Tuesday, October 17, 2006

HOWTO have a traffic map(image) as your screen saver

This HOWTO is for Windows XP. Traffic maps are becoming increasingly predominant. The age of the internet has improved us? In Seattle the traffic map is actually rendered as a GIF image.

If you are in the lucky few cities of:
Atlanta, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Louisville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, OC/Inland Empire, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Fernando Valley, Seattle

You can use the TrafficGauge download.

However, I've found the WSDOT traffic map is much more detailed than TrafficGauge.

An alternative solution is:

  • download SeqDownload - This utility allows you to schedule and automatic download of an image file
  • Install SeqDownload
  • Configure SeqDownload
  1. Run SeqDownload
  2. Click the Run at Startup, Click the Run In System Menu
  3. Click New (for a new scheduled download)
  4. Configure the URL (for Seattle: http://images.wsdot.wa.gov/nwflow/
    flowmaps/videomap_Seattle.gif)
    the link
    - Pick a New folder to download images into (c:\traffic\download)
    - Pick a time frame to download image (5 minutes?)
    - Select save to the same filename everytime
    - Pick the length of time for this downloading (1 year?)
    Press Create New Item

  • Setup the Window XP Screensaver to use this folder, of one image, for its Slide Show
  1. Right-click on the desktop - select Properties (or your favorite method to change the screensaver)
  2. Select the Screen Saver Tab followed by My Pictures Slideshow
  3. Select the directory that you are downloading the traffic image to (from the SeqDownload above - in my case C:\traffic\download)


Click OK and now the Seattle traffic map will be your screen saver, updating every 5 minutes with a new image.

2 comments:

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