and the creator of Warcraft Characters, to see if he would be interested in working together in a collaborative effort to make an application that fully utilizies his intuitive and beautiful UI, and includes all the features that are currently in (and were planned for) WowiArmory. He has expressed interest in this, and hopefully I’ll have an update soon with more information. The first item that’s planned to be integrated is full support for character-specific items (full-color item stats with gemmings and enchants!).

Expect to see most (if not all) of the following features:

• The ability to save characters locally for quick, offline viewing. Access all of your “favorite” characters easily, without the hassle of having to do a lookup.
• The ability to search for characters, guilds, and items. All in an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Want to show your friends the item you’ve been wanting for the past week? Do a quick search and view its full stats!
• The ability to check your realm status wherever and whenever. You can use this to figure out when Tuesday maintenance ends, and when its time for you to login and start playing! You can also figure out if your realm’s down, or if it’s just you!
• The ability to compare two characters on a stat-by-stat basis! No more alt-tabbing between two different armory windows.
• The ability to check guild progression for any guild, and see how far they’ve progressed. Figure out if the guild you’re looking at is right for you, or if “ULTRALEET RAIDERS” really are what they claim!
• Full integration with Be.Imba! Check to see how far someone is raiding-wise, and how you can improve your character!

All this within a nice, compact, and easy-to-use interface on your iPhone or iPod touch. If you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions, please let me know in a comment! I’d love to hear your ideas and what you think.

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Categories: WowiArmory  |  Tags: WowiArmory

iArmory Status (July 23rd, 2008// 2:50pm)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I’ve been hard at work since my last posting. Aside from real life responsibilites (I’m working full time during the summer), I’ve been working to try and make iArmory the best tool it can possible be. For those who aren’t subscribed to my mailing list, you’ve probably missed a few important announcements.

New Name

iArmory has been renamed to WowiArmory due to issues I won’t go into at this time.

WowiArmory Website

I would like to set up an actual website for WowiArmory which will contain information about the web app, and include screenshots and a way to contact me and report bugs. There are two reasons I mention this. First of all, most of my skills lie in the aspect of web development, rather than web design. If any of you are good at designing websites, I would love to have your help in designing the new WowiArmory website, just let me know! Second, I would like the website to include user testimonials from testers such as yourself. If you have something to say about WowiArmory and would like to be featured on the website, please send me an e-mail and let me know! The more replies I get, the better.

Source Code and API

Many of you have been asking if I’m going to release the source code of WowiArmory, so that you may learn from it and create your own applications based on it. I’m both surprised and flattered by the great reaction I’ve gotten of this nature, and as such have decided to do three major things. First of all, I’m working on creating an API that will simplify the communication with WoW Armory to something as simple as getCharData(”NAME”, “REALM”); getStat(”Strength”);. The API will do all the caching, XML handling, and data parsing for you. The second major thing I’m doing is porting WowiArmory so that it uses this API for all of its caching and information gathering. Finally, I’m going to release the source code to both the API and to WowiArmory, for you all to learn from and develop off of. If you are a PHP developer and would like to help me test it out or give me feedback, or assist me in the project, please do let me know in a new e-mail.

WowiArmory Application

A large majority of you have asked if I was planning on making WowiArmory into a full-fledged application on the official AppStore. To be honest, I would love to! It would open up many possibilities for the application, including the ability to save character data locally, and the ability to mark characters as ‘favorites’. I could even build in a tool for comparing two characters on a stat-by-stat basis! It would also parse the XML data locally, meaning that you will never be troubled because too many people are trying to use WowiArmory at the same time (so the official armory won’t lock WowiArmory out, and as such you won’t be stuck in a queue). If you’re an Xcode developer and can develop applications for the iPhone (or know someone who is/can), please do let me know, I’d be very interested in working with you!

WowiArmory Mailing List

If you’d like to be informed via e-mail whenever an update is made to WowiArmory, please send me an e-mail via the contact page of this blog. Remember that you can also keep track of updates to WowiArmory by subscribing to my blog, or following me on Twitter.

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Categories: WowiArmory  |  Tags: WowiArmory