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Winter Coders Social 2008

sam keen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:05:00 +0000

This year’s Winter Coders Social is set to go. Come join the party this Tuesday, December 9th at Cubespace.

Details: http://calagator.org/events/1250456151

Speaking at this years PHPWorks in Atlanta

sam keen — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:03:00 +0000

Very excited that the talk I submitted to php|works was accepted. I’ll be speaking at the Atlanta conference on my continuing work with combining XMPP and SMS with existing web API’s

Shizzow’s public announcment

sam keen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:08:00 +0000

One of my side projects has turned into a full blown startup. Shizzow.com will be officially announced at today’s Lunch 2.0 at cube space. It’s been a pleasure working with the other fine folks on this project and I’m looking forward to the future.
Thanks to Silicon Florist for all the press

Accessing Trimet Arrival Times with SMS

sam keen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:11:00 +0000

I discovered the Portland Trimet API about a month ago and was very inspired by the amount of real-time information available and the ease of accessing it through their web service. One feature of the service is that for a given stop id you can get the arrival times for the buses/trains for that stop. These are not the scheduled times but rather the real-time estimated arrival time based on the known GPS coordinates of the actual vehicles on their routes.
You can get to this data through IVR system by dialing 503-238-RIDE or on the web.

In the mean time, I have also been working with extending existing APIs with additional access such as SMS and XMPP (jabber). So it was natural to take on this trimet service as my first proof of concept.
For SMS access, you simple text “pdxt {stop_id}” to the short code DOTORG (368674)

so for example, for the stop 8334 (Pioneer Square South MAX Station Eastbound), you would text…

“pdxt 8334” to DOTORG (368674)

The result is shown below (with the same request through the web for comparison)

There is slight differences in the times since it is difficult to coordinate the SMS and web request precisely.

In my trials, response times for SMS were in the 5-10 second range which for me is acceptable.

I’ll next be working on an XMPP (Jabber) wrapper around the service so you will then be able to access the service with an IM client (which many phones now have). XMPP will give the same mobility benefits of SMS but removes the 155 char limit for the returned text allowing for more information to be included in the returned message.

Once I have completed SMS and XMPP around this service, I plan to refactor the technique so it can be easily applied to other services. I will also document the steps I took to integrate with SMS and XMPP. Look for that on google code soon.

Startupalooza

sam keen — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:50:00 +0000

Exciting event coming up at the end of March. Startupalooza is gaining steam, building quite the list of product demo’s (including Fyreball, my current employer). The event designed to be Those who have walked the path, sharing their knowledge and experiences with those interested in beginning startups. This is not a typical startup event where the goal is to impress VC’s in the crowd (though I’m sure a few will be lurking).

Event is: Saturday, March 29, 2008, 2:00 PM – 7:00 PM

RSVP at Upcoming

Ignite Portland 2

sam keen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:31:00 +0000

Looks much bigger (550+ registered) and better this go around. I went to Ignite 1 and had an excellent time. Can’t wait to see how it goes this time.

Happening Feb 5, 2008 : doors open at 5:15pm at the Bagdad.

Ignite Portland home page

“Portland On Fire” Profiling Local Individuals

sam keen — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Portland On Fire is a site launched by Raven Zachary on the first day of 2008. It’s goal is to give a quick bio of local folks, showing what they’ve done and what they are currently up to. It is starting with people in the tech and arts sector but the hope is that it expands out to all corners of the Portland talent pool.

OSCON 2007 Recap

sam keen — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:44:00 +0000

Just finished up my 2007 ‘OSCON Experience‘ I attended the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday and we had our PDXPHP both in the exhibit hall as last year, but in addition I helped to organize the OSCamp room.

Spent most of my time in the exhibit hall this year. I only made it to one OSCON session + 2-3 OSCamp sessions. Still had a good time though. I was able to catch up with folks I typically only see at OSCON in addition to hanging out with local friends. There were no shortage of after parties this year. It seemed you had your pick of 3-4 parties a night. People were really zombiefied by the end of Thursday (I know I was).

OSL was nice enough to give a demo of the OLPC to the OSCAMP crowd. Getting the device (and Brad from OSL) out of the loud, crowded exhibit hall enabled the OSCamp’s to get a real close look at it and ask all the questions they wanted.

360Flex Comming to Seattle

sam keen — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:18:00 +0000

Flex seems to be on fire as of late. I really like the theme behind the efforts over at 360Conferences.

For more info on the event, visit www.360flex.com

“The gist is, we’re bringing together the best Flex has to offer, in a community setting where developers can hang out, share ideas, share problems, in general come together and leave with more knowledge and more contacts and friends than when they arrived. Our last event in San Jose was a phenomenal success, this one is shaping up to be better than that.

Additionally we keep the price low, at 360.00 for 3 days, so that even those developers and engineers without an expense account can attend.“

OSCamp 2007

sam keen — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:03:00 +0000

I sort of just fell into organizing the camp this year but it is really starting to shape up. Didn’t take too much effort and O’Reilly was extremely easy to work with. They were nice enough to kick in for grub, projector rental, and brainstorm / collaboration type office supplies (and those are not cheap when you have to purchase them from the Convention Center $$$)

So what is OSCamp:

OSCAMP is in the spirit of BarCamp and other Unconferences. This clip from BarCamp SF provides a great video summary of the spirit of a BarCamp. This year it will be held on July 25-26 as part of O’Reilly’s OSCon2007.

Be sure to head over to oscamp.org and register (if you have not already registered for OSCON). OSCamp is free and open to the public (After you register