NGA launches new mobile app

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced March 11 that it released its second mobile application, the Disconnected Interactive Content Explorer, earlier this month via the Apple iTunes commercial app store. In addition to iTunes, the app will also be available on Google Play in the near future.
The DICE mobile app allows users to load interactive content generated in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to a mobile device and have the ability to display and use that content without a network connection. It can also include local data, such as tiles and vector data for interactive maps. All items loaded into DICE are automatically detected by the application and then presented in list, grid or map view.

“Releasing DICE to the App Store and Google Play will allow NGA to easily provide consistent access to GEOINT for consumers operating in disconnected environments,” said Ben Tuttle, Ph.D., NGA Mobile Apps team lead. “Additionally, as the app is built on open standards and has been released as open source software on the NGA GitHub account it should allow other agencies to take advantage of this capability for distributing interactive data to disconnected users as well.”

DICE was developed by NGA’s Mobile Apps team as part of its efforts to provide persistent and relevant geospatial intelligence whether connected or disconnected from a network. It is tailored for use by disaster response personnel, urban search-and-rescue teams and others that require interactive content, but may be in a situation where network or internet connectivity is unavailable. Content is not included in the app, which has been developed to be completely customizable to a user’s needs, serving as a container that can parse and display content in a web browser on a disconnected device.

This is the eighth application NGA has released to its organizational account on GitHub, an open-source, collaborative software development environment. The agency’s goal with releasing software packages via GitHub is to “increase the impact of government investments by providing developers with the opportunity to take things in new directions.”

To test drive DICE, please download a test package from NGA’s GitHub account using the links below. Watch NGA’s GitHub account for load instructions for Android devices coming soon.

iTunes 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disconnected-interactive-content/id966026588?mt=8

Test package and user guide 
Download DICEUserGuide.zip and then click “index.html” to start instructions for iOS.
https://github.com/ngageoint/disconnected-content-explorer-examples/tree/master/reportzips 

Github 
https://github.com/ngageoint/disconnected-content-explorer-iOS 
https://github.com/ngageoint/disconnected-content-explorer-android