Utah County Trail AdvocacyOn June 7th, 2012 is a meeting that will be attended by every City Mayor in Utah County. The Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG) is a multi city organization that organizes projects that span multiple cities in the valley. At June 7th meeting, they will be voting to approve funds to construct Phase 3 of the Historic Rail Trail. This section of trail connects the existing north end of the Historic Rail Trail to the existing south end of the Porter Rockwell Trail in Draper, just north of the county line. The Murdoch Canal Trail, currently under construction, will connect to this trail system as well, providing an off-street connection from the mouth of Provo Canyon to Lehi. If Phase 3 of the Historic Rail Trail is approved, that same trail system will connect to the trails in Draper.This missing section of trail is a vital one, as there is not currently a safe way to travel via bike or running between Utah and Salt Lake counties. Building this trail will provide Multi-use trail access for walking, running, and cycling between these two counties.What To DoWe have an opportunity, right now, to communicate with our elected officials and encourage them in building sustainable infrastructure that supports commuters, recreational, and family use of the resources in Utah County.Please call your City Mayor and encourage them to support Phase 3 of the Historic Rail Trail at the MAG meeting, and thank them for their continued support of multi-use trail projects in Utah County.List of City WebsitesThank you for your support of Utah County Trails!
This spring my lawn needed to be aerated, and I asked my lawn guy to put down a spring mix of weed prevention, insecticide, and fertilizer. He services several homes in my neighborhood and visits them at once to save on time. A few days later, he came by and aerated the lawn. I didn’t see him do it, but aeration leaves obvious little plugs on the grass, and he left a little service flag stuck into the lawn.
The service flag he leaves is useful, as it sometimes has instructions. After fertilizer is laid down, the little flag has instructions to give the grass a deep water to push the fertilizer down into the soil. What I don’t know is if the lawn was fertilized. Was it? Did the cooler than expected weather cause him to push back his application of the fertilizer?
This eventless state leaves me in uncertain darkness.
What I don’t expect is for my lawn guy to spend most of every day on the phone communicating little details to his customers. What I do want is more communication.
(While my example here is a lawn service, these same ideas apply to pool services, maid services, or pretty much any service that visits a home.)
Evented Lawn Service
service_scheduled - Raised when the work schedule has changed. This event is raised by the service scheduling software. Attributes include the date and time, the services to be performed, and the estimated length of time the service will take.
service_canceled - Raised when a service visit is canceled. Attributes may include a reason (weather, account waaaaay past due, etc.) and a hint if the visit will be rescheduled.
service_completed - Raised when the work is complete. Attributes include the services performed and any special care instructions related to the service.
Lawn Service Mashups
A service_scheduled event modifies the instructions for the sprinkler system, to prevent the system to turn on during the service visit.
A service_scheduled event triggers a check of the family calendar. A birthday party on the calendar triggers a message asking for a reschedule.
A service_completed event containing instructions to deep water the lawn adds instructions to the sprinkler controller, causing a deep water to start within minutes of the service being completed.
A service_completed event 4 months earlier, without another service_completed event or service_scheduled event sends a notification to the property owner, requesting a check to see if the service will be performed.
A sure sign of spring in my neighborhood is the smell of a Barbecue drifting in the wind. I’m more of a die hard Barbecuer (-ist?) and have been seen more than a few times grilling amidst falling snowflakes. I’m a poor measure, but when my neighbors are out, it’s a pretty good indication that spring is upon us.
The backyard barbecue is a great example of an thing in our life that is used more occasionally then other things, but becomes very important when the desire strikes. I offer this as an example to explore the eventification of the less active things in our lives.Evented Barbecuesburner_on - Raised when a burner is turned on. Attributes include which burner.
burner_adjusted - Raised when a burner is adjusted. Attributes include which burner and the approximate level it was set to.
burner_off - Raised when a burner is turned off. Attributes include which burner.
temp_change - Raised when the temperature of the Barbecue changes.
probe_temp_change - Raised when the temperature of an attached meat thermometer changes.
tank_pressure_change - Raised when the pressure measured in the connected tank changes.Barbecue MashupsA tank_pressure_change event indicating low tank pressure is followed (perhaps some time later) by a new_event from the family calendar with BBQ in the title. A reminder is sent to the Grill Master’s cell phone, reminding him to fill the spare tank.
A series of burner_on and burner_adjusted events occur, followed an hour later by a turned_off event from the dining room light. A message is sent to the Grill Master reminding him to turn off the grill.
A recipe_loaded event is followed by a series of temp_change and probe_temp_change events. An estimated time remaining and adjustment suggestions are adjusted on a display in the kitchen based on the instructions in the recipe and the rate of temperature change.
An event_reminder event from the family calendar causes a lookup of the current outside temperature from a weather service. Based on the cold outside temperatures, a message is sent to the Grill Master containing a suggestion to fire up the grill earlier than usual.
A few weeks ago AJ Fisher wrote about sensor networks, and the structure of what he brilliantly calls a Sensor Commons. I love the future he describes, and the benefit we will gain as a society from the information gathered by little sensors all over the place.AJ’s vision addresses the problem of sensor data in the large, but I struggle with a different problem. I want a better way to install, configure, and use sensor data in the small. I’m glad that I can contribute the weather information from the little station outside my house, but I also want a better way to tie that into my house thermostat and my alarm clock.My SensorsIn my personal life right now, I only have a few sensors. One of them is my cell phone, which is perhaps the best current sensor for life activity. I’m also eagerly awaiting my Twine device, a result of my backing their KickStarter project. I foresee a future with sensor data available from my appliances, my power system, and the lights, switches and plugs in my home. Most of this data is already known, but not shared.My thermostat knows what the temperature in my house is. It displays the current temperature on the front and uses it to automatically turn my furnace and air conditioner on and off. Do you know what would be really neat? I’d love to see a historical graph of that data. I’m not talking about new, complicated data here. I’m just talking about the same data *already being collected* being shared and accessible.ConfigurationFor normal human beings, tying these sensors together is a challenge. They want a way to easily add a sensor and give it behavior in a user friendly way. I believe the right way to do this is with a Personal Event Network. Devices connected in such a way are simple, because the behavior and logic is programmed in the network, not on the device. This allows low cost devices to be easily attached, and then configured via the user’s installation of Apps into their Personal Event Network.I believe that Apps are really a collection of features. By choosing and installing Apps, a user configures their phone and their computer. Personal Event Networks can be configured the same way.Sensor Data as EventsPerhaps the only component that I’d add to AJ Fisher’s design of the Sensor Commons is the concept of events and Evented APIs. The only current way to access sensor data is through a traditional API, and that means polling. And we all really hate polling. By supporting the concept of events in the Sensor Commons, an infrastructure of real-time, flowing data is possible.I see a future where my personal sensors are connected to my Personal Event Network, and I share data from those sensors by installing Apps that share my sensor data with the Sensor Commons, making it available for the use of scientists everywhere.Thanks, AJ, for sharing your thoughts with us. May we work together for this bright future.
In today’s Evented World post, I’m going to stretch the definition of a Service to include a City. I’m going to choose a city, but this discussion is easily expanded to a County, a State, or hey, even a Country!
Cities are a really great example of a service. We pay for it through our taxes and services, and the events of a city have a direct effect on our lives. Cities typically provide or coordinate garbage and recycling services, snow plows, and utilities. They maintain roads, have parades, hold public meetings, and provide fire and police services.
I’ve picked only a few of the many events that are appropriate to give some examples of how they could be used. How many more can you imagine?
Evented Cities
road_closure - Raised when the city will close a road to traffic.
council_resolution - Raised when the council passes a resolution.
snow_plow_active - Raised when the plow is out, with attributes containing recently cleared streets and streets being targeted next.
evacuation_order - Raised when an evacuation order is in effect during a crisis such as a wild fire. Attributes include area of evacuation and references to additional information.
garbage_pickup - Raised when the garbage is to be picked up for a neighborhood. Attributes indicate when the pickup can be expected.
City MashupsDue to a holiday, my garbage is not picked up on it’s regularly scheduled day. Two days later a garbage_pickup event early in the morning causes an alert to be sent to my bathroom mirror for me to see and acknowledge when I wake up.
A council_resolution event is raised during city_council meeting. A CyclingAdvocate app on my Personal Event Network recognizes that the resolution involves bike lanes, and loads the details of the resolution into my Instapaper account for later reading.
A road_closure event from the city works department is received by the garbage company, who adjusts their pickup schedule to avoid the road closure. Every home rescheduled is sent a garbage_pickup event with the adjusted expected pickup information.
Smartphone location events from both my phone and my wife’s phone indicate that we are out of state. An evacuation_order event is raised due to a nearby fire, causing a message to be sent to the next-door neighbor asking them to take our pet cat with them since we are out of town.
Facebook’s new Frictionless Sharing has started some conversations about what Social Sharing really is. ItemsDigital Sharing has a history that is mostly Item based. I’ll start with email (though sharing existed before) to limit the discussion to digital forms of sharing. Email was (and still is) used as a method of sharing Items. If you find something interesting, you can email a link or copy the content into an email. As Social Sharing grew with Social Networks, sharing has mostly followed this similar path. An explicit action is required to distribute the item of interest to my followers.
Item based sharing is meant to be received Item by Item. Email lands in an inbox till read. Items in Google Reader remain as unread till viewed by the user. Streams are designed to show a current view, and typically do not provide the user a method to start where they last left off.
Google+ seeks to refine the Item based social sharing, and their Circles method of selective sharing does a good job to refine the per Item flow.
Streams
Facebook is seeking a different type of sharing, one focused on Streams. In this model of sharing, shared items are not filtered, and the emphasis is on the Stream, not the Item. The value of each item is much less then Item sharing, but the value of the stream itself is more powerful with the constant flow of data.
Stream based sharing is not a progression from Item based sharing, but a new type of sharing enabled by the proliferation of APIs and web technologies. ConfusionThe current problem with Social Sharing is confusion between these two sharing types. Users and Services alike remain confused about which they are, causing flaws in design and misuse by users. Social Noise is a result of including Streams in an Item system. Other examples of sharing confusion:
- Google+ is an Item sharing service, but provides no easy way to resume from your previous place in the list of posts.
- Facebook is a stream sharing service, but provides no way for users to extract value from the stream in aggregate form. Pandora (through it’s Facebook partnership) should offer a Station based on the recently listened items from my social contacts.
- Google Latitude has both Items (places I explicitly check in) and Streams (Places I am checked in automatically), but does not offer tools to handle these types of sharing differently.
- Endomondo is a workout tracking and sharing service. They make no differentiation between Items and Streams, though some of my workouts are Items (an epic bike ride) and some are Streams (my daily bike commute).
Litmus TestDo you care if you miss an update? If you do, you are likely treating that as an Item. If you only care about what’s recent, then a Stream is more appropriate.NowWe need to learn how to distinguish between these (and future) types of sharing, and learn how to best use each type. Something New isn’t necessarily Bad.
This past Friday, the Check Engine light came on in my car. As far as error reports go, this is one of the worst. The presence of the light simply means that SOMETHING IS WRONG of an unreported magnitude. Reading the error code to find out what is actually wrong requires a specialized device that plugs into the car’s OBD data port. Most mechanics have one, and even some auto parts stores. Fortunately, I own a neat little gizmo that acts as a OBD to Bluetooth bridge, allowing an app on my phone to communicate with the car’s internal computer. This particular car was originally sold in California, and it’s fuel oxygen sensor is a little picky at the higher elevation of Utah. I read the code with my phone, determined that I’ve seen this code before, and cleared the code, turning off the check engine light and returning the car to it’s normal operation. Doing an Evented World post on a car has been on my list since the beginning, but my Check Engine light experience motivated it to the top of the list. I’m calling this an evented car, but this clearly applies to your truck, minivan, city bus, and even the Schwan’s refrigerated delivery vehicle. The Evented Cardoor_unlocked - Raised when a door is unlocked, with attributes indicating which door, and perhaps which method (key fob, key, internal button).door_locked - Raised when a door is locked, with attributes indicating which door.door_opened - Raised when a door is opened, with attributes indicating which door.door_closed - Raised when a door is closed, with attributes indicating which door.engine_started - Raised when your engine is started.engine_killed - Raised when your engine is turned off.engine_error - Raised when your Check Engine light is on, complete with attributes indicating the problem.vehicle_status - Raised periodically with attributes such as fuel level, ignition state, speed, and locationcrash_detected - Raised when airbags deploy or seat belts lock.It is worth noting that most events will also be handled by the car’s internal systems, and that they are also signaled externally. The deployment of the car’s airbags does not depend on involvement of any external systems.I’m going to limit this exploration to these simple events, but I’m sure you can imagine more.Car MashupsCalling these ideas car mashups just sounds bad, doesn’t it? Here are just a few of the potential evented mashups involving a car:A vehicle_status event with an updated location, followed by an engine_start event causes a comparison between the location of the car and the location of all valid drivers of the car. Finding no valid match and not having the Allow Guest Drivers preference set, the engine is killed and an alert sent to the car owner.A crash_detected event sends a message to OnStar and to the insurance company. OnStar opens a call to the vehicle to determine if emergency services is needed, and the Insurance company notifies the local agent.An engine_killed event, followed by a vehicle_status event causes the car’s location to be recorded. Smartphone location events from the driver are monitored, and when the driver begins to head in the direction of their car, guidance information appears on the screen of their smartphone guiding them back to the car.A vehicle_status event uses the location of the car and the fuel status to alert the driver to nearby cheap gas prices convenient to their location. This saves fuel by not requiring additional driving to reach a cheaper station.
Outside each of our homes, there are utility meters carefully measuring our use of water, electricity, and gas. These devices can tell us about our utility usage, and therefore our monthly bill, just by walking outside. When was the last time you checked one of your meters? The collection of data does not automatically make it useful.Most of us see utility information when we get our bill, which is usually a week or so after the monthly billing period ends. This delay between measurement and reporting is one of the reasons why we are not very efficient with our use of utilities. Can we shorten the delay between measurement and reporting?Evented Utilitiescurrent_usage_rate - Raised periodically with the current usage rate as event attributes.price_update - Raised when the utility is adjusting prices.daily_usage_total - Raised after the close of each day with the totals for the day.monthly_usage_total - Raised after the close of each month with the totals for the month.Monitoring devices like utility meters produce a constantly changing numbers. In order to limit the number of events to a sane amount, these numbers must be filtered and consolidated. Two common methods are time intervals or significant change thresholds. It’s probably accurate enough to have utility data reported every 5 minutes. This is simple to build and keeps the values to a minimum. Another method would be to report the new values whenever they change significantly. This will send fewer events for measurements that don’t change very fast, but will send one immediately when one does change.Utility MashupsA location event from my smartphone indicating that I’m away from the house, followed by a current_usage_rate event for my electricity that is higher then normal (when I’m home) sends an alert to my smartphone.A daily_usage_total event indicates that my water usage is much higher then my monthly budget allows. During that day, I’m alerted whenever a current_usage_rate is high, so I can determine the main uses of water in the house. When daily_usage_total events indicate that my use is within budgeted amounts, no alerts are received.By monitoring price_update events, apps in my Personal Event Network can make adjustments to the thermostat or scheduled running times of my appliances to reduce running costs.
One of the clear winners of the eCommerce revolution was consumer shipping companies. Shopping online has become mainstream, and UPS, FedEx, DHL, and others have the pleasure of moving our goods from one place to another. Oddly enough, these shipping companies only maintain a relationship with the shipper of the package, and not the receiver. They do provide delivery alerts, typically in the form of an email or SMS, but that is where their involvement ends. Connecting shipping companies to Personal Event Networks will have some incredible benefits that our current systems don’t allow. Imagine not giving your shipping address to the online merchant. Your Shipper knows where you live, and quotes shipping options accordingly. Shipped packages raise events into your Personal Network, and personalized service could enable delivery to where you are, not to a predetermined address.For Personal Event Networks, all this magic is easy. Now, on with the show.Evented Shippingnew_package - Raised when a new package has been created in the shipper’s systems.package_progress - Raised when delivery progress has been updated. This event will be raised frequently during the deliver process. Event attributes will include estimated delivery dates.package_delivered - Raised when the package is delivered to it’s final destination.These events are hardly surprising. In fact, many shippers currently send notifications similar to these, usually in the form of messages intended for human consumption and delivered via email or text message.Shipping MashupsWhen a new_package event is received, an app called DeliverAnywhere uses permissioned access to personal data such as my calendar to determine that I’ll be attending a conference out of state at the time of delivery. The package is routed to that location.An urgent package is being sent to my home. Because the package requires a signature (or, you know, a biometric id), it cannot be left on the doorstep. 10 minutes before delivery a package_progress event is raised with the updated delivery estimate. The music blaring in my workshop is gently paused, and I’m alerted that the sensitive package will soon be arriving.While on vacation, a low priority package is delivered on my doorstep, resulting in a package_delivered event. Because I’m on vacation, a message is sent to a neighbor’s kid who is watching the house. He runs over to pick up the package and put it into our garage for when we return.
When I was creating my original idea list for this Evented World series, Brad Hintze suggested elementary schools. While a school might not be the first thing that jumps to mind when you think of a service you use frequently, I hope I can change your mind. I’m specifically talking about elementary schools, but this could likely apply to all types of education institutions. The Evented Elementary Schoolchild_present - Raised when your child’s attendance is recorded for the day.child_released - Raised when your child has been released. This will happen when class has ended, or when your child has been picked up from school. Event attributes will include the reason for release.grade_updated - Raised when your child’s grades (marks) have been updated.assignment_issued - Raised when the child has been issued a new assignment. Event attributes will include a information about the assignment, including the due date.I’m sure there are more events that apply in this setting, but even these simple events can yield some powerful opportunities.
As with other evented systems, direct action is not required by a human to raise the events. These events will be raised by systems created to help manage the school. Attendance software will raise the child_present and child_released events. The teacher’s grade system can raise the grade_updated and assignment_issued events in response to assignment information recorded by the teacher.Elementary School MashupsA temperature_recorded event indicating a slightly elevated temperature, followed by a child_present event sends a message to the school nurse. The elevated temperature might not be a sign of the child getting sick, but getting checked early could help prevent the spread of disease through schools. An assignment_issued event is received by a HomeworkHelper app I have in my Personal Event Network that helps me remind my child and links to resources that can help with the assignment.After an earthquake, smartphone location events are combined with child_present and child_released events to help my wife and I retrieve our children from school and then meet up at a safe location.The family’s game console automatically adjusts allowable play time per day based on grade_updated events. When grades improve, restrictions are gradually relaxed.
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