17. Getting data from the Internet out into the real world Adrian McEwen - www.mcqn.com
18. Bubblino Adrian McEwen - www.mcqn.com Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuttyxander/3206466676/
19.
Notas do Editor
First off, a brief bio so you know a bit about who I am, and how I got here. After graduating I moved down to Cambridge to join a small startup called STNC. You won’t have heard of it, but we were doing interesting things with mobile phones and the web before most people had a mobile phone. We built the first ever web browser to run on a mobile phone. We were then bought by Microsoft when they started getting serious about phones, and after a few years working for the “Evil Empire” I left to start my own company. Since then I’ve been using my experience in writing software for very constrained platforms and knowledge of web technologies to work on projects that cut across web and mobile. More and more, I’ve been interested in, and helping people with, the emerging “Internet of Things” – getting data out of the real world and into the Internet; or out of the Internet and into the real world
This isn’t something that I’ve made. It’s a site collecting lots of data about ship positions from enthusiasts all round the coast, and then showing you live ship data on a fairly rudimentary map. If you hover over any of the ships then you get some more information about it. Despite living about quarter of an hours walk from the river, I can’t actually see it from my flat – someone built Britain’s biggest cathedral right in the way. I thought it would be nice to be more connected to the traffic on the river, and so I used this data to build…
I have a little script that takes the data from ShipAIS.com and works out when a boat has entered, or left the Mersey. Whenever that happens it sends a message to the @merseyshipping twitter account. That means I get a background awareness of the comings and goings on the river, and find out just how busy the river still is!
http://mapme.at/api/export.html?usernames=royaldaffodil,royaliris,snowdrop,amcewen&mode=since&since=1%20hour%20ago Building upon that, I did some work with the Liverpool-based location history and sharing web startup mapme.at. Now you can add the famous ferries ‘cross the Mersey to your friends on mapme.at, and see where they are in relation to you. On this screenshot you can see that I’m at home; Snowdrop is moored over in Birkenhead; Royal Daffodil is plying the normal ferry route around the river; and I’m not sure what Royal Iris is up to down there – she’s on the Manchester Ship Canal for some reason.
BakerTweet – a simple and easy way for one bakery in London to send Twitter messages whenever they pull something fresh out of the oven. Then lets local followers know when it’s a good time to head down to buy something.
Bubblino – a twitter-watching, bubble-blowing Arduino bot.