The Geoloqi + CivicApps Hackathon is all wrapped up and it has been great! I got to meet a number of new people and we all literally got a number of things done. The bus app, is practically done, and there 
are oodles of ideas primed and ready. New SDKs will be coming from the OSS Community for Geoloqi (prospectively including .NET Libs, C++, and even Python!) Needless to say, a LOT of good stuff happened this weekend.
Until next hackathon, cheers to everybody involved, it’s been great hacking!
But myself and fellow hacker & Geoloqi Crew put something together to figure out where the bus is. Nothing super fancy, but the idea is solid. We wanted to get a simple mobile application put together that would identify where it is, what the closest bus stop is, and pull up the next arriving bus(es) for that stop. We were throwing in a few other ideas, such as pulling up specific stops based on your favorites or even specific buses at that route based on your preferred routes.
Pat (@patrickarlt) & I (@adron) started out by pulling in the GTFS data from TriMet. I setup a basic import to turn all the stop locations in the GTFS data into a Place within a layer within Geoloqi. Pat setup a URL that could be used to call down the latest X arriving buses. Then we combined forces figuring out how to efficiently get all of the 7000+ bus stops into Geoloqi. That proved a little bit more of an issue than we thought. Not a huge issue, but one that got Kyle (@kyledrake) and Aaron (@aaronpk) Coding some fast batch solutions to get it all into Geoloqi while Pat & I handled the application.
On Sunday we’re lined up to get the application into a MVP (Minimally Viable Product) state. We’re hoping to be able to maybe even use it tomorrow in at least a simple way. From that point forward we’ll hopefully move past the MVP into other functionality! 🙂
Another thing to note, is that with our basic implementation we’re using GTFS data. This is a data format that is standardized and used by many of the agencies around the country. So technically any transit agency, as long as they have a way to return their route arrivals, can be setup to use our application we’re building. Some of the other GTFS data can be retrieved here;
Day one of the hackathon has been seriously kick ass! I’ve had a blast and heard some great ideas, seen some great code, even working demo results, and seen amazing skills applied all around! At this juncture, I’m exhausted, got a little more to code, and ready for day 2 of hacking!
I’m heading off on yet another coding adventure this coming weekend. I can never get enough hackathons, startup weekends, and such. The energy, creativity, and learning is unbeatable at these types of events. This adventure will be mashing up a plethora of APIs (SDKs) and other capabilities to build something cool against. What it may be, what it will be, I’ve no idea yet. But here’s a quick summary of the companies & entities involved.
First a quick review of Geoloqi and what CivicApps are, the key sponsors and organizers of the event.
Description:Â Geoloqi is a private, real-time mobile and web platform for securely sharing location data. We’re a company that believes in doing more with location, and creating useful services for people and businesses.
CivicApps
Description: The aim is social change. The path is regional collaboration. The focus is local.
Technology is changing our relationship with government. Not so long ago government made decisions with little public input. Those days are gone. Today, information technology has redefined the structure and authority of government. The problems our communities face are beyond the capacity of government to resolve alone. Cooperation, collaboration and openness are no longer questions of opportunity; they are essential means of conducting our community’s business effectively. Every citizen can be an active participant in reshaping their world. WE are the government.
The CivicApps.org site aims to encourage every citizen to be an active participant by putting the data in their hands. The CivicApps.org site was developed to source, profile, and accelerate innovative ideas using Web and mobile technologies. The aim is social change. The path is regional collaboration. The focus is local.
Beyond these two organizations there are a host of others that are putting forth support through either the hackathon or the CivicApps Efforts.
Here’s a list of the entities involved in the CivicApps Project, click on the respective image to learn more about each one. All of these, in some way, form, or manner have contributed data or otherwise to the CivicApps Data.
An elected regional government, Metro helps you make the region an extraordinary place to live, work and play. Metro serves more than 1.5 million residents in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties and the 25 cities in the Portland region. Some of the related data & maps they provide are covered here.
Our belief is that mass transit ridership can increase dramatically through improved customer service.
We’ll help by:
Empowering passengers with information about waiting time.
Providing Transit Authorities and operators with a robust, reliable, and cost-effective way to manage fleets and communicate directly with passengers.
Reducing the uncertainty associated with public transportation.
TriMet provides bus, light rail and commuter rail service in the Portland metro area. Our transportation options connect people with their community, while easing traffic congestion and reducing air pollution—making our region a better place to live. TriMet’s developer resources are available here.
…and others:
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Stay tuned and I’ll have more on the hackathon and my project. Cheers!
This last weekend, extending into Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were a MASSIVE coding weekend and vacation for me. I initially left with the intent to basically just be lazy and not do anything in particular. Maybe write a little code, learn some more about Rails, RSpec, or Mongo DB. But hold, things changed!
I boarded the train down to Portland on Thursday of last week to attend the ALT.NET PDX Group at E-Discover (thanks E-Discovery for the space!). The meeting went great with a solid 10 people attending and contributing to some great conversation topics like; mongo db, migrations, windows 8, which way the cloud technologies are going, and HTML5 + CSS + Javascript came up more than once.
After that I had a full remote work day fighting with deployment of SQL Compact Edition. Even though Scottgu says you can deploy it with the magical bin deploy, I’ve found that to be absolutely NOT the case. It is unfortunate as I might have to rip something apart pending it isn’t actually going to work on SQL CE. As soon as the work day wrapped up around 4pm, I headed over for a short stay at Beer & Blog at the Green Dragon. After a beer, I was off to Urban Airship to check out this Startup Weekend that I’d managed to luckily get into. It all came about like this…
I still have two free tickets to the sold our Portland
Startup Weekend….really surprised nobody has claimed them.
While at OSCON 2011Â I spoke to a Phil Robb, Bryan Gartner, and Terri Molini with HP. Phil is heading up the Open Source Program Office for HP, which we spoke about.
Context and Clarity:Â I knew HP was involved in cloud computing to some degree, know they make tons of devices, hardware, printers, and know they are involved in open source. Beyond that I did not know too much about any particular aspect of HP, nor have I ever worked for them. So if I swoon in response to any of their products or open source efforts don’t think I’m just being a shill, because if you know me, you know better! With that, let’s hit on this discussion and exploration of HP.
The first BIG thing that HP announced, that we all learned about at once via OSCON is HP’s signing up to support the OpenStack Project! Â This is pretty big news, as OpenStack is a big deal for future Cloud Computing Development focuses on enabling a company versus locking them into a single provider. For those that don’t know much about OpenStack, I’ll be publishing a Spotlight on OpenStack in the near future!
Cloud Computing, Not Just OpenStack
During our conversation, one of the things I really wanted to know about was HP’s efforts around cloud computing without any specific focus. I wanted to know where they are headed, what their plans are, and how they’re currently involved. Of course many of those questions can be answered just by looking at HP’s signing on with OpenStack! Me being the curious type, I wanted more though.
Phil laid out the focus for me with a great quote, “Open Source & Mobile is exceedingly important, and we’re right there with cloud technologies as well.” Â As our conversation progressed it is evident that HP has many current inroads they’re making into cloud computing. Some of those include Linux (of course that’s a no brainer! :)), the LinuxCOE, and other deployment and management software.
Talking to Phil, Bryan, and some other HP Devs and Evangelists we discussed the various approachs HP is taking to get people “cloud enabled”. Their approach is open, as one might expect, and encompasses a wide breadth of capabilities. One of the approaches they have is the distribution of virtual images, regardless of your virtualization software. They’ve worked to provide additional ways to expand and distribute images as necessary.
Web OS, Webkit, and V8
HP also contributes or works with several technologies within the JavaScript Tech Stack including Node.js, V8, and Webkit. They also use these tools extensively in putting together solutions for WebOS or other tool stacks internally. I’m always stoked to hear about more companies and individuals stepping in and contributing even more to Node.js, V8, and that whole echelon of server side js technology.
Other tools, technologies and efforts they’re actively contributing to in some way or another include jQuery, PhoneGap Applications, and others. HP reviews several thousands projects monthly and makes decisions to get involved or contribute in other ways.
Summary
HP is a major contributor of several major open source projects. They contribute actively and are involved actively, making a positive impact to the community and projects themselves. HP’s ongoing efforts with cloud computing is continuing to grow, and with the recent boarding of the OpenStack train they’re in line to make some major steps into the cloud computing world. Overall, I’m impressed, to HP & the teams there, keep up the good work. You guys and gals are kicking ass!
Geoloqi
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