ComputerWorld has an excellent article on the rapidly increasing use of M2M and sensor technology in vehicles, especially in tractor-trailers and commercial shipping. It’s impressive to see how sensors are making their way into almost every aspect of tractor-trails, from load detection to location tracking to collision and rollover avoidance.

The biggest challenge of all? How to coordinate the data and alarms from the various independent systems.

At Ublip we’re always thinking about ways to bring our technology to a Web 2.0 world. One example of this is our Share Where product that has been adopted by several universities and non-profits. Share Where allows publishers to easily share the location of a mobile asset with consumers. One request we get time and time again is the ability to support mobile phones. We do provide limited support for mobile phones using Google’s static maps API, but in some cases it’s not as useful as a mobile client.

Let me introduce you to LightPole. Lightpole allows consumers to subscribe to “channels” and access realtime information about restaurants, shows, history and much more based on their current location. There are a lot of companies trying to solve this problem, which there is a definite demand for. So I fired up my LightPole account and within minutes we were tracking the Tufts Joey from one of our mobile phones here in the office. Since I can’t easily provide a screenshot of LightPole running on our phone I’ll provide a screen of the web app:

This was easily done by plugging in our GeoRSS feed and letting LightPole do the rest of the work. There are many different applications where providing realtime GeoRSS feeds to end users can provide tremendous value. Here are a few I can think of:

- Knowing where the city bus is
- Knowing where the pizza guy is
- Knowing where the air conditioning guy is (do I really need to wait around the house from 12-6?)
- Knowing where the shuttle is because I’m about to miss my plane

What if everything had a GeoRSS feed and I could use LightPole to “see” it on my mobile phone? I’ve stated on several occasions (to the point of being a broken record) that getting data from remote devices is not an easy task and that’s why we created our .

I’ve been meaning to get around to this post for quite some time. Once or twice a year I go on a family quail hunt in South Texas. Last year I posted a quail hunt video on YouTube that has been getting a reasonable amount of views/comments:

The main reason for posting the video was to share with family and friends the different elements of quail hunting. I’ve come to learn that every hunting guide does things differently depending on how much land is being hunted, area of the country, who their guiding, etc. Every year we’ve been fortunate enough to hunt with Mitch Hurt’s Wild Bird Hunting service. Mitch is an incredible guy and knows everything about every bird that ever existed. At any rate, Mitch uses a wireless technology that helps him determine where his dogs are at all times (he normally puts two down at a time). The bird dogs have collars that transmit a signal back to Mitch’s receiver and it tells the general direction of where the dog is (by beeping) and whether or not the dog is on point (by beeping faster). It’s a rather crude technology at best and by no means extremely accurate. With that being said, the technology (shown in the video above) has stirred up some interesting comments on YouTube. I’ve included a few below for your reading pleasure:

If that doesn’t sum up people’s reactions to technology in an old fashioned industry then I don’t know what does. The comments are rather amusing, nonetheless. The tracking technology is used to provide a more pleasurable hunting experience and not make hunting easier. Sure, it may help us flush more coveys but that doesn’t necessarily equate to killing more birds. If you’ve ever had a covey flush under your feet then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about (it ain’t easy).

It appears that Garmin sees an opportunity in the bird dog tracking space. This past year Mitch mentioned to me that he’s interested in evaluating the Garmin Astro system. I just pulled it up this morning and was very impressed with the capabilities.

It’s not a cheap system and like all technology the price will come down over time. What’s interesting about this product is that the use of features specific to the quail hunting industry. For example, it’s very common in GPS navigation units to mark a “waypoint” or “point of interest”. Gamin sells this feature as a way to mark a covey and locate your lodge.

I believe there is a common theme that I’m seeing over and over again in this space. Many people are resistant to GPS tracking technology because it either invades someone’s privacy, causes security concerns, or just makes us more efficient. In the case of tracking bird dogs I do believe the technology is beneficial and it still doesn’t make me a better shot. I could go on and on defending my stance (can you tell I’m a bit defensive with the slight beating I’ve taken on YouTube?), but the reality is that GPS tracking may be coming to an industry near you.

I’ve been doing a considerable amount of hacking with the iPhone SDK, mainly to get the iPhone communicating with our Foundation product. Last night I was trying to display the horizontal accuracy from the iPhone’s CoreLocation API in our Foundation user interface. The horizontal accuracy is the radius of uncertainty of the iPhone’s location (and it’s measured in meters). The uncertainty I was dealing with at the time of development was 1618 meters. I’ve seen the iPhone come close to 100m and even better when connected via WiFi, but more on that later.

As part of our Foundation product we provide some simple JavaScript functions that make it easy to draw geofences on Google Maps. If you’re not familiar with a geofence, it’s basically a virtual boundary you can create to receive a notification if a device moves into or out of it. In most circumstances a circular geofence is used. So I spent an hour trying to understand why I couldn’t get the geofence overlay to display on Google Maps. Here’s my initial screen:

After a considerable amount of time and frustration passed (1 hr to be exact) I decided to zoom nearly all the way out and was surprised to see that I geofenced all of North America. Then I came to the realization that units were keeping me down (m vs mi). I was passing 1618 meters into our function, which was expecting miles. This yielded the following screen:

My geofence was only 1,617 miles off. It turns out that 1618 meters is just a tad bit more than a mile. Finally, I ended up with exactly what I needed:

Ah yes, much better. The image above shows the reading from inside our office building where we’re surrounded by all sorts of windows, walls, cubes, etc. Because of triangulation we’re able to get readings indoors and even underground. Even though the accuracy isn’t all that precise it’s enough to do some really interesting things. If you’d like to get your iPhone hooked up to the Ublip Foundation for development and testing purposes please feel free to comment or drop us a line.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the fact that “Location Matters”. Location is important and relevant in nearly every instance I can think of. Do you ever hear a song on the radio and it triggers a thought of where you were when you first heard it? Whenever I hear Daughter by Pearl Jam I think back to a bus trip to UNC Chapel Hill to get our butts kicked in a soccer game. Brad Harris actually had the CD and let me listen to it. But I digress.

What triggered this blog post was a recent trip we took to Six Flags with our daughter. I decided it would be a fun experiment to take one of our portable GPS trackers with us to Six Flags and map our trip. The biggest incentive for me was to see if I could get a 90 mph speed reading while plummeting down the first hill of the Titan. Unfortunately, we didn’t get around to riding the Titan but plan on making it back. You can see a sample of our trek around Six Flags below.

It’s amazing the amount of detail that some of Google’s satellite imagery provides. In an instance I could look at all the blips and think of a “story” that was associated with each one. As an example, blip #1 was when we rode the Judge Roy Scream and blip #9 is where we stopped (note the red color) and ate dinner. Each one of these blips tells a story and if a picture’s worth a thousand words, then a map with blips is worth a thousand more. Here’s some YouTube footage of the Judge Roy Scream that I just stumbled across. Nothing too crazy, but with a 4 yr old you gotta ease them into the wild world of rollercoasters:

As a side note, I think there could be incredible value for Six Flags to actually rent these portable GPS trackers at the gate. It would be a great way for parents to keep track of kids/teens while at the park (on a parents cell phone). They already rent a “Flash Pass” that allows holds your virtual place in line. Based on the current wait times you get notified when it’s your turn in line. This all happens while you’re off somewhere else eating lunch or riding another ride. So it’s apparent that Six Flags has embraced the whole upsell model.