A couple of months ago I decided to write a little J2ME application that allows mobile users to get the cheapest gas prices on their device – aka GasBum. This ultimately stemmed from a few conversations I had with friends and family over the labor day weekend. GasBum runs on many different devices and on some of the more popular ones such as the Nokia 7610, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6620, and Nokia 3650.

Last month I received a phone call from a guy named Brent with Advocate Magazine. He wanted to do a small phone interview so I took him up on the offer. I really didn’t think it would be in the next release of the magazine, even though he said it would be. The Advocate goes out to about 100,000 readers in the Dallas area. The magazine is distributed throughout four major divisions in Dallas with my area being Lakewood. You can see the distribution numbers here.

You can check out the magazine article below and I’m excited about getting GasBum installed on many more devices over the coming month. This article gives me more credit than I deserve, but I’m appreciative nonetheless. Enjoy and thanks to everyone for all the great feedback.

I’m always interested in the latest technologies and how they will enable developers to build applications that truly revolutionize the web. This technology for me currently is Flex 2.0. At one point in my life I was a stout Flash and ColdFusion developer. I still use these technologies when the task at hand requires them, but find myself straying further and further away from them. This isn’t by choice, but by demand. I’m very seldom involved with projects that need a true Flash developer. Nowadays, you tend to only see Flash being leveraged in a truly rich multimedia experience, like the crazy-cool puppet control at Comcastic. If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely check it out….there’s some crazy physics going on behind the scenes.

Back to the point of this post. With Web 2.0 being the latest tech buzzword we’re seeing some truly amazing applications and development tools spring forward. The whole concept of desktop applications running in web browsers and getting smarter by the minute may seem far-fetched, but it’s where we’re headed. The key is in providing developer’s with the necessary tools to make this happen. Morfik is working on an IDE that will allow programmers to write object oriented code that will then get compiled down to JavaScript and HTML. This is supposedly built into an AJAX engine that removes the developer from having to write any low-level code. This is known as their JavaScript Synthesis Technology.

Near the bottom of the JST page you should notice the following quote:

“As an indication of this power, two Morfik programmers used it to build a desktop version of Google’s Gmail in just 2 months. This application is a pixel-by-pixel match of Gmail’s interface and functionality, yet it also works offline just like standard email clients such as Microsoft Outlook.”

Sounds like a programmers dream. Hopefully they’ll release the Gmail source as an example application because right now I’m a bit skeptical. I’m hoping to be proven wrong and in the meantime will await entry into the Pioneers Program.

As a stepping stone to porting Google Maps to Flex I’ve taken the approach of placing the maps on top of Flex. This is done through the use of a transparent background approach where the background of the Flash movie is made to let anything underneath it show through. This is done by setting a parameter called wmode to transparent. You can see the results in the image below.

What’s happening here is that the map div layer is actually getting rendered on top of the Flash movie. Therefore, it gives the appearance that the map is actually inside of Flex. From an end user standpoint you can’t really tell the difference. From a development standpoint you can make JavaScript calls to communicate between Flash and the map object. This is a little extra work, but serves the purpose of what I’m trying to do initially.

I’m confident that the port of Google Maps to Flex will happen whether it’s by me, somebody else, or Google themselves. I know the last option sounds crazy, but Google did recently switch all their on-line video content to Flash. Flash video is tough to beat. I can envision a truly rich mapping application with video and push technology where data arrives and is displayed automatically on the map without polling or refreshing. Map sharing could even be implemented.

With all this being said, let me get back to the point. Taking the div approach provides a seamless experience for the user. Events in Flex are broadcasted to the map div and vice versa. If you look at the following example

http://www.db75.com/dev/gmaps/flex_gmaps4.htm

You’ll notice that clicking on a point in the map selects a record in the table beneath it. These are two completely different environments, one DHTML and one Flash. They communicate with each other through JavaScript calls. When a record is selected in the table the appropriate location on the map is centered in the view. One very cool thing about this is that you can use your up/down arrow keys to move through the table and watch the different points pan into view. All this functionality comes standard with the Flex DataGrid control and a simple change event is responsible for calling the JavaScript that centers the map.

You can even drag the horizontal divider and the map will resize appropriately. This is done again by broadcasting an event from Flex to the map div. This functionality is a bit quirky and needs some work since the map doesn’t resize until the mouse is released. There is no feedback given to the user when they’re dragging and if you drag upwards the map actually covers the divider.

The other key point I’d like to mention is to make sure that your div layer is placed after your Flash object/embed code. The browser renders this code from the top down so you want the map to be rendered on top of the Flash movie. I experienced some crazy results when placing the map div before the Flash code. View the source of the link above if you need an example.

With all this being said I think there’s enormous potential with integrating Google Maps and Flex. Although this isn’t “true” integration it does provide a tightly integrated experience for the end user. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this implementation. It’s very straight-forward and appears to be a viable solution (unless you’re in Safari and that’s a different story).

I’ve been talking with Joe Orbman from WebORB and he demonstrated his Google Maps chat with me last week. He asked me not to blog about it until he published the final release….so here it is:

http://www.themidnightcoders.net/examples/messageserver/chat/mapchatajax.htm

It’s a cool concept because upon posting your message a DNS lookup is made that pinpoints your location and displays it on the map. I would highly recommend checking out the “SHARE MAP WITH SELECTED CLIENT” feature as it demonstrates the power of WebORB and push technology. One note to Joe, MAKE THE KILLER SHARING FUNCTIONALITY STAND OUT MORE BECAUSE IT’S HARD TO SEE!

If you’re not familiar with WebORB I definitely recommend looking into it. It’s definitely the only product of it’s kind. It’s the only product I know of that works with both AJAX and Flash clients and has built-in support for Flash Remoting.

In my small neck of the woods I like to write about development technologies and any wild ideas that come across my mind. With that being said, it’s truly amazing how many specialized blogs exist on the web. I think the last number I heard was that about 40,000 new blog sites go up in a single day. I think about all the RSS feeds I subscribe to and how all of them have very specialized content. The web is changing and more people are becoming empowered to “participate” in this once “read-only” web.

Jamie’s PolkaDachs site has been getting an increasing amount of traffic and I was blown away by the fact that a blog site called Mommies with Style wanted to write about her products. You can find the post here:

http://www.mommieswithstyle.com/2005/10/possible-cure-for-pet-peeve_17.html

This isn’t only a shameless plug, but also serves to represent a point. The point being that in the mid 90′s I was using notepad and a program called WS_FTP Pro to upload my content to the web. Oh how the times are changing and no longer are just techies participating in creating the web’s content. I think these are really exciting times for everyone involved and now if I can only get all my friends and family to start blogging.