I have to thank Austin for pointing me to this great app. This is a mobile version of Microsoft’s popular Live search. I’m not going to bother about functionality details since you can find all sorts of blogs discussing it. The main thing that I want to point out is that I was skeptical at first since I’ve downloaded a hundred different apps on my Cingular 8125 and have never been highly impressed. This time it was different. The pure usability of this product is amazing and there are some very rich effects that you don’t normally see from a mobile app.

If you use the Categories functionality you’ll see a very cool drill-down effect similar to the Macintosh tree control that pans horizontally. The Directions functionality is very appealing and usable for a mobile device. The turn-by-turn display of directions in a list with very intuitive icons is NICE. Of course this can be switched into map view, which has a nice route overlay.

I haven’t used the J2ME version yet, but will be looking into that shortly. I can’t see how it will even compare with the Windows Mobile version. At any rate, if you have a Java or Windows Mobile device I highly recommend checking it out. I’ve barely touched the surface of this killer app, but am looking forward to using it out in the real world.

I’ve received a fair amount of emails lately asking how to get BlueGPS working with different Bluetooth GPS receivers. The configuration is generally the same for most receivers. Some users are unaware of my configuration page and I wanted to share the link here: http://www.db75.com/new_blog/?p=235. I’ve made a couple of updates so if you’re having problems be sure to review the steps again. Thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback on the Windows Mobile version of BlueGPS.

I’ve received a numerous amount of emails from users asking me how to install and use BlueGPS on their Windows Mobile devices. Since there are several steps to this process and I’ve done very little documentation, I wanted to get started with a generic howto for configuring a Bluetooth GPS receiver. I currently own a Belkin Bluetooth GPS, but this should apply to many different types of receivers. Let’s get started.

The first thing you want to do is navigate to Start > Settings > Connections > Bluetooth as seen in Figure 1.

After clicking on the Bluetooth icon you’ll want to navigate to the Devices tab as shown in Figure 2. The tabs are located at the bottom of the screen.

Click on New Partnership and your device will start scanning for Bluetooth devices in range. You obviously want to make sure your GPS receiver is powered on. When scanning is complete you should see your GPS receiver listed in the window as seen in Figure 3.

Now select your Bluetooth GPS receiver and you should be prompted for a pass key. This may be manufacturer specific but for the Belkin receiver the key is 0000. Figure 4 shows the pass key screen.

Once your pass key is entered click Next and your receiver will be queried by your Windows Mobile device to see what services it supports. The main service we’re looking for is the serial port profile as seen in Figure 5.

Be sure to select the Serial Port checkbox and then click Finish. After that’s complete you’ll need to configure the necessary outgoing communication port. Let’s navigate to the COM Ports tab within the same Bluetooth settings screen we’ve been working from. You can see this screen in Figure 6.

After selecting New Outgoing Port you should be prompted to select your Bluetooth GPS receiver as seen in Figure 7.

After selecting your Bluetooth GPS receiver you’ll be asked to specify a COM port. This step is essential in making sure the configuration is correct for use with BlueGPS. You must make sure to specify COM 6 as seen in Figure 8.

I normally leave Secure Connection checked although I’m not 100% sure what that actually does. It ultimately doesn’t seem to affect my connection at all. Once you’re done here click Finish and you should see the screen in Figure 9.

That’s it! You’ve done it and everything should be configure correctly to work with BlueGPS. Pat yourself on the back and download BlueGPS to start having some fun.

I spent some time this evening adding a sidebar to the geotagging app. If you click on a tag in the right sidebar the map is recentered and a window displays the tag information. Now I just need to get it so other BlueGPS users can post their favorite tags. Once this is achieved the possibilities are limitless in terms of how the information can be displayed to the user as well as functionality. Below is a screen and you can check out the working version by clicking here. I’m trying to work out a bug where the tags in the sidebar don’t correspond with the proper locations on the map. But you get the drift of what it’s trying to do.

I’ve been spending what little spare time I have on BlueGPS and getting data from Windows Mobile over to my Rails app. I received a few feature requests from BlueGPS users asking for the ability to “geotag” locations with a simple note. I ultimately want to build in photo capabilities, but I’ll save that for a rainy day. So over the past few days I’ve been geotagging some of my favorite locations and have posted them here. You can see SensorLogic’s headquarters in the screen below. I took this the other day while leaving work and am amazed at the accuracy of my GPS receiver. It’s definitely accurate within meters.

If you’re interested in sharing your favorite locations with the community then look out for the next version of BlueGPS. I think of all the possibilities with sharing this type of information and how it can be used from a social aspect. Think of creating a geotag and then letting users add comments, rate the location, get directions, add to places to visit, etc. There’s a ton of potential with location based services and I’m hoping to see some ideas I’ve had over the past few years come to fruition. Needless to say, the technology to support this type of application currently exists and it’s only going to become more mainstream.

While working on a recent update to BlueGPS I’ve added the ability to “geotag” favorite spots with a location and basic note. The data is uploaded from a Windows Mobile device to a remote server. The server is currently running Ruby on Rails. I’ve added methods to add geotags and am currently working on the interface to display them. Since these tags will ultimately live on a Google map it makes sense to deliver them as XML and load them via AJAX.

Much to my suprise Rails provides just the mechanism to get data in an XML format. This is known as the Rails Builder. Generating XML is as simple as specifying a .rxml template instead of .rhtml. For example, my controller has an action of get_locations and instead of specifying a view name of get_locations.rhtml, I used get_locations.rxml. The builder code looks like:

xml.locations do
@locations.each do |temp|
xml.location(:lat => temp.latitude, :lon => temp.longitude, :note => temp.note) do
end
end
end

and generates the following XML:

[locations]
[location note="Ella's favorite little donut shop." lat="3250.1878,N" lon="09645.8498,W"][/location]
[location note="Golf Galaxy superstore. A good place to blow all your money!" lat="3252.5340,N" lon="09646.1594,W"][/location]
[location note="Matt's Rancho Martinez. Great Mexican food!" lat="3248.7498,N" lon="09645.2135,W"][/location]
[location note="SensorLogic Headquarters" lat="3257.5224,N" lon="09649.4056,W"][/location]
[/locations]

These are actual tags I generated over the weekend using the next version of BlueGPS. I’ll be working to display this data on a Google map in the next few days. The next version of BlueGPS will support geotagging and I’m hoping users will share their favorite spots with the community.