Kyle Archer

After Tim and I enjoyed making the sequel to "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" ...we safely made it to San Angelo, TX on Sunday, October 16, 2005. (albeit 9 hours late thanks to Continental Airlines) Concho Valley Rural Transit District has been a progressive client of ours since 2002. They started with our entry-level product, ParaPlan Lite with an Access backend, then updgraded to ParaPlan Pro SQL and have now upgraded to ParaPlan Pro AVL. ParaPlan Pro AVL is our premier Paratransit management application. With this turnkey solution users can... Take and manage client appointments quickly Dispatch each trip to any route or driver Generate efficient computer-assisted route schedules Transmit those schedules electronically to each vehicle's MDT Monitor routes in real-time using the EnGraph GPS Control Room Communicate with each driver using the EnGraph Mobile Messenger Reconcile actual arrival times and mileages with accurate GPS data Review the actual route from any...

Just now I saw that 10 are dead from flooding in NE US. This was after the 'suspicious package' story in Los Angeles, preceded by the terrible earthquake in Pakistan and coverage of Katrina victims.

My company currently owes everything to Mapinfo . We were of their ealiest partners, sought by the vision of my boss Carl Kurt. Through their platform we provided tools and capabilities unknown at the time. However, as times are changing, their competitors are now providing cool services too. Mapinfo has good stuff, like their geocoding product, MapMarker Plus , is an amazing product but is fairly expensive. Do they want/need to compete with 'Google Maps / Earth' or ' Mappoint '? They easily could have 10 yrs ago had they found the vision. I wish the 'brand new' version of their flagship product, MapInfo Professional 8.0 , supported Access 2003. MapInfo...its time to get rockin!

We have started re-writing the code in .NET for our flagship paratransit management application, ParaPlan . I am very excited about this endeavor and Tim is leading the development process, codename 'Goldstar'. Read his post about it here . I wrote the initial version in 1999 using VBA for Microsoft Access 2000. Carl wanted us to write it in FoxPro because he had some experience with it. I built some initial functions for the system in FoxPro, but I wanted to be in Access. Access 2000 had recently been released and I convinced Carl that it was in our best inerests to use a true Microsoft product. Some of the most significant issues I had to solve during the initial development of ParaPlan were: 1) Teaching myself ADO to access data in VB. 2) Using MapInfo in the background using OLE. 3) Getting custom controls to install properly on client machines. 4) Creating a successful install program. 5) Splitting the database to create a true multi-user application. 6) Using VB to cont...

This has to be some of the coolest stuff I have seen in a while... Tim 's new baby... His Fly To Application. You will need to install Google Earth to experience it. I also noticed one national and one local TV News broadcast using Google Earth to show the audience locations on our planet.

We all know that none of us have ever really seen devastation like this. I saw an interview with a man who told the story of losing grip on his wife while holding their kids and she said, "Take care of the kids." He couldn't hold on to her and he just said, "She's gone, she's gone." The reporter started balling...I have just never seen anything like this since 9-11. News is saying it is like Hiroshima...well its just hard for me to realize right now that we intentionally did that to Japan. I know it was a crucial decision to end WWII, but right now it seems like a crime against humanity. I think Joe Scarborough can be quite the right-wing punk sometimes on MSNBC, but he is doing the best job of being a real person while giving us information on this disaster and I admire that. Please donate to the American Red Cross .

A note to developers using Integrated mapping with MapInfo Products... 1) To launch MapInfo Runtime within VB code use: Set MI = CreateObject("MapInfo.Runtime") instead of: Set MI = CreateObject("MapInfo.Application") 2) Beware that common object calls may NOT be compatible with the host Mapinfo version. e.g. MI.Do "Set Map order 6,5,4,3,2,1" works with MapInfo 6.0, but not 7.8 Thus make sure to test all MapBasic code with the version matching your MapInfo pro version before using Integrated Mapping.