By VANESSA LANGDON
Staff Writer
The app community is here to help all the freshmen and transfer students here on campus with the creation of the Falcon App. The free app, created by UCLA students, is available only to those with iPhones—Android users are left muddled walking in circles, for now.
The app works like a compass that points you in the direction of your chosen destination. Here at Saint Rose, we have 31 ‘spots’ or locales on campus that the app can give you directions to. It’s a little confusing at first. The compass is the biggest hurdle to overcome. The fact that Falcon uses a compass instead of the location services featured by the standard Google Maps on the iPhone is its biggest pitfall. If you lack compass skills, you may end up wandering around in a northerly direction instead of heading to the library to write your paper.
The app may be more useful in a larger campus setting rather than quaint Saint Rose where you can see almost all the buildings from any other. Falcon was revealed at this past year’s Coachella festival where navigating the large area and many stages proved to be its best use. Saint Rose students may not need to use it here, but if you ever visit someone at another campus, it may end up being a saving grace. Other local colleges that the app supports include: SUNY Albany, Albany College of Pharmacy, Siena College, Sage College, and RPI.
In addition to the spots already created, any user can create their own spots to mark a favorite new coffee shop, their favorite spot in the park, or a parking spot. The parking spot capabilities may be the biggest asset, especially for all commuters on campus. The app also has a section for ‘friends.’ While well-meaning, it almost verges on stalking as you can see the locations of your friends on the app.
Ali Baghshomali, one of the creators of the app spoke of its conception, “[It] came from our personal experiences. I frequently would find myself lost when I was looking for things on campus, when I was at a music festival, or in generally similar settings. I’d also constantly hear the same thing from others, or would have people stop me and ask me where things are. All of this added up to us realizing that there’s a pain here that needs to be resolved.” It took Baghshomali and the other creators about four months to conceptualize the app and get it in the iOS store.
The process of naming the app was a democratic process, “We all sat down and made a long list of available names that we each liked. We vetoed the ones that weren’t liked by all three of us, and then made a poll that we sent out to all of our friends on Facebook where they got to vote on the remaining options and give their opinions. ‘Falcon’ got a great response, the imagery was cool, and we liked the comparison between a Falcon darting straight towards its prey and our app pointing you directly to where you need to go so it worked.”
Baghshomali has been thrilled with the general response thus far, “Our alma mater UCLA now uses the app as an official part of their new student orientation process, and the iSchool in Syracuse also pushes us out to their students all the time. We also released a version of our app specific to one music festival in Vegas – Festival was called ‘Electric Daisy Carnival’ and the app was called ‘EDC Falcon’ – that proved so popular that it ended up as a top-10 navigation app in the entire app store the next day.”
The app is a good backup if you are completely lost, but if you do know an address or the name of where you want to go, the Google Maps app might be a more user-friendly option as it can give you step by step directions instead of the general northwest coordinate.
The verdict: if you have lots of extra space on your phone that’s not being taken up by millions of selfies and the latest twerk-inducing Miley Cyrus song, it may be a worthy investment.
