tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7172827.post-10366170841916443032007-08-01T19:51:00.000-05:002007-08-04T00:21:02.385-05:00This week I got a much needed break with my family. We went up to the Wisconsin Dells for the first time. This place is crazy! My wife says it's like a "family" version of Las Vegas. I absolutely agree.<br /><br />Besides hanging out at the pool and on the water slides with my kids I also had a project in mind I wanted to complete. I blogged a few weeks back about my BlackBerry 8830 and I still love it. One of it's cool features is a built-in GPS chip set.<br /><br />Since my kids are still young (under 4 years) I have plenty of time in the evening where my wife and I are imprisoned in our hotel room. My plan was to build three applications to allow my BlackBerry to communicate my GEO coordinates to my blog here. Like so:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_x_F7Z3hGb2o/RrFPjiHdSGI/AAAAAAAAACo/11NS-KfLwWI/s1600-h/GEO-Blog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_x_F7Z3hGb2o/RrFPjiHdSGI/AAAAAAAAACo/11NS-KfLwWI/s400/GEO-Blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5093940125404842082" border="0" /></a>The first application would reside on my BlackBerry. It's job is to communicate my device and GPS data to a server application to be saved at a given interval. I am sending and saving things like: <ul><li>Device Id</li><li>Latitude</li><li>Longitude</li><li>Altitude</li><li>Distance</li><li>Speed</li><li>and Time</li></ul>The second application sits on the server and saves the data sent to it into a database table. It also returns a geo-coded RSS feed when requested. The geo-coded RSS feed for my device is found at <a href="http://whirrl.com/geo-feed/851582166">http://whirrl.com/geo-feed/851582166</a>.<br /><br />Lastly the third application is a maps mash-up (in this case Google Maps) to show my last known coordinates on my blog.<br /><br />Everything seems to be working ok so far. I've placed a little map on the right gutter of my blog that shows my last know coordinates.<br /><br />All in all this was a pretty interesting adventure. I had to remember back about 7 years to my Java days. The BlackBerry uses a Java based operating system so the applications that run on it are written in Java. Then for the server-side I got to play around with some fun PHP and Apache Rewrite Header goodness. Lastly for the maps I fiddled and tweaked JavaScript and a tiny bit of CSS.<br /><br />Hmm... the more I think about it I really touched a lot of different technology during this vacation! Let see... to build this handy little system I had to touch the following languages and syntax:<br /><ul><li>Java</li><li>PHP</li><li>SQL</li><li>JavaScript</li><li>CSS</li></ul>and I had to touch these operating systems:<br /><ul><li>Macintosh OS X (10.4.10)<br /></li><li>Vista</li><li>Windows Server 2003</li><li>BlackBerry OS 4.2.2<br /></li></ul>and I had to work with these integrated development environments (IDE's):<br /><ul><li>NetBeans</li><li>Enterprise Manager</li><li>Query Analyzer<br /></li><li>TextPad</li><li>TextMate</li><li>Blogger (eh, I'll count it)</li></ul>Phew, good thing I don't specialize! Based on interest level, in a future article I may publish the step by step how-to of the whole ordeal. If you want to know more please leave a comment below.Andrew D. Goodfellowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05305223415570458316noreply@blogger.com