WiFi Location Based Services for Windows XP

I'm pleased to announce that the first beta version of Herecast for Windows XP is now available.

It has all the same features as the Pocket PC edition. Your location shows up in a little bubble (or a regular tooltip), and you can click the icon to get more details...





As with the Pocket PC version, subscriptions can send you messages as well...



Right-click the icon for more options, and to upload data.

There are a few things with the XP version that I'm not quite happy with yet. For example, it seems that it cannot detect your location unless you are connected to a wireless network. This is definitely something I need to resolve. There are a few other minor things. But having a version of Herecast for Windows XP will make the software accessible to a much wider audience, and will also make developing location-based services easier. That, indeed, is the next goal--to create some useful services (beyond the little demos) that will drive future growth.

For Pocket PC users, there is one small bugfix affecting services, but no other features or fixes worth upgrading for. You might as well stick with beta 4.

I'm going to be taking a bit of a break for the holidays, as I take on the task of looking for full-time work. I'll keep an eye on things here as well. (To keep things under control, I don't plan to do any promotion of the XP version for now... we'll just see if anyone finds it on their own.)

Happy holidays! :)

Comments (RSS)

By the way, I didn't uncover any significant new stability issues in the code, so if anything on my end will fix the problem with the iPAQ 4150 ROM 1.10, beta 4 should have done it.

Mark - http://www.herecast.com - Dec 14 2004, 1:58 AM

hell.. just when i wanted to try to do one for windows.. haha...

great shit btw. still i've some suggestions for herecast. like is it possible to add a sync feature where herecast will sync its internal database with the one on the net by prolly country, province, or state depending on selection...

jeremy - Dec 14 2004, 8:46 AM

Oh yeah, that's been on the to-do list for a while. Currently the only thing I can recommend is hitting the "clear data cache" button so it will download everything again. But I'd like it to automatically sync itself as well.

Mark - http://www.herecast.com - Dec 14 2004, 1:32 PM

haah.. and also prolly refresh the manufacturers list from IEEE OUI like kasuei wifi graph

http://www.kasuei.com/wifigraph/

jeremy - Dec 14 2004, 5:45 PM

Oops, sorry, I haven't been keeping up with that list. I've updated the web site and the downloads. From now on, you will also be able to download the latest manufacturers list from http://www.herecast.com/manufacturers.php?dl

Note that some manufacturers buy their WiFi components from a third party, resulting in the wrong company showing up. If anyone spots a mistake like this, let me know.

Mark - http://www.herecast.com/stats.php - Dec 14 2004, 10:08 PM

You can get the same OUI database same as "WiFi Graph". We grab it from http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt and I think it should be updated quite frequently.

But you do need some "data massage" work. If you need source code on it, feel free to contact me.

Compulim - http://www.kasuei.com/ - Feb 2 2005, 6:56 PM

hey mark. i finally had the courage to upgrade my 4150 to the latest firmware... and its working fine. herecast doesn't crash no more.

jeremy - Feb 11 2005, 6:06 AM

Yeah, I've been looking up manufacturers in the OUI manually as they show up in the database. But I suppose it wouldn't take up that much more space to include the whole thing. Well, it's 226k.

What sort of "data massaging" do you have in mind? Different spellings and so on?

jeremy -- good to hear! It must have been the bug I cought when I ported to XP. (The debugger in Visual Studio is much better than the one in eMbedded Visual C++, so it caught a few things right away.)

Mark - http://www.herecast.com/stats.php - Feb 24 2005, 3:37 PM

hi jeremy,
this is vamsi from india.can u tell me how can i use the herecast source code to run an application on PDA(pocket pc 2003).when i take PDA thru the campus ,i should know the location of the PDA,for example(if i am in the library it should indicate me that i am in the library).this can acheived my getting the information about the nearby access points.(ex:mac address,ssid,signal strength etc).Is there any other way out to get the source code for the particular application.plz help me out.

thanku sir,

regards
v.vamsi

vamsi - Apr 15 2005, 4:31 AM