Author Archives: geoff

Plant Base 2 Beta Test

Posted on March 29, 2012 by geoff

The first public Beta test version of the new Plant Base 2 program is available for download.  A lot more information and download links are here – www.deeproot.co.uk/plantbase_v2_beta.html Some sections of the program are not finished yet, but with most of the main features working I thought that some users may want to to take an early look at it.  As with any Beta software, it is best to treat it with a little caution! However during many hours of testing here, recent builds have behaved well with no major issues. There will be further Beta versions as bug fixes are done and extra code added. I’m expecting it to take quite some time yet before getting to Release Candidate … Continue reading →

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Plant Base price drop

Posted on March 10, 2012 by geoff

We have reduced the cost of the Plant Base licence to £25.  This a permanent reduction by £10 and not just a seasonal sale price, but is equal to the Spring and Autumn offers that we ran last year. Effective from today – see the purchase page The price drop is a part of other business changes that I described in my previous post. We have now installed the automated licensing system for web payments, so that new customers can get their Plant Base registration code straight after paying for it.  No more waiting for one of us to manually generate it and also reduces the need for us to arrange office cover while we are away.  The mechanism uses … Continue reading →

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Business changes

Posted on March 6, 2012 by geoff

Things have been quiet recently here on the web-site, but there has been a lot of activity going on in the background! From this spring there will be some some significant changes in the way that the business operates. We are moving onto a strictly part-time basis, to allow scope for other activities. The biggest impact is on the garden maintenance side of the business and other on-site visits, which will be reduced to a minimum. The other effect is that there may be lengthy periods when there is no contact cover, so from time-to-time there might be delays responding to emails. The impact on Plant Base development is likely to be small, or possibly even beneficial. Progress will no … Continue reading →

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Plant database update

Posted on November 15, 2011 by geoff

It has been quite a long time since there was an update to the plant database itself, so here it is – Data Release 22. There is no program version update to go with it, the production program for Windows remains at version 1.6.1 and the mobile edition at 1.7. The downloadable install files now use Data Release 22, as will all newly supplied CD’s. The free web database, Plant Base Online, has also been updated to the same release level. This update adds approximately 300 new plant records and about the same number of new pictures. This isn’t a great many considering it is over year since the last update, however more importantly it also has amendments to over … Continue reading →

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New Android PBO Viewer versions

Posted on November 1, 2011 by geoff

At long last I’ve found some time to get back to some program coding! New versions of both the PBO Viewer apps for Android were uploaded to the market yesterday. PBO Viewer  – 1.0.6 PBO Viewer Plus  – 1.0.5 These updates are to give much better scaling for a wide range of screen sizes. The original versions did not handle Android tablets at all well, but they should now display correctly on most 7″ and 10″ tablets. Some minor formatting issues were also fixed and there is allowance for additional variations of phone screen resolutions, for example the  HTC Sensation with qHD 540×960 screen. The apps also work fine on Android x86 netbooks – we tested on an Acer Aspire … Continue reading →

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Plant Base Autumn Sale

Posted on October 18, 2011 by geoff

We are really into autumn now, with cooler weather and the garden showing all the seasonal signs. So we are doing our traditional autumn sale on the price of Plant Base license registrations. The price has been reduced to 25 GBP, the same as we did in spring. We are still not supplying any physical CD packages yet, due to holding off on getting more produced until the next release is ready. This will probably be a data update for the current version and should be out reasonably soon.

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Website changes

Posted on October 14, 2011 by geoff

You may have noticed already that some of the web pages have changed in appearance. I’m in the process of updating the site, so at the moment there is a mixture of old and revised pages. The most noticable difference is moving to a slightly wider page view, which will hopefully make them easier to read. Nearly everyone is now using larger, higher resolution screens than when the website was first written. It makes sense to take advantage of that. There are a number of other changes that are not really visible, but improve load speed and efficency. I’m not altering the organisation of the site or page names – so all external links will still work. As usual the … Continue reading →

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Summer development slow-down

Posted on August 26, 2011 by geoff

As you may have noticed – there has not been much happening here during the last few months!  In fact there has been lots of other garden related activity going on, but this has left very little time for Plant Base program development. The current tricky financial conditions mean that priority must be given to short term needs. Though the coding work might slow down, at least the business is secure as it doesn’t owe anything to anyone! As usual, the database content has been continuously updated throughtout the year, so a revision release is on its way. As the season winds down I’m hoping there will more chance to progress with forthcoming versions. In the meantime there is still … Continue reading →

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PBO Viewer Plus for Android

Posted on April 15, 2011 by geoff

We have recently released our second Android smartphone app – the “Plus” edition of the original PBO Viewer. This adds the advanced search options, with all the selection choices of the “Advanced Search” online database web page. Apart from the initial search form, the rest of the app is exactly the same as the basic, free, PBO Viewer. There is a small charge for the Plus edition to cover the extra time involved writing the search feature, which is quite involved. We think it represents good value though. PBO Viewer Plus is available directly from the Android market at: https://market.android.com/details?id=deeproot.PBOviewerPlus The selection form is quite large with 32 criteria choices (none are mandatory!). I considered several ways to preset this, … Continue reading →

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PBO Viewer Android App

Posted on March 14, 2011 by geoff

We have just released our first application for Android smartphones. This is a fairly straightforward little program that provides a simple front-end to the Plant Base Online web database. More developments in the pipeline! PBO Viewer enables a query of the web database by plant name, or part of a name – both botanical and common names are searched. A list of results are shown, clicking an item then gives a page with the details. It uses its own web interface that keeps the data transfer down to the absolute minimum, which is important for those on metered mobile bandwidth. An “advance search” edition will be along soon and of course ultimately a fully functional Plant Base app with its … Continue reading →

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