Dear Falling Fruit user,
Our new website (long in beta) finally launched alongside updated Android and iOS mobile apps. Special thanks to UIUC Hack4Impact and Wojtek Bazant. Are you a developer, a designer, or a user with an opinion? Share your thoughts by email or on Slack, and consider joining our small team of volunteers on GitHub building the features of the future!
New features
New to all
- Flexibly filter the map by location types, which are organized as a nested (taxonomic) tree. For example, hide all dogwoods Cornus sp. or show only Gala apples Malus domestica 'Gala'.
- Save the URL of the current map view, including location filters. Open URLs in the app.
- When adding a location, find types by their synonyms. For example, "sloe" in English leads you to blackthorn Prunus spinosa. Switch language to search in other languages. We recently added Turkish, Japanese, Ukrainian, Swedish (thanks Tim Conze), Chinese simplified and traditional (thanks Yanshi Li 李炎诗 and Tong Kitchen-Huan 还彤), Russian (thanks Anya Sytenkova Аня Сытенкова), and Czech (thanks Barbora Boulová).
- Suggest new location types. But please check first that they don't already exist!
- Post multiple photos per review. How about a wide view of the plant plus a close up of the fruit?
- View user profiles (name, bio, and activity feed).
New to mobile
- Show location clusters (when zoomed out).
- Label locations with their types (when zoomed in). These are more descriptive than colors or icons.
- Switch between Google and OpenStreetMap basemaps.
- Flag content for admin review.
Exclusively for signed-in users
- Save locations to lists. Saved locations are highlighted in orange on the map.
- Edit and delete your reviews.
- Delete your locations (if they haven't yet been reviewed or edited by others).
Important platform changes
User names
On the old website, signed-in users could choose a different name (or none for pseudo-anonymity) for each location and review, leading to many historic names for the same user. The new system is clearer: all contributions made by a user are signed with the user's current name (or number, if empty). For true anonymity, add content while signed out.
Default plant selection
Now that the map can be flexibly filtered, some common barely-edible plants have been removed from the default view (honey locust Gleditsia triacanthos, yew Taxus baccata, among others). They remain visible in the type tree and can be easily turned back on by the more expert and adventurous among us.
Foraging ranges
These remain in the database but no features have yet been developed using them (see discussion).
That's all for now. Thank you for your support, happy foraging, and stay tuned for more updates.
— Ethan & the Falling Fruit team