1) When catching a balloon it would great if one could choose which balloon they catch as they float across the sky instead of the app catching one for you. Perhaps I only want to catch red balloons? Shouldn't it be my choice?
We tried to get this feature to work originally but came across the problem that there can be significant time delays working over the mobile phone network. Phones can be connected at different speeds (3G, GSM, EDGE etc) which means that in the time you click on a balloon and wait for it to come down another user could have done the same and swiped your balloon!
In the end we had to go for the slightly less satisfying but more bullet proof approach of giving you a balloon chosen at random from those above your head.
2) After catching a balloon there are only two choices "Home" or "Reply", it would be really great to have a "release it back into the air" type button that would take you directly back to catching another balloon, in case you don't want to reply to the one you just caught.
I agree that it would be really useful to have a 'Catch Another' style button. Our problem boils down to screen space - we can't fit in another button at the bottom to the three that are already there.
3) The tracking feature is great! But it could be even better if I could add a reply to one of the balloons I originally released.
We thought about this through the design and decided against in app replies as it seemed to clash with the fact that the balloon is floating around the world. We've tried to push the idea of using twitter ids so that people can send tweets to each other if they want to continue a conversation started by a balloon.
4) The ability to add a photo that is already on my iPhone would be really nice too.
We decided against this feature from an early point in the development. The aim is to keep a strong degree of immediacy when replying to a balloon.
On the darker side it would also make it more open to misuse by some who might try to use the app to spam or spread inappropriate images
5) Balloon labels for balloons I'm tracking would make identifying them easier.
Agreed - we're looking at whether we can add the first line of the tag to the tags shown balloon tracker. Space, again, is a bit tight so we need to investigate it further.
