The Bay Bridge just had a cable snapped and BlinkTag is on the wrong side. The Bay Bridge is closed, sounds like it could be 24 hours or more before it reopens.

I’m curious how long it will take google maps to automatcally reroute around the bridge closure and what systems they have in place for verifying and updating info on emergency closures to key transportation links. As more people start to rely on online maps for traffic info it becomes increasingly important for emergency info to make it’s way online quickly.

In honor of Geocities shutting down today, XKCD redesigned their site in Geocities style. This redesign included a prominent use of the blink tag (including some HTML mistakes to show the markup).

Update: SFist wrote a followup article about us and our bus.

Blnktag just pimped its ride!  $3,250.  Worth every penny.

What’s even sweeter is that we figured every hipster with $10,000 bucks would have bid on this guy, thanks to SFist.  But I guess the down economy has come to our rescue once again.

Burning Man, here we come. (We’ll probably pull this to South By Southwest too, depending on its roadworthyness)

The stats:
1984 articulated MAN
Make: MAN Company Website
Model: SG310-18-3A
Serial:EC720800
Fleet #: 6090 SF. Muni
Engine: MAN pancake
Fuel: diesel
Transmission: 3 sp. Allison auto.
Registration: non op.
Top speed: 55 mph.
Starter: pneumatic
Tires: 50% or better
Length: 60 ft.
Width: 102 in.
Seating: 55

It was in the newer version of “The Italian Job” and at least one Nelly music video. It was mentioned in the IMDB “goofs” section for The Italian Job:

Factual errors: When Charlie is confronted by Steve in the helicopter under the freeway, the buses in the background are MUNI buses. The movie takes place in Los Angeles; MUNI is the public transportation in San Francisco.

So this might be kind of a gray area terms-of-service-wise, so do what you want with it. But if you’ve ever wondered how to mashup the Google Transit layer with your custom map, here’s how.

While we aren’t advocating anybody actually do this, we’ve heard from a *confidential* source that Google implements new feature requests in rough proportion to the number of people who hack together stuff like this. Just saying . . . .

Firefox 3.6 beta was released today. It added support for “Orientation” events in web content. This javascript event can use a devices built in accelerometers to detect the orientation and update accordingly.

Since our company name is based on a non-standard HTML tag that makes text Blink I thought it would be fitting to apply the orientation event to our entire site. To view, you need a laptop with an accelerometer (a newer macbook pro or Thinkpad) and to install and run Firefox 3.6.

Check it out some demos:

• A level Web App
• Accelerometer + Canvas Tag Demo
• Rotating Video & Other elements
• Rotating Firefox Logo
• View some code examples

In case you don’t have that, I made a video of the fun effects you are missing out on:

It turns out that if you actually have orientation events enabled, this embedded youtube video will disappear as it doesn’t play nice with embedded youtube videos. However, if you are seeing this effect live, then you don’t need to see the video.

We haven’t posted pics of our office, which features Super Mario Bros wall decorations, a 7ft tall scale model of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, a tiki bar and even some computers.

Here are some choice shots:

In partnership with 511ContraCosta.org, Blinktag is proud to announce the release of its very first iPhone application, iSmog. This is something we hope to be doing more of in the future, so be sure to contact us if you’d like one of your own.

From 511CC:

“511 Contra Costa is proud to announce the release of its very first iPhone app – iSmog!

iSmog displays air quality information for the San Francisco Bay Area. With just a tap of the screen, users will see an easy-to-understand map of environmental quality in the Bay Area’s five air basins, built using data provided by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). With this information, commuters can make more informed choices about environmentally friendly transportation options, and members of sensitive groups will be better able to stay abreast of information that can be, literally, life-or-death.

Push notification alerts users with allergies or other environmental sensitivities when the air contains unhealthy levels of contaminants including ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and two sizes of particulate matter, all precursors of ozone. Notifications can be customized by level of sensitivity and by geographic area.”