Diving Dude

Version: 1.21
Price: FREE
Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Description: Diving Dude is a social media app made just for scuba divers. It also contains a limited logbook.

Pros: Diving Dude is very easy to use. It is linked to Facebook and Twitter, and features the ability to tag your dive site using GPS or Longitude/Latitude coordinates.

Cons: Limited dive sites around the world are preprogrammed. It’s not available for the Android market. There is no way to upload your logbook data from your PC or dive computer.

Bottom Line: This is the first social media app I’ve seen for the iPhone dedicated to divers. A downfall of this app is it limits its users to owning an iPhone, as there is currently no Android version available. With its whimsical interface and minimalist fee it’s a great way for divers around the world to communicate and share their favorite dive sites and logs. Keeping your logbook updated on this app is unfortunately all done with good old manual data entry; it would’ve been nice to be able to take a digital logbook from my Mac or PC and upload it to my Diving Dude profile without having to manually copy all the information. It also lacks some of the privacy I would like to see in a social media app such as how much information I share with my friends. (I might not want to give out my email address to everyone I friend on Diving Dude.) All in all though it’s a great breakout into the social media world for divers, and hopefully more to come.

To download, go to Diving Dude.

PADI Rescue Diver Michael Dombrowski, President of DomCo Electronics, Inc., is an Electrical and Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience specializing in iOS applications and rapid prototyping. He has created apps for the educational industry, including The Organwise Guys, and for the dive industry with RB Planner, as well as prototypes for the Arduino Community. To see more, visit his website at www.DomCoElectronics.com.