Archive for the 'iPhone' Category

Trimet Tracker for iPhone updated

Published by
mattking
at July 9, 2008 in iPhone, APIs and Projects. 6 Comments

Do you live in Portland? Do you ride the bus? Need to know when the next bus is going to arrive at your stop? Have an iPhone? Then I have an app for YOU!

Trimet Tracker allows you find any stop and get upcoming arrival times. Now you can also get any detour information Trimet makes available from it’s awesome API, and you can now map your stop with the build in iPhone Google Maps app.

I also fixed a few bugs, although there is one weird thing with the Streetcar stops (they don’t show arrivals for some reason). I sent an e-mail to Trimet to see what’s up.

Check it out: http://trimet.onmyiphone.net/

UPDATE: Heard back from Trimet, here’s what they have to say about the Streetcar times:

Unlike the rest of our system, for Portland Street Car arrivals we retrieve the results from nextbus.com. Since their permission for use is more restrictive than ours we are unable to reproduce their results on our web service.

Bummer. Looks like you folks looking for Streetcar times will have to rely on the call-in service and the reader boards at the stops.

Track Trimet on your iPhone

Published by
mattking
at January 22, 2008 in iPhone, Software and Productivity. 11 Comments

Recently I started riding the bus again full time…if not to save the environment, but to save my nerves from dealing with traffic. After a few days I was reminded about one of the things that bothered me about riding the bus: I hated not knowing exactly when the next bus was going to arrive.

This time around I have my iPhone, so I am able to use the tracker on Trimet.org to see when the next bus came. Except it was really difficult to use on such a small screen. I was able to find out when the next bus came, it took me 2-3 minutes to do it.

So I decided I was going to write an iPhone app to do the same thing, but with a much simpler and easier to use interface. At first I was just going to scrape the Trimet site to get the information. But then I came to find out that Trimet actually has a really nice API to all their tracking information!

So I present to to you the Trimet Tracker, an iPhone app that allows you to easily find out when the next bus is going to arrive at your stop. Just enter your Stop ID and you’ll get a list of all the arriving buses (or MAX or Street Car), what time they will be showing up, and how long you have to wait. If you don’t know your Stop ID, you can also do a quick search by picking a route and selecting from all the stops on that route.

To make it even easier, you can also save any stop to your favorites list so you don’t have to enter a Stop ID or search for your stop again. Just hit ‘Favorites’ and select which stop you saved.

Obviously this tool isn’t for the masses…how many people are riding Trimet with an iPhone? Even if no one uses it, this tool has already saved me the a couple times from missing a bus. That’s worth the whole 4 hours it took me to develop it.

For the technically inclined, Trimet Tracker was built using the Camping microframework, IUI for the interface, and a few lines of custom Javascript.

One final thought: I now firmly believe that Portland is the geekiest city on the west coast. Even our transit system has an API.

28 NES Ringtones for your iPhone

Published by
mattking
at December 17, 2007 in iPhone and NES. 4 Comments

The other day my friend Jason Glaspey showed me how he made an Excitebike ringtone with MakeiPhoneRingtone by actually ripping audio from a Youtube video, pulling it through and audio editor then finally dropping into MakeiPhoneRingtone to be able to put it on his phone.

Being the NES nerd I am, I remembered how to rip music from NES games directly. So now I’m going to show Jason up by sharing 28 different NES music ringtones for your iPhone. These are all AAC files that you can drop into MakeiPhoneRingtone, which will make them immediately available as ringtones that can sync up to your iPhone.

I’ve broken the collection up into 4 separate zip files, and I’m calling them NES Ringtone Paks 1-4. I’ve covered most of my favorite tracks from about 20 NES games. Here is a list of all the ringtones:

NES Ringtone Pak 1:

  • Blaster Master Area 1
  • Blaster Master Area 2
  • Goonies 2 Theme
  • Castlevania Level 1
  • Contra Level 1
  • Double Dragon
  • Excitebike

NES Ringtone Pak 2:

  • Kid Icarus World 1
  • RC Pro Am Opening
  • Legend of Zelda Overworld
  • Little Nemo
  • Metroid Spacey
  • Metroid Zebes
  • Mike Tyson’s Punch Out Workout

NES Ringtone Pak 3:

  • Mega Man 1 Elecman
  • Mega Man 2 Boss Selection
  • Mega Man 2 Opening
  • Mega Man 2 Wily
  • Mega Man 2 Woodman
  • Super Mario Bros. 1
  • Super Mario Bros. 1 Out of Time

NES Ringtone Pak 4:

  • Super Mario Bros. 3 Powerup
  • Super Mario Bros. 3 Star
  • Super Mario Bros. 3 Underground
  • Wizards & Warriors 1 Castle
  • Wizards & Warriors 1 Low Energy
  • Wizards & Warriors 2 Air
  • Wizards & Warriors 2 Fire

If you have any requests for other games, leave me a comment below. Enjoy your NES ringtones!

The future of music: It’s mobile

Published by
mattking
at September 11, 2007 in Music and iPhone. 3 Comments

Last week I went to a show for one my favorite bands, Rilo Kiley. It was part of Music Fest Northwest, an event here in Portland that takes place over the course of 3 days. Basically you by a $40 wristband and you can pick between 100s of bands playing in multiple venues across town.

One of the opening bands was Grand Ole Party from San Diego. I’d never heard of them before, but I liked their sound, and their lead singer had a great voice (AND she played the drums!). When their set was over and we were waiting for the next band to come on, I kept reminding myself the name so I could check them out when I got home. Then I remembered, I had my iPhone with me. I could get any kind of information I wanted about them on the Internet.

When I was younger I went to tons of concerts and saw opening bands that I might have liked to check out. Back then I’d have to remember the name, or write it on my hand, then head to the music store to try to find their CD…and it most likely would have not been available anywhere but the most obscure indie music store, which back then I had little access to.  In the end it was just too much of a pain in the ass.

Like it or hate it, Apple’s iTunes has been largely successful. Now they are introducing the iTunes Wi-fi Music Store, which will allow people with iPhones and iPod Touch devices to purchase music directly on their device and download it on the spot. Had this been available at this concert, I could have very well went to the music store, listened to their music, bought the album and listened to it before the next band came on. On the flip side, if I didn’t like their music by listening to the samples, I can decide not to buy the album.

I believe easy mobile access to music from anywhere is the future of music…and the future is here with Apple’s iTunes Wi-fi music store. When people don’t have to think about how to find music they want, and just go onto their device and get it, they are much more likely to be okay with paying $0.99 for a song or $12 for an album without much complaint. I know I am, and I’m excited to try it out.

Whois on your iPhone

Published by
mattking
at August 15, 2007 in iPhone, Software, Productivity and Javascript. 1 Comment

I finished a quick app for the iPhone that allows you to do a whois lookup on a domain to see if it’s available or not. I’m always out and about and think of a domain name, and want to know if it’s taken.

Why don’t you just use whois.net or something, you ask? Well first of all that site is packed full of bloat and junk that makes it a pain to look something up. Secondly, I have a sneaking suspicion that sites like whois.net harvest requests and register those domains if no one else does. And no, my app does not record lookups!

I built the app using a small PHP script and IUI. Check out the app at http://whois.onmyiphone.net