At Inktomi, we used to joke that cookies were the “duct tape” of the Internet.

That was before XML Web Services; but even now, this Smartphone 2003 bay area traffic application uses .NET Compact Framework and XML Web Services as a kind of “super duct tape” to make it easy for me to get drive times from my Audiovox 5600 (BTW, the best consumer purchase I’ve made in years).  My job hasn’t enabled me to code in years, so the fact that I can create personal glue-ware for my phone - so easily that I view it as a minor customization to a consumer purchase - is truly a testament to platform advances. 

Unfortunately, www.511.org does not yet provide a WSDL interface, so please do as I did and contact 511.org requesting that they do. Until then, this ASP.NET Web Service screen scrapes www.511.org to get drive times. Since there’s no easy way to know 511’s origin intersection codes, the argument to the web service is simply the URL you see when you lookup a route on their web site (this URL for example). 

Use Visual Studio 2005 (codename “Whidbey”) beta 1 refresh to customize the source code for this project.  It uses this OpenNETCF.org implementation of BackgroundWorker.  Here’s the ASP.NET source code for the web service, here’s .NET Compact Framework source code for Form1.cs and Form2.cs.  Sample screen shots:

(thanks to Ben Riga for pointing me to ActiveSync Remote Display to take Smartphone screenshots)

Also, based on comments in Scoble’s prior posting on the WeatherByZip application, know that you can point your phone’s web browser to the CAB file to install it over the air.