It's Highway Robbery, innit

[tim]

Made some small improvements to https://highwayrobbery.uk today - added the current opening status of each fuel station (tells you if currently open or closed, and if open when it closes), and an expandable list of opening hours. It should pick up the bank holiday opening hours tomorrow.

I even did it using 12 hour clock because apparently young people today can't comprehend 24h clock. Mental.

[tim]

Nice little article on https://highwayrobbery.uk in this month's PC Pro magazine (July edition, came out 2 days ago). A flurry of £1.50 donations has come in as a result, which is nice. I mean it barely touches the sides of what it's cost me to host so far but hey ho

[Simon]

Nice little article on https://highwayrobbery.uk in this month's PC Pro magazine (July edition, came out 2 days ago). A flurry of £1.50 donations has come in as a result, which is nice. I mean it barely touches the sides of what it's cost me to host so far but hey ho

Is that article thanks to an old forum member with an Aston?

[tim]

Yes indeed, Mr Honeyball.

[Jimexpl]

The two cheapest to me within 6 miles (SE1 4QA) are definitely not petrol stations - how does it end up with that data.

gnh E B London EC2A 4NE and QA F1 22 Pembroke Place.

124p at E B London if you want to try filling up at an interior designer!

[tim]

Whomever inputs the data at each retailer has a basic responsibility to type the right shite in.

Addresses are hard, apparently.

[tim]

V1.60 now has a Favourites feature. Add the stations you visit most often from search results and they'll be pinned to the home page. Pricing is live (every 20 mins).

[tim]

I've recently invested in a MacBook Pro so I can develop some iOS apps, and the first candidate was a native app for my Highway Robbery site. It solves the problem of knowing where you are and typing in a postcode or a nearest largish town because, obviously, it knows where you are on a phone and can then navigate you to one of the stations via your default navigation app.

I expect it'll be a month or so before it hits the App Store properly because I want to launch the Android version simultaneously and the hoops you have to jump through for Play Store are more constraining and time consuming than Apple, which surprised me.

Anyway if anyone wants to try it out, it's available via TestFlight on iPhone for now. Here's the public link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/9tDeTtPx

Once it's released properly it'll be a 7 day free trial then £1.99 a month (and the website will degrade so as not to compete). The TestFlight version asks you to go through the subscription process with your apple ID, but it is sandboxed so will not charge you and is free until I retire it for testing prior to release.

[240PP]

I see it’s now on AppStore. Very simple and easy to use.

How long did it take Apple to review it?

[tim]

Yep, been live on the app store for a week, the Android Play Store version should clear the testing requirement tomorrow and hopefully also be live by the weekend.

This one took apple about 10 days for it to move from Waiting For Review to In Review, and then less than 24 hours for approval.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/highway-r ... 6796426715

[DeskJockey]

Do you know how your app compares against others? I get six searches a day on the RAC app, but interestingly it doesn't list a single petrol station near me. They might not be the cheapest, but I'd still want to see them on the list.

Seems a deliberate choice. Also, paid 1.749 for 95 yesterday. That stung.

[tim]

Obviously, it's more betterer than all of them*

* opinions may vary.

You can have as many searches as your little fingers can tap.

My app is live data taken every 20 mins, and stale prices are highlighted. It isn't free though, and people seem to want everything for free. Free doesn't pay for the servers, the mapping license, the databases etc etc and with zero data about you being captured and no ads the only way for it to exist is £1.99 a month. Not a lot really.

I've just launched a new routing feature - enter a start (or current location) and end and it'll make a simple route and show you stations along the way, with variable off-route parameters. It's live on Android now and pending review on Apple.

There's a further update pending now which allows you to save and re-load routes for journeys you do often.

[DeskJockey]

I'll take a look. Didn't expect it to be free, the RAC one isn't (comes with the breakdown cover).

I like betterer.

[mik]

Related information:

Amex just refunded the difference to one of the guys on teh Lotus forum. There is a suggestion this is a deliberate ploy by this service station as opposed to an error.