Week 11 -12 Development

Over the past week I've been working on a simple Kiosk implementation to show a proof of concept for our iPhone app. Basically the program would have fake buttons that make it look like a normal Kiosk and an additional button for iPhone upload. I'm thinking that when the users upload their photos to the server they are given a unique ID (which can be maybe a hash of their iPhone serial number or something) and when they click on the iPhone upload option they are asked to enter this unique id. The file where their photos are stored would also be named using this ID so when they enter it the program knows which file to look in and only looks in that file and no that of other people. Once they enter this ID they are presented with a screen that has thumbnails of all the photos that they have uploaded. The user can than click on a photo to see the full size image and to print it. Then once they have finished printing their photos and they exit the iPhone upload area their file gets deleted along with their photos.

This is taking some time to do as I'm not a wiz in C# but hopefully I will have it done by the end of the week. I just need to juggle it with my Thesis presentation due on Thursday.

Development Update

The past week I've been working on (when I can) the server side components. I have managed to get a PHP script that will accept HTML POST requests containing an image and upload these images to a directory on the web server box. It checks that the items being upload are only images and that they each have a maximum file size of 8MB. I previously made a small C# application to publish a generic http service (with the help of some libraries). This application will need to be configured with the IP and port number that this PHP script is accessible via. The next step with the PHP script is sending back a meaningful message about the status of their upload attempt. In the case of success a messages saying "Success" will be presented to the user along with some info about the total size of the files uploaded, their location on the kiosk and a unique ID for that particular transaction. This unique ID could potentially be used as a password as well. From what Nick has said this response to the iPhone should simply be some echo commands in the script that print out this information. If this works as planned than the server side is well on its way to being complete for the basic implementation we are planning on for the final demo.

I am foreseeing that I will be called on for helping with the bonjour service discovery parts on the iPhone. Apparently there are some libraries available to work with bonjour so hopefully we can use them. If all else fails we can just make the IP and Port static so the app always expects the server to be at one particular address.

Progress update Week 10

After researching Bonjour a bit I set about getting my own Bonjour service published. Becuase our server side software would likly be running on the same machines as the kiosk software is run it would need to be implimented in Windows. I found some example zero config applications with a nice .Net Library that I used to make a simple winodws application that lets you publish a bonjour like service that advertises that you have a local bomjour service at IP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX listening on port XXXX. Now I will neet to look at testing weather I con access this published service on a larger network and from there look at setting up a web server to accept HTTP POST requests on the published port and save the content uploaded to a given file.

April Round up

Well I've forgot to post to the blog for a few weeks, busy with Thesis, work, wedding arrangements, the list goes on. Some major happenings with one group member suddenly dropping the course. This meant we needed to re-evaluate our app and consider adjusting the scope to suit. I have been given the task of developing the server side code for the Air Photo app. Originally I believed the app would be used much like the original one with people having online accounts that they could use to view their photos and upload more if they wish. So I coded some web pages with PHP that enabled users to do this, complete with a MYSQL database backend. Then I found out that the scope of the project was reduced to involved people only printing photos from their phones and the server side code would simply be run in a printing store and their local computer that is connected to a local wireless network. This may somewhat mean I have less coding to do as a web front end for users isn't required but I now need to try and configure Bonjour to work with My PHP code to enable people to upload photos to a queue.

We are supposed to give our mid semester review tomorrow but with so many changes to the app and Evan being unable to work on it with a bicycle accident we will need more time to put together a decent presentation that accurately represents our app.

Development update

Today we had a meeting but only Abdul and were there. Since both Nick and Evan had access to Mac computers at home Abdul and I have been assigned to do the server side components. At our meeting we discussed what components and functionality would be required and some of the technologies we would be using to impliment the web site.

We identified that the website would have to facilitate the following functions:

• Loggin in
• Registering (there will be the option to register online or by using the iPhone app)
• Administering the site (adding/removing users and their photos)
• There will be different functionality for users and for photo retailers.
• Users will be able to see the photos they have uploaded
• Photo retailers will be able to see the orders allocated to them and some statistics
• Photo retails will revieve emails for photo orders detailing their reurements and with their photo attached
• Users will get the details for where to pick up their photos within the app.

Abdul explaned some usefull frameworks that could help us develop the web site. These include:

• Hibernate - a Java library to help create and query database tables
• Spring - handles dependencies
• Smart GWT - A Java tool for designing interfaces.

Over the next few days I will be looking at these to learn what they can do for our project.

New COMP3000 blog

I am now using this blog for my COMP3000 (Designing Mobile Applications) course. In this course we are designing a app for the iPhone. The last 2 weeks we have been throwing around some ideas for apps. I have come up with a few good ideas but I have discovered that most of them already exist. The front runner for the app we will develop os an app that helps people create photo postcards and assists them in finding stores and ordering print outs of their photos/postcards.

We just had a meeting but only 3 of us turned up (Abdul, Nick and myself) so we didn't get much resolved. It was good to meet Abdul and he seamed to be quite enthusiastic to get started on our app. We should try to meet again before the end of the week to finalise our app idea and assign roles to group members. This way we can get the ball rolling with development and with specific roles assigned to people we will feel a greater sense of responsibility.

I am looking forward to exploring the iPhone SDK and seeing what it has to offer. I am hoping it makes development for the iPhone a breeze and that I don't get bogged down in the code.

Last FM

I am just starting to appreciate how useful last FM is. It gives you an endless supply of music online but not only that, it gives you details of the songs you play on your computer. This can be interesting as you might really like a song but not know much about the artist. Also you can see how popular the song is by checking the scrob count. This reminds me of the experiences I had with windows media player when I would by a new CD and want to rip it to play on my computer as MP3's. In windows media player you could download the track lists so you wouldn't need to type the track and artists names in yourself, a big time saver. How ever these track lists came from other users so occasionally the track or artist names would be wrong or if it was a really new CD it wouldn't yet have track information online and you had the option of entering it.