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Whilst on my ride yesterday, I was testing out a SPOT tracking device along with the SPOT integration into the new Yahoo! Fire Eagle geo-social service.

I'll do a longer post when our house is not in so much chaos (birthday part deux is going on), but here is what this cutting-edge, super-cool (HTML 6 needs a <sarcasm> tag) device/service managed to pick up yesterday:

I had it in tracking mode (phones home every 10 mins) most of the time and actually deliberately sent a few "OK" check-in messages (that Fire Eagle picked up but does not show in the messages history of the SPOT site). It missed the whole island trek and the trees on the Burke-Gilman seemed to cause it major angst. Those check-in messages were also supposed to make it to my phone & e-mail but never did.

Again, I'll go into more detail about how it all is supposed to work, but I wanted to toss up a quick post on cautioning folks to perhaps wait a bit for the device and/or service to mature a bit before investing in either.

I was musing on Twitter about the need for the ability to get the status updates from friends who only use Facebook incorporated into my Twitter feed (so I do not have to view Facebook as often). While writing a bot would have been cool, I dislike re-inventing the wheel and came up with a way to do it by pairing some web "services" together (not actually using web services per se).

To do this, you'll need to setup a new Twitter account (I suggest using your "TwitterUsername_fb"), unless you want all your followers seeing all your friends' updates. You can secure the updates to this account if you wish. You'll need to use a secondary e-mail account (Twitter does not allow dups). I also really don't like giving my main Twitter credentials to external services.

I also suggest getting an OpenID as one of the sites you'll be using is twitterfeed and it prefers OpenID logins (I have a free OpenID through Verisign, but you already have one if you are an AOL, Blogger, Flickr/Yahoo, or WordPress users [and others]...full details on the OpenID link I provided).

With those credentials in hand, fire up your browser and head to Facebook and then choose to use the old Facebook (it's just temporary, but one step will fail if you're not in "old Facebook mode"). Highlight "Friends" and select "Status Updates":

On the status update screen, look on the right under "Subscribe" for a "Friends' Status Feed" link. Right click on it and copy it (however you do that with your browser/system). Save and protect this URL!!! It has direct access to the status updates of your friends (and, hence, part of your account) so you should not disclose it without consideration.

The next step is to go to twitterfeed and login:

Once you login, create a new feed and populate it with your alternate Twitter credentials and Facebook Friends' Status RSS feed URL. I highly recommend testing both your login and feed (via the provided links). You can tweak the other settings to match your preferences. The only downside is that if your friends have any more than five (5) updates since the last check, you will miss them. You can choose an alternate feed-post-to-Twitter provider (or roll your own) if this becomes an issue).

The last step is to follow your alternate Twitter user id and you will begin receiving updates every 30 minutes (or longer, depending on how often your friends post status updates).

This setup is only as robust as Twitter, Facebook RSS and twitterfeed, so you have no guarantees from me on how stable it will be, but it has been working well since I configured it.

If you have an alternate solution, definitely drop a note in the comments!

Garmin announced the launch of their new developer web site which provides information on and access to "free and licensed Garmin resources and a library of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), toolkits and web services broken into 4 main categories":

Device Communications

Start connecting with Garmin devices today — whether you want to send and receive location data directly from your website using the Garmin Communicator Plugin or whether you want to create custom POIs that can be sent to Garmin navigation systems using our Content Toolkit.

Web Services

Access data and utilize core features provided by MotionBased — Garmin’s web-based activity portal. Enable your website to store, manipulate and display Garmin GPS data with little or no development.

Smartphone/PDA Services

Provide mobile applications running on Windows Mobile or Palm OS with access to GPS information, interactive maps and intelligent routing including SMS-based messaging that can be used to transmit position information to supported devices.

Location Based Services

Get Garmin to work for your business solution. Add location-based services to any Java-based mobile phone application and enable fleet tracking, messaging, dispatch and navigation directly on Garmin’s portable navigation devices.

When I get some time to poke around the site, I'll report back on what you can/cannot do with this new offering from Garmin. On a surface scan, tho, it looks very promising and is a welcome surprise from Garmin.