Introducing Commute.hk 香港交通相機 iOS App

I just released a new iOS app called the Commute.hk 香港交通相機. This app gives you quick accesses to all the traffic camera views in Hong Kong.

You can browse the cameras easily by using map, list and grid views, as well as adding your own favorite cameras for easy referencing.

All traffic news and camera imagery are provided by the Data.One service operated by the OGCIO of the HKSAR government.

If you drive a fast car, I am sure you will find this app very helpful. By the way, this app will push any special news traffic info right to your app as quick as it gets.

Here are some more screenshots:

My Twitter Python script

I know there are tons of twitter python script out there. Here is my simple python command line script to send twitter update:

import twitter, sys
api = twitter.Api()

USERNAME = 'YOUR_TWITTER_USERNAME'
PASSWORD = 'YOUR_TWITTER_PASSWORD'

api = twitter.Api(username=USERNAME, password=PASSWORD)

if len ( sys.argv ) > 1:
 message = sys.argv[1]
else:
 message = raw_input('Your twitter message: ')

status = api.PostUpdate( message )

You're going to need Python twitter installed, of course.

Shipping my first Facebook application: 李炳光牧師 FBApp

Background:
Boss has been a faithful Christian that puts a lot of effort to Rev. P.K.Li's website pkli.com, mostly by putting persistent efforts to maintain the weekly sermons. No easy feat by all means for a tight budget group. A lot of the weekly sermons MP3 have to be edited by hands using Final Cut Studio 2, to reduce noise and normalize the videos, and then uploading to Amazon S3 for downloads.

Problem is the traffic seem to hover in the same level, about a few thousands people a month, not too impressive. So boss wants actions! So here were my suggestions:

• Mac OS X Dashboard Widget - checked!
• iTunes Store Podcast download - checked!
  
• iPhone interface - checked!
• Videos on Google and Youtube - checked!
• Facebook Group and profile - checked, too!!

Well, Facebook Group got 386 people as of today. iTunes Podcast does pretty good with 400 - 500 podcasts downloads a month. But boss wants more. So what to do?

Enter Facebook Application. Facebook Applications let you create an application that lives in Facebook.com. So here is the plan:

1. Write Application
2. Get as many people to add this application. Showered them with latest Rev. P.K.Li's speeches
3. Pester the people whenever there are new speech
4. Let you friend's know you added the Facebook app. More people joint. Yay.

How-to:






Creating a Facebook application is not difficult at all.

1. Sign up a Developer account. Register an application at the "Developer" Facebook app.
   
2. Go through the tutorial at Facebook Developer wiki with PyFacebook. I use Django to integrate with it.
3. Then hook up the Speech data in the original pkli.com's site with the Facebook FBML templates.
4. My mantra is Fail early fail fast. So ship it first http://apps.facebook.com/revpkli/ and wait for feedback.
   

Total time spent: 3 hours.

What's next

This app is not going to be as popular as gaming apps as Mafia Wars, so as long as more people download Rev. P.K.Li's speech, then it's mission accomplished for me.

Improvements coming up:

1. Add "My favorite" feature.
   
2. Let people rate the speeches.
3. More social networking features: send this MP3 to friend
4. Facebook Connect integration back on pkli.com
   

You are welcome to check it out: 李炳光牧師 Facebook Application