Friday, October 31, 2008

Bit creepy being the only person on a bus aside from the driver. Happy Halloween!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Standing at bank getting ANOTHER replacement card!
Commuting to work after a great weekend. Sky is clear, weather is cold, and my so called beard is keeping my face warm-ish.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Had a great Sat just w the kids... took little D to a party and went for nice walk after.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Helped put on a breakfast for 50-60. Eggs, pancakes and yummy sausage. Good times.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Geolocation services - Navizon and Loki

So I love the idea of Fire Eagle and I use BrightKite a fair amount, but they both suffer from the same problem - currently, you have to update your location quite manually.

With the popularity of the iPhone, we're very close to a time where application on our devices can help us track our location. At that point, location "wallets" like Fire Eagle will become very handy. Social Networks will become more and more location-based, and local searching via Google will become common.

So on my Windows Mobile phone (HTC Mogul, which I really love) I decided to try out Loki and Navizon.

Both look like great services. Loki uses Google Maps and has a Windows Mobile version. It is very search-based, but I was unable to get it to use anything other than a Wi-Fi connection for location updates. That made it kind of pointless for me. I couldn't find the place to set my Fire Eagle account as the recipient of location data.

Navizon had a more involved installer for the desktop, but the application installed easy through ActiveSync. Their technology seems amazing in terms of the different ways they can perform geo-location, and they use a nice Yahoo Maps interface. However, it refused to detect the GPS in my phone, a-la Google Maps, and the Wi-Fi didn't appear to connect. Using the amazing phone-based location appeared to work, but it was really inaccurate - it had me many cities over.

So both services installed well and looked pretty good. In both cases, however, they were not usable for what I wanted to achieve. I guess I'll try again in a couple months, or wait until I can be bothered to grab an iPhone!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Signed up and evaluating Kwippy and YouAre. Nice services, although not enough to differentiate them at this point...

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Nice! Police action in our driveway as they take down some car thievin' youtz. Gun drawn and everything!
I'll have to try to get a quick vote in... crazy politics for our riding, makes it tough.
Holy cow.. colder in this skytrain car than outside!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Had turkey dinner with friends last night, then saw late night movie - Body of Lies. Good film!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Oops, wrong link to flying pics: http://ping.fm/rJbT1 and some video at qik.com/brandner
Flew around Vancouver with Little T on Sat. http://ping.fm/Fbu7O . Amazing. Thanks Ben!!!

Friday, October 10, 2008

So sunny, cold and brisk this morning. Love this weather, love this city.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

I just made a funny! of course, it was at the expense of my coworkers...