Posted by mop
Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:48:00 GMT
An online repository for dated and confirmed storage of electronic documents and other media.
A typical use-case scenario involves a home owner taking digital photos of their household contents: jewelry, stereo equipment, art work, etc. The digital photos, and possibly scanned copies of invoices for the same items are then submitted, via the Internet (email, FTP, browser up-load), to the Virtual Deposit Box service.
The market space seems to be somewhat crowded already...
- IP.com "enables customers to protect all internal e records such that they can prove the original date and content of any document in the future"
- Surety "is the leading provider of tamperproof data integrity solutions that generate irrefutable evidence of exactly what electronic records were created and precisely when" (market leader?)
- Read Notify allows customers to timestamp and notarize email contents
- GenuineDoc allows customers to digitally sign online content
See my initial write-up. I do not expect to take this any further.
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Posted by mop
Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:19:00 GMT
Results of our final brainstorming session using Paul’s random association technique.
Our random topics were as follows:
- Follow the Money
- recreational properties
- Huge Problem
- distance
- Future Technologies
- data integration
- Current Skill set
- performance and optimization
The results of our storming are online.
Ideas of Interest
Caretaker Matchmaker Service
A job board for cottage caretakers.
Integrated Travel Reservation System
Facilitate linking from one reservation system to other recommended sites, e.g. if selected bed and breakfast is not available on a given date, facilitate the transfer of customer to another B&B.
Customized Travel Reservation System
A CJB-like reservation service for small destination properties, e.g. B&B.
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Posted by mop
Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:06:00 GMT
Results of another brainstorming session using Paul’s random association technique.
Our random topics were as follows:
- Follow the Money
- overseas family vacations
- Huge Problem
- poverty
- Future Technologies
- rich web interfaces
- Current Skill set
- customer service
The results of our storming are online.
Ideas of Interest
Travellers Matchmaker Service
A matchmaking service for travellers and those folks who are willing to billet.
Travel Games / In-Air MPORPG
Assuming in-air Internet access becomes somewhat ubiquitous, a collection of games suitable for air travellers, especially games that involve multiple players in the same plane.
Travel Notification Service
SMS or other notification service for travellers and their agents, e.g. notify of flight delays especially when travel involves tricky connections.
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Posted by mop
Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:05:00 GMT
The second brainstorming session with Julia, Sepehr, and myself, using Paul’s random association technique was more fruitful.
Our random topics were as follows:
- Follow the Money
- high taxes
- Huge Problem
- time management
- Future Technologies
- digital photography
- Current Skill set
- virtual communities
The results of our storming are online.
Ideas of Interest
Automated Tax Payment
Online service that facilitates the annual tax filing and payment process, thus allowing users to avoid the high-stress filing period(s).
Insurance Photo Repository
Online service that allows users to store photographs and other digitized images (document scans?) in a dated and irrevocable manner. The service would provide dated third party verification of ownership.
CellShots.com
Online organizer for digital photos taken via cell phone. Similar to flickr.com and others, but with an interface suitable for cell phone photeurs.
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Posted by mop
Fri, 25 Feb 2005 16:12:00 GMT
Julia, Sepehr and I spend some time brainstorming business ideas, using Paul’s random juxtaposition method. This was our first session using said method, so the results were a little uneven.
Our random topics were as follows:
- Follow the Money
- debt (mainly housing costs), debt reduction, debt servicing
- Huge Problem
- global warming, climate change
- Future Technologies
- portable energy sources, batteries, fuel cells
- Current Skill set
- XML & variants
The results of our storming are online.
Ideas of Interest
Mortgage Comparator
Online service for quick comparisons between similar mortgage products. Probably in combination with user submitted advice and experiences.
Account Aggregator
Online service that allows aggregate view and management of disparate financial services. Provides a 10,000 ft view of debt.
XGWRL
Online clearing house and/or publication avenue for Global Warming Reports (using XML Global Warming Reporting Language) as published by participants in the Kyoto accord or similar.
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Posted by mop
Thu, 08 Jul 2004 03:01:00 GMT
Not sure where I’d like this type of documentation to exist, but it should be preserved for posterity. So... here’s some background on In-Touch’s object-relational framework: Makedata.
Makedata is a Java app that creates *.java files that encapsulate the RDBMS <--> Java mapping. Each object/table is defined in a simple text file () which Makedata transforms into three files:
- table.sql
- a SQL script that creates the table and indices
- tableRawData.java
- a java object representing the raw data (members plus accessor methods, very bean-like)
- tableRawRowBuffer.java
- a java object that knows how to read and write the raw data to/from the database
The generated classes are generally found in the ./target/generated-datafiles/ directory. The Ant task ’datac’ invokes makedata.
Each *RawData class is a sub-class of intouch.data.Data. Each *RawRowBuffer class is a sub-class of intouch.sql.RowBuffer. Generally we extend each of the generated classes and these sub-classes of *RawData and *RawRowBuffer become containers for business logic.
Another important class is intouch.data.View which defines a bit-field representing each fields in a data object. A view of the table/data is defined by turning bits on and off.
We also use these classes to represent table joins. There are two abstract classes intouch.data.ViewData and intouch.data.ViewDataRowBuffer which are extended to define joins. Again, for each object-rdbms map there are two classes, one for data and one for db read/write.
Posted in In-Touch, programming | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by mop
Mon, 28 Jun 2004 01:26:00 GMT
In-Touch now has a bit of virtual space at RimuHosting. The company is based in New Zealand, but our server is located in Dallas TX. Rimu is unique in that they provide Virtual Private Servers (VPL) using User Mode Linux and a variety of Linux distros, including Debian.
We’re currently on a $40USD/month plan that provides a VPS with 128MB of RAM, 4GB of disk space, and up to 60GB of traffic. I’m guessing the hardware is a dual Xeon running at 2.8GHz. So far rimu.intouch.ca is just used to host the In-Touch blogs, but I may also use it for other In-Touch and customer services. At the very least, I’d like to learn something about UML services.
Some stats from rimu.intouch.ca:
tsai:/home/mpierson# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : User Mode Linux
model name : UML
mode : skas
host : Linux host32.rimuhosting.com 2.6.6 #3 SMP Thu Jun 10 01:10:47 UTC 2004 i686
bogomips : 2510.02
tsai:/home/mpierson# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 125532 95932 29600 0 7896 64668
-/+ buffers/cache: 23368 102164
Swap: 98296 0 98296
tsai:/home/mpierson# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/ubd0 4128448 452448 3466288 12% /
tmpfs 62764 0 62764 0% /dev/shm
The only gotcha I’ve encountered so far is the incompatibility between UML and the GNU-TLS libraries in Debian sid. I orderd the VPS with Debian woody and one of the Rimu admins had to rescue our VPS after a "apt-get dist-upgrade" to sid failed. A few dpkg-divert additions were required for /lib/tls/*, but now rimu is happily running sid.
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Posted by mop
Mon, 28 Jun 2004 00:06:00 GMT
Well, here it is. pyBlosxom is now installed on blog.intouch.ca.
I started with the Debian version of pyBlosxom in the experimental archives, and created a mini install in each user’s home dir. This more-or-less follows the install suggestions in the pyBlosxom wiki. The flavour templates are roughly based on the html flavour that comes bundled in the Debian package.
Each user now has files in their home directory similar to:
www
|
- pyblosxom
|
- data
content-type.html
head.html
story.html
footer.html
- etc
config.py
- plugins
pycalendar.py
- cgi-bin
pyblosxom.cgi
Blog are placed in the data subdir with a ’.txt’ suffix. The file name is significant when constructing permanent linke to articles so best to make it descriptive. Articles can be written in plain text or in HTML (still with ’.txt’ suffix) -- I suggest HTML for readability. pyBlosxom auto-magically classifies articles according the the file system hierachy under the data directory.
My goal is to write at least one article per day on work related subjects, and to convince other In-Touch’ers to do the same.
Posted in blogs, In-Touch | no comments | no trackbacks
