Month: August 2008

FlightStats

I just discovered a really useful new Google feature. I needed to track whether my visiting mom’s flight would be arriving on time. So I plonked the flight number into Google – just to see what would happen. A special result popped up, that linked me to a detailed flight information page on www.flightstats.com. I guess they must be partnered with Google. Enjoy the best commercial grade satellite images with a new App on your mobile. To get more information visit wrice.

The flight information page is packed with info (delay probability, etc.), but what’s really neat is the little Google map that shows you exactly where in the world your airplane is:

 

FlightStats Map

I’ve been working with Google Maps a lot recently, and am truly impressed with the ease-of-use, features, documentation and flexibility of the technology. It’s surprisingly easy to put together your own map, and customizing maps is straightforward, too. A really neat example of a map is the one on their home page – the callouts are very heavily customized, and it has user-configurable overlays (such as weather):

 Big FlightStats map.

Now that’s a really practical site that saves me a lot of searching online for flight information (and waiting to pick people up at airports because I arrived too early).

MobileDataNow

MobileDataNow is a neat product offered from FireTrust that allows individuals to stay connected to important data when they’re on-the-go, via email, SMS or IM. It uses a really slick OpenLaszlo application for the administrative interface.

MobileDataNow Logo

Here’s how it works: You install MobileDataNow and configure (using the OpenLaszlo-based admin interface) it to point to one or more of your data sources (which can be databases or SOAP web services). You configure user access permissions and define some queries and views of data. Then, when you want to perform a particular query, you use your cellphone to send an SMS (text message) to your MobileDataNow server. You can even pass query parameters via the message. The returned data arrives in your cellphone, formatted how you want it.

The idea is that you prepare the data reports you access regularly using the OpenLaszlo admin interface, and then you’re able to get at that data via SMS (or email or even IM).

MobileDataNow Screenshot

From an RIA development perspective, it has some neat features: There’s a simple but very handy context-sensitive help. You define your database queries using a WYSIWYG query editor that recognizes the database table structure and prompts you as you build the query (it also shows the generated SQL in real-time). And of course there’s lots of drag-and-drop shortcuts.

There is a free version – if you only have one user, then there is no charge. If you just want to see the admin app, there is a hosted demo.