Tim Hibbard

Software Architect for EnGraph software


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October 2005 Entries

In case you have not heard...


Is there a geekswithblogs blogger that hasn't talked about the VS 2005 release yet? :)

It's cool to see so much excitement. Let's build some killer apps.

posted @ Friday, October 28, 2005 10:01 AM | Feedback (2) | Filed Under [ .NET ]


Google Maps Tabbed Info Window


Mike Williams built a tutorial on how to use the nice tabbed info windows on Google Maps like they have on Google Local. He also started a discussion in this Google Group. It looks a bit complicated for a non-web guy like me, but eventually I want to work these into Where's Tim.

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posted @ Thursday, October 27, 2005 1:27 PM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ .NET GPS Mapping Where's Tim ]


Visual Studio 2005 on MSDN


Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition is now available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. The bandwidth is not too bad yet.

Oh happy days :)

posted @ Thursday, October 27, 2005 9:14 AM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ .NET ]


WhatIsMyIp is listening


One of the guys from WhatIsMyIp found my blog from their webstats page. I guess this post that I wrote about them is sending enough traffic their way to get some attention. Maybe they will start resolving host names to IP addresses on that cool Google map and get me to dump Geobytes.

posted @ Thursday, October 27, 2005 6:58 AM | Feedback (7) | Filed Under [ Mapping ]


Stick with Sanyo?


I've been waiting for the MM-9000 by Sanyo for months, but then I see the MM-A940 from Samsung. I've always been a Sanyo guy. But I want bluetooth, BizCard Scan, and 2.0 megapixel camera...it's about to be decision time, any suggestions?

posted @ Tuesday, October 25, 2005 6:17 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Mobile ]


Article about EnGraph


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 :)

posted @ Monday, October 24, 2005 7:59 AM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ EnGraph GPS Where's Tim ]


Back from San Angelo


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.

posted @ Monday, October 24, 2005 7:46 AM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ EnGraph ]


San Angelo


Kyle Archer and I are off to San Angelo, Texas this morning...watch us here.

posted @ Sunday, October 16, 2005 6:17 AM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ EnGraph GPS Where's Tim ]


More on Access 2003 Runtime


dlrider left a comment to my post about Access 2003 security:

I came across this page looking for this solution. Thanks. I know nothing about Runtime (and the MS site isn't clear to me) so I thought I'd ask the knowledgeable... If an application is put together as a runtime package, can a user with full Access open it as a normal .mdb and make changes?


The simple answer is yes. The user accessing the .mdb via the runtime can view your Access application as if they were using the full version of Access 2003. The limitation of the runtime, is that the user can not edit the forms, queries, database, etc...

posted @ Friday, October 14, 2005 7:00 AM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ MS Office ]


Where's Tim and ProgrammableWeb get linked from Czech Republic


www.zive.cz wrote an article about AJAX and Google Maps and linked to Where's Tim and John Musser. It's all written in Czech and I couldn't find a translator that actually translated it, so I hope they are saying nice things.

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posted @ Tuesday, October 11, 2005 5:13 PM | Feedback (0) |


Getting ready for Texas


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 knows where the vehicles are supposed to be and the route that they are supposed to take. We should set up SMS/email alerts when a driver deviates from the suggested route. Maybe we will make that a version 2.0 feature.

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posted @ Tuesday, October 11, 2005 2:40 PM | Feedback (1) | Filed Under [ EnGraph .NET GPS Mapping Where's Tim ]


WhatIsMyIp = NotQuiteGoodEnough


Mike Pegg and Lance Robinson report that WhatIsMyIp.net is now using Google Maps to show an IP's location. It's nice visually, but it doesn't resolve host names to an IP address. Most of the IP addresses that I need to locate are in the host name format. It's not that hard to add the functionality, here's a free code sample. I'm going to stick with Geobytes.

posted @ Friday, October 07, 2005 2:22 PM | Feedback (4) |


People hate quicktime


Well's, One Stack Mind, and tayker all say the same thing, "I hate quicktime". Maybe you guys should check out quicktime killer.

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posted @ Wednesday, October 05, 2005 10:49 AM | Feedback (44) | Filed Under [ EnGraph .NET ]


Google Maps + Web cams


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.

posted @ Wednesday, October 05, 2005 9:32 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ EnGraph .NET GPS Mapping Where's Tim ]


Pete wants Ruby On Rails developers


Pete Cashmore is looking for Ruby On Rails developers...see his blog post for more.

posted @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005 7:13 PM | Feedback (0) |


KML Creator source code


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.google.com/kml/2.0">
  <Placemark>
    <Snippet>Tim Hibbard's real time location</Snippet>
    <description>Location of Tim Hibbard, Software Architect for EnGraph</description>
    <name>Tim Hibbard</name>
    <LookAt>
      <longitude>Replace Me later</longitude>
      <latitude>Replace Me later</latitude>
      <range>3000</range>
      <tilt>60</tilt>
      <heading>0</heading>
    </LookAt>
    <visibility>1</visibility>
    <Style>
      <IconStyle>
        <Icon>
          <href>http://www.timhibbard.com/images/mesmall.jpg(enter your own url here)</href>
          <w>-1</w>
          <h>-1</h>
        </Icon>
     </IconStyle>
   </Style>
   <Point>
     <extrude>1</extrude>
     <altitudeMode>relativeToGround</altitudeMode>
     <coordinates>replace with lat,replace with lon,0</coordinates>
   </Point>
 </Placemark>
</kml>


I then use this function to populate the XML document:

Private Function GenerateKML(ByVal lat as Double, ByVal lon as Double) As String
    Dim xDoc As New System.Xml.XmlDocument
   'Change this url to where you saved your base XML doc
   xDoc.Load("http://www.timhibbard.com/kml/base.xml")

    Dim nowticks As String = Now.Ticks.ToString
   'creates a new unique name to save
    Dim tmpFileName As String = Server.MapPath("kml\") & nowticks & ".xml"

   'replaces the longitude tag with the lon parameter
   Dim MyNode As System.Xml.XmlNodeList = xDoc.GetElementsByTagName("longitude")
   MyNode.Item(0).InnerText = lon.ToString

   'replaces the latitude tag with the lon parameter
   MyNode = xDoc.GetElementsByTagName("latitude")
   MyNode.Item(0).InnerText = lat.ToString

   'replaces the coordinates tag with actual data
   MyNode = xDoc.GetElementsByTagName("coordinates")
   MyNode.Item(0).InnerText = lon.ToString & ", " & lat.ToString & ", 0"

   'saves the file as an XML document
   xDoc.Save(tmpFileName)
   Dim actualFileName As String = tmp.TrimEnd(".xml".ToCharArray) & ".kml"
   'renames the file as a KML file that Google Earth can understand
   Rename(tmpFileName, actualFileName)

   Return "http://www.timhibbard.com/kml/" & nowticks & ".kml"

End Function


Please let me know if this helps or if you use it in an application.

posted @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005 4:32 PM | Feedback (2) | Filed Under [ EnGraph .NET GPS Where's Tim ]


Latest BlogFlux cities via Javascript


It's not exactly what I'm looking for, but it's getting closer. Via javascript you can view up to the last 25 cities from BlogFlux. You can then create a web site like this (which is acting funny right now...I think it choked on this city: 't Goy, Utrecht, Netherlands). AhmedF blogs about it here.

posted @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005 2:25 PM | Feedback (1) |


Congrats to Kyle


Kyle Archer got engaged this past weekend to a great girl named Allie!!

posted @ Monday, October 03, 2005 10:50 PM | Feedback (1) |


Location XML Standard


I don't know much about XML standards, so maybe Jeff can help me out with this. I think there should be a location based standard that RSS aggregators and future websites (like Where's Tim) can consume. There would only need to be a few items needed.
- Title of location
- latitude
- longitude
- Time stamp
- Web link

People could syndicate their current location, companies could syndicate their store locations. Cell phone companies could have a standard data format for their location based services. As location based programs become more and more popular, it would be nice to have a standard to fall back on.

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posted @ Monday, October 03, 2005 7:09 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ GPS Mapping Where's Tim ]