Dutton's blog

Although I'm struggling to achieve a happy co-existence between Google's Calendars and Contacts and my MobileMe subscription (still fighting dupes and funny syncs with the wrong numbers being associated with the wrong contacts etc... but that's for another blog post!), one part of MobileMe I was keen to do something with was their "Locate My iPhone" feature. Regular apps aren't allowed to run in the background on the iPhone, making any form of auto-updating tracking application all a bit "manual"  (e.g. Google Latitude on the iPhone), Apple have provided the ability to get the location of your iPhone automatically, but as it's officially being touted as a feature to use when you've lost your iPhone it's tucked away within the "Account Settings" section of the MobileMe web page.

This was screaming out to be screen-scraped and developer Tyler Hall has stepped up to the plate with Sosumi - A MobileMe Scraper. Using Sosumi is literally a case of including the class in your PHP, instantiating it with your MobileMe username and password and calling its locate method which returns an object containing the current latitude, longitude and result accuracy, it's as simple as that!

At the moment I've got a cron job on my server hitting this every five minutes and logging to a database. If the data hasn't changed since the last logged entry, a counter is incremented and timestamp_last is set. A very simple Google Map displays these locations as points on a map but I've got loads of ideas of stuff to play about with, such as:

• Plot the reported accuracy of each location as a circle on the map, more Google Maps fiddling.
• Modify which points are mapped based on time and date ranges through the webpage, some PHP + AJAX experience.
• Store locations of common places I visit, then for each point logged (taking into account the accuracy range) I can programatically work out where I am.  Could then auto-generate "Richard is at work", "Richard is at home", etc... reports for my blog/twitter/facebook etc... =).

Bit sad I know, but it seemed too good for a total sync-monkey like myself and I'll never pass up an opportunity, however contrived, for a PHP mash-up!

I meant to blog about this in the week, but last Sunday I visited the Wildlife Heritage Foundation as part of the Wild Arena Big Cats 2 Workshop and Experience which I blogged about a while back. I thought I'd share my experience and show off some of my photos from the day.

Their site in Kent is excellent. It's only open to the general public through specialist days (photographer, wildlife experiences, etc.), through which they are funded and so it's a lot more intimate than a zoo. The enclosures are arranged around a central grass car park, ideal as you can keep heavy kit in your car which is never too far away for a quick lens change. Having said that, I managed to spent the entire day shooting with my 70-300 IS USM, despite bringing my entire kit bag and tripod!

As the site takes part in numerous breeding projects for the cats, it's no surprise that animal welfare is their number one priority and this is reflected in the quality of the enclosures and environments they provide. The obvious advantage for photography is that you can get right up to the enclosures and take pictures through the bars which eliminates the usual problems you get trying to photograph big cats (or any of the more dangerous animals) in zoos, where you are kept back from the enclosure by another fenced off area meaning you can't keep the bars out of shot.

The day consisted of a group tour around the various enclosures given by one of the WHF team (and his bucket of meat =) ), being introduced to each cat in turn with lots of photograph opportunities. Wild Arena's Janet also came along to provide valuable photography tips. Once the tour completed we were then free to roam around by ourselves and take any more shots we liked.

Overall, the whole day was excellent, both Wild Arena and WHF guides were extremely knowledgeable and friendly and made the whole day go very smoothly. I'm still trying to sort through the 600+ shots I took on the day, but as I do I'll be posting the best to my Flickr account.

So, the way forward... Well from here on in it's going to be a clean CSS layout more akin to the DT of old but with the google map integration I've already developed. Managed to steal away a few hours this weekend to work on a template layout and so work on the back-end plumbing is now underway. Watch this space...

Apple's release of the iPhone 3GS finally convinced me to leave my 10+ year long T-Mobile and Nokia loyalty for the unchartered territories of O2. I've not been disappointed at all with the jump, but one feature I didn't realise I'd miss until it was gone was SMS delivery reports. O2 claim on their website;

The ‘delivery report’ function is not supported on our network. If you’d like to receive delivery reports, you can enter *0# followed by your text message and then send the message as you usually would.

Which I must admit is pretty clunky to have to remember each time but it does the job I suppose.

After a bit of digging around I've found a list of codes for other networks and countries which I've posted after the jump...

If you have any updates please let me know in the comments and I'll add them to the list:

Belgium
Proximus *R*
Base *N#

Brazil
Claro *N#

Croatia
T-Mobile *r*

Germany
T-Mobile *T#
Vodafone D2 *N#
O2 *N#
e-plus *N#

Greece
Vodafone *#
Wind *0#

Hungary
T-Mobile *A#

India
Voodafone *NOT#

Israel
Orange *NM#

Poland
PlusGSM (Polkomtel) XYZ

Portugal
Vodafone *NOT#

Qatar
Qtel *N#

Romania
Orange *NM#

Serbia
MTS *!#
Telenor *!#

Sweden
Telia *KV#
Comviq KV#
Telenor ##

Switzerland
SWISSCOM *N#

Turkey
TURKCELL *N#

UK
O2 *0#
Orange RCT
T Mobile *0#
Orange RCT
Vodafone – No code exists for Vodafone
Virgin *0#

US
T–Mobile *noti#