Blog
August 2010

Welcome to our blog. Through it, we hope to offer insight into or products and technology, as well as some general news that we hope may affect your transportation habits.

President Obama visits Goose Networks

Yesterday brought a bit of excitement to Goose Networks' Seattle offices.

On Tuesday, August 17, 2010, Barack Obama, the 44th and current President of the United States, made a quick six hour stop here in the Emerald City.

The President's first stop? The Grand Central Bakery, a few floors below our office and a long-time favorite among Goose staffers.

       

Here's an account of the President placing his lunch order, as retold by a member of the White House advance team:

Quick drive along empty streets, past Safeco Field, with clusters of people periodically lining the cleared route. Those crowds thicken as we reach the leafy downtown. Cheering as motorcade stops in front of brick building with the Grand Central Bakery inside.

"Hey guys, how are you? Great place, really beautiful neighborhood." He greets the staff behind the counter. "What's your name?" (There's an Andrea and a Rachel.)

He turns down a local salad with strawberries, even though he acknowledges it sounds good. Then decides on a half a turkey sandwich (described by staff as "Thanksgiving in a sandwich"), a smaller version of that local salad, and a bottle of water. Also gets "something sweet to go."

"You gotta ring me up," he tells them, though they seem not really sure about that. He tells them again, laughing, they really have to.

 

And so you have it -- even the President pays for his half turkey sandwich at the Grand Central.

Posted by Zac Corker on August 18, 2010.

Moscow's traffic problem

Think your local commute is bad? Maybe, but at least you're not in Moscow.

In the Aug 2 eition of The New Yorker Magazine, writer Keith Gessen offers a grim account of the gridlock that grips the Russian capital.

Gessen presents the source of the city's traffic challenges as part historical (Moscow's early rulers built the city as a concentric series of walled forts, with the Kremlin at the center, preventing the diversion of traffic to side roads), part political (the city's elite are afforded driving privileges that serve to cripple the regular flow of traffic), and part cultural (while sitting stuck in traffic is not desireable, it beats the endless lines endured by Muscovites during communist rule). 

The article also discusses the innovative approach taken by Yandex, Russia's largest internet company, in the display of real-time traffic data throughout the city. While other cities use sensors embedded in the pavement to measure traffic flow, in Moscow these have a hard time surviving both the weather and the road repairs the weather necessitates. So, Yandex asks drivers to download software onto their GPS-equipped mobile devices so to that information about their movements can be sent automatically to the Yandex servers. As the program grows, Yandex is able to give an increasingly accurate and encompassing picture of Moscow's traffic situation at any given moment. 

Posted by Zac Corker on August 9, 2010.
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