Jan 31 2008
Where’s Corey Now?
Today I learned:
- I can use my smart phone to track my location in real time.
If you are ever looking for me, I should be right about here:
Click here for a detailed view…
I was originally under the impression that I would have to purchases a subscription based service to make use of the GPS feature on my Blackberry Curve (either to access maps in real time or report my location to my personal site). Well, thanks to Doug McCune I found out that there is a great (and free) application from Mologogo that installs in no time flat. The app will display maps from either Microsoft or Google, and optionally feed your GPS stats (including elevation, etc.) to an URL of your choice. This allowed me to for instance embed a map of my location here. Any time you want to know where I am (and I have my cell phone with me), the map will reflect my realtime location. Doug’s inspiring post can be found here.
Some gotchas when I was trying to set things up:
- The download on Mologogo’s main site wasn’t auto-install enabled for my Blackberry (.jad file), but if you go to http://bb.mologogo.com there’s a compatible installer you can navigate to with your Blackberry.
- When setting up Mologogo to send data to an alternate URL it’s not enough to configure your profile on Mologogo’s site, you must also set the URL in the Mologogo app settings on the phone.
- Earlier in the day Mologogo’s website was down, and I wasn’t able to log in. I ended up surfing around and found another similar service called BlackberryTracker. There app also worked like a charm on my curve, and after you’ve registered for a developer key you can use their API directly to access your saved location data - so you don’t need your own server. Works pretty good but at the time of this writing their developer site is down (so you can’t get a key). But all in all much faster (less slick) application.
- For what it’s worth, the best tutorial to get you up and running and embedding your location on your own website or blog can be found in this wiki article.
Today I also learned:
- There are some gotchas if you change jobs mid-year.
I ended up finally gathering up all my W2s, 1099s, 1098s, etc. and firing up ol’ Tax Cut. To our surprise it turns out we’re getting back a bit more than we thought we would. A welcome surprise, certainly better than if we found out that we owed. I really didn’t know that if you’d maxed out your social security contributions, then moved on to another employer, the new employer really has no clue, so continues to keep withdrawing social security. Good times.
Is this also tracking where you’ve /been/? The red lines stretch all over the place … how much history does it keep, and what are the red dots?
Yes, in the detailed view, I think I only set it to 30 points. Yesterday for example, you could see my commute from home, to airport in DC, then land at SJO, then taxi to the hotel. ;o)