Hazardous Materials Placard Apps

Our handy ebook adaptation of the Emergency Response Guidebook 2012 is now available in the versatile epub format from Barnes & Noble. Ideal for Nook devices, the epub format is also compatible with a wide array of ebook readers (including iBooks). The new version has all of the features of our established Kindle edition including color-coding, a clickable table of contents, and intuitive formatting that closely follows the official ERG. Also, as with our Kindle version, official Department of Transportation corrections (as of April 2013) have been integrated into the text.

At the same time we have made a correction to Table 3 of the Kindle version, fixing the text describing windspeed ranges. If you own the Kindle version and did not receive an update notification from Amazon, you may visit the “Manage your Kindle” section in “Your Account” to resend the ebook to your device.

Revision History:
- Version 1.0 — Initial release of Kindle version
- Version 1.1 — Added missing sections: Intro to Green Tables and the How To section for each table
- Version 1.2 — Incorporated DOT and other corrections
- Version 2.0 — Made many formatting improvements, including the consolidation of the unnumbered placards pages into one section, making it more intuitive and more similar to the physical ERG.
- Version 2.1 — Initial release of the epub (Nook) version. Corrected the windspeed labels in Table 3.

As we’ve been working on the upcoming epub version (for Nook and many other readers) and Spanish/French editions, we’ve made many small and large improvements in the document formatting.   Version 2.0 was added to the Kindle Store this afternoon and should become available shortly.

If you have already purchased the previous edition and you did not receive a notification from Amazon with the option of updating your copy, you may go to the “Manage Your Kindle” section of your Amazon account page to find the option to update.

Here is a list of specific changes for this version:

• Consolidated the three unnumbered placard sections (placards without UN numbers, rail cars, and road trailers) into a single section with improved navigation links. We also made it easier to get to the appropriate guide once the correct image is selected.
• Fixed a formatting issue with the Blue section where some entries were in a different order than others.
• Improved the Table 2 footer formatting and added links from the Table 2 gas formulae direct to the footer translations.
• Changed the initial index to the Blue Pages to take up less space.
• Made lot of small technical corrections to improve the ebook generation process and pave the way for the epub and French/Spanish editions, coming soon!

We’ve brought our popular ebook version of the Emergency Response Guidebook up to date by integrating the official corrections published by the DOT into the text in order to offer the most accurate edition possible. Our version 1.2 was added to the Kindle Store this afternoon and should become available shortly.

If you have already purchased the previous edition and you did not receive a notification from Amazon with the option of updating your copy, you may go to the “Manage Your Kindle” section of your Amazon account page to find the option to update.

Here is a list of specific changes for version 1.2. (Official errata are marked PHMSA.)

We have published new versions of DOT Placards and Placards Plus. The Emergency Response Phone Numbers page has been added to each version, and there are now quick links from the Guides to the Phone Numbers page. If you are running the app on a phone, you can now press the phone number to have it dialed.

As we started work on the French and Spanish versions of our ERG2012 ebook, we noted that we had omitted a small amount of material from the print edition when we published the English version.  We left out the Intro to Green Tables section and the short How To section for each table.

Thanks go to Aaron for spotting the problem and bringing it to my attention. And to Kim for producing the missing content in record time but with her usual attention to detail.

I spent a couple of hours this morning regenerating the ebook and, as always, tweaking and re-tweaking the formatting to get things looking just right.  A few minutes ago I hit the Submit button from the Kindle admin page.  Version 1.1 will be available for download within a day or so.  (Amazon says 48 hours but I’ve never seen it take that long myself.)

It took quite a bit more effort than I originally expected, but I’m very pleased to announce that we’ve just published the Kindle edition of ERG 2012:  Quick Lookup.  This ebook adaptation of our popular DOT Placards Android app gives the user fast access to the hazardous material identification sections and to the specifics of an appropriate emergency response.

Based on the newly updated 2102 Emergency Response Guidebook recently published jointly by the transportation departments of the US, Canada, and Mexico, our ebook provides extensive cross-linking to make it easy to not only look up the detailed Guide for each material but also get quickly to the correct entries for that material in the Green Table 1, 2, and 3 sections.

We also included all the how-to and background information of the print/pdf version so the ebook can be used both for emergency response and for reference.

Note that the ebook makes extensive use of the same color coding as the print edition.  It will work well on the Kindle Fire and in any of the free Kindle Reading apps available for just about any smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

Today we published new versions of both the free and Plus versions of DOT Placards.  These contain a minor fix required to display the guides correctly on new versions of the Android operating system.  This was reported as a problem working with tablets (thanks, guys!) since those are the devices using the newer version.  But it wasn’t a problem with the display, just a minor formatting defect that the older versions of Android ignored and worked-around.

As always, if you like the app, please leave a comment in the marketplace.  If you have questions or complaints, PLEASE email us at support@sherprog.com — we want these products to work well for you.

We’ve seen two crash reports, recently, for DOT Placards Plus.  Thanks to the stack traces that the Android Marketplace provides us, Matt was able to track this down to a problem with rotating the phone while simultaneously using our new voice input feature.  He quickly came up with a fix and posted the new executable this morning.