Articles written by Lars Brandstäter

The newest Disney Cruise Line ship, the Fantasy, has moored today in Eemshaven, after she floated out of its enclosed building dock at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Germany last week.

Picture: Track of convoying from Papenburg to the North Sea (Eemshaven, Groningen)
The vessel reached its final final stages of construction. This marks another milestone as the vessel heads toward its March 31 maiden voyage from Port Canaveral.
Almost a year ago, the Fantasy’s sister ship, the Dream, embarked on its maiden voyage from Port Canaveral, where it is based.
Both the Dream and the Fantasy are 4,000-passenger ships. They’re 40 percent larger than their two older fleet-mates, the Magic and the Wonder, which have been repositioned from Port Canaveral.
Try catching the track with FleetMon Explorer (live AIS), start at Vessels Detail Page:
http://www.fleetmon.com/vessels/Disney_Fantasy_2956459
Photo copyright Joern, http://www.fleetmon.com/community/user/168084_e5c21_Joern

New AIS reception on the island of Azores results in better monitoring of ship traffic in the central Atlantic.
Europe – America routes are passing our reception, FM is able to store positioning info of vessel fleets even better.
live vessel tracking of the Azores here:
http://www.fleetmon.com/live_tracking/fleetmon_explorer/popup?fmeSearch=p38100
Port of PONTA DELGADA, PT:
http://www.fleetmon.com/ports/Ponta_Delgada_Portugal_6702

We have just finished the new pages for displaying your AIS Antenna reception statistics via your User profil.
So please all you beloved sharers take a look at your graphical representation and feel free to comment on functionality and design.

thanks to all our members, and a happy new year.
the fleetmon.com team
The new website Fleetmon.com has just started, but our AIS coverage continues to grow: Welcome to new ports and areas with live ship traffic on Fleetmon.com, Fleetmon Explorer and Fleetmon mobile! This is the roundup of new stations to date:
Good news for all top ship spotters on Fleetmon.com: If you have more than 500 active ship photos, your account has just been upgraded to a free Fleetmon Unlimited plan.
All AIS sharers have already received a free upgrade during the weekend, so that now all the kind people driving the Fleetmon community get a little reward for their contributions.
(If you think that you should receive an upgrade, too, but have been left out by mistake, just get in touch and we will fix that quickly!)
There seems to be an issue with a small numer of accounts and their respective right groups, which prevents those users from loggin in with the iPhone App. Please check your accounts via the website.

We will continue to deliver the best vessel tracking App available for the iPhone and iPad.
What’s New in this Version * NOTE: FleetMon Mobile needs free account on www.fleetmon.com website (formerly digital-seas.com), please check your username/Password on “Xtra” tab *
We’ve launched a complete new companion website: www.fleetmon.com, the first open Ship Wiki on the web, delivering access to more then 250.000 vessel datasets. FleetMon Mobile is now giving you direct mobile access to this huge database.
Continuous development without fast version number hops,
please rate this App in the Store.
✔ Interface: New: icons for vessels not in motion (streamlined with FleetMon Explorer Desktop)
✔ Added coverage layer for zoomed out views
✔ new: Vessel labels for zoomed in “port views”
✔ new: “port” and “sea” buttons on map for faster zooming (patents pending :-)
✔ complete rewrite of mapping module, adding speed and new layers
✔ much faster vessel photos due to new image servers
✔ faster and smooth reloading while moving the map, also new data cloud servers installed
✔ New: “News” display for server status and fleetmon.com Blog news
✔ adjusting authentication schema for the new relaunched fleetmon.com platform
___________________older logs of this version path
1.5.7
✔ Added compatibility to the upcoming version of iOS.
✔ Fixed some issues related to indexed tables.
✔ Added changeable radius in Spotter (Xtra -> turn iPhone to landscape mode).
1.5.6
✔ Improved network code to handle server-side glitches, even more elegant.
✔ Adds a fix to nail down a pretty rare bug handling thumbs. Thanks to all the contributors involved, you know who you are! :-)
Please rate, if You like FleetMon.
1.5.5
✔ Enhanced stability for iOS version prior to 4.3.3.
1.5.4
✔ Fixed a minor issue that could lead to an empty map.
✔ Reduced memory footprint (run more apps faster at the same time)
1.5.3
✔ new: Coverage layer added to FleetMon’s spotter map.
✔ new: Improved vessel search.
✔ Fixed some minor glitches and issues
1.5.2
✔ new: flicker free update of vessel positions on map
✔ new: swipe gesture to delete vessels from “My Fleet”
✔ new: status feedback in message bar
✔ Fixed bugs to improve stability
1.5.1
- for users having difficulties to input their login data, we adjusted the interface (my Fleet)
- fixing a memory leak
- new map switch
Since
1.5
Ooh Boy, this update marked the biggest effort since the release of Fleetmon :mobile in Fall 2009.
Functions:
✔ new: “My Fleet” Function, manage the same Fleet list on your device and on fleetmon.com website
✔ new: Gallery of Ship Images , only accept the best in quality in full resolution for the iPhone (retina) and iPad
✔ new: Feedback function: send reports and comments from inside the app
✔ new: supoport for portrait and landscape mode on all devices
✔ new: map display with literal of sea area and nearest port for better orientation
✔ new: reDesign of vessel detail tab for faster overview and readability
✔ new: listing of last ports now also available on detail page (just swipe down…)
General:
✔ testet with iOS 4.3 on iPhone and iPad,
✔ local image cache for reducing the data volume of transmission
✔ new server for optimizing image resolution of various end-devices
✔ implementing functional authentification against Fleetmon.com
(70% of our net-traffic was created by scraping third party apps)
✔ adoption to multitasking and memory available, saving all task states
✔ new APIs for all services, new servers (of course… :-)
*

the new site is online, the team did a fast and clean job, but we are tired.
It is 02:00 o clock in the morning. We will add more functionality over the next days.
You are welcome to comment in our forum. Have fun with the new Site !

Here is an image from our planning session this night, right befire we start the works to switch over the Fleetmon service to a new environment. The team is “still” optimistic, we do have 2 degrees with lots of rain here in Rostock. Best circumstances to start a night shift. Fridge is filled, plans are made…. lets go.