IS4401IS4401Project Technology Issues, Part 2

IntroductionIntroduction

This seminar covers Development Tools Web hosting services Payment processing Mobile technologies

SMS Gateways Bluetooth RFID GPS ‘Phone blogging

NetBeans 5.5/5.5.1NetBeans 5.5/5.5.1

Integrated IDE for Java developmentSupports Standard, Mobile and Enterprise

JavaA lot of new tools for Mobile, Web Services and

SOAAvailable in labsLoads of info available from:

http://www.netbeans.org

Java SE 6 available from:http://java.sun.com/

I want to develop at home!I want to develop at home!

Visual Studio 2005 available free from BIS Tech Support

NetBeans 5.5 and Java 6 SE available free from Sun

Databases (Oracle 10i XE, SQL Server 2005 Express, MySQL 5.0) available free, as mentioned two weeks ago

If you want to run IIS, you need Windows XP Pro – not free! But Visual Studio 2005 includes a small

development web server

I want to develop at home!I want to develop at home!

Suggest you back up your PC or laptop before installing development tools or databases

Your PC will slow down and uninstalling can be tedious and messy

No harm to have 2Gb of RAMNetBeans 5.5 is SLOW to start up

Especially in lab environmentEven on dual-core PCs!

Briefly…Briefly…

PHP Easier than ASP.NET 2.0, apparently You can get LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and

PHP) downloads free but you need your own PC Ruby, Python and AJAX

Supported on many platforms Available as free extensions to VS2005 AJAX extensions installed in Labs

Perl Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flex … And lots more …

PlagiarismPlagiarism

A lot of the technogies discussed here require the use of APIs provided by 3rd parties

Students need to:Discuss the use of external code with

their supervisor in advance.Supervisors will have veto rights if it is felt

that the proposed contribution of 3rd party code outweighs significantly the work of the student

PlagiarismPlagiarism

Students need to:Clear any s/w licence issues with Bob if it

involves installing software on BIS hardware

Acknowledge in their documentation areas where they have used code from 3rd parties (such as mobile phone emulators, API's, mobile utilities etc.) and not try to pass it off as their own!

Web hosting servicesWeb hosting services

Loads of hosting services availablePick one that suits the technologies

you want to useOrganise hosting early in your projectExamples

http://www.webhost.ie/ http://www.brinkster.com/ http://www.blacknight.ie/ http://www.hosting365.com/

Web hosting servicesWeb hosting services

What’s the cheapest? Shop around – some services do basic hosting deals for

€90 pa

Do a Google search on web hosting on http://www.google.ie

Keep your client’s needs in minds Should be possible to upgrade hosting

package if traffic volume increases

Web hosting servicesWeb hosting services

Sample services and prices Webhost.ie - €89+VAT pa for Windows 2003 Server +ASP.Net 2.0

+ MySQL + DreamWeaver + FrontPage Blacknight.ie - €35 pa for Linux + PHP + Perl + MySQL + FrontPage Hosting365.com - €39.75 pa for Windows + ASP.NET 2.0 + MySQL.

€39.95 for Linux + PHP + Perl + MySQL. Brinkster.com – As little as $4.95 pm but check features carefully.

Also $4.95 pm applies to 24month contract. FREE Hosting

Check out http://www.aspspider.net/ ASP.Net 2.0 + Windows 2003 Server + SQL Server 2005 Express Low storage limits and traffic volumes

Web hosting servicesWeb hosting services

Some hosting services, e.g. http://www.webhost.ie, will allow you to publish ASP.NET 2.0 websites directly using Visual Studio 2005

Easy! But it ties you to .NET technology Demo follows …

Payment processingPayment processing

Numerous service providersEg http://www.realex.ie

A lot require merchant accountsYour customer has to have this already,

otherwise beyond scope of FYPBest option is probably PayPal

Merchant account not needed.See http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_merchant-outside

Then click “Website Payments Standard”

Mobile technologiesMobile technologies

SMS GatewaysBluetoothRFIDGPS‘Phone blogging

SMS GatewaysSMS Gateways

Clickatellhttp://www.clickatell.comPros

HTTP and XML APIsCheap and works well

ConsXML API is not well documentedAlso XML implementation is non standardShould be a proper web serviceNo developer support !!!!!

SMS GatewaysSMS Gateways

Clickatell DemoUsing XML APINeed to do an HTTP POST of a quasi-XML

documentHard to find decent code for itThere is a C# example here:

http://forums.clickatell.com/viewtopic.php?t=292 Should be easy enough to convert to VB.NET

SMS GatewaysSMS Gateways

Clickatell Demo

Small Windows App

SMS GatewaysSMS Gateways

Clickatell Demo

Small Windows App

SMS GatewaysSMS Gateways

Where can I get code? C# code available from:

http://forums.clickatell.com/viewtopic.php?t=292

Tested working – I used it Provides method as follows:

public string SendSMS(string phonenumber, string message)

Returns a string with XML response Use code from post at bottom of page

SMS GatewaysSMS Gateways

Clickatell – things to note XML API provides all sorts of useful

methods Eg bulk SMS, MMS, ringtones Two-way SMS will cost considerably more Payment process is a bit clumsy

BluetoothBluetooth

What is Bluetooth?Short-range two-way wireless technologyMainly used in mobile ‘phonesTypical 10m-30m rangePairing required prior to useNot suitable for apps where transient,

brief radio contact is required

BluetoothBluetooth

Programming withBluetooth

You need …A Bluetooth dongle

A Bluetooth APIJava: https://btutil.dev.java.net/Python: http://lightblue.sourceforge.net/ Other APIs available. Not all are free.

RFIDRFID

http://www.phidgets.comRFID kit

for CAN$90USB

interface.NET and

Java APIs

GPSGPS

Global Positioning SystemSatellite NavigationTypical 5-15m accuracyLocation-aware

applicationsVehicle tracking

GPSGPS

Most GPS devices support the NMEA 0182/0183 protocol See http://www.nmea.org/pub/0183/ andhttp://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/nmeafaq.txt

Connect to PC via serial port APIs

For example: http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/nmea-0183.htm

Sample NMEA SentenceSample NMEA Sentence

GGA - Global Positioning System Fix Data

GGA,123519,4807.038,N,01131.324,E,1,08,0.9,545.4,M,46.9,M, , *42

123519 Fix taken at 12:35:19 UTC 4807.038,N Latitude 48 deg 07.038' N 01131.324,E Longitude 11 deg 31.324' E 1 Fix quality: 0 = invalid 1 = GPS fix 2 = DGPS fix 08 Number of satellites being tracked 0.9 Horizontal dilution of position 545.4,M Altitude, Metres, above mean sea level 46.9,M Height of geoid (mean sea level) above

WGS84 ellipsoid (empty field) time in seconds since last DGPS update (empty field) DGPS station ID number

… Easy to decode!

Mobile ‘phone bloggingMobile ‘phone blogging

Use your mobile ‘phone to upload photos to a Web site

Supported by www.flickr.comRequires Java-enabled mobile

‘phone with internet access.Or use ‘phone with

mobile email account.

Amazon Web ServicesAmazon Web Services

Includes, but not limited to: S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Really heap high volume online storage EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud

Easily accessible remote computing capacity The Mechanical Turk

“… A marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. The Mechanical Turk web service enables companies to programmatically access this marketplace and a diverse, on-demand workforce. Developers can leverage this service to build human intelligence directly into their applications.”

http://aws.amazon.com

Other IdeasOther Ideas

Mashups Aka hybrid web apps A website or web application that seamlessly

combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience

Interesting combination of mobile and web technologies

Google Earth Check it out!