EnGraph
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EnGraph
Our software will automatically generate pick up and drop off times based on distance of trip, how many other people are on the bus, how long it takes to drop them off, etc. We display these times in our custom TimeSpinner control based on WPF Extended Toolkit’s button spinner. Since the computer is generating the time, they are often not human-friendly. 6:00 AM is a lot easier to remember than 6:03 AM. So we give the users the option to modify these times. Using the spinners, they can adjust the...
We recently added OAuth to MentionNotifier so that users can quickly view and edit their subscriptions without needed an additional login. This is enabled by default for new users, but existing users will need to do the following steps to associate their subscriptions with OAuth: 1) Go to http://software.engraph.com... 2) Click “Sign in with Twitter” 3) Verify that your twittername and email are correct 4) Click "Associate with OAuth" This will also allow you to reply to notification...
EnGraph is looking for an ASP.NET developer to join our team. We are a small company in Lenexa, KS that creates .NET applications for Paratransit agencies. A good candidate would be very comfortable with ASP.NET, Forms Authentication and JavaScript. A huge bonus would be knowledge of IIS, Google Maps API, AJAXPro, ActiveReports, WPF and SQL. We are accepting resumes immediately and look to hire as soon as January 18th. We would consider contract or full-time and we would require office attendance....
I use Gmail for my personal email, and as an archive for my EnGraph email, but haven’t been able to use it as my main email client as it appends a “On Behalf of” to messages sent from Gmail using a non-gmail address. Google has recently released an update to Gmail allowing you to use an SMTP server of your choosing, which removes the “On Behalf Of”. Now I can email my clients from Gmail and they don’t know the difference...
In ParaPlan 4.0, we use twitter to maintain a change log. I wanted to display this information to our users, so I wrote a little class that calls the RSS feed and uses LINQ to parse the data. All I need is the message and the date, so that is all it pulls out. Here is the class: public class Twitter { public string Message { get; set; } public DateTime PubDate { get; set; } public static List<Twitter> Parse(string User) { var rv = new List<Twitter>(); var url = "http://twitter.com/statuse...
This code example will show how to hide a listbox from the user when it doesn’t have any items. It involves binding the Visibility of the listbox to the Items.Count of the listbox. We run the Items.Count through a converter that will return a Visibility.Visible object if the Item.Count is not zero. Here is the converter class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Windows; namespace HideAListBox { public class...
After a couple years of dating and exactly one year of living together, Chelsea and I got engaged yesterday. We are planning a small beach wedding off the North Carolina coast in March 2008. She's always wanted a beach wedding, and well, that's all that counts. Plus we found this really cool self proclaimed hippie beach bum to perform the ceremony. This will be the third EnGraph wedding in as many years. Kyle and Allie got married in 2006 and David married Becca last May. After working at EnGraph...
After we upgraded our server to Team Foundation Server 2008, our builds were failing. To be more specific, our builds were failing for lots of reasons, but the first problem was that the build server was unavailable. We needed to stop the Team Build Service - the build service for TFS 2005 (and set the startup type to manual), before starting the Visual Studio Team Foundation Build service - the build service for TFS 2008. Technorati tags: TFS, Team Build, upgrade...
Kyle has been grinding away in Expression Web getting our new website rocking. After pestering and pestering the prince of perfection, he finally gave me the go-ahead to unveil his baby: EnGraph.com Technorati tags: EnGraph, Kyle Archer, Expression Web...
Kyle Archer is headed to New Jersey today to swoon our future clients at the COST Expo 2007 tradeshow. He took our Where's Tim phone, so you can view his current GPS location on Google Maps in real time (updates automatically every 15 seconds). You can view his location here. Or download the Where's Tim task tray alerter. It's ClickOnce, so it's double cool. Bring home the bacon, Kyle! Technorati tags: Kyle Archer, EnGraph, New Jersey, Where's Tim, GPS, Google Maps, COST Expo...
We are looking for a new printer for our office. It needs to be able to print/copy/fax/scan and be ethernet connectable. I've typically purchased HP in the past because they seem to be the best. We are currently looking at this one from Best Buy. Anybody have a suggestion for a good office printer? Technorati tags: EnGraph, Printer...
I just made it to Philly (despite running late this morning and checking in 32 minutes before my flight) and met up with Kyle. He has been on a EnGraph crusade as of late, visiting six clients in the last two weeks. He writes more about it on his blog. We are visiting a client in Salem, NJ this week, adding new GPS units to their system and troubleshooting some existing units. Matt Strausz is joining us on Tuesday to help with the installation. It should be a good week. I'm looking forward to some...
The last month or so, I've been wallowing in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), trying to determine if it is the correct direction for our next version of our flagship software, ParaPlan. WPF is flashy and fun and bubbly, but there are not many examples of real world enterprise applications that are built around WPF. After much research, and significantly pushing back our deployment timeline, we decided to rebuild ParaPlan 4.0 using WPF for our UI. We were able to use our existing 2.0 UI framework...
Kyle Archer talks about how Supernova makes it possible for one of our potential clients with a visually impaired dispatcher to use ParaPlan. Creating software that adds business value to a company, eliminates process inefficiencies and has a quick ROI makes for a great whitepaper. When a company writes software that adds quality of life to an individual, that is very cool. Technorati tags: Kyle Archer, EnGraph, ParaPlan, SuperNova...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project DefaultTargets="DesktopBuild" xmlns="http://schemas.micro... <!-- TO EDIT BUILD TYPE DEFINITION To edit the build type, you will need to edit this file which was generated by the Create New Build Type wizard. This file is under source control and needs to be checked out before making any changes. The file is available at - $/{TeamProjectName}/TeamBui... where you will need to replace TeamProjectName...
Last year, Kyle and Allie got hitched, and tomorrow, David (one of our AutoCAD studs) is marrying Becca. Congrats David! I guess that leaves me as the last stud in the stable :) Technorati tags: David Collins, EnGraph, Wedding...
I just wrote the 300th unit test for our version 4 of ParaPlan (GoldStar). We are about 6 months into the project, 85K lines of code and 60% code coverage on the non-UI stuff. Our first release to alpha testers is July 1. Hopefully, I'll have closer to 85% coverage by then. Technorati tags: EnGraph, ParaPlan, GoldStar, code coverage...
This code is meant for people that want to easily implement INotifyPropertyChanged after using the "prop" code snippet. It will take code that looks like this: public int DriverID { get { return _driverID; } set { _driverID = value; } } And return it like this: public int DriverID { get { return _driverID; } set { _driverID = value; OnPropertyChanged("DriverID"); } } It also will ignore any triple slash comments and #regions. So you can copy your entire #region --Properties-- into the class and it...
Via Kyle Archer, our sales guys are at the CTAA Expo this week in Reno, NV. Check out our booth if you are around! Technorati tags: CTAA, 2007 Expo, Kyle Archer, EnGraph, Reno NV...
Ever since moving to Lenexa, our internet has been really slow. In Lawrence, I was getting about 6.5 mb/s down and 760 kb/s up. Now I'm getting: Any suggestions for a better ISP in Johnson County? We are with SBC now and our contract expires this year. Technorati tags: EnGraph, SBC, Speedtest.net...
I've thought about posting this for a while now and responses to my architecture post by Dave and Dru have got me thinking about it again. I avoid open source frameworks or libraries in our production desktop applications. I don't have a problem with third party when it comes to web applications or internal apps. I use AjaxPro and skmRSS on Where's Tim and my home site. I use Indy.Sockets all the time in our internal apps. Where's Tim is just for fun though and if it goes down, it's not that big...
When we decided that ParaPlan 4.0 would be rebuilt in .NET (from Access), we decided not to redesign the SQL database. Even though we have some inefficiencies in our db we want to decrease development time and allow our beta testers to be able to switch back and forth between our Access front end and our .NET front end. As development began, we decided that we needed an object for each table and that we could eliminate some of the database inefficiencies in our objects. So we have an Appointment...
I'm not being narcissistic, I just discovered tonight that I'll be able to save over 5000 lines of code on my current project using System.Reflection to internally populate an object from an external object of the same type. I'll post some code later so the true gurus can pick it apart. Technorati tags: Reflection, Justice Gray, ParaPlan, GoldStar...
Taking a cue from Grant Holliday, I've created an OPML file for EnGraph's bloggers. I used this OPML generator and then tweaked it's output to get my final result. The feed is at http://engraph.com/engraph.... Note: To host an OPML file at WebHost4Life, you need to set the mime type to text/xml. Technorati tags: EnGraph, OPML, Grant Holliday, Webhost4Life...
As a display of how non-creative I am, I redesigned timhibbard.com this weekend. The new master page concept with ASP .NET 2.0 is really cool. Using a master page, I linked the Where's Tim API to show data from Where's Tim on the top of each page. Using AjaxPro and a little JavaScript, it updates every 15 seconds. Other than that, it's pretty boring :) Technorati tags: ASP .NET, C#, timhibbard.com, Where's Tim, Web design, AjaxPro...
Cursor on Target (CoT) is an effort by military and governmental branches, FFRDCs (federally funded research and development corporations) and private companies to standardize an electronic portable data format to define location based data. I am the biggest geo-geek that I know, so obviously I was very interested when they contacted me about implementing their format into Where's Tim. These guys have done a great job of making a simple schema (12 required fields) that is easy to implement. I blogged...
I've been working on implementing CoT XML standard for describing location based data. Here is the C# code for an .aspx page that will render XML More infomation about CoT can be found here: using System;using System.Data;using System.Configuration;using System.Collections;using System.Web;using System.Web.Security;using System.Web.UI;using System.Web.UI.WebControls;u... System.Web.UI.WebControls.W... System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;... System.Xml;public partial class cot : System.Web.UI.Page{...
Frank Ohrtman, who talks about everything WiMAX, has started a new series of posts about how WiMAX could potentially advance specific vertical industries. Delivery Industry Agriculture I would like to see an article about how WiMAX could help the ParaTransit industry. EnGraph has a digital manifest application that runs on Windows CE and it would be better adopted with the bandwidth and cost benefits of WiMAX. Technorati tags: Frank Ohrtman, WiMAX, ParaTransit, EnGraph...
We moved most of our stuff from our Lawrence office to our new EnGraph office in Lenexa yesterday. Putting all our stuff into Jonathan's trucks. See the basement page for reference. David was nice enough to paint! Server room...populated! No logo yet :( Gotta have the KU hoop My new desk ...with all my junk Technorati tags: EnGraph, Lawrence, Lenexa, Kansas, Kyle Archer, David Collins, Jonathan Umscheid, KU...
Yesterday Kyle, David, Jonathan and I walked 18 holes at St. Andrews in Overland Park and then did some planning at our new EnGraph office in Lenexa. Here are some pics: David teeing off Water hazard? Our new desks! David and Jonathan's office Server room...finally! Technorati tags: Golf, EnGraph, Kyle Archer, David Collins, Jonathan Umscheid, St. Andrews, Overland Park, Lenexa...
The last year in the Pendleton & Sutton building has been good for EnGraph. It is our first office and I remember when we just moved in. However, we've added new members to the company (and are still looking for more), and an office in Kansas City just makes sense because all the developers but me live in the KC area. We just signed for a place on Strang Line Rd that used to be occupied by Kyle's brothers company, ASB. We move in on Monday and I'll be driving there everyday (which will make Where's...
Jeff Atwood wrote an interesting post yesterday arguing for using GUIDs instead of auto-incrementing integers. We recently had one of our clients merge with another one of our other clients and it was a pain merging their ParaPlan databases. If we were using GUIDs as Primary Keys, the headache would have been much less. Technorati tags: Database design, Jeff Atwood, GUID, EnGraph, ParaPlan...
The next task in our Team Foundation Server is going to be id 666. Maybe I should not work today and just watch basketball. Technorati tags: Evil...
A couple weeks ago, I blogged about the pain in my hands because of tendonitis. Since then, I've followed all directions from my doctor, took my medicine and even switched to using my left hand for the mouse. The pain only got worse, and it got to the point where my hands, wrists and forearms were throbbing. It hurt to drive, play with the dogs, use the remote control and my productivity with EnGraph was going down the tubes. Some days I would have to quit at 3 PM and just read a book. By the way,...
Update - Found a solution here I've had a problem ever since installing TFS, and I've not blogged about it yet because I wanted to figure out a good solution first. I haven't found the solution, so I'm hoping for some good advice from the brilliant GWB readers. We have quite a few dll's and controls that we reference from our applications. For example, we have our SQL Connection String control that lives in the EnGraph Controls team project. If I want to use the SQL Connection String control, I add...
Update: 02/27/2007 added support for raw SQL Strings When I build data access layers, I like to define a const for each column in the query like this: const int CLIENTID = 0; const int STATUS = 1; const int FIRSTNAME = 2; That way, I can pull data like this: newClient.Name.FirstName = reader.GetString(FIRSTNAME); And if something changes in the database, I know I only have to change the field that FIRSTNAME references. However, sometimes, tables can be quite large and it becomes a pain in the wrist....
Yesterday, Jonathan Umscheid started full time with EnGraph. He's been working on a contract basis for us for a bit now and it's great to have him on board full time! Jonathan and David are doing some really cool things with our AutoCAD project and they really need to start blogging about it! We are still looking to fill a position for a .NET developer that will help Kyle and I on our transportation and GPS software (you might even get your own Where's Tim). Technorati tags: Jonathan Umscheid, David...
I originally started reading blogs to become more knowledgeable about technology. I've learned a lot, but somewhere along the line I picked up way too many subscriptions. Anytime somebody talked about something cool, I subscribed to them. Anytime somebody linked to Where's Tim, I subscribed to them. I find that my daily grind though FeedDemon brings me a lot of repeated posts and things that don't really interest me. I skim through all the feeds and rarely pick up anything that is worth the read...
I was digging through some old VBA code today, and found this little guy: On Error GoTo i_cant_belive_i_have_a_erro... I actually remember when I wrote that. It was when we were still working from Kyle's spare bedroom and I didn't even have a desk. I was working on some old card table with my crappy Compaq laptop. Technorati tags: Old code, EnGraph, VBA...
Carl was nice enough to give me tickets to the Kansas basketball game against Colorado this Saturday. I'll be the one wearing blue. Technorati tags: basketball, Kansas, Colorado, Rock Chalk...
David added some more hard drive space to our Team Foundation Server yesterday. Technorati tags: David Collins, EnGraph...
Windows has pretty good VPN management. It's pretty good at redialing the connection when the connection is dropped, and for the most part it works. However, sometimes it thinks it connected to the VPN when it's really not, and it doesn't validate the connection to a specific internal IP. We needed something that was a bit more robust and could disconnect and reconnect if it couldn't see a specific IP. This class I wrote takes a VPN connection name and an IP to ping and will use rasphone.exe to connect...
Clarification - The specific program I am working with here has the word "updater" in the name. This flags the UAC that it needs admin rights. Full Trust ClickOnce plays nicely with UAC otherwise. I've been battling all day with how one of our ClickOnce applications works with the UAC in Vista. I've found two ways to get past the "Cannot Start Application" message: Run IE as an administrator The first way is very painful and not useful for a repeatable process, but it works. Assume your ClickOnce...
In a recent post, I talked about wanting a TFS group called ParaPlan_Stud that contained Kyle and myself that we could assign tasks to and view in our "My Work Items". Much thanks goes to Mickey Gousset, who wrote a book that you need to get, for helping me with this. Here is how we did it: Created Project Group call ParaPlan_Stud and added Kyle and myself to it. Edited Task.xml To access the Task, I had to edit the xml file that defines the task. Using the VS 2005 command prompt, I entered: witexport...
Kyle and I are running into a small problem with Team Foundation Server when it comes to assigning tasks. In a typical software development company, a Project Manager receives a bug or feature request. He then assigns associated tasks to his developers. Once the developer is finished, the task is re-assigned to the PM for review. At EnGraph, things are a bit more collaborative. Partly because of our size, but also because we like to manage support and development from a team perspective. Back to...
I came to work this morning to find a pile of snow where I usually park. It didn't seem like we got much snow this weekend, but it sure looks impressive all piled up like that. If you look closely on the left hand side, you can see the bus that I blogged about here. Technorati tags: Snow, Lawrence Kansas...
Christoph Wille has developed a Team Foundation Server code check-in policy that checks the pending changeset for ///code comments. This has been a very useful tool for us. It can be downloaded here. Thanks Christoph! Technorati tags: TFS, Check-in policy, code comments, Christoph Wille...
If I plug our DSL modem and router in our battery backup, will we maintain internet connectivity if the power goes out? Technorati tags: Stupid question...
As Kyle blogged about and I blogged about a couple months ago, we are still looking to hire at least one person to do .NET development in the Kansas City area. We have some really cool projects going on and we just don't have the resources to take everything on. We are thinking about advertising in CareerBuilder. They have some good packages for print and internet exposure. Has anybody worked with CareerBuilder? Have any good or bad stories? Know any friends that are interested in working with .NET...
When migrating our TFS from a workgroup based install to Active Directory, we got a couple errors when running Team Build. Access to the path 'C:\...BuildLog.txt' is denied To fix this error, I simply deleted the root Team Project folders in Windows Explorer and re-ran the build. The build then recreated the folders. You may have to run the builds in a specific order if your solutions reference assemblies that live in these folders. The other error occurred after a build started: TF42004: Team Build...
Jeff Julian - Mr. GeeksWithBlogs - was nice enough to tag me, so here are five things you probably don't know about me. 1) I have a chapstick addiction. It's bad, I go through a stick every couple of weeks. It's really not my fault though, my Mom and sisters are just as bad as me. 2) I'm a bad driver. I feel sorry for anybody that has to ride with me. I go out of turn at four-way stops, run too many yellow(ish) lights, liberally interpret lane dividing lines, and generally assume that I have the...
I added my main workstation to our new Active Directory domain last night with out a hitch. This morning, I added my Vista laptop and ran into a bit of a problem. So I added a DNS role to the server and was able to add the laptop to the domain. Then we started in on Kyle's laptop. When attempting to log on, we got "The system cannot log you on now because the domain engraph is not available". After much googling, I discovered that the DNS role was incorrectly set up. I thought that just removing...
Today I get to learn how to change a Team Foundation Server from a workgroup based install to a domain based install. We've had Active Directory for a while, but it was never set up right. Thanks to Robert Oderkirk at Free State Business for helping us figure out what was wrong. So now, we have to attach all of our computers to the domain, set up the network users, and hope that TFS plays nicely with the transition. I need to do more research, but hopefully, I just have to switch the TFS accounts...
We were supposed to get Visual Studio Team Edition for Developers in the mail by the 20th of this month (Dec 06). It still hasn't come and I don't see it on MSDN. Time to get back on the phone with Microsoft. Technorati tags: VSTS, Tired of waiting...
I'm a huge Cesar Millan fan and have learned so much about proper dog training from his show on National Geographic. I just found his blog and rss feed. His latest post is about dogs as co-workers. Joey has been coming to work with me ever since we got our office. It's easy for me to get too plugged into my current project and taking him for a walk or playing with him provides a nice mental reboot from time to time. Technorati tags: Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, National Geographic...
Since EnGraph's productivity has gone through the roof with Team Foundation Server, we now have time for other things. Like installing our KU basketball hoop (9 months after moving in): I used to be a deadly shot back in the days of Kyle's basement. Now if only Joey will give me the ball back: Technorati tags: EnGraph...
Most bloggers do some sort of self-gratuitous year-end post where they talk about all the great things they have blogged about over the last year. I tried to come up with a post like that, but I found that I only talk about Where's Tim. So instead, I thought I would pay homage to the greatest Director of Software Development that EnGraph has ever had - Kyle Archer. In no particular order, here are my top six posts from KJA this past year: EnGraph to attend n4a this summerMy Visual Studio Experience...
I loaded the new Sprint Mobile Email java client on Kyle's phone (MM-A920). The install was easy, I connected it to EnGraph's mail server in less than a minute. The interface is simple and you can even enable SMS alerts when you get a new message. Technorati tags: Sprint, Mobile Email, Kyle Archer...
I've been chin deep in confusion the last week getting EnGraph to be official Certified Partners and installing Team Foundation Server. Luckily for me, there is a lot of good information online so I thought I would post a mini-guide: DO ask lots of questions to your Microsoft rep about becoming certified DON'T freak out when the partner's site opens 15 new Internet Explorer windows DO follow the competencies instructions as close as possible DO worry when you don't hear back from Microsoft after...
I ordered a new server and workstation from Dell on Friday. Not only did they give me 60 days same as cash, but they shipped our server on Saturday. The representative gave me his direct line and said to call him anytime I need something. I recommend him to anyone needing new hardware: Matt Moore - 512.723.5850 Technorati tags: Dell, good customer service...
I didn't really like how I was storing some of our SQL connection information. It was buried deep in the file system in an XML file, but it was still plain text. So I spent my day looking at the different encryption options in the .net framework. I needed it to be two-way encryption so our objects could still work with it, so I decided on Rijndael. I found some great code, modified what I needed and wrapped it in one of our objects. It works pretty well. Now only if KU could have pulled it out...
The roads are disgusting today, so I am working from home. It's nice to get laundry done and have Cold Pizza on in the background, but I miss my monitors. I've been with EnGraph for 3.5 years now. The last nine months we've had an office. For a year, we worked out of Kyle's basement, and the rest of the time, I was working from home. I love having an actual office. Mostly because it provides a needed separation between personal and professional life. I found that I had a hard time shutting down when...
We finally got everything straightened out with our certification process. Apparently we had assigned the wrong competencies to the wrong assessments or something. An hour and a half on the phone took care of it. The lady that helped me was really nice and explained things well. But more importantly, EnGraph is finally an official certified partner of Microsoft. Team Foundation Server, here I come. Technorati tags: EnGraph, Microsoft Certified Partner, good customer service...
Kyle is heading to Philly today. He has been helping them set up a transit company from the ground up. Literally. They didn't have office space two weeks ago. He talks a bit about it on his blog. Anyways, he is heading to the airport now and sent me this picture. Technorati tags: Vista, license plate, kansas, Kyle Archer, EnGraph...
All the audio and video clips on LJWorld.com and KUSports.com are in quicktime format. To Jeff Croft, Matt Croydon and all the other developers over there, please give us another format. Haven't you read that people hate quicktime? Their office is four blocks from EnGraph headquarters. Maybe I'll bribe the development team with a free lunch. Pepperjax for the LJWorld geeks if you let me watch Julian Wright clips in a format other than quicktime. Technorati tags: Lawrence Journal World, Lawrence Kansas,...
Matt Dunbar & Co. did a fantastic job putting together GIS day at Kansas University. My favorite part of the day was judging the student competition. Seven students gave ten minute presentations on unique uses of GIS. They showed everything from a geographic boundary of where grits are consumed (apparently South Carolina is the capital of all that is grits) to a traffic analysis of SW Douglas Country in Kansas. The winner was Lincoln Lewis. He showed how to make GIS data pretty using a suite...
I'm driving to Jonesboro, AR today to install ParaPlan for our newest client, EAAAA. I'll be driving through Clinton, MO. You might remember that we stopped there on our SC Code Camp trip. It's also Jeff Julian's hometown. Watch me here. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, EnGraph, South Carolina CodeCamp, Jonesboro, Clinton, Jeff Julian...
This bus has been parked by our office for so long, that it shows up in satellite view on Google Maps. Technorati tags: Google Maps, long term parking...
Kansas University (right here in Lawrence, KS) puts on a Geographic Information Systems day every year. A couple months ago, Matt Dunbar contacted me and asked if I would speak about personal tracking. My talk is titled "Big Brother is on MySpace. How GPS will change our everyday lives (in a good way)" After some shameless promotion of Where's Tim and EnGraph, I plan to talk about how real time GPS can add a new dimension to social networking sites like MySpace. I also plan to talk about enhancing...
We are looking for a .NET developer to join our team. This person will be helping Kyle with our transportation software and also working with me on our GPS software. You might even get your own Where's Tim! For more information about EnGraph or this position:See this pageTalk to me at the Kansas City .NET user group tonightSend me an emailChat with me on MSN Technorati tags: EnGraph, Career, Opportunity, Software Development...
The Messenger blog talked today about using their protocol handler to initiate IM conversations from an a href or command prompt. The idea is to use their handler (msnim:) as you would a typical handler like mailto. I wonder how hard that is to implement. That would help our clients transition smoother between our .NET and non-.NET applications. For example, if they had a vehicle loaded in our ParaPlan software and wanted to see where the vehicle had been that day, we could put an a href link that...
We just unveiled EnGraph Help!, a community server driven website that will (hopefully) bring our existing client base together electronically and allow them to have a central place for knowledge and maybe even help each other. We also want to use this as a central place for public documentation. All of our standard operating procedures are in the form of emails and word docs. When push comes to shove, we generally just know who is the best to do a specific task. EnGraph Help! will provide a platform...
Kyle and I are sitting in the Philadelphia airport hoping that our flight doesn't get delayed again. So far, it's only been delayed an hour, but they are delaying and canceling flights left and right. I met a guy named Curt Walz who works for Sygma, a fast food distributor. He was telling me how they use RFID to tell the warehouse workers which items to pick for the order they are completing. The RFID reader actually mounts on the workers forearm and alerts them when they need to pick an item. I...
Today, our client out here in Jersey replaced this server: With this 4gb ram, mirrored 146 gb HDD, dual core Xeon bundle of love from Dell: It's the difference between night and day. We've been running on a similar server the last couple of days, and it's made our software look so much better. Tomorrow is going to suck, because I have to consolidate all the services from the two servers we've been using this week to this new server. Hopefully all goes well, because I have a 6:00 PM flight to catch...
David, Steve and everybody else involved did a great job in putting this event together and keeping the chaos at an organized level!! My talk on AJAXPro went really well. 25 or so people showed up and everybody seemed to understand the power of AJAXPro and several of them told me afterwards that they had projects that could use this technology right now. I've talked before about why AJAXPro is better than XMLHttpRequest. It also had advantages over ATLAS (Microsoft's AJAX library) in that AJAXPro...
Kyle and I are at the airport getting ready to head to Salem. Tulsa TechFest 2006 was awesome. Lots of attendees and great sessions. They did a great job keeping everything organized. And to Chris Williams, my laptop acted up when I plugged into their projector too, so it had nothing to do with your projector, my laptop is just possesed. More details about TechFest later, I met some very interesting people. I've never actually gotten a GPS reading at takeoff or landing, but I'll keep trying. Technorati...
This weekend, I'm heading to the Tulsa TechFest 2006 to give my AJAXPro talk. Sunday, Kyle and I are going to Salem, New Jersy to see one of our clients. The Heartland Developers Conference is coming up the week after that. I'm speaking at the Kansas University GIS day in November. I will be speaking in the same session as Dr. Jerome Dobson. I've heard that he is not a big fan of GPS, so that should be interesting. My talk is called "Big Brother is on MySpace. How GPS will change our everyday lives...
Kyle and Carl are driving to Arkansas today for the Arkansas Public Transportation Conference. Watch them on Carl's Where's Tim
Kyle has finally started using Visual Studio .net for one of our new products! He talks more about it here
This code shows how to use an ASPX page to render RSS with embedded GeoRSS tags. It calls from the FeedMap service. I talk more about the functionality in this blog post. Imports System.Xml Partial Class FeedMap Inherits System.Web.UI.Page Dim place As String = "" Dim lat As Double = 0 Dim lon As Double = 0 Dim count As Integer = 50 Dim rssUrl As String = "" Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load Try place = Request.QueryString("place") Catch...
The FileSystemWatcher is very useful when you need to be notified of changes made to a specific folder. You can raise an event when a new file is created, or deleted and you can also filter by file type and choose if you wish to monitor sub directories. The only problem with the object comes with large file transfers. The created event is raised as soon as the file transfer begins to your watched folder, not when the file has finished transferring. So if you need to move a file or pull data out a...
The FileSystemWatcher is very useful when you need to be notified of changes made to a specific folder. You can raise an event when a new file is created, or deleted and you can also filter by file type and choose if you wish to monitor sub directories. The only problem with the object comes with large file transfers. The created event is raised as soon as the file transfer begins to your watched folder, not when the file has finished transferring. So if you need to move a file or pull data out a...
We released a new version of Where's Tim this morning that supports GeoRSS feeds. Use a georss query string with the url of the feed as the query string value like this: http://timhibbard.com/where... or you can create an xml file that contains information about GeoRSS feeds that looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <GeoRSSFeeds> <feed url="http://timhibbard...
Look at how happy Kyle looks :) This means that David's laptop (January 06) is the oldest workstation at EnGraph. It's great to work for a company that understands how to properly equip their employees...
EnGraph was nice enough to get me a framed dollar bill for my first sale of Where's Tim!! Thanks guys
I get an email every couple of weeks from somebody that has found Where's Tim and wants me to help find their lost cell phone. I always reply nicely and tell them that it is not possible to track a random phone via GPS based on it's number or ESN. First of all, if it was that easy to track something, I would be out of a job. Second of all, it goes against everything we believe in as far as allowing the trackee (is that a word) to be in full control of who watches them and when. Thirdly, it shows...
Terry Rombeck from the Lawrence Journal World just interviewed me about the different uses for real time GPS. We talked about Verizon and Sprint's family tracking services and how EnGraph uses GPS to add value to businesses. We also talked about potential privacy implications and that for consumers to fully accept GPS, we need to make sure our software adds value to the average persons daily life and that the added benefits outweigh any privacy concerns. The article comes out next Tuesday. I'm curious...
Not for a new job...I love EnGraph!! Allan Hoffman wrote a career spotlight article about software architects and quoted what I think a software architect is. Allan was also nice enough to write an article about Where's Tim on nj.com a couple months ago. I would link to it, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore...
Carl Kurt, president of EnGraph now maps his real time location on Where's Tim using a real time GPS phone. He also has an RSS feed for his location, and a Google Homepage widget.Now we have three people being tracked in Lawrence (Carl, Clint and myself). To watch us all at once, go to Where's Tim, select "All Available" from the "Select person to track" combo box and push "Track" click here...
I've never been a big fan of Garmin. Mostly because when we started working with GPS a couple years ago, they snubbed Kyle and I when we tried to set up a meeting to see if there was anything we could do to help each other. They told us, "We don't work with other companies". I'm starting to become a fan though. I really like that they blog on a regular basis. Jeff likes his Nuvi and David likes his Edge. Like I talked about yesterday, their mobile product is good for the GPS market. What really won...
I'm rewriting a class in our GPS object that handles the geographic coordinates of GPS points. We need more flexibility in converting between types of coordinates. I'm torn between designing the class for performance or for ease of consumption. From an architectural point of view, the class should be easy to consume. So when somebody has this class loaded, they could use a .DecimalDegrees or .DMS property and it would take the existing data, convert it on the fly and spit it back. However, I know...
I am having lunch today with Clint Batman from ThinkGeo, another GPS company out of Lawrence. They have some additional hardware that might be useful for us and maybe we do some things on Where's Tim that he might find beneficial to his products. Plus the sweet salsa at La Familia can't be beat...
We are working on something pretty cool...stay tuned
Yesterday, Google announced KML support in Google Maps. KML is a markup language like XML that defines data to be shown on a map. I use KML on Where's Tim to show my current location inside of Google Earth, so I was very excited...until I tried it. My KML file is an .aspx page that returns a content type of "application/vnd.google-ear... so when you click on it...it opens in Google Earth. So I put the address of my .aspx in the query string as instructed by Google and I got a "could not...
Mike Pegg is driving around San Francisco getting ready for the Where 2.0 conference. He has one of the EnGraph Nextel's and you can watch him on Where's Tim!! We also created a Google Homepage widget that shows his location. Click here to add it to your google homepage...
Kyle and Mark are heading down to Orlando tomorrow to be vendors at the CTAA trade show. This is a great opportunity for us to showcase our transportation and GPS software. Kyle talks about it on his blog. [EnGraph] [CTAA]...
Steve Walker was at my AJAX.NET talk at Wichita Code Camp. This is what he said: ...One thing that I thought was interesting about the presentation was Tim showing us how his company uses Google Maps and GPS to track items around the world in real time. In a VERY small amount of code, we were able to see where Tim was at and where he had been on his drive over this morning... Thanks Steve. People are starting to use the Where's Tim API for interesting things. One guy mashed up Where's Tim data with...
Raymond Lewallen gave a great presentation at the Wichita Code Camp yesterday on Continuous Integration (zip file) and I know that I could integrate it into our existing source control and automated updating system and that it would save some time now and a lot of time in the future, but I have one problem.I need another license for Vault to pull the files from source control. Which isn't that big of a deal, but I've been pushing EnGraph to look into Team Foundation Server. So they are not going...
This article is from a talk I did for the Kansas City .net user group. It will show you how to use the AJAX.net library written by Michael Schwarz. Initial Setup: 1) Download dll from http://ajaxpro.info 2) Open Visual Studio and create a new web application 3) Add a reference to the AJAX.net dll 4) Modify your web.config to include: <system.web> <httpHandlers> <add verb="POST,GET" path="ajax/*.ashx" type="Ajax.PageHandler... Ajax"/> </httpHandlers>...
Clint Batman from ThinkGeo gave a great demo of his GPS software at the May Mixer at the Lawrence Regional Technology Center last night. They have a web based tracking system built in .NET similar to Where's Tim. They have some features that we don't, and they have a few things that they do better than us. We also have some features that they don't, like RSS feeds, mobile version, ASMX interface to our data, and WeatherBug integration. Hey Clint, give me a call sometime and we can sit down and see...
Matt Strausz of SmartStart of Kansas got his blog rocking again. Check him out for your DUI information. He talks about getting it back and gave EnGraph the "small business of the day" award
TechSmith, makers of Camtasia gets my "2nd best company of the day" award for posting comments to Kyle Archer's post and my post about Camtasia. It's great to see companies keep bloggers on their radar. In case you were wondering, the "Best company of the day" award goes to (again) EnGraph Software...
Kyle Archer has been blogging up a storm. 3 posts in 2 days...Go Kyle! He doesn't really hate Depeche Mode, but he was disappointed in their stage walk off the other night (so was Doug Butscher). He also found a cool product called Camtasia Studio that is going to allow us to quickly publish our PowerPoint presentations to the web. [EnGraph] [Kyle Archer]...
Nicholas Carlson called me the other day to talk about Where's Tim and Google technology. He was nice enough to write an article on InternetNews.com about it yesterday. He also gave Dave Rheingold from ShakinDave.com a plug. [Where's Tim] [Google Maps] [EnGraph] [ShakinDave]...
On Where's Tim, you can send a text message to my phone by clicking on my location icon and populating the fields. I've been getting some funny messages since the Digg effect. For your viewing pleasure, I syndicate these messages in an RSS Feed. My favorite was a guy from Spain that said "Where are you?" I respond to all messages if they populate the "from email" field. I've had some good conversations with these people. [Where's Tim] [EnGraph]...
This weekend, we migrated Where's Tim to ASP.net 2.0 and Google Maps API v2. We also added some "Get directions" functionality to SmartStart of Kansas Find a location page. And we just got dugg! [Where's Tim] [EnGraph] [Google Maps] [GPS]...
This is pretty cool technology. I got an email this morning from Frank Taylor and he said that the Google Earth integration we have on Where's Tim is cool, but not even close to what we could be doing. He suggested looking into Network Links. A Network Link is basically a .kml file that points to another .kml file and tells it how often to update. So I created a .aspx page that dynamically creates a .kml file based on data from the web service. And then created another .aspx page that generates a...
Yahoo Map Image released new maps the other day. We use them on Where's Tim when we need a static map image. Check out the new maps on the location RSS feed and Where's Tim Mobile. [Where's Tim] [EnGraph]...
One of our clients needed some software installed on his computer today. However, he didn't have the cd that was needed. So I VPN into his network, remote desktop into his laptop, VPN'd on his laptop back to our network, shared the cd drive on our server and granted him access to it, put the software into the cd drive and installed away. I felt like I was on the Office Depot commercial. "Use your easy button to find my easy button?!?"
I constantly and shamelessly plug EnGraph and Where's Tim as much as I can :) Since timhibbard dot com slash wherestim dot aspx is not easy to remember and easily misspelled, we bought FollowTim.com. Eventually we will host everything there, but for now it just redirects to http://timhibbard.com/where... [Where's Tim] [EnGraph]...
Lawrence, KS got new Google satellite images the other day. Check out pictures of the EnGraph office.I haven't fully migrated Where's Tim over to the v2 of the maps API. Once I do, you will be able to see the new images on Where's Tim as well.[Google Maps] [Lawrence, KS] [Where's Tim]...
Jeff gave a good talk last night at the Kansas City .NET User group about the Provider Model. Material available here. It's something EnGraph could benefit from, but probably not something we are going to do right away. I need to get a better handle on generics first, that would make our products better. Jeff also set up a Google Group for the user group...check it out...
A year ago we were working in Kyle's basement, now look at us. We even have an official nameplate at our new office!! [EnGraph]
LiveWave is rocking with their new real time GPS web solution modeled after Where's Tim. It was pretty cool to watch them drive all over Newport, RI yesterday and I now know how other people feel when they watch me! These guys have been great to work with and we are working on some cool ways to integrate their existing camera feeds with the new GPS data and Google Maps. Stay tuned, we are going to be bringing some neat stuff. Kyle talks about it too. [EnGraph] [GPS] [AVL] [Google Maps] [Where's Tim]...
We would like to welcome our newest clients, City of Jonesboro Arkansas Transit. Carl and Kyle went down there last week and installed our paratransit solution, ParaPlan Lite and our fixed route solution, RiderTrac. Kyle talks more about the trip on his blog.[EnGraph] [ParaTransit]...
Like I talked about yesterday, We are building a real time GPS web solution for Smiths Detection. The pieces are starting to come together, but the GPS data still points to my current location since their Cloudberry account is not completely set up. The web site is at maps.livewave.net, check it out and watch for more changes this weekend. [EnGraph] [Where's Tim] [GPS] [AVL] [Google Maps]...
We just received a purchase order for a web based real time GPS system using Google Maps. It's exciting for me to see all the work we've put into Where's Tim starting to materialize into $$$. We have a couple other companies that are interested too, so hopefully we'll have a bunch of Where's Tim popping up on the internet :) Check back this weekend for a url. [EnGraph] [Where's Tim] [GPS] [AVL] [Google Maps]...
I found another podcast that talked about Where's Tim. Apparently, I'm a "nerd with no life"!! It's by WeBeGeeky.com (which is down right now) and the mp3 is here (9 min, Where's Tim mentioned about 1:45 in). [GPS] [Where's Tim] [EnGraph]...
Google has an API for their personalized homepage, and of course it is really easy to consume. It is an XML file with a place for HTML / Javascript. I created a striped down version of Where's Tim using their API. To install this module on your homepage, click here. Google provided a method for asynchronously downloading data, _IG_FetchContent (which I talked about the other day). To consume this method, you provide the datasource and the function you wish to call after the data is downloaded: function...
Well, like I said yesterday, I was pretty nervous for my interview with Good Morning Kansas on ABC 49 in Topeka. Kyle was nice enough to go along and we got there around 5:45 AM. Heidi greeted us at the door and said that she had been watching on Where's Tim and already knew I was here!! We went over some basic stuff about the site and she explained that I would be going into the studio around 6:00 and get familiar with the set and the anchors. We went in the studio and she introduced me to Blake...
When developing modules for Google Homepage, you use the _IG_FetchContent command to fetch data from an external source. Google is "nice" enough to cache that data source (for days) and that causes problems with dynamic sources like Where's Tim webservice. To get around this, put a random number at the end of the url as a query string, like this:_IG_FetchContent('http... + Math.floor(Math.random()*16... function callback(response)...
I made it to New Jersey tonight, after the standard flight delay out of KCI. Check out the Get History feature on Where's Tim for today (03/19/06), it's pretty cool to see the jump from Kansas City to Philadelphia. I'll be working with our clients in Salem trying to resolve some .NET remoting issues. We have a really neat GPS system in place here. The data is downloaded wireless from the vehicles and then we use .NET remoting to transmit the data back to headquarters. I think we have some port forwarding...
We added a daily mileage calculator to Where's Tim. I don't really like how it's set up visually. I've never been very good at UI design, so I'm looking at other examples on Mapki to find something that looks good that I can use as an example. We also added a GetMileage function (that takes a date parameter) to the Where's Tim Web Service. And added mileage to Where's Tim Mobile. If anybody has any ideas how to make the mileage look better, please let me know. Or better yet, get on the Where's Tim...
CBS is broadcasting the first 3 rounds of the NCAA tourney online. I'm excited to see it work and curious to see if it actually does work. EnGraph will be happy that Kyle and I will be at least be by our computers!PhogBlog says "They have no idea what they're going to encounter."...
We added some stuff to Where's Tim today. We trimmed out some of the redundant information that the Where's Tim webservice was returning on the GetTimsHistory call. We added my speed to the Dump History to XML file. When I am actually moving, we use a green icon to indicate my current position. When I am idle, the icon is the default red one. I messed with using different color polylines to indicate my speed on the Get History function, but it was too slow because I had to create individual polylines...
Testing w.bloggar settings from my new laptop. Thanks EnGraph
I wrote an article that has the code we use to update our ClickOnce applications. The class encapsulates the main functionality of the Application.ApplicationDepl... class and works asynchronously. It can be called with one line of code: Dim updateCO As New UpdateClickOnce("EnGraph Manager", True, True)...
Class to implement manual updates in ClickOnce applications. With one line of code, you can asynchronously update your applications Dim updateCO As New UpdateClickOnce("EnGraph Manager", True, True) Public Class UpdateClickOnce #Region " Variables " Dim WithEvents MyApp As Deployment.Application.Appl... Dim AppName As String = "this application" Dim UseMsgbox As Boolean = True Dim IsChecking As Boolean = False #End Region #Region " Properties "...
We are working on a licensing system for one of our new software suites. One of the requirements is that the software must be reactivated after 3 days of not being used. Kyle sent me this email: From: Kyle J. Archer Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 9:29 AMTo: 'Tim Hibbard'Subject: RE: software licensing could you write a ClickOnce app that kicks them in the nutz if they haven't used our software for 3 days? we could call it KickOnce Ha...
We host EnGraph.com and TimHibbard.com with WebHost4Life. They have always been good, but the last couple of days, I have been trying to move some our web services from the server in my living room to EnGraph.com. When I try to create a new web service in Visual Studio 2005, I get an authentication error. So I go to the webhost4life help desk, tell them the problem, they tell me to try again, so I try again and tell them it still doesn't work and wait 6 hours for them to tell me to try again. Repeated...
Google came out with new PageRank ratings recently, and gave Where's Tim an 8!! I'm excited, unfortunately the site is acting funky right now. Sometimes a mashup becomes a mixup when one of the pieces stops working quite right :) We'll get it right again shortly. UPDATE3: Ok...we are not an 8 *anymore*. Back to a 5. Strange, for a couple hours we were an 8. I wonder what happened. UPDATE2: Back up UPDATE: Talked with Marc Bernard over at Cloudberry, they are having a service outage out there...should...
We added two new rss feeds for Where's Tim -The text messages people send me - More info -The "Get directions to Tim" requests - More info Eventually, we will also put this data on the site, but for now we have temp pages for the text messaging and directions. We still have the news feed, my location feed and cool people that linked here feed. We will always keep our Where's Tim rss page up to date with new rss information...
Yesterday, EnGraph signed a lease for a real office!! Which means, I no longer will work from home. I like working from home, but I'm ready for a change and getting an office is the right move for the company. Kyle is going to have to drive a bit further than me as the office is in downtown Lawrence. Matt Strausz is going to join us in the office, as he also works from home. Very exciting. I would also like to welcome our new member to the team, David Collins. I can't put a fun little blue line under...
On Where's Tim, you can now see where I was on a specific date. Entering a date in this box: will get you this: Clear History = Removes the history overlay Export History to XML = Generates an XML document with the lat/long data Disable Auto Update = Temporarily disables the Auto Update feature so you can move the map around and browse my previous locations without the map recentering itself Note that the history function doesn't work that great in Firefox. And that getting dates with a lot of data...
Sahil Malik reenforces what I have been telling Kyle (my boss) for years. 20% of my time should be spent doing research. For me this includes reading blogs about technology, creating test apps using new technology and reading books.I am constantly finding new ways to do things and as time permits, I go into our old code and refactor it to make it faster and more efficient. This makes me a stronger asset to EnGraph, makes our applications better and keeps the daily 9-6 fun for me...
Using the WeatherBug API, you can now see my current weather conditions on Where's Tim. The API was easy to use and I also include the data in the Where's Tim Webservice. Calling GetTimsWeather returns an object that contains: Current Temp (.Temp) Todays Rainfall (.Rain) Current Windspeed (.Wind) Wind Direction (.WindDirection) My current zipcode (.ZipCode) URL with more info (.WebLink) Thanks to the My class in VS 2005, you can get my current temperature with one line of code: MsgBox(My.WebServices.EnGra...
I had a great time talking with Jeff and John the other night. As I listened to the podcast, I noticed a few things that I should clarify. Lat/Long = Latitude & Longitude, and x and y way of locating a geographic point on a map. For example, the Lat/Long of Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, KS is -95.25438, 38.954069. We used the AJAX.net library by Michael Schwarz. It is very easy to use and had wanted to talk more about it, but we ran out of time. All you do is modify your web.config, register your...
Kyle was in Salem, New Jersey last week working with one of our clients. He talks about it here
Kyle talks about the EnGraph Christmas party
The Dakota Transit Association is featuring our paratransit management software, ParaPlan in their winter issue. Kyle talks about it here. Technorati Tags:EnGraph, ParaPlan, paratransit...
You can now integrate my current location data into your own applications using the Where's Tim web service. The GetTimsLocation function returns a GPSData structure: GPSData -Lat -Lon -Speed (in MPH) -Since (last active reading - date format) -Place (reverse geocoded location - string) Thanks to the new My class in VS2005, my current speed can be displayed with one line of code: MsgBox(My.WebServices.EnGra... The SendTimAnEmail function accepts 3 parameters (From,...
Pictures of the t-shirts that Kyle made for the EnGraph christmas party. Good stuff. Thanks, Kyle...
Based on a request from one of my .NET heros, Jon Box, we put together an article about Where's Tim, the technologies that we used to create it, the various functions, some source code and the future of GPS. The article is here. Technorati Tags: GPS, Where'sTim, AVL, Google Maps...
Just got back from the EnGraph Christmas party. Kyle made some fantastic Where's Tim shirts. Pictures on the way. Paisano's was delicious, of course. It's nice to sit down with everybody and talk about all the things we have accomplished over the year. As a developer, it's easy to get stuck in the daily grind. We work really hard and create some cool products and it is very nice to work for a company that appreciates all that we do...
MilitantPlatypus linked to Where's Tim today. He says As of this post, he is currently golfing...at 1:00 PM...on a WednesdayI was actually at Carl's house having a marketing meeting. We are looking EnGraph's core products and spinoff products and deciding where to shift our focus to. Of course I think we should focus on GPS Control Room and Web based GPS applications like Where's Tim, but I am a bit partial :) I actually had a guy send me a message via Where's Tim. He said: Hi tim I wanna make one,...
New! Check out the new ClickOnce Where's Tim Tasktray alerter! http://timhibbard.com/where... When I tell people that I keep a GPS enabled Nextel phone in my car and anybody, at anytime can see my current position, they always ask, “Well, aren’t you worried about that?” I always say, “No, one day everybody will use their current location to assist them in their everyday lives.” While most people aren’t as comfortable with this level of transparency, I believe the social and business benefits of...
Kyle asked for it, so now on Where's Tim, you can get directions, and distance from anywhere to my current location. Push the "Get Directions to Tim" button, a dialog box will instruct you to select a location on the map, you click on the map where you currently are (you can still drag and zoom the map), and using AJAX, it will generate a Google map with driving directions and mileage from where you selected to my current location. Like I was talking about before, we want Where's Tim to resemble...
Using Yahoo's REST Map Image API, and EnGraph GPS components, I was able to create Where's Tim Mobile. I've only tested it on my new Samsung A-940, please let me know how it looks on different devices.http://www.timhibba... Technorati Tags: REST, GPS, AVL, EnGraph, Where's Tim, Mobile Development...
So Kyle and I were talking about Where's Tim, and we decided we need to make it more of a replication of a business Automatic Vehicle Locating (AVL) solution. So when we are talking to potential clients about what EnGraph can provide them, we use this page as an example. One of the things that every AVL product needs is messaging. So we added a feature where you can click the icon and in the info window is a place to enter your return address and message. Using AJAX, the message is sent to my cell...
Ontario Emperor writes a nice article about EnGraph AVL software, Cloudberry and Where's Tim. He also "followed" me back from San Angelo here and here :)...
We made it to San Angelo and back (no thanks to Continental Airlines...never flying them again!). Kyle talks about it here. I'm looking forward to Jeff Julian's talk Tuesday night about XML Serialization at KC.net user group...If you're in the Kansas City - Lawrence - Topeka area, make sure you come check it out...
My roommate Evan (you may remember him from here) took my Nextel this afternoon to go look at a new car, I was watching him on Where's Tim and I about died laughing when I saw him miss his turn, pull a quick maneuver and head in the right direction. Next week, Kyle and I are going down to San Angelo, Texas to deliver our EnGraph GPS solution. Sean is going to get a kick out of watching his 30+ vehicles drive around western Texas. Their region covers over 16,000 square miles. Our ParaPlan software...
This is cool. Somebody needs to do something like this for the Kansas City/Lawrence area. Maybe integrate it with Where's Tim, people could truly see where I am :) Maybe I'll do that next month, after we deploy our satellite based Automatic Vehicle Locator down in Texas...
I got an email today from somebody that wants the source code for the "Fly to with Google Earth" function on Where's Tim. Essential, I created a base XML file, used an XMLNodeList to parse and change the base XML file, saved the base XML as a KML file, and used a Response.Redirect to launch the url with the KML file. Here is the base XML file that I used. Note that the file HAS to be saved with the .xml extension. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <kml xmlns="http://earth.go...
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing out of Kansas City talks about submitting your company information to local search engines. I submitted EnGraph's information this morning. They are all free and Yahoo actually has a free website that goes along with it (it's still in beta though and the wizard is very buggy). The only one I didn't do is Superpages because they asked for a credit card to validate identity, which I think is pretty shady. Plus they didn't ask for the credit card until the very last...
Where's Tim has been getting a lot of attention lately. And as I watched Matt drive around the other day, I realized there is something very interesting about seeing him move across the map. When it comes to business applications, knowledge is money. Our ParaPlan Pro application supports geocoding, which means we can transform a street address to a latitude and longitude. So for each of our client's trips, the software knows when that person was supposed to be picked up, and the exact lat/lon coordinates...
Brian Noyes gave a great talk on ClickOnce. Some things I learned: -ClickOnce applications can be deployed from a non-Windows server. The mime types just have to be set correctly -VS 2005 now provides "Debug in Zone" where you debug your application in the same sandbox that your application requests -Adding your deployment server as a trusted domain will not allow your ClickOnce application full trust We have been very happy with our ClickOnce apps from beta1. I can't wait until Nov 7!! Brian also...
I really like the MapStats provided by BlogFlux. They provide a Google Map with the location of people that have hit my blog as well as referrals and pages visited. I'd like to see them open the data up a bit, they have been messing with RSS a bit, but it's not quite right yet. I'd rather have a web service where I could query the hits by a certain date range. That would be cool. Then I could overlay the data and see if the same people that hit my blog also hit Where's Tim and/or EnGraph. That's...
It's official! EnGraph has begun development on the migration of our flagship product, ParaPlan to .NET. We have several little helper applications that are written in .NET, but our main core is still an Access front end hitting a SQL database. We are completely redesigning the user interface, business rules and database structure in the new ParaPlan, code named "Goldstar". We have been talking about and planning this for almost two years, it's very exciting to see it move to the next level. Kyle...
Here you go Jeff, since you like green so much, I made a couple buttons on BlogFlux. Geekswithblogs blogger: Kansas Geek:
Garmin Mobile is a turn-by-turn navigation system for Sprint PCS phones. I've been using it with my Sprint phone for a week or so, and although I am not a big Garmin fan, I am excited about this product. It does everything you would expect from a GPS application. Closest restaurant, grocery store, golf course to your location, distance to your next turn, reanalyzing your route when you deviate from the suggested path. When you get out of Sprint coverage it handles it *ok*. It doesn't download the...
Rich Turner answers the question, "Is .NET Remoting dead?" The bottom line answer is: There are currently no plans whatsoever to remove .NET Remoting from the .NET Frameworks and so will remain available and supported for several decades to come. Good, we like .NET remoting
So Kyle says to me, "I guess its pretty cool to see your location on a Google Map, and that's neat that it uses AJAX to populate the map so I don't have to see a nasty page refresh to see if your location has changed, but what I really want is to have it just automatically give me a new map when your location changes..."So using a simple setInterval javascript function and a variable that is populated on the onkeyup event of a textbox, we made it happen. Just enter the number of seconds you wish...
I took the function that creates the .kml file for Where's Tim and wrapped it in a web service. Contact me for access. If you just want to test it, use “test“/“t... for username/password. Syntax: Dim WS As New KMLCreatorWebService.Mappin... InputStructure As New KMLCreator.KMLInfoInputStru... = “This is a test“InputStructure.D... = “Automatically generated“InputStruct... = 38.945InputStructure.Lon = -94.568InputStructure.UserName...
Using EnGraph's GPSParser, Air-Trak's Cloudberry AVL data and Google Maps, I built a web page that shows my real time location. It took a little over an hour to put together. That shows the ease of EnGraph GPS Management tools and Google Maps. Here's the page - www.timhibbard.com/wheresti...
Clint Batman and Spatially Aware do some cool stuff with .NET mapping controls for a reasonable price. EnGraph spends way too much on maps from MapInfo. We want to set up a meeting sometime next month and figure out exactly what we need to do to convert our applications to use their maps. They are a local company from Lawrence too...
I played with a Ranger unit yesterday from Mentor Engineering. It is a Windows CE device with a large screen and 5 hot keys on the side. They have some with 802.11 and bluetooth, but this one didn't. To connect to a network, we had to insert an ethernet card into the compact flash slot. Overall it seems like a solid device. I didn't see a way to program the hotkeys though, hopefully that's in the SDK. EnGraph is delivering the Ranger next month as an in-vehicle display for one of our GPS solutions...
I've been playing with Air-Trak's automatic vehicle locator, Cloudberry with Nextel. My buddy Matt travels during the day, so he took the Nextel phone with him and is collecting data for us. The positions have been fast and accurate. Air-Trak allows for web service access of the data, which was a big selling point for EnGraph since we have our own GPS applications and just want the data. Their application is good, with neat features, we just don't need it...
In the 12 months before I started blogging, our website received 11,000 hits. In the 12 months after I started blogging, we had 122,000 hits. Now we have Kyle blogging (rss) and we are giving away free applications and .NET controls. I think EnGraph has the best Paratransit software in the market, and hopefully people will keep going to our website and finding out about it...
QuickTime Killer: This application is intended for people that use or consume Sprint Video Mail, as Sprint uses QuickTime for viewing thier movies. (or anybody that hates QuickTime) Of course, as soon as QuickTime is ran, it adds itself to startup, which is very annoying to me. This application will remove QuickTime from start up and kill any running QuickTime processes. This application runs silently at start up and closes itself as soon as it takes care of QuickTime. Download...
DateBox: This control contains a textbox. When the user double click the textbox, a calandar control is displayed. The user can select the date, and the date will be displayed in the text box. The developer can get the date by calling the .TheDate property. Download Just dll SQL Connection String Builder: This control contains 4 textboxes and labels for Date Source, Initial Catalog, UserID and Password. The developer can pass in a valid SQL connection string and the individual elements will be parsed...
We have released SQL Connection String Builder .NET Control. This control is designed for situations where you need your user to enter their own SQL connection info. It has 4 textboxes and labels for Data Source, Initial Catalog, User ID and Password. You can pass in a full connection string and it will parse out the elements and display them in the proper field or you can let the user populate the data and pull out a valid connection string using the .ConnectionString property. The connection string...
I am using VB.net, reworking one of our GPS solutions and I have class A that inherits from class B and implements interface C. I defined Events in interface C and when I raise those events from class A, they do not bubble up to application D that consumes class A. I found some information here, that says I need to define my events in class B and raise them by calling a overridable sub in class B. But I had trouble with that as well. The whole thing is not very intuitive, I wonder if I am missing...
2005 KC Dev Con was good. The speakers were informed and the sessions got to the point quickly. There was the expected Microsoft spin...plugging VS 2005 and making sure we knew that EVERYTHING was being ran inside VirtualPC. There must have been a memo about it...We heard VirtualPC over 40 times I bet. I attended the Smart Client Track where Jon Box talked typed datasets, binding sources, background workers, as well as a bunch of cool stuff you can do with Visual Studio Tools for Office. I'm still...
We all have those friends, those friends that can not go 20 minutes with out getting some spyware or virus. My buddy Evan got a nasty one the other day that hooked ctrl-alt-delete, taskmanager, regedit, msconfig, and also disabled any anti spyware software. So I wrote this simple program that lists all the running processes, provides search links, and allows the process to be killed. It can be downloaded here. Here is a screenshot...
We have several products that rely on VPN, which is obvious based on my many many many posts on VPN. The problem with VPN, is that every configuration is different and since we are not responsible for setting up or manage our clients VPN, it becomes very difficult to support. I think we can provide a more stable product using .NET remoting, so we have been doing research and testing. It is so nice that there are so many smart people out there blogging about it. I'll post some of my initial code out...
We have released DateBox .NET Control. This is the first of many controls we plan to release to the community. We have all these controls that we use during the development of our transportation solutions, that we decided to split them into individual dll's to be used by other developers. This one is pretty straight forward. It is a textbox that captures the double click event and launches a form with the Month Calendar control. Once the user selects the date, it is displayed in the textbox. The...
Yesterday's KC .NET UG meeting was good, especially considering the speaker wasn't there! Jeff Julian and another guy (sorry, I don't know your name. If you read this, please let me know your blog address) talked about using RSS and blogs to get information and drive traffic to your website. Jim Erwin and Doug Butscher sat behind me and we had a good discussion about paired development, I'd like to see EnGraph try that sometime, but deadlines are already tight. Kyle Archer came along and he had a...
This is the one where Kyle Archer talks about how EnGraph became a company
I blogged a couple weeks ago about a SEHException we were getting in our Public Sub Main due to Application.EnableVisualSty... Basically the solution was to insert an Application.DoEvents after the EnableVisualStyles call. Well, that has been working until today (which happens to be the day I have to demo this to our owner). So I made EnableVisualStyles an option in the application. So now the code looks like this: If AppOptions.EnableVisualStyles = True Then Application.EnableVisualSty... End...
We have a logging component that is based on an arraylist, the arraylist is then bound to the datasource of a listbox. The component exports the log to xml and stores data between sessions in xml and all that. It's actually pretty cool and I would like to make it part of a public EnGraph Components package someday...anyways, we've found that at about 2000 records, it starts to slow down significantly. A task that would normally take 2-3 seconds, runs for 15-17 seconds. We're pretty sure it is the...
Following up on a previous post...here is some more information about our GPS solutions. The whole suite is really starting to take shape. We have a little more tweaking to do on our end of the software, and then we deliver it to a client in New Jersey in a couple of weeks...its very exciting...
We are officially a 2004 Existing Business of the Year winner! We went to a ceremony a couple weeks ago in Topeka. More pictures and information is available here and here. It really helps a small company like us when we get recognition here and there
It's my own fault really, but, while installing our software on a client's machine, I attempted to install .NET 2.0 framework and XP Service Pack 2 at the same time. I started the Service Pack 2 installation first, and the 2.0 framework installation completed successfully, but the SP2 installation hung when it was installing FXSAPI.DLL. Task Manager did not open up, and new windows would not open up. Existing windows would work, and I could browse the internet using an already open instance of IE....
We have been cranking on this project for a while. The following press release should show up at www.gislounge.com soon March 22, 2005 Houston, TX and Lawrence, KS Engraph, LLC, a leading developer of transportation software and Advanced Tracking Technologies, Inc. a leading manufacturer of GPS products, are pleased to announce the development of an integrated solution for transportation service agencies and providers. Custom software solutions provided by Engraph using ATTI’s GPS hardware...
For those of you that use Sprint Video Mail, or those that get sick of that quicktime icon in your taskbar, We wrote a little application that removes the quicktime startup information, and stops the background quicktime process. The application is available here Here is the read me info: This application is intended for people that use or consume Sprint Video Mail, as Sprint uses QuickTime for viewing thier movies. (or anybody that hates QuickTime) Of course, as soon as QuickTime is ran, it adds...
My boss asked me today what blog stood for :) I explained the concept, how they helped increase the speed of knowledge and how it was an opportunity to help bring more attention to ParaPlan and EnGraph. He didn't really believe me until I told him that 23% of all external links to our website in 2004 are from my blog...his ears perked up a bit and said "Well, you bloggers keep blogging away!"...
We released our first production ClickOnce application a couple days ago...of course it will remain a beta version until MS releases vs 2005. I was a little concerned that we weren't allowed to release production software yet, but I checked with our ISV Buddy, and he told us as long as our clients were aware that it is beta, we could go ahead with it. So far, one client is using it on four computers. Everything seems to be working well. We done a lot of testing to make sure it runs on different configurations....
Lately Jeff has been talking about ESS. Here is a way that it could help us. We could use it as a means to let our clients know where we are and how we can be reached. We could have an ESS feed that would contain our appointments and future trips. We could then build an aggregater into our applications and our clients could click a link that would say "Where's Tim" or "Where's Kyle" and it would let them know and what number to call to contact us. I posted earlier that some our clients don't always...
A couple days ago, I posted how we finally got a RSS feed up. The problem is since we are hosted on UNIX, I couldn't put a nice blog system like .TEXT up. We are moving to a Windows based server soon, and then I can use something like that. Anyways, I still wanted a RSS file so I found a RSS generator called RSS Builder built by Wim Bokkers. The only problem I had was that RSS Builder didn't support the comments tag. Since we don't have an actual blog, I wanted to put an email address in the comment...
I finally got off my butt and turned our news site into a RSS feed. I don't have an official blog website up for it yet, but its all in the works. Please tune in for company news, paratransit industry news, Goldstar progress, and product releases
It seems simple enough. All I want is to be able to give our clients one phone number to contact us. They would get a message that says press 1 for Kyle, 2 for Tim or 3 to send fax. Then it would forward the call to our cell phone. Ideally, the fax image would be sent to our email. Also, I want to pay $60/month or less, which is our current phone bill with Southwestern Bell. I can't seem to find anybody that does this though...any ideas? I would think that other small companies would like a similar...
We are working on an Office addin for Outlook that : 1) Displays new messages in a window allowing you to quickly reply to an email, or delete it 2) Forwards new mail to your mobile device. 3) Forwards new mail to a SQL Server (based on connection string, stored procedure name and parameters) 4) Control the behavior of EnGraph OutlookPlus from your cell phone via SMS It is still in development and we don't have any documentation for it yet, but if anybody wants to help test when it is a bit closer,...
Migrating from MapInfo to MapPoint is going to save our clients about $1000 per computer. Most clients run our software on 5 - 10 of their computers. Most of the bids we lose are due to cost and we usually only get under bid by less than $5k. We will be able to deliver a better product at a cheaper cost thanks to MapPoint...
Kyle and I are leaving for San Angelo, TX in a couple hours. We will be there for a week doing training and installation. Any suggesstions on things to do down there
Our email and website have been down today and yesterday. Damn earthlink Update: From earthlinks website: Some Webhosting domains beginning with letters E, F, G and H are not resolving properly, resulting in errors with mail delivery and viewing webpages. System Administration is aware of the issue and currently working to resolve. DNS is being reloaded to properly recognize the affected domains That makes no sense to me...I just hope it is fixed soon. Update2: Now the Sprint pictures site is down...
I attended the Lawrence Technology Association meeting today. Our company presented a session on what we do, and another Lawrence company presented some bio-tech info. I was able to sit next to one of the developers from Sprint who told me about their plans to roll out a service that would be able to hand off data and voice calls between PCS and 802.11. That would be nice for people like me that have poor cell coverage in my house and a wireless network...
1) Enter username and password 2) Enter account properties Under the tab enter yourusername/services/metab... in the Page field 3)
I have finished creating Record Activity Tracker, known to me and Kyle as RAT. Our original database doesn't have fields for datestamps. We can't really modifiy the existing structure because it is too hard to update clients, so we created a new table that handles all the record update/create activity. Read the “official“ version on the news page of our Website
Until we deliver this product. It's 3 AM, we've been cranking for 18 hours straight, and I just started a fresh pot of coffee...life is good
Red Bull and Marlboro lights. I'm approaching 16 hours for the day. Our boss is coming in 9 hours to see the “latest” version of ParaPlan. We're cranking away
Well, 500 miles worth of trips between Lawrence and Kansas City, I am mostly moved into my new apartment. I am a mile away from Kyle's place, so it cuts the commute by about 45 minutes :) Road runner won't have my cable hooked up until the 24th, so I am using my cell phone connected to my laptop to post this. I've been thinking alot about our migration from Access to .net. I am trying to decide if we should continue to support Access as a backend or we should make everybody use SQL/MSDE. I think...
Well, after attending DevEssentials in Kansas City and listening to Jeff Julian speak on the importance of community and blogging your individual development efforts, I decided it would be a good idea to start blogging on my own. I have been moblogging for a while, but this is my first official text post. I live in Lawrence, KS and develop in .net, SQL, and VBA Access for a small virtual company. I have been programming ever since my Dad gave me a Mac Plus and ZBasic at the ripe age of 10. I also...