First steps of chat

Have you ever seen the new 'Chat' item in the client menu? Yes, we implemented Jabber instant messaging to allow chat not only between Woophoo users but towards outer space too.

Jabber had ca. 90 million users in 2007, (according to Wikipedia, based on the calculations of Process-One) but if you have a Gmail account you are one of them, because GTalk - the chat at the left of Gmail - uses jabber too.

That's nice, but you have at least three IM accounts and maybe you don't want to have a fourth one at Woophoo. A solution to this problem is that you could log in into your favorite IM account using the Woophoo client. We are working on this! Notice that not only technical difficulties are in the process but our constant will is to protect your privacy: we just don't want to know your IM account.

Experimental Traffic Map

One of the main goals of Woophoo is to provide traffic maps. The task is quite simple: visualize current traffic situation on a map, to enable proper routing decisions. 

We use anonimised measurements provided by Woophoo users as input information - this can be directly used for visualization, or, if we do not have up-to-date information of a given area, we can try inferring, predicting current situation based on historical data of the given area. A lots of algorithms can be used both for prediction and for visualization, including data mining and knowledge discovery algorithms. However, we have to present a scalable method, that can provide fast answers for lots of concurrent users asking for maps of different areas.

Our new, experimental traffic map service produces something like the next figure, which is the current traffic map of Budapest.

The map is available both on client side and on the web site, however, Woophoo users currently provide data mostly only for Hungary. Color codes refer to the average car speed of the area, the strength of coloring relates to the accuracy of the prediction. The speed is relative, red indicates deceleration against the average speed of a given user on a given route. I personally prefer this kind of speed values, because it blures driving skill differences. Accuracy basicly depends on the user activity of Budapest; if we have more accurate data, then we can infer the current situation more precisely. 

Keep in mind, that as a prototype service, we keep on developing both prediction and visualization - new visualization techniques, better prediction algorithms are expected. And, of course, to have proper maps, keep on using Woophoo - if more and more use Woophoo, traffic maps become more and more accurate.

Woophoo Beta

I'm glad to introduce: Woophoo Beta! 

According to our schedule, we made some major enhancements, fixed bugs, wrote documentation, completed initial tests, designed pages etc. -- and we found, that Woophoo is the best integrated GPS service and tool-set available today for free, and is ready to open up.

To summarize, Woophoo can currently provide reliable 

• traditional map-based navigation,
• GPS vehicle or personal tracking,
• buddy tracking (fleets),
• chat (via Jabber),
• route planning (via OpenStreetMap Gosmore),
• traffic map

on the mobile client side, and

• interface to handle tracks, track statistics, comments, tags, 
• search interfaces for tracks,
• interface to handle and administer bunches (fleets),
• bunch tracking,
• traffic map,
• interface to embed bunches, tracks in foreign web pages

on the web side, and there are are lots of fancy new features under development.

The main goal of the beta stage is to test and enhance the services and tools while they are public and open. We tried our best to make Woophoo useful and comfortable - now we need feedback from independent users. If you find a bug, have a feature request or just want to contact us, you can 

• leave a comment on this blog,
  
• visit Woophoo Agora,
• or write an email.

Try it, use it, and don't hesitate to write feature requests, bug reports or general comments.

Attach images to your tracks!

If you want to document a moving event like the Critical Mass, or you just want to have a sweet memory of your trip, it's a good idea to attach photos to your track.

Here is the track of Critical Mass Budapest on 22 September, 2008:



To attach photos to a track, first you must upload them somewhere on the internet because we don't store images. Just upload them to your favorite image sharing site! Our favorite is Picasa so we have nice integration with it but you can attach any images available on the internet to your tracks.

So simply click the "Attach Picasa image to this track" or the "Attach image from URL to this track" link to start the attaching process. A new window opens up and you can select the image to attach (by entering the url of the image, or by selecting it from your Picasa albums). You must point at the location where you took this photo. It's easy to use our location selection tool: If you move the mouse over the map, an arrow follows it on the track. The arrow never leaves the track, it is always at the nearest point to the mouse so you don't need to click a precise location on the track. If you see that the arrow is at the place where the photo is taken, just click on the map and the location will be selected.
Of course you can add a comment to the image if you want.




Note: Please consider the copyrights when attaching images from the internet. All the images attached to our sample tracks are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Beta test in two weeks!

Big news: Beta test starts on October 20!

Beta test is not just a fashionable label on the logo. It means that Woophoo isn't perfect but usable now, and we need your help to improve it.

Why participate in the test? Because Woophoo is in its current state one of the best free gps trackers on the Earth.

Note that you don't even need to wait for the beta if you want to try Woophoo. Woophoo is up now, you can jump in!