Jaa

Was I just in a Smartphone commercial?

  • Artikkeli

First off, let me introduce myself.  My name is Brian Cross, and I’m a member of the Windows Mobile Developer Experience team.  "Hello!"

Now, about that Smartphone commercial.  As far as I know, there weren’t any hidden cameras in my car, but it sure felt like there should have been. 

Some friends and I were driving north from the airport with some friends on our way to another friend’s house in Seattle. It was a very nice summer Seattle night, when all of a sudden. . .  "Arg! Traffic!  There shouldn’t be traffic at this time!"  Maybe there was a baseball game?  Nah, we weren’t close enough for a baseball game to cause traffic this far south. 

I took out my Smartphone and launched this little traffic application a friend of mine wrote for Seattle traffic.  I brought up the traffic map and it looked like traffic was pretty bad for about 1.5 miles or so.  I thought to myself, "hmmm, that might not be too bad, I wonder what was causing it?" The Washington State Department of Transportation has cameras on many of our freeways, so I brought up the image that was closest to where the traffic started.   Once the image loaded, I saw a police car blocking off all but one lane of the freeway.  Yuck!  I knew this was going to take awhile. 

Luckily there was an exit close by.  We headed for the exit freeing ourselves from the grips of traffic, only to find ourselves in a town we weren’t familiar with.  I knew that there was a state route somewhere around here that also went to Seattle, but I didn’t know exactly how to get there.  So, I found my Bluetooth GPS receiver (The GPS receiver from Streets and Trips with the optional Bluetooth sled) and started up Pocket Streets.  I found our location and then quickly found alternate route.  We were on the new route in just a few minutes and back on our way to Seattle.  Ah, victory!

Total time delayed by traffic was about 5 minutes!  I felt a little bad for all the other people that didn’t know what they were getting into as they hit the same traffic. 

- Brian Cross

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 20, 2005
    Its pretty cool when technology (especially the Smartphone or Pocket PC) manages to pull you out of trouble.

    But then there are times when these very gadgets aggravate our problem. ;-) I mean the app refuses to connect to the internet. Or the BT GPS refuses to be discovered. Time to Reboot. Out of memory error! ;-)

    But I still love my Windows Mobile gadgets and would not leave home without one (or two).
  • Anonymous
    August 20, 2005
    One day well will all have the technology....

    and everyone else will exit the motoway, and jam up the urban road too.... ahhh.. technology

    ;-)

    riki
  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2005
    Ah... Yes, but then the most up-to-date people will be on the next version which will tell them to take another route, or maybe even stay on the motoway :)

    -- Brian
  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2005
    Whats the name of that Traffic software?
  • Anonymous
    August 23, 2005
    It's just a little traffic program that a friend of mine wrote for the seattle area.

    -- Brian
  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2005
    Hi Brian,

    I am a software enginner who is developing SmartPhone applications using VS.NET, C# and and SmartPhone 2003 SDK.
    I want some help from you. Can PayPal Applications be developed for the SmartPhone 2003.

    Please reply asap. Its somewhat urgent.

    Thanks

    Regards

    Varun



  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2006
    Hi Brian,

    I am not sure if you can help us on this matter, but we have serious problems using BT GPS on WM5. The BT GPS configuration has to be reset/reconfigured at each use.

    Any tweaking advice?

    Our thread is here:

    http://www.malsingmaps.com/forum/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=35756#35756

    Thank you in advance.
  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2006
    Hi,
    I'm using BT GPS Receiver Holux GPSlim 236.
    I'm using it with the Pocket Street and it works like a charm,
    I'm running WM5 on my O2 Atom and it really works.
    There can be two possibilities to ur issue.

    1> The BT stack provided with your device has got some issue and thats the reason u have to reconnect again and again..
    2> I'm not sure but I hope you are using the ROM that your provider has given u along with the device, i mean an authentic one, I have heard about issues when u use leaked ROMs and start breaking things.