Plot Hound - Tutorial Videos

We've just put together a few videos that show how to use Plot Hound.

In the videos below, I'll walk you through how to set up cruises on the website, wirelessly download them to your phone or tablet, add tree measurements in Plot Hound, upload the cruise to the website, and view the results.

I'd recommend watching the videos full-screen and at 720p resolution so that you can actually see what's going on!  Click the button in the bottom-right of the video to go full-screen.  Then click the gear button at the bottom to change the video resolution.

Creating a cruise

Downloading cruise and navigating to plots

Adding trees and uploading cruises

Viewing cruise data

Creating a new stand

Plot Hound - Stability and User Interface Improvements

Version 2.21 of Plot Hound is now available on both the App Store (pending Apple's approval) and the Android Market.  This update makes Plot Hound faster and more responsive than ever before.  We also tweaked the interface a bit to make the app simpler and more intuitive - moving some of the commonly-used buttons to the top of the screen.

Comment below to let us know what you think about the new version of Plot Hound!

Recent Press - Bloomberg & Forbes

SilviaTerra was recently profiled in both Bloomberg and Forbes:

Zack Parisa's Forest Inventory Software - Bloomberg: July 5, 2012

All-Star Student Entrepreneurs - Forbes: August 1, 2012

(Photos from Bloomberg and Forbes respectively)

Plot Hound - Shapefile, KMZ, and KML Import

We are proud to announce the launch of a much-requested feature for Plot Hound - shapefile and KMZ import.  To import stands, simply click the "Upload" button on your stands dashboard page and select the file to upload.

Before any of these stands are saved in Plot Hound, you'll be asked to verify and name the stands.  You can choose to name each stand manually or select a field (pulled from the shapefile or KMZ) to use to auto-generate the names.

To import a shapefile, create a zip folder with the .shp file all of the associated files (.prj, .dbf, etc.) and then upload the zip file.  


To import a KMZ file, simply upload the .kmz file.  (Useful tip: KMZ stands for "KML-Zipped" - if you unzip a KMZ you'll find a KML file inside)


KML uploads are still supported.

Plot Hound - iOS Login Bugfix

Several Plot Hound users on iOS alerted us to an issue with logging in to Plot Hound on their iPhones and iPads.  After entering their username and password, they were presented with an "index.html Login failed - error()" message.  This issue did not affect Plot Hound users on Android.

This error was traced back to an issue with one of our SSL certificates.  We have replaced the certificate and the issue has been resolved since June 16.

We understand that many people use Plot Hound as a core part of their business and we have put in place safeguards to ensure that service interruptions like this do not occur in the future.

Plot Hound - iPhone App Released

Plot Hound for iOS
We're proud to announce that Plot Hound for iPhone and iPad was just approved by Apple and is now available for download from the iTunes App Store.  The iPhone/iPad version contains all of the same features as the Android version (except for Google Navigation).

As part of our mission to simplify cruising for all foresters, we're super excited to make Plot Hound available for free too all iOS users.  We've put together a short "Getting Started" guide to help you start using Plot Hound out to the woods as quickly as possible.  Welcome to cruising with Plot Hound!

We had overwhelming demand for an iPhone version of Plot Hound, so we pushed out this version as fast as we could.  There may be some small bugs we didn't catch in this initial release, so let us know if you run into any issues and we'll send out updates as quickly as we can.

Plot Hound for Android 4.0
There were a few bugs that prevented Plot Hound from working correctly on the newest version (4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich") of the Android operating system.  We've fixed those problems and updated Plot Hound on the Android Market.  You can download the newest version here.

Experimental Support for BlackBerry, webOS, and Symbian

We built Plot Hound on the open-source goodness of HTML5, jQueryMobile, and PhoneGap.  This means that we only have to maintain a single codebase but can support a wide variety of mobile platforms.  While we're focused on Android and iOS for now, we have highly experimental builds of Plot Hound for BlackBerry, webOS, and Symbian.  If you're interested in getting early access to Plot Hound for any of these platforms, shoot us an email and we'll send one your way.




Website Updates:
Diameter Distribution Charts and Stand Tables
Over the past few months, we've given the website a facelift and added some new functionality.  We chose to go with a Google-esque white color scheme to give the site a cleaner and more modern feel We took the same approach with the new color scheme for Plot Hound as well.

(Click image to magnify)

Our biggest functionality addition was to automatically create a species-specific diameter distribution chart and stand table whenever you upload a cruise from Plot Hound.  You can find your charts and stand tables on the "Details" page for each of your stands.

Upcoming
We use Plot Hound to run our business so we're always working to make Plot Hound better.  Some of our plans for future improvements include:

• Support for Windows Phone 7 (as soon as PhoneGap Build supports it)
• Better mapping, navigation, and GPS interfaces
• Adding offline map tiles (so you can see maps on your phone out in the woods)

As always, feel free to send us an email if you have any questions or run into any problems with Plot Hound.