Introduction, and: Re: an idea: GPS blog?
On Tuesday 23 January 2007 10:51, Oleg L. Sverdlov wrote: Videoblogging has its niche, but how about a small application that remembers where you've been during a day , and how long; and then visualizes everything in form of nice coloured curves, and publishes to your blog? Hi, I've been thinking the same thing, if you are talking about colored curves over a map that is. Maybe I can take this opportunity to introduce myself: I'm Richard Bennett, I'm an independent software developer living in Belgium, but doing a lot of my work in the US through my partnership company, GRITechnologies.com . Some years ago I made an application for tracking snow plows by GPS. This was in the days before prevalent wifi, and worked by sending the GPS coordinates back to the server in small dumps, by SMS or by GPRS (or the US equivalent). Something similar should be perfectly possible for travelers using the Neo... send in an SMS every hour with the coordinates, and prompt the user if they would like to add a descriptive text about the area they are in. Alternatively it could just store the coordinates for a longer time and send one SMS for a whole days travel. Before getting too excited I thought I'd better wait and see how well the GPS works though, because if you have to hold the phone up in the air and wait for 2 minutes for it to sync it won't be very user-friendly... Here are some screenshots of the app we made: http://www.gritechnologies.com/products/webowl/screenshots/ I also wrote a few papers on tracking GPS using SVG too: http://www.gritechnologies.com/papers/gps_tracking_with_svg/ http://www.gritechnologies.com/papers/gps_tracking_with_svg/part2.html http://www.gritechnologies.com/papers/gps_tracking_with_svg/svg_and_base64.html (The SVG examples won't work unless you have Adobe's SVG plugin version 3) So yes... I've been thinking of doing this, but need to see if the GPS performs fast enough to keep it user-friendly. Other work I'm doing for the US Census Bureau is displaying statistics on a lightweight web-mapping client, see: http://lehdmap.dsd.census.gov/ (try 'anoka' for a test lookup) I have the interface working on my Nokia E61 on the Opera and the Nokia browser, but the lack of a mouse makes selecting arbitrary areas difficult. The Neo with GPS and a touch-screen might be ideal for data input... The mapping data could be loaded from a micro-SD card, or cached from a bluetooth/USB network, and surveyors could annotate the data in the field, either in realtime, or store and sync. It would also be an option to load the mapping data locally, and the data overlays over GPRS. This is just a bit of RD, I don't know if it will work out or not, but it's fun to play around with. We're using the Mapserver as the back-end (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/), so if there are any people interested in working on mapping and Openmoko, we can setup a wiki page or something to help focus our efforts, or at least link to the various projects. Cheers, Richard ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: an idea: GPS blog?
Great ideas - it would be worth checking out existing services to tie into, such as Plazes (http://plazes.com), which has blog widgets (see my blog sidebar http://highearthorbit.com) There are also Geo-plugins for blogging engines, such as GeoPress for WordPress (http://georss.org/geopress), that the Neo could publish location, history, photos to. Or just geotag photos and upload to Flickr/SmugMug/Panoramio/Zooomr/et al. GeoTracing (http://www.geotracing.com/) is a very cool project that spawned GeoSkating GeoSailing, much like what you're suggesting. And Bliin (http://www.bliin.com/) is an upcoming project to do very advanced tracking/friend finding, etc. See the OpenMoKo wiki for some of these links and to add your own ideas! http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/OpenMoko/ideas/GPSFriends http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/OpenMoko/Software But as Richard Bennet pointed out - a lot of the actual 'ability' will depend on the accuracy of the GPS that the phone apps sees. Andrew On 1/23/07, Jan Van Vlaenderen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would be a nice feature when doing geocaching. Everybody can see the mistakes you did :-) On 1/23/07, Michele Manzato [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nice to keep as a personal record, BTW that's done in several time tracking apps. But who's willing to tell the world where (s)he usually hangs out and when during the day? Cheers Michele Da: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Per conto di Oleg L. Sverdlov Inviato: martedì 23 gennaio 2007 10.51 A: OpenMoko Oggetto: an idea: GPS blog? Videoblogging has its niche, but how about a small application that remembers where you've been during a day , and how long; and then visualizes everything in form of nice coloured curves, and publishes to your blog? -- Best regards, Oleg. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.410 / Virus Database: 268.17.4/644 - Release Date: 22/01/2007 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.410 / Virus Database: 268.17.4/644 - Release Date: 22/01/2007 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Andrew Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED]42.4266N x 83.4931W http://highearthorbit.com Northville, Michigan, USA ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: an idea: GPS blog?
Speaking about _useful_ solutions, I'd like to see user-submitted map of speed cameras. Like when the phone is in car-cradle, then half of the screen transforms in one big button. You see a camera, you tap on screen. When the car is waiting on red light, the phone uploads data to a server and downloads updated and processed information about cameras locations. Next time you're approaching a camera, the phone will play alarm sound. O. Richard Franks wrote: On 1/23/07, Oleg L. Sverdlov wrote: Videoblogging has its niche, but how about a small application that remembers where you've been during a day , and how long; and then visualizes everything in form of nice coloured curves, and publishes to your blog? I'm definitely looking forward to something like this. What I'd find useful is something which uploads the GPS traces to my home machine database, then makes that data available to other sources through access control. 1) So I can select an area downtown, and see my most (or least) favourite places or travelled routes through it for the time period of my choice. 2) If I'm going to a planned meeting with a Neo-Owning-Friend (NOF?), the Neo could check my agenda and automatically enable Location-Sharing until we find each other. Actually, as there are a bunch of GPS Google API mashups out there already - if the Neo can run Google Maps then it will be quite easy to integrate access control, editing, uploading (to home/openstreetmap/etc), quering home machine DB, all into the same webapp. Richard ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: an idea: GPS blog?
Richard, nice idea.The upload back to home looks like a necessary feature. BTW Speaking about _useful_ solutions, I'd like to see user-submitted map of speed cameras. Like when the phone is in car-cradle, then half of the screen transforms in one big button. You see a camera, you tap on screen. When the car is waiting on red light, the phone uploads data to a server and downloads updated and processed information about cameras locations. Next time you're approaching a camera, the phone will play alarm sound. But what's important for new phone popularity, is teenagers market, so the more bells and whistles, the better. Cool factor. O. Richard Franks wrote: On 1/23/07, Oleg L. Sverdlov wrote: Videoblogging has its niche, but how about a small application that remembers where you've been during a day , and how long; and then visualizes everything in form of nice coloured curves, and publishes to your blog? I'm definitely looking forward to something like this. What I'd find useful is something which uploads the GPS traces to my home machine database, then makes that data available to other sources through access control. 1) So I can select an area downtown, and see my most (or least) favourite places or travelled routes through it for the time period of my choice. 2) If I'm going to a planned meeting with a Neo-Owning-Friend (NOF?), the Neo could check my agenda and automatically enable Location-Sharing until we find each other. Actually, as there are a bunch of GPS Google API mashups out there already - if the Neo can run Google Maps then it will be quite easy to integrate access control, editing, uploading (to home/openstreetmap/etc), quering home machine DB, all into the same webapp. Richard ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: an idea: GPS blog?
The big problem with a lot of these applications being suggested is it will require back end servers to store the data. I'm yet to see anyone suggest SAAS pricing models for FIC applications on a monthly/annual basis or is everyone on this list still thinking that open source means free. Regards, Dean Collins Cognation Pty Ltd [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +1-212-203-4357 Ph +1-917-207-3420 Mb +61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial). From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Oleg L. Sverdlov Sent: Tuesday, 23 January 2007 8:34 AM Cc: OpenMoko Subject: Re: an idea: GPS blog? Richard, nice idea.The upload back to home looks like a necessary feature. BTW Speaking about _useful_ solutions, I'd like to see user-submitted map of speed cameras. Like when the phone is in car-cradle, then half of the screen transforms in one big button. You see a camera, you tap on screen. When the car is waiting on red light, the phone uploads data to a server and downloads updated and processed information about cameras locations. Next time you're approaching a camera, the phone will play alarm sound. But what's important for new phone popularity, is teenagers market, so the more bells and whistles, the better. Cool factor. O. Richard Franks wrote: On 1/23/07, Oleg L. Sverdlov wrote: Videoblogging has its niche, but how about a small application that remembers where you've been during a day , and how long; and then visualizes everything in form of nice coloured curves, and publishes to your blog? I'm definitely looking forward to something like this. What I'd find useful is something which uploads the GPS traces to my home machine database, then makes that data available to other sources through access control. 1) So I can select an area downtown, and see my most (or least) favourite places or travelled routes through it for the time period of my choice. 2) If I'm going to a planned meeting with a Neo-Owning-Friend (NOF?), the Neo could check my agenda and automatically enable Location-Sharing until we find each other. Actually, as there are a bunch of GPS Google API mashups out there already - if the Neo can run Google Maps then it will be quite easy to integrate access control, editing, uploading (to home/openstreetmap/etc), quering home machine DB, all into the same webapp. Richard ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: an idea: GPS blog?
On 1/23/07, Dean Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The big problem with a lot of these applications being suggested is it will require back end servers to store the data. I'm yet to see anyone suggest SAAS pricing models for FIC applications on a monthly/annual basis or is everyone on this list still thinking that open source means free. I'm not discounting this, but I'll be opening up a port or two on my firewall first - most home-use router/gateway boxes support port forwarding quite easily now - and with something like xampp, even most windows-based folks can set up a database server on their home machine quite easily too. To connect the 'home-servers' together, you could use dynamic dns or a centralised server which takes a known OpenMoko-ID and spits back the current IP/Port and/or operational status. Richard ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: an idea: GPS blog?
Op dinsdag 23 januari 2007 14:55, schreef Dean Collins: The big problem with a lot of these applications being suggested is it will require back end servers to store the data. I'm yet to see anyone suggest SAAS pricing models for FIC applications on a monthly/annual basis or is everyone on this list still thinking that open source means free. I think most of us are thinking about home-servers. I wrote a simple php-script on my server that takes the arguments (GPS-coordinates) of a GET-request and puts those in my postgreSQL-database. Then another, equally simple, php-script pulls those coordinates out of the database and shows them graphically on a jpg/png of my choosing for anyone to view. Optionally you could use the Google Maps API. All of this is should be do-able on anything starting from a virtual hosting account, even storing the data in a database is optional, just use a textfile. I've tested this setup by sending FlightGear's nmea-output through a bash-script to the input.php and it works beautifully! All I need now is a small application on my mobile to make the HTTP GET-request like http://www.example.com/webgps/input.php?lat=51.439123lon=5.477123 unfortunately, my programming skills are limited to the most basic php and bash. Oliver ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community