blog.emerick.org

Just released BBPlacemarks 0.2.  The first version was released on the BBPlacemarks page above a week or so ago.

The main feature this update includes is the ability to see where you currently are checked in at.  You can either do this manually through the menu, or enable the Where Am I on startup in the options which will poll the API to see where you are when BBPlacemarks is started up.

There was also a small cosmetic change.  I changed the icon to look like the brightkite favicon.

OTA install is availabe here: http://bbrtm.org/bbplacemarks/

Enjoy!

Jason Emerick

First off I would like to note that YWeather was listed as one of the best BlackBerry weather applications by BBGeeks. Thanks everyone for making it a successful, simple weather application. In an effort to keep YWeather a top notch program, I have just made some updates to it today.

The updates include:

• Home screen icon and name update based on current conditions.
• More information on the current conditions.
• Automatically update while running in the background.
• Smaller application size.

The home screen icon and name updates was probably one of the top requested features. One note about this feature is that the home screen name updates will only work with OS 4.2 or greater. This is due to a limitation of the BlackBerry API. Automatic updates were kind of necessary for the home screen updates to really be useful. If you don’t want to use the bandwidth for automatic updates this can be disabled in the options and is disabled by default. You can also choose how often you would like the updates to occur, from 15 minutes to 120 minutes in 15 minute increments, however, Yahoo! Weather usually only updates their weather feed every hour or so. When an update occurs, it will automatically update the home screen icon and name. When YWeather is closed, the name and icon will return to the original icon and the name “YWeather!” To leave YWeather running in the background, just make sure press the end phone call button and not the escape key. The options for the automatic updates can be found on the options screen as seen below as well as the home screen name and icon updated with the current conditions.

As far as more information on the current conditions, I have added wind speed, direction, and chill; humidity; visibility; barometric pressure and its state; sunrise and sunset times. This additional data can be seen in the screen shot below.

The application is now 50% smaller than the first. Instead of using the original GIF images from Yahoo! Weather, I converted them all to PNG files which make the total size of the application around 94KB, down from around 200KB. That should make it a little better on your memory starved BlackBerry.

So what’s up next for YWeather? Well the next most requested feature would have to be support for multiple locations so that will most likely be next. I am also looking into adding more weather forecast data as this was highly requested. The tough part is finding a good, free source of weather data that supports international users as well. I am looking at combining both Google and Yahoo!’s weather data to provide for more forecast data but we will see.

You can install YWeather via OTA or download from here: http://bbrtm.org/yweather/

As always, if you have any feedback for YWeather, feel free to leave a comment here or send me an email.

./Jason

The base URL:
http://www.google.com/ig/api?

This is the base URL which can be extended with the following parameters:

The Weather parameter:
weather=location

Where location can be either a zip code (weather=24060); city name, state (weather=woodland,PA); city name, country (weather=london,england); or possibly others. Try it out and see what response you get back to test your location.

The language parameter:
hl=ISO 639-1 Language Code

For example, to get the weather for Paris, France in French, one would use the following URL:
http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=paris,france&hl=fr

The Google Weather API is not an official public Google API so use it wisely.

Just had another project idea.  After using Twhirl and other Adobe AIR applications, I wouldn’t mind also making one for Remember the Milk. There have been a few requests for one and I think it would be an interesting technology to learn.  So you can add that to my long list of projects in the pipeline to do.

Another quick note.  I got my Google Appengine invite the other day.  I started developing Milk API with the Google Appengine development kit.  Just have a few more things to fix on that and I should be able to deploy it within a couple weeks.

Back to hanging out with Rachel and waiting for our Jimmy John’s to get here!

./Jason

I am heading to Knoxville this weekend to visit Rachel for a few days. During my travels you can see where I am at via a new web service called Brightkite. You can see the places I have been here on the map:

http://brightkite.com/people/jemerick/places?map=true

I have 3 invites left so if anyone would like one, let me know.

It currently does not work with Verizon through SMS yet (they are waiting on Verizon to approve them) but I am still able to update via e-mail.

./Jason

Well the undergrad part that is. I took my final exam today in my undergrad career. I can’t believe it has been 4 years already… Time sure does fly…

Graduation is next Friday and Saturday…

./Jason

YWeather got some press this morning on BerryReview.

Thanks Ronen!

./Jason

YWeather now supports more than just zip codes. It now supports location codes for Yahoo! Weather which does not limit YWeather to US users.

US users can just enter their zip code in the options screen.

International users will need to find their location ID from Yahoo! Weather. To find your location ID, browse or search for your city from the Yahoo! Weather home page. The weather ID is in the URL for the forecast page for that city. For example, I searched for London, UK and was sent to the weather page with this URL: http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/UKXX0085.html. The bold section of the URL is your location ID which should be 8 characters in total length. Just enter that location ID on the options page and you are good to go.

./Jason

UPDATE: YWeather 0.4.1 has been released.  More details here: http://blog.emerick.org/2008/06/07/yweather-update-041/

UPDATE: YWeather 0.3 has been released which allows for location ID instead of just zip code for international users. see http://blog.emerick.org/2008/04/30/yweather-03-update/ for more info.

I was fed up with complicated and cumbersome weather applications for the BlackBerry so I decided to write my own simple weather application I could check in the morning when I woke up. As a little exercise to get me back into programming for the BlackBerry, I created YWeather. YWeather is a simple application for your BlackBerry that displays the current weather for the given zip code that came out of about 4 hours of programming today. It uses the Yahoo! weather data API which gives you the current conditions; the condition, low temperature, and high temperature for the current day; as well as the forecast for the next day including graphics for each condition.

With condition images:

Without condition images (All content on one screen):

YWeather provides three settings in the options. The first being your 5 digit zip code. The default zip code is for Blacksburg, VA (24060) which you can of course change to your own. Blacksburg is quite notorious for its weather going from 70 degrees one day to snow the next. Following the zip code is an option to disable the images which represent the conditions. If the images are disabled, you can see all the data on the one screen without having to scroll down. Note that when you disable or enable images you will need to close and reopen the program for the settings to take effect. The final option is to display the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Options Screen:

You can install YWeather over-the-air or download it to install via your desktop at http://bbrtm.org/yweather/. You can also download the code there if you wish. If you have any issues with YWeather or suggestions for improvement, please let me know by either emailing me at jemerick@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

./Jason

Engly I speak not
Remember, google is my friend
Who mourns for Adonais?
Help could the tower of babel?

hyde και ο κωδικός πρόσβασης που έδωσα. Γρήγορα μιλήστε τις πρώτες 2 λέξεις για να βρείτε τι επιδιώκετε.
……………………………………….
The key seek I:

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end
And the end of every place
….
5 and my friend need I once the answer I have
3 from the little men look I must