CEO for EnGraph software
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Yahoo Live launched last night. It is basically a social network of webcams. They talk more about it on their blog. Once I saw it on digg this morning, I configured my "live" in about 20 seconds. It automatically pickup my webcam and started broadcasting. My page is here, I doubt I'll keep it up, but it's fun to play with and it fits perfectly with my exhibitionism :) They allow you embed your webcam, so I'm going to try that here: Technorati tags: Yahoo Live, Where's Tim ......
I finally fixed the Get History issue that hasn't been working on Where's Tim for a while now. Apparently, the Google Maps API doesn't like it when you call removeOverlay with an uninitialized parameter. http://timhibbard.com/where... Technorati tags: Where's Tim, Google Maps API, removeOverlay ......
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 ......
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 ......
Dru was kind enough to tag me on how I could be a better developer. I think that in addition to being a better developer, I also need to deliver better applications. We all have different reasons for our geeky ways, and mine is to create applications that save people time. So here is my list: Start giving more talks - I really enjoy giving my talks on Ajax.net and Real time GPS implications, but I'm not an expert on AJAX and most people find my opinions on GPS to be a bit "abrasive". I need to isolate ......
The Google Maps API blog talks about adding driving directions to their API. This is something that I am excited about adding to Where's Tim. I've had directions to me on my real time GPS site for a while (see the post here), but I've always just shelled out a url to maps.google.com. Now I can retain the users of that feature on my site and not have to send them away (hoping that they will come back). This is also big for the mashup "industry" as well. Visually understanding where an object resides ......
I've finally made it! Google Suggest will recommend "Tim Hibbard" after typing "tim hib" and will recommend "Where's Tim Hibbard" after typing "wheres ti". :) Technorati tags: Google Suggest, Narcissistic ......
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 ......
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 ......
The guys over at NavXS have just released a new Windows Mobile client for their social geocoding network. Feel free to add me as a friend after you download the software. My user ID is tim@timhibbard.com and it is directly tied to data from Where's Tim. Technorati tags: NavXS, Social Geocoding, Where's Tim ......
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 ......
Last night, I set up Matt Strausz of SmartStart up with Live Writer and Flickr4Writer. He has already started using it on his latest post about their Ignition Interlock device. Disclaimer - I built Matt's site a couple years ago (including the very cool "Find a shop" Google Map app) in exchange for links to Where's Tim, random car repairs and a case of beer :) Technorati tags: Matt Strausz, SmartStart of Kansas, Live Writer, Ignition Interlock ......
Where's Tim hasn't been getting much attention the last couple of months. A little bit here and there, but nothing like the Digg days of last summer. I've got several requests for information the last week or so though. Joab Jackson (who did a National Geographic story last October) is working on an article. Ronan Fitzgerald (who did an article in The Guardian) has been emailing me about the Social Geocoding studs NavXS. Davey Winder is also working on a mashup article. I'll post the links to these ......
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 ......
The Google Maps API blog talks about adding support for GeoRSS enabled feeds on Google Maps. That means you can take the Where's Tim Messaging Feed and view the last 50 message people sent me on Google Maps You can also take my location feed and view it on Google Maps. Since my location feed contains Yahoo Maps, clicking on the GIcon will show a Yahoo Map on the Google Map! Technorati tags: GeoRSS, Where's Tim, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps ......
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, ......
Yesterday it was 74 degrees and sunny, and I went running wearing a short sleeve shirt. This morning, it was snowing on the drive to work. Hopefully, this is winter's last gasp of air and spring is right around the corner. Technorati tags: Weather, Lawrence Kansas, snow ......
Ken Hoetmer - who has his own Where's Tim - has started a new company called Spatial North. He talks more about it on his blog. Good luck Ken! Technorati tags: Ken Hoetmer, Spatial North, Where's Tim ......
My girlfriend got me a Sirius radio for Valentine's day. More specifically, a sportster 4 with pause, rewind and fast forward. I can set my favorite teams and it alerts me when they are playing. I can set favorite bands or songs and it will alert me when a station is playing it. It even has a built in FM modulator so I don't have to hard-wire it to my stereo. Plug and play, it just works! My Saturn is officially geeked out now. It already had the GeeksWithBlogs sticker, my TomTom and Where's Tim. ......
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 ......
Pete Cashmore, who writes a blog you should subscribe to if you care at all about web trends, wants you to insult his posts. And he is going to pay you $500 to do so. whoever leaves the most amusingly witty derogatory comment on specific Mashable posts between now and Friday, January 5th will win $500 paid by Paypal or check. Cursing isn’t allowed, but everything else is fair game. Here is a good post to start slamming. What a great promotion effort! Technorati tags: Pete Cashmore, Mashable ......
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 ......
Carl is driving to Colorado and wants people to watch his progress with GPS and send him text messages. Click here to see him on a Google Map and click the icon on the map once you get there to send him a text message. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, GPS, Google Maps ......
Somebody from Sprint must have read my blog post about not being able to receive text messages from Where's Tim. Either that or somebody decided that we were not sending spam through our servers. Either way, I am now getting text messages people send me on Where's Tim. I also publish these messages in a GeoRSS enabled RSS feed. Since the feed does have GeoRSS, you can even view the last 100 messages on Where's Tim. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, GeoRSS, Sprint ......
Google Maps released a new version of their street maps this morning to users of their API. This adds city boundary shading and a bunch of new streets to Lawrence, KS. They have had this version on the maps.google.com page for a while and just pushed it out to the API. Check out Where's Tim for the changes. Technorati tags: Google Maps, Where's Tim, API, Lawrence Kansas ......
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 ......
Iain Martin (a student on the post graduate diploma in journalism at Cardiff University) wrote an article about the mainstreaming of geography and geotagging journalism. He talked briefly about Where's Tim and included some of my quotes on how GIS will impact various industries. He even mentioned Social Geocoding. Well, it was in a quote from me, but he still published it! He also spoke of Jerome Dobson and his concerns of loss of privacy. It's funny how we always get mentioned together in articles. ......
A couple weeks ago, I blogged about Sprint blocking my SMTP server from sending text messages to my cell phone from Where's Tim. After I changed the code to send messages people send me through a different mail server, it worked fine for a week or two. I noticed last week that they were not coming through again and sure enough, they blocked me again. I apologize to anybody that has sent me a text message on Where's Tim and I haven't replied. I still kind of get the messages via the RSS feed, but ......
The GIS folks at Kansas University have put the slide decks from GIS Day 2006 online. Hopefully they will have the videos posted soon. My slide deck (in pdf) is here. Here is my wrapup post for the day. Technorati tags: GIS Day, Kansas University ......
A couple French websites talked about Where's Tim today. After translating them to English, I was a bit surprised to read the negative/paranoid connotation of the comments. Maybe the intent was lost in translation, but one guy mentioned radio controlled missiles and burglary. Translations here, here and here to see comments. I have not been to France or hung out with anyone that has spent an extended time in France. That being said, I wonder if something about the French culture or government spawns ......
Google Maps works by asynchronously downloading tiles of map/satellite data as you navigate around the map. Lately, I've noticed that it has been rendering the wrong tiles in Where's Tim occasionally. I've only noticed this in FireFox though. Anybody else seeing this? Technorati tags: Google Maps, Where's Tim ......
I'm working on an article for a special personal tracking issue of a magazine. It's due next Monday and I would like some other people to look it over before I submit it. If you have some spare time this Thanksgiving weekend, send me an email and I'll send you a copy to proofread. Warning, it's mostly about Where's Tim and Social Geocoding, so if you're tired of reading about that on this blog, you're probably not going to want to read this :) Technorati tags: Writing, Where's Tim, Social Geocoding ......
When you send me a text message on Where's Tim, I just send an email to my cell phone at myphonenumber@messaging.spr... Turns out that Sprint didn't like that and block messages that came from my mail server. So I switched it to send through a different server. I wonder why they cared? I guess they saw a lot of traffic coming from the same SMTP server and assumed it was spam. [Update here] Technorati tags: Where's Tim, Sprint, SMS ......
You're going to be hearing a lot more about the Social Geocoding service, NavXS. It's MySpace meets Where's Tim. These guys do it right. They have a Windows Mobile client, a Java client, Google Maps interface and a rock solid permissions model. They also have a blog here. Technorati tags: NavXS, Social Geocoding, GPS, location sharing, Where's Tim ......
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 ......
You heard it here first. Social Geocoding is a social network with a layer of location awareness. A million little Where's Tim's running around interacting with each other with "friends list" based permissions. NavXS, Dodgeball and Loopt are all examples. Come listen to my talk at KU tomorrow if you want to learn more. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, Social Geocoding, Social Networks, NavXS, Dodgeball, Loopt, Kansas University, GIS Day ......
Rachael King from Business Week writes about Where's Tim: Meet Tim Hibbard. It's 11:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night and Hibbard is currently near the intersection of Jacob and Ranch Streets in Lawrence, Kan. It's a cool 50 degrees outside. He's not moving around now, but he's traveled a total of 28.42 miles today. And no, I'm not stalking him. Very cool. She also talked with John Musser of ProgrammableWeb (THE place for web API's). He talks about the article on his blog. Technorati tags: Where's Tim, ......
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 ......
Manish Lachwani from 411Sync sent me an email this morning about his new service that allows you to send a text message to 411Sync with a couple of lyrics from a song and they will send you a text back with the artist and title of the song. For example, send a text message to 415-676-8397 with "getlyric stranger flowers yet" and it will return 8:16 AM by 311. "getlyric should have done something but i've done it enough" to get Blue and Yellow by The Used. I can see being useful when listening to ......
In CNN's article about .NET 3.0 RTM, they quote Ben Noonan from Burton Snowboards: Now that our pages are enabled with Atlas, we've seen nearly double the traffic. That is a misleading statement. By nature, adding AJAX elements to your site is going to increase traffic. Every page that loads asynchronously (where the initial page load is just the structure and then the data loads in front of your eyes) is charging many more hits to the server. For example, on Where's Tim, I initially load the map ......
Tim from GPS Review revisits the idea of submitting a GPS tracklog to your insurance company to prove you are a good driver in exchange for better rates. This particular program is in the UK called "Pay as you Drive". David Starr talked about a similar program in Canada a couple months ago. I still think this is a good idea. In order for GPS to be profitable in the consumer market, the end person being tracked must be in full control. In both of these cases, participation is voluntary and the consumer ......
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 ......
Heartland Developers Conference 2006 in Omaha was a huge success! Joe Olson, Phil Wolfe and everybody else involved did a great job getting everything put together. Day 1: Joe Stagner did the opening keynote on Federated Logic. Basically using data sources that live anywhere on the internet with ASMX web services. He even talked a little bit about GPS and web based mapping solutions. Something that is near and dear to my heart. Next, I went to Dave Donaldson's talk on Power Programming with Attributes. ......
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 ......
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 ......
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.
Joab Jackson published an article in National Geographic that give a very basic introduction of GeoRSS and a couple examples of it's use. One of the examples was Where's Tim!! GeoRSS is a way to add geographic information to an RSS feed. Most generically, it is used to add a latitude / longitude point to an item. To add GeoRSS to your existing feed, add the namespace to your rss element like this: rss version="2.0" xmlns:georss="http://www.ge... xmlns:gml="http://www.openg... ......
Today, Flickr released geocoding for photos on a Yahoo map. Hopefully, they will add GeoRSS tags to their RSS feeds so I can easily overlay pictures on Where's Tim (like I talked about earlier). As a side note. Jeff Croft and Matt Croydon have already geocoded their pictures, so Lawrence has way more geocoded pictures than any other city around. It shows that this little town has geek power :) Via TechCrunch ......
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