Splash Page/ Cookies/Table (Week 2 Ideas)

Splash page

With other examples of online address books and social media sites, its important to have a splash page were users can either sign up or log in to their existing profile.

To the right is a quick mock-up of a possible design for our splash page.

Cookies 

A cookie will be useful for users who wish to log back in, so they won't have to re-enter their details onto the website. So the minimum we will have is the user name and password cookie. We can set the password to display * 's instead of characters however encryption of the password is another subject of research. A good example of cookies in action is at http://www.cookiecentral.com/demomain.htm view page source to see how its called and used.


Tables  (for data base)


What we will need:

User ID -
First name
Secondname
DOB
Address
Telephone Number
Mobile Number
Photo
Family Tie

We will also be looking into encryption of this table.

PHP Wall

Using a work example from http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-214623.0.html I was able to upload my own PHP wall to zappa.
My example is here - http://zappa.uwl.ac.uk/~21108489/

The php
<?php
$text="<hr align='left'>".date("m:i:s ").$_REQUEST['text'];

$handle = fopen("wall.txt", "a");
fwrite($handle,$text);
fclose($handle);

echo $text;
?>
The functions for download and post are located in the html file. It should be quite easy to implement this into our website so the users can have a message board feature to the page.

Geo-location & Printing with HTML 5

Geo-location Example - http://merged.ca/iphone/html5-geolocation

This is a great example as it works on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and the iphone. It works by first calling JavaScript object navigator.geolocation. (Html5).

        if (navigator.geolocation)
        {
            navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(
                 function (position) {  
                mapServiceProvider(position.coords.latitude,position.coords.longitude);    },

Next we need to declare our mapping server this is done by -

        function mapServiceProvider(latitude,longitude)
        {
            // querystring function from prettycode.org:
            // http://prettycode.org/2009/04/21/javascript-query-string/
        
            if (window.location.querystring['serviceProvider']=='Yahoo')
            {
                mapThisYahoo(latitude,longitude);
            }
            else
            {
                mapThisGoogle(latitude,longitude);
            }
        }

The provider could be most any search engine with mapping.

        // be sure to include the script to initialize Google or Yahoo! Maps
        function mapThisGoogle(latitude,longitude)
        {
            var mapCenter = new GLatLng(latitude,longitude);
            map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map"));
            map.setCenter(mapCenter, 15);
            map.addOverlay(new GMarker(mapCenter));
        
            // Start up a new reverse geocoder for addresses?
            geocoder = new GClientGeocoder();
            geocoder.getLocations(latitude+','+longitude, addAddressToMap);
        }

Update>
We have decided not too use geo location in our project...

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Printing in HTML5

Focus on having a CSS rules- setup for printing

 TBC

Advantages & disadvantages of cloud Storage (not finished)

Advantages:
The primary advantage of cloud storage as a means of keeping your data is that you will be able to access it anywhere that you can gain access to the internet, this could be a computer anywhere in the world, a mobile phone or through a tv that is connected to the internet. This is an obvious positive point for those who would otherwise have to carry around large amounts of data on their devise or on hard drives.
The second biggest selling point of cloud storage is that it negates the need to have large amounts of storage on your computer or mobile device as all of the space needed is on a server elsewhere, and so allowing your personal computer to run faster. Another vertue of cloud storage is security. Should your device be stolen, files that would have otherwise been stored on it would not be lost and you would still have access to your files once you had replaced your device.

Disadvantages:
The two biggest disadvantages to cloud storage would be access and security. Firstly, you only have access to your files when you have an internet connection, and when the servers where they are stored are connected to the internet. Secondly, files could become vulnerable to unauthorised access and thus could potentially view large amounts of your data.

Desktop Contact Management

There are two main desktop address book applications that are shipped with computer operating systems:

Address book for the OSX : This is the apple based address book application that syncs with the same program on the iphone and ipad. This is an easy to use application which efficiently stores all details, but until the recent face lift included as part of the Lion OSX was to particularly attractive to look at.

Microsoft Outlook Express : Outlook express is shipped with the windows OS on most PCs and is familiar to most computer users. The contact book is simple to use and configure but once again is not appealing to look at and would be over complicated to those who are used to using an internet based email client. Outlook express is similar in appearance to the business orientated contact management systems advertised on so many web sites.

Examples of online contact management

There are many examples of websites and and downloadable online applications for storing contact details. It would appear that this market is primarily aimed at the business sector and the need to store vast numbers of contacts that could be shared amongst for example a sales team.

Here are some examples of online contact management:

http://www.plaxo.com  This is the most modern and useful interface of all of the sites that i visited. Plaxo is the only site that did not appear to be totally business orientated.

http://www.hyperoffice.com/online-contact-management  This site is typical of the address book sites that are readily available. The interface clunky and a bit dated to look at. It would seem that ease of use is not the top priority when dealing with the business sector and that focus is on the inter-connect-ability and power of the database.

http://www.infostreet.com/cloud-apps/address-book/ This is one of the sites that is using the new buzz phrase 'cloud storage' to entice users.

Other examples include: workbooks.com, beiley.com

Research

As a group we have decided to spend the next week do some initial research into the following areas:

- Examples of online and offline applications used as address books.
- Advantages and disadvantages of 'cloud' storage.
- Technologies that we may need to implement within our application.
- What our features maybe and how they would work.
- Potential security issues.

Ideas

We have decided to develop the concept of an online address book.

The idea of the application would be to provide an address book that could be shared by, viewed and updated by members of an extended family.

Through secure a secure access point, family members would be able to share and update home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. In practice this would be a very small, tightly controlled social media application.

This application would make it easy to get in touch with relatives who may live all over the world and not regularly stay in touch, and would mean that when a member updates their contact details all participating family members would know.

Initially we have come up with some categories for our database to contain:
- Names
- Phone Numbers
- Address
- Emergency Contact details
- Work numbers
- Thumbnail photo

We have also talked about the idea of having a message board that can be posted to by all family members, and that could be shared over social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

One of the deciding factors in our group choosing to develop this idea is the recent trend toward 'cloud' storage of data and the benefits that this can bring.

Ideas