Sherpa, a location-based services application developed by Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup Geodelic, is among the fastest-growing applications for Google’s Android. In the past week, the company claims that it has seen 50,000 downloads from the Android market. The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, which launched earlier today, has been providing the impetus for growth.
Nearly 4,500 copies of the app were downloaded today alone. Sherpa, as we’ve previously explained, constantly learns your favorite locations and starts to aggregate them. The more you use the application, the smarter it gets, thereby serving up location information that’s unique to you.
The idea of an application such as Sherpa (and to some extent, Where) makes a lot of sense as we start leveraging the location beacon to do our thinking. I have been playing around with the Sherpa app on my Google I/O version of MyTouch and so far it works as advertised. As I spend more time with it, I will share my experience.
Check out this cool video of T-Mobile’s MyTouch promotion in San Francisco. That’s a whole lot of skydivers captured on camera by Chris Albrecht from NewTeeVee.
That’s quite an accomplishment. Is this an indicator of a starved android user-base, or an application with strong buzz?
I am a tmobile emp. and we have been told to load this on ALL demos (3-4 per store) and to load it on the customers phones when we activate or upgrade them WHETHER THEY WANT IT OR NOT. Thats why it has had such a large up tic. Its ok but i wonder why the company is pushing it so hard?? Do we have an intrest in it? There are other location type apps that are just as good or better based on the reviews….. make me wonder.
As an aside: i installed the ” appPack” and promptly uninstalled most of it, half the stuff caused a force quit.. just sayin’…
Om
Are you sure you are not allowing yourself to become a mouthpiece for anyone that wants to get a buzz going ? This app may or may not be good but when you base an article on a week’s downloads or “todays downloads” it just doesn’t sit too well. But maybe thats just me.
Just my personal opinion and nothing against Sherpa but I see many articles in your otherwise fine blog taking on the tone of “bay area buzz gossip that someone called me up today about” and while that may be fine for an individual person’s blog, it doesn’t go well with the legit technical publication enterprise that you seem to want to become.
Rakesh
I am not sure why you say what you say, but if you would use the app, then you would see that this is truly an awesome app. i have been using it and like it a lot. And when 50,000 downloads happen in a week, it is a hot app.
And by the way I don’t know what you mean about bay area buzz gossip. That is a difference of perception I guess.
Sherpa has 50,000 downloads because T-Mobile has been pushing them with the myTouch pack. So there is free distribution. But the reviews of the app are less than stellar and are quickly falling down. If this is the hottest Android app then Android is going to have a tough game against iPhone.
its a good app from the description of it.
But there are many other location based apps.
I am not sure its hot though, the phone just got released.
Actually, when you look at the review comments, there are haters and lovers it seems. The total ratings on the other hand seems strong. It’s interesting that an app would polarize people like this. Or maybe it’s just an issue with performance on the G1 vs. the myTouch. The press release says it’s “optimized’ for myTouch whatever that means. Maybe it is too graphically intensive for the G1.
It is indicative that they had to push the update of the application on the very first day of release in response to unfavorable user reviews. That tells that they were not well prepared for the launch. Their marketing and business people did a great job hyping the app and making T-Mobile connections that gave them the distribution but it seems to me that their engineers and product people were not up to the task and almost blew up the opportunity created by their business and marketing. There are several Android apps aiming for the same space that have better ratings than Sherpa.
Nice little app. Tried to find it in the Android Market with the HTC Magic of mine (on Rogers Wireless Network) but no luck. Seems that this app is not available to Canadian customers. Anyone else out there, from Canada, who was able to download the app?
Can’t find this in the market.
Thanks for the tip Om.
In the future, would you please add a bar code to posts about Android apps if available?
Cheers.
The app really isn’t that great – it is slow, occassional halting graphics and really isn’t QUITE worth the hype that Tmobile made about it (along with most of their App Pack recommendations).
Om – I downloaded it to my G1 and it’s embarrassingly slow. Is it really better on the myTouch?
I just downloaded Sherpa on my new Mytouch and it’s actually pretty quick especially on 3G. I’m wondering if other users are running multiple apps in the back round or if the G1 just sucks. It will be interesting to see what their Iphone app is like.
I downloaded it on my G1 as well. The app doesn’t do much and is really not worth all the hype t-Mobile is generating. The download numbers are inflated no question.
Yan-
Actually those #s are publicly available and tracked via the android market.
I had Sherpa running on my G1, and Sherpa was very mediocre peformance. I just upgraded to the MyTouch. It works 100x better and I love Sherpa on it. If I had a G1, I’d be panning it too, but I think it is more about the device’s inability to run multiple applications more than anything else. Thanks, Om.
When I first saw this App I was really struck by the user experience. It has the best feel of any mobile app I have used.