I have hit a roadblock of sorts at the moment. The app that is currently working, doesn’t update how I want but at the moment it “works”. Right now, even though it can detect the MAC addresses around it, I can’t figure out how to have it send that information. I’m sure it is rather easy and I’m just over thinking it, but it has been a long time since I programmed anything like this. So hopefully if I just stop working on it for a bit, I’ll come back to it with a fresh mind. Here is a screenshot of the app, I would show a video but I can’t find my firewire cable and the other cameras all make the icons blurry. It is the cool looking map one.

After working all night on getting xCode and the iPhone toolchain to work correctly. I managed to get a wifi scanning app working at about 3am. It is very basic, and all it will do is show the MAC address and the SSID. It’s nothing special, but it is one of the first steps I needed to complete for this app to be useful.

Now that I have if spitting out MAC addresses, I need it to contact my database of known MAC addresses to GPS coordinates. I don’t really know how I’m gonna do this but I hope to have something semi working soon. After I get to this point, I’ll be almost half way done. I will need to design an easy to use interface, because all iPhone apps need to be easy to use and since I suck at design, how about someone send me some mock ups? Thanks.

Here is a screen shot of the wifi scanning in action. It’s basically just a wifi scanning utility at the moment.

I was bored last night and started working on some code that would update my location on the site again just like it used to. The only difference is before it would get updated by a GPS phone that had internet using the Mologogo software. So the way that this is different is that it will currently use the IP of the location that is in a list of known IPs and GPS coordinates. This works on a non-jailbroken iPhone as well, since it is only a lookup by IP and not a MAC address or anything like that.

The first version was written in shell code and would have to be ran from the iPhone, and everyone that wanted to use it would have to install it to the phone. It didn’t take me too long to get it working and tested. It was ugly, it needed a jailbroken iPhone, but it worked. I then decided that it wasn’t practical to have the iPhone store the code, when all it would have to do is connect to a server with the code and update from there. So I set off to make a PHP version of the code and host it on my server.

I got the code on the server, and decided that, the best way to make it iPhone friendly was to use the iPhone web app template at located here. I still have a few things to add to the template and a few other feature I need to add to the code. But this is app will work on a non-jailbroken iPhone as all it needs is an active wifi connection. It needs wifi because the IP from the Edge network wouldn’t work for the type of lookup we are doing.

I don’t want to do an IP lookup and match it to known GPS coordinates, but currently that is the only way I know of to do it on a non-jailbroken iPhone. So now, I am working on a native iPhone app, that will do the GPS lookup by IP, MAC address of the router, and hopefully cell tower triangulation. The 3rd part I am not really sure how I will pull that off, but I know it is possible because of the other apps out there. The two big differences between my program and the other one, is that mine will be free, and will let you update your location on your own website like what I do here. The nice thing about the native app, is that you won’t need a wifi connection as long as you have Edge service. Also I know that the new iPhone firmware 1.1.3, is suppose to have the triangulation built into google maps. But I doubt it will let you use that information to update your site location on a blog or such. Also I know many people won’t be updating to that version as they like to use native apps and updating to 1.1.3 will break all apps again.

The main goal after I get the native app in a semi-beta build. Is to allow users of the native app to go out and find access points and IPs, and update the database so that users of the web based version, will get better and more results. This will be nice for users that don’t want to jailbreak their phones for whatever reason, but still get to use an awesome app such as this.

Depending on how far I get with the coding in the next few days will decide if I present my application at the Chicago 2600 meeting or not. I am fairly confident that I will at least get enough done to show off the complete web app. The native app will be a bit tougher but if I run into any problems I’m sure someone there would have an idea on what I could do. It would also be great to get suggestions and comments from others on what they would like to see. I should also note, that since the web app, is a web based app, it can be used with any device capable of connecting to the net. So this won’t just help iPhone users, but anyone with a wifi card can get GPS coordinates from their web browser.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress on the web app.

So I bought an iPhone. I got one of the discontinued 4GB ones, since I won’t be using it for music, and it was only $300. Which is about my limit on a cell phone. I’ve only had it activated as a phone since Friday night, but it has been an amazing experience so far. I got a bunch of 3rd party apps instead, and seem to install one or two new ones everyday. So many programs are being released for it everyday, many of them are really good and almost must haves. Today I installed an IRC client and a wifi scanner.

I’ve also been using it to tether to my laptop for internet, this has been great as my internet at home does not exist at the moment. In fact I’m posting this blog update from my laptop using my iPhone for the internet. My favorite application would have to be the one that installs all the other applications. Sure I can download the apps from their websites and then mess around with terminal, but it’s so much easier to just touch install on the iPhone and have it download and install for me. Anyways here are some screen shots of my haxed phone, and I’ll post another update soon with more info on all the apps and stuff.

Sorry, I’ve actually be out doing stuff. So this might be a long post, so I’ll do one of those nifty tag things so that you’ll have to click something else to finish reading everything and then my site will get more traffic from that.

So let’s go back to about the 5th of July.

July 5th, 2600 Meeting

90% of the meeting was spent outside! Ok, well, some people decided to stay outside for most of it. I did, as well as many others. It was a nice night, and it was just fun to get away from the wifi and just talk. Steve had an intresting presentation on something.. just kidding. It was good, but during it someone kept making his MacBook go into FrontRow ^_^, HAX BY JAKU #1 of the night.

Now, Josh bought a MacBookPro that day as well, and while he was out. I messed around with his terminal, and set a wall paper on it. On the wall paper it was all white, like the background but at the end of the line where you begin to type it said "hax by jaku", soooo HAX BY JAKU #2. I wish I had a picture of it, it would make more sense. I think it might still be on his computer so I shall just ask him for it later.

After the meet, nothing really important.


(continue reading…)

Hey, look an update. Alright so I’ve been busy. I bought a car. A new VW Jetta 2007 Wolfsburg edition. I just bought a car charger for the USB phone, so from now on, the phone will always be ON and in the car. I’m usually never too far from the car anyways.

I have a few new projects I plan on doing as well. Again a secret until I get some sort of prototype working. I will be using it for my car, but it has many other uses as well. So maybe if I get extra time it will be a 2-for-1 type project.

I want to get back into filming things over the summer, so I might post some of my stuff up here as well. But don’t count on it, unless it turns out really well. If I do get into filming again, I’ll have to figure out a way to pull the content I post from Revver, MetaCafe, and YouTube to the site. That shouldn’t be to hard, and would make the site a bit more interesting with more aggregated data. Although I should really start using the services I already got working with the site before I go adding new stuff. Oh well.

Oh and the picture thing on the right is broken, because Leopard (beta) doesn’t work will with the software I used to get it working. I’ll fix it another time or just go back to Tiger. Which ever I have more time for first I guess.

And I didn’t have anything to do with it!

I presented my secret project at the 2600 meeting. I was hoping for a much bigger response to it than the one I got. I felt that there was to much to go over and so that made people bored\unimpressed. Or maybe I am the only person that thinks controlling an 8 year old system with a web browser, or Wii remote is cool. Eitherway, I had fun working on it, and I learned a lot from this one project. So at least I can take the knowledge of this project and use it towards other things. I already have a few ideas but won’t be working on them until I move to my new apartment, whenever that might be.

I have been working on a new secret project the past few days. A few people know about it, as I needed them to test some things. But I’m not saying what it is, until after the 2600 meeting on Friday. I hope to have most of it ready for the presentation I will be giving on it. It isn’t the coolest thing in the world, but it is interesting. I will have a demo of it at the 2600 meeting, so that should be fun.

So I had some time to work on the site today. Most of it is under the hood updates.

I updated to the latest version of WP, as well as added a few plugins and modfied them to work how I want. I can now change the image of the picture on the right by email, without having my MacBookPro on. I now have my current status from Twitter on the right, as well as my AIM status. Soon to have my latest post from Dodgeball. You don’t see it yet, but when I answer a question from Consumating.com, it will show up under the Consumating catergory, it won’t post to the front page to keep it clutter free. I know I am forgetting some things, but either way, I am alive and I am working on the site, so both good things. Inless you hate me that is.