Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Complete NIMS Guide--now appearing on your iphone

Just found out about this new NIMS Guide available as an iPhone app. It is a Field Guide to the Incident Command System published by Informed. The cost is $9.99. It provides 125 pages of NIMS definitions, job descriptions, etc. Very handy for those addicted to iPhones like I am and who find more and more of my life located on this little flat computer in my pocket.

I just got it and gave it a quick run through and my initial impression is that it is useful if you need a Field Guide handy. But, it definitely needs work. The pages kept wanting to go back page by page to the starting point all by themselves and the only way I could stop them was by keeping a finger on the screen. It didn't flip to more readable horizontal, and expanding the pages for easier reading was clunky. I kept touching on the outline at the front expecting it to open up to the section I was identifying--a perfectly normal and expected way to navigate on these apps, but it didn't go anywhere. The only way to get through the document was to scroll through page by page--not the handiest way when you are in the middle of an event.

So, while I'd rather have this on my iPhone than not, you might consider waiting for an upgraded version which I hope will come soon. In the meantime, this is a nice start.

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