Tim Hibbard

Software Architect for EnGraph software


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November 2005 Entries

Sub domain redirection for Where's Tim


wheres.timhibbard.com now points to http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim.aspx

 

posted @ Wednesday, November 30, 2005 5:40 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Where's Tim ]


Unfortunately, no golf for me today.


MilitantPlatypus linked to Where's Tim today. He says

As of this post, he is currently golfing...at 1:00 PM...on a Wednesday
I 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, can you message me back??
I got your email address and I'd love to talk to you about it.

Mark Wadia said:
Enough golf...slacker.

Funny, maybe I'll try to get a round of golf in tomorrow and then you guys can really give me crap about it. Just don't tell Kyle.

Technorati Tags: Where's Tim, EnGraph

posted @ Wednesday, November 30, 2005 2:51 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ EnGraph Where's Tim Goldstar ]


Popular mashups on ProgrammableWeb.com


John has added a tag for the most popular mashups on ProgrammableWeb. He even has Where's Tim on it!

He talks about it on his blog post here.

posted @ Monday, November 28, 2005 8:22 AM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Mapping Where's Tim ]


Samsung A940 Dislikes


Couple things I don't like about my new Samsung A940.

1) When you close the lid, any running applications (web browser, text messaging) exit. My Sanyo would keep those running until I pushed the End key.
2) When you get close to 200 text messages in your inbox, it will warn you that it will delete old messages once it gets past the 200 limit every time you get a new text message. I know that, just delete them like the Sanyo did.
3) Garmin Mobile doesn't work on it. Not that I really care, Garmin Mobile is a garbage app anyways, it was just cool every now and then.

I do like the better camera (2.0 MP), EV-DO, bluetooth (works like a champ) and the business card scanner (very cool)

posted @ Friday, November 25, 2005 2:45 PM | Feedback (2) | Filed Under [ Mobile ]


Top Ten Ways to Freak Out Your Roommate


I got great roommates, Matt and Ev, so I wouldn't do any of these, but they are hilarious:

10) Collect potatoes. Paint faces on them and give them names. Name one after your roommate. Separate your roommate's potato from the others. Wait a few days, and then bake your roommate's potato and eat it. Explain to your roommate, "He just didn't belong."
9) Move everything to one side of the room. Ask your roommate if he knows how much an elephant weighs, and look at the floor on the empty side of the room with concern.
8) Draw a tiny black line on your nose. Make it bigger every day. Look at it and say, "The hair, it's growing. Growing!"
7) Buy some knives. Sharpen them every night. While you're doing so, look at your roommate and mutter, "Soon, soon...."
6) Collect hundreds of pens and pile them on one side of the room. Keep one pencil on the other side of the room. Laugh at the pencil.
5) Tell your roommate, "I've got an important message for you." Then pretend to faint. When you recover, say you can't remember what the message was. Later on, say, "Oh, yeah, I remember!" Pretend to faint again. Keep this up for several weeks.
4) While your roommate is out, glue your shoes to the ceiling. When your roommate walks in, sit on the floor, hold your head, and moan.
3) Make a sandwich. Don't eat it, leave it on the floor. Ignore the sandwich. Wait until your roommate gets rid of it, and then say, "Hey, where the heck is my sandwich!?" Complain loudly that you are hungry.
2) Every time your roommate walks in yell, "Hooray! You're back!" as loud as you can and dance around the room for five minutes. Afterwards, keep looking at your watch and saying, "Shouldn't you be going somewhere?"
1) Talk back to your Rice Krispies. All of a sudden, act offended, throw the bowl on the floor and kick it. Refuse to clean it up, explaining, "No, I want to watch them suffer."

From Basicjokes

posted @ Wednesday, November 23, 2005 5:35 PM | Feedback (3) |


Cool Google Maps mashup


Found this on GoogleMapki: James Martin's "Where I've been". I really like how he uses 2 Google Maps to zoom in. Kind of like a scrapbook version of Where's Tim.

posted @ Wednesday, November 23, 2005 3:52 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Mapping ]


Downtown Lawrence to get free wi-fi


Thought From Kansas reports: Lawrence Freenet wants to provide free wireless internet access from 6th to 11th street on Vermont, Mass, and New Hampshire by June of 2006. Good deal.

Technorati Tags: Lawrence, WiFi

posted @ Wednesday, November 23, 2005 8:28 AM | Feedback (0) |


San Angelo, v4


I'm headed back to San Angelo, Tx Sunday morning.  This time it's just me and I'm driving.  You can watch me travel through Big 12 south country on Where's Tim (send me a message if I look lost, I probably am!).  Our Window's CE messaging application is done and we've worked with Cloudberry to get them more GPS data for less money (every byte counts when you're spending $0.66 / KB). 

It's going to be a good week.  And I'm really looking forward to that club sandwich from Zentner's Daughter.

posted @ Saturday, November 12, 2005 8:14 AM | Feedback (3) | Filed Under [ EnGraph GPS Where's Tim Mobile ]


Kyle wants more


Kyle's response to the new Get Directions to Tim feature: cool, but not enough. He wants to be able to enter an address and have it generate a route. That makes sense. A business AVL application would use addresses rather than lat/long.

I'll see what I can do. I'm starting to run out of screen space on Where's Tim, I wish I was a better UI designer...ugh. I've always wanted to learn how to do those "virtual" windows that appear on a webpage. You know, like those annoying ads and request for surveys, or like on my Google home page when you push "add content" and a sidebar slides open. It can't be that hard to create.

posted @ Friday, November 11, 2005 12:54 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ .NET GPS Mapping Where's Tim ]


Get Directions to Tim


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 a business AVL application. This helps get us a step closer to that goal.

Here is the VB.NET code:

_
Public Function GetDirectionsURL(ByVal lat As String, ByVal lon As String) As String
    Try
       
'class that handles my current gps location
       
Dim myLoc As MyLocation.Loc = GPS.GetLocation
       
'generate url

       
Dim RV As String

        RV = "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from%3A+" & lat.ToString & ",+" & lon.ToString
        RV += "+to%3A"
        RV += "+" & myLoc.lat & ",+" & myLoc.lon

       
Return RV
   
Catch ex As Exception
       
Return "http://maps.google.com"
   
EndTry

End Function

The Javascript code:

var lstner;

function getdirections()
{
   alert("Click on your location on the map");
   lstner = GEvent.addListener(map, 'click', function(overlay, point){
      document.getElementById("btnGetDirections").value = "Working...";
      document.getElementById("btnGetDirections").disabled = true;
      var x = point.x;
      var y = point.y;
      wherestim.GetDirectionsURL(y,x, getdirections_callback);
      });
}

function getdirections_callback(response)
{
   var av = response.value;
   document.getElementById("btnGetDirections").value = "Get Directions to Tim";
   document.getElementById("btnGetDirections").disabled = false;
   GEvent.removeListener(lstner);
   //window.navigate(av); wasn't working on firefox
   window.location=av; 
}



Technorati Tag's: , , , , ,

posted @ Friday, November 11, 2005 7:40 AM | Feedback (2) | Filed Under [ EnGraph .NET GPS Mapping Where's Tim ]


Where's Tim goes mobile!


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.timhibbard.com/wherestimmobile.aspx

Technorati Tags: REST, GPS, AVL, EnGraph, Where's Tim, Mobile Development

posted @ Tuesday, November 08, 2005 7:36 PM | Feedback (2) | Filed Under [ EnGraph .NET Where's Tim Mobile ]


News feed for Where's Tim


The RSS feed for Where's Tim wasn't working quite right. It's back now.

http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim.xml

Also, if you need a quick and dirty Windows application to create RSS feeds, check out RSS Builder. It is an open source program and he is looking for developers to help him out.

posted @ Tuesday, November 08, 2005 5:53 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Where's Tim ]


Messaging with Where's Tim


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 phone and returns a confirmation when it has been delivered.

So far, I have only been able to get messaging to work inside of Internet Explorer. Firefox and Safari seem to choke on it. If any web gurus want to help me out, I would appreciate it. I also had trouble with the Yahoo version that I am working on. I think it has something to do with the button type I am using, but I'm not sure.

In the future, we also want to add a searchable history, geofencing with alerts, MapPoint web service compatibility, ThinkGeo compatibility, speed exception reporting, idle time exception reporting, and anything else Kyle thinks of.

Technorati Tags: AVL, GPS, Where's Tim, EnGraph

posted @ Tuesday, November 08, 2005 6:56 AM | Feedback (7) | Filed Under [ EnGraph Mapping Where's Tim ]


Playing with Yahoo maps API


I'm trying to get Google Maps and Yahoo Maps to play well together with Where's Tim. Not quite there yet, but getting close.

http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim2.aspx

Trying to work in URL query strings too:
http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim2.aspx?google
http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim2.aspx?yahoo

Technorati Tags: Yahoo Maps, Google Maps, Where's Tim

posted @ Monday, November 07, 2005 6:05 PM | Feedback (6) | Filed Under [ Mapping Where's Tim ]