Q: Do I need a cell signal and WiFi for location capture in photos?
A: When you take a photo in GWF, it will try to capture your location if GPS on your phone is turned on and working. At a minimum, you need some sort of connectivity, either a cell signal and/or WiFi; a best case scenario is that you have both.
Q: Do I need GPS in order to see the location of photos I have already shot?
A: Generally, no. If GWF was able to capture your location when you took the photo, the GPS coordinates would be saved along with everything else. From then on, those points will show up on the map, even if you don’t have cell signal. You can tell if location data has been captured because the Map icon (the globe in the lower right corner) will become enabled; for photos that have no location coordinates, the Map icon will be grayed out. This is normally what happens when you select a photo from your library instead of taking a photo with the camera, since there is no location data.
Q: None of the photos I take in the app show up with the photos on my phone; where are they?
A: The photos that are used by GWF get stored inside the app on your phone; this is important because the photos are not stored the way your camera shoots them.
Q: The phone’s camera can take photos that are bigger than the size of the photos used in the app. Are the photos stored the way the camera takes them and will all those photos use up a lot of memory and storage?
A: The simple answer is “no.” The photos you take from inside of GWF, are not kept the same size as the full-size camera photos that you normally take. First off, they’re way too big and having lots of big photos in an app like GWF would make it run really slow and that won’t do at all. Instead the photos are reduced and split for use in the app to keep things running smoothly and everything is managed for you. Reducing them that way also cuts back on the amount of space it takes to store them and so that even when working with lots of photos in the app, it remains fast and responsive.
Because of how this is done, if you want full-size photos, you can also use the phone’s camera to take additional photos the normal way. If you do that, the photo you took in GWF can still help you identify the others in among your regular photos.
Q: Will my information get backed up to the cloud?
A: Yes, as long as you have set up the app for backup in your iPhone settings, the app data will be backed up with everything else.
Q: Is there a limit to how many Events I can have?
A: Since GWF is designed for Events to come and go over time and it is expected that you would not need to have more than five or ten Events. However, people keep coming up with new ways to use the app and the number of “Events” could grow. Fortunately, GWF does not prevent you from having a lot more Events if you want; that is one of the reasons that Events have provided lots of icons for your use. We don’t normally test with more than 5 or 7 but you could have quite a few more.
Q: Is there a limit to how many Guests an Event can have?
A: There is no arbitrary limit but eventually, you will start to run low on memory and you will begin to notice problems, the actual upper limit depends on many factors but you are not prevented from having lots of Guest entries in a single Event. Currently, for you to have more than 20 is still not a problem and GWF has been tested as high as 100 Guest entries! We don’t recommend ever creating that many and in reality most people won’t need more than a couple dozen at a time but we think it would be better to allow the app to run a little slower if you need just one more, rather than having a hard stop that tells you that you’ve hit some limit.
Q: Is there a way to export the photos that I take in the app?
A: No. The design of the app is to make it uncomplicated and intuitive to experiment, learn and play with and adding lots of features (like most other developers do) just ends up making things complicated and confusing for everyone except for a few people who want it to do more. However, you can go to a place in the app that has the image you are interested in and take a screen shot of the phone and that will show up in your phone’s photos.
Q: Can I share my Events with other people?
A: If you wish to, feel free to invite them to sit with you and you show them the photos on your phone. The goal of GWF is to enhance your personal, social experience; the intent is to facilitate interaction and sharing over the human network… face to face.
Q: Will there ever be a version that offers more capabilities?
A: Possibly. This version of the app is designed for simplicity and ease of use at a level that anyone and everyone can use; we intend to keep it that way. It is also possible that some enhancements to existing functionality could materialize if we feel that there is a way to do it while preserving the ease of use and simplicity. However, should the app become successful and there is demand for something more, we have lots of ideas for those who would take on a bit more complexity in order to get more powerful features – we would like that too. If that were to ever come about, it would be something new and different. In any case, we will always try to preserve the simplicity and accessibility of the original GWF.