Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I was brainstorming interesting usages of Twitter and came up with the following:
An application can use it as a call home mechanism
An application that has an invalid license could broadcast its location
A software company could use it as a remote shell like interface and issue commands to shutdown, restart and to publish patches
An application can use it for heartbeat purposes
Has anyone else came up with other non-standard usages of Twitter?
I fail to see the advantage of using a proprietary, third-party chat site in place of an appropriate networking protocol.
Matthew nailed the point that all these "applications" just represent a communications protocol between twitterer and remote host, and there are lots of mature protocols you could use instead right out of the box, rather than rolling your own on twitter.
But depending on your situation, of course there could be scenarios in which twitter is the easy way. I have written similar hacks that use e-mail as transport mechanism for automated tasks, simply because corporate red tape doesn't permit us other more conventional means. They can reboot machines, restart processes, post public messages, etc.
One of it is already available for Windows - "TweetMyPC v2.0 lets you shutdown/restart/LogOff and lots more in your windows PC.remotely."
I'm not sure this counts as a very practical use (a bit of fun mainly), but it certainly attracted my interest:
Twitter image encoding challenge
The idea of this challenge is to try to encode a picture into a 140 (Unicode) character Tweet. It's quite astounding how much information some of the algorithms posted there can fit into a message.
Scott Hanselman used Twitter to create an app for ordering a sandwich.
Check out his post
I think the main advantage of using twitter in instances like this is its SMS capabilities (and the fact they're free - whereas you can buy services that charge a monthly fee to allow you to receive SMS messages to a HTTP page or something like that).
I'd considered using it to make a little budget app for myself where I could SMS twitter things I'd bought to a private twitter account, similar for tracking petrol usage I was planning on smsing the odometer reading,cost etc in a certain format and capturing it at home to run statistics and stuff on it. There are limitations to it though - like you can only hook up an SMS number to 1 twitter account...
It's good to think outside the box, but don't be too focused on using just twitter because it's cool.
If you were comfortable setting up sensors and such, you could get a microcontroller, hook it up to a twitter feed, and then give it remote commands.
For instance, remote controlled house lights. You could then just tweet "Home lights on GXSDFXV" (The garbage at the end is to prevent real tweets from turning on and off your lights).
I wouldn't use Twitter in particular for transferring any private information (think about security if someone hacks the account and can shutdown your corporate servers or transfer fake licenses). For that I would setup a private server which implements the open microblogging protocol (like identi.ca) as long as - like others already said - there is another more suitable protocol.
For publishing PUBLIC information (heartbeat messages can be considered that, too) I like the idea pretty much. We recently had a very successfull (but unfortunately effectless) E-Petition in Germany where a Twitter account posted the number of signatures every couple of minutes.
Carsonified are using this to allow people to discover other people sitting in the same room at their conferences.
They label each chair with a tag and then you tweet that tag to an account they have and it registers you on a floorplan on the venue. Users are coloured in on the plan by their interests.
Clever but a bit overcomplicated for my tastes...
http://hello.carsonified.com/Home/Faq
Related
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm trying to work in a more organised way and started adopting user stories.
I think I have misunderstanding of how should I use user stories for technical stuff.
Let's say I'm coding an app that gives me the ranking of my site for a certain Keyword in Google.
The user story goes like that:
As an Internet Marketer
I want to find out where my website ranks for a keyword
So I'll know whether my SEO efforts work
Now this is pretty straight forward and user centric... However, what happens if I need to introduce Proxies into the loop.
On one hand, Proxies are technical implementation detail on the other hand, proxies is part of the Internet Marketer's domain.
How should I craft such story?
As an Internet Marketer
I want to use Proxies when searching in Google
So we'll be able to check a lot of keywords without Google blocking us
The above scenario doesn't sound right for me... Maybe I can rewrite it to be something like:
As an Internet Marketer
I want to be able to check a lot of Keywords at a time
So it'll save me time
This sounds more right, however what acceptance criteria can I give it? try scraping google 100 times in a min? Isn't it waste of time?
Here's another scenario. How should I craft a user story when the feature I want to implement is that a proxy can be used once in 30 seconds? I don't have any idea of how to approach this problem from a user centric perspective...
Another thing I thought of doing is to present another Role. Instead of being centered around Internet Marketer, I can say we have a role called Google Scraper. I can say that Internet Marketer is in relation with Google Scraper.
Now I can write a user story like:
As Google Scraper
I want to change proxies every Search
So Google won't ban me
What would you say about approaching technical implementation details like above? It can also help breaking the system down into modules...
You don't write technical stories. User stories should meet the INVEST criteria.
Proxies do sound like an implementation detail and should be avoided. You should not be mentioning proxy servers in your story. Even if they are part of the domain, there are potentially other ways to achieve the same effect.
Instead of writing "I want to use a Proxy, so that I don't get blocked", you should write, "I want to disguise my identity, so that I don't get blocked". If I was your customer, I wouldn't know why you wanted a proxy? Is it a forward, open or reverse proxy? There are loads of uses for a proxy server. You should pick the feature that you want to exploit.
However, you shouldn't get too hung up on perfect stories. The agile manifesto says, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".
When writing a user story, you should also consider the 3 C's: Card, Conversation, Confirmation. Do both the customer and you understand the meaning of the story?
Does the card meet INVEST criteria? If you answered yes to both those questions then the story is fine.
User Stories should not include technical details. During Sprint Planing technical details should be added as Delivery Team tasks nested below the User Story. These tasks should be created through discussion by the delivery team. You should not attempt to document every implementation detail under the sun as you will reach a point of diminishing return. Aim for 60-75 percent coverage on implementation details (tasks) for each user story as the details may change as coding begins. Any additional details developer discover during coding can be shared and documented briefly during the daily stand-up. should The User Story can be simple and non-technical while the Delivery / Development Team will flesh out story details as nested Tasks.
These Task should be visible to Developers through their Integrated Development Environment (IDE). As Developers complete tasks they can associate their checked in code with the task in your work item tracking tool (Jira, Team Foundation Server, On-Time)
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
We are planning to introduce real time chat feature in our mobile apps. Ofcourse we would be going the XMPP way.
Can anybody shed some light on stats for maximum number of concurrent users Openfire has supported on EC2 instances (windows server) of different sizes in the real world?
We are looking at numbers ranging from 22500 concurrent users to 75000 concurrent users depending upon growth patterns predicted for app downloads and user adaptability for this new real time chat feature. time range = next 12 months.
From whatever googling I have done so far, it seems Openfire may not be the best bet when it comes to scaling out so can these numbers be supported on a single instance of ec2 over time? ie: we start hosting on smaller instances and keep increasing instance size as load demands.
Ejabbered seemed to be the best option when it comes to scaling out but since we would need to have erlang skills in order to extend it makes ejabbered a difficult choice for us. The other alternate is tigase which is java so we could extend it much easily but if Openfire can work for us for the next 12 months or so by scaling up versus scaling out, we would be happy to use it for now and see how well this new chat feature is embraced. Number one reason being ease of management.
Lastly, if you could help with links on SaaS / PaaS providers for XMPP chat + Push Notifications to mobile devices when user is offline, it would be awesome. We got in touch with quickblox.com but their enterprise offerings appear to be expensive for us at the moment. We want 100% ownership and portability of our data if we go the SaaS / PaaS way.
There are several references to Openfire handling those and larger numbers of concurrent users on a single server.
There is document on scalability from 2007 that shows 50000 users supported on version 3.2. The current release is 3.7.1. Don't forget that that also means a much slower machine than anything you are likely to run on today.
You also have to take into account what features of XMPP you will be using, but simple messaging should be able to easily handle the numbers you are referring to.
The numbers you mention should be easily handled by ejabberd.
I am unsure as to how you want to "extend" ejabberd. Multi-user chat and messaging are handled fine by all servers and of course ejabberd. Additionally, if you are thinking of custom protocols, these can be written in your language of choice and connect to ejabberd as an XMPP component.
The only thing you might miss is a web interface (which ejabberd has but it's rather limited), but then again if you expect to manage things through a web UI for an application, you will need to think again ;)
if you want to go with ejabberd, you can always get support from ProcessOne.
This is another plus for ejabberd, as it can be commercially supported if you want to / can afford.
Android Push Notification is a good solution.
With Android-Push services, you (Android developers) can send messages directly to the people who have installed your app. All you need is to include a code snippet into your app, and post to a specific URL to reach your app users, even if your app is inactive on their phone.
Feature:
Free
Free, unless you need extensive number of pushes for your app. Of course you can pay for more push and a quicker tech support.
Easy
Extremely easy to integrate into your app
Super simple to push to the app: just send a URL request
No C2DM limit, you don't have to have a gmail account to use the push service
Cloud service, no need to setup your own push server
Effective
Low battery and network consumption on the phone
Track user interaction, find out how users react to your push
I am investigating developing an app for Windows Phone 7 that requires access to email/calendar information from Exchange Server (read only).
The way I see it there are 2 options EWS or ActiveSync.
WP7 only supports Basic Authentication.
By default on Exchange server installations the EWS virtual directory has Basic Authentication disabled meaning a configuration change of Exchange Server to allow EWS to be used.
The ActiveSync protocol looks like it would take some time to get your head around and develop an implementation.
The questions are
1. How common is it for people to enable basic authentication for EWS? Is this something that most businesses are likely to not want to do?
How difficult is it to learn and use the ActiveSync protocol? Is it something that could be done in days, weeks or months?
1) To find out about the common configuration of EWS servers I'd spek to some sysadmins and ask them. Maybe try on https://serverfault.com/
1) How difficult something is to learn very much depends on the skills and experience of the person learning and the teaching resources available. This is a non-trivial protocol so I wouldn't expect learning it to take days. There will also be a licensing cost of implementing Excahange ActiveSync which I suspect would make it an expensive option.
Option 3: Create your own web service that acts as a proxy to EWS and does the authentication for you. Ugly and a bit painful, but if your app is architected well, once WP7 supports better authentication, switching to directly hit EWS should be pretty simple.
ActiveSync is painful and does not support everything that EWS supports. I would recommend going the EWS route if you have that option.
If your going to use ActiveSync, think again... it uses wbxml and you would need to create your own API for doing calls - this means crating tokenized blobs which must be 100% perfect and account for all aspects of whatever type of messaging items you are going against or will risk creating bad items or even poison ones. The devistation caused by bad EAS calls could well exceed your customer base... so, you need to be very careful. Also, while the specs are public, it needs an very expensive license. If you license, you would need to get a support contract with a specific schedule in order to get develper support. With a team of developers, it will likely take 3-5 or so years to do a full implementation client side and work out most of the bugs. So, as far as the skills in email development, you and your other developers would need to be pretty hard-core. There may be third party APIs which wrap EAS calls... however, you should be sure that they are licensed and that that the license would cover your development - so, you would need to research those on your own.
EWS has more features and is far, far easier to use and is what is suggested... further, there is no special licensing, etc.
Using a proxy web service+Exchange Managed APIs so that WP7 can go against Exchange without writting a ton of code:
http://www.telerik.com/products/windows-phone/getting-started/exchange-client.aspx
... can also use this approach to use NTLM.
Before considering EAS...
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdav_101/archive/2011/09/29/new-to-exchange-activesync-development.aspx
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I've been looking at systems such as txtlocal, esendex and clickatell. I need to send out a very large number of messages and ideally would like to go in at a lower level then using systems like these. Does anyone know how these SMS gateways like I've listed work in terms of actually sending out the messages? Will they have agreements with different carriers and be sending them out programmatically? I've tried contacting some UK carriers directly but as of yet haven't had any success getting any information from them.
Aggregators typically work by talking directly with a mobile carrier's internal SMSC using IP/X.25/frame relay and using a protocol like SMPP/CIMD to request a message send.
They will have connections to multiple networks SMSC's so they can do least cost routing (i.e sending a message to a user on their home network being cheaper).
Here are some contact details for Orange/Voda.
That said, MXTelecom as mentioned by Phill offer a good gateway service, as do mBlox - both of whom have already done all the hard (and expensive) work for you.
Working with an aggregator is definitely worth the effort. They handle the legal contracts with the providers as well as with the auditing services. You can go directly to a provider (e.g. AT&T, etc.) and broker the deal yourself but generally speaking you'll only need that if you have very specific program/campaign needs. Coke, for example, brokered their own deal to get the four-digit shortcode for COKE (2653).
Keep in mind, when working with an aggregator like MXTelecom you'll be signing a contractual agreement with them (usually for 6 to 12 months) and it'll take between 8-12 weeks (in the US) to get your shortcode provisioned and setup. It's not the funnest process, IMHO.
Oh, and don't forget, they will audit your system to make sure it does what it says it will do in your campaign document.
It is also possible to create your own system (at least in the US) and use a long code. One of our original prototype systems was built with Kannel using a mobile phone tethered to an Ubuntu box. With an unlimited plan it was quite nice. Usage is related to your carrier contract so be mindful.
Per your question of how they work... They generally work via an API (HTTP or SMPP are most common). Depending on your in/out volume you may want to put a queue in between your application and the aggregators API.
First if you're going to do any bulk SMS messaging you should get a Short Code. An aggregator will have all the necessary API's/SDK and documentation for you.
Try MXTelecom (AKA OpenMarket)
The company where I work for (1800+ Employees) is looking to enhance the personal relationships between its employees, allow a better collaboration and communication between departments and make it easier for the HR department to identify skills, experience and interests among the personnel (ex: we have some colleagues with deep knowledge of SAP modules and products, but during concrete projects it results very difficult to identify them and integrate them). Therefore, they want to implement a social network for our intranet.
We are just looking for the basic features such as profiles, discussion boards and so on, so nothing fancy. I proposed Community Server but my boss said .Net and java are no-gos. He wants LAMP and is not interested in a web solution like Ning, because of privacy and security concerns. It does not matter if it is Open-Source or commercial software. But it should allow a complete layout customization and must also have access from the outside world.
So my question would be, is there something like Community Server running on a LAMP stack?
Thank you very much!
UPDATE: We already have a Facebook page and a group. But my boss wants some features not included in Facebook such as a tag cloud in each profile page displaying skills and relevant proyects; and a feature like the "neighborhoods" from Last.FM, where you can group people with similar skills and interests and there is also the confidentialy issue (discussions about projects, clients, etc). So, any ideas?
You should check out StatusNet. http://status.net/
It doesn't directly answer your question, but aren't you rather trying to reinvent the wheel?
Facebook has got Social Networking down and the likely hood is 95% of your 1800 employees already use it.
Why would you go to the effort of writing and supporting a product as well as asking your employees to update information about themselves in multiple places when you could just set up a Facebook Network.
The other point I would make is, why are you limiting yourself to one way of doing things right from the off. Perhaps a detailed analysis of which technologies best serve your purpose would be more appropriate.
I appreciate this doesn't answer you question, I just feel this is a good example of Corporations unwilling to embrace tools already out there, I suspect because they are scared of them.
I'm probably right in guess that you're company heavily monitors Facebook usage, which is why this also might be hard.
Try Open Atrium, a Drupal-based team server.
Some sort of facebook application would allow you to keep the data on a server that you manage, but still use facebook's existing features. Pretty certain that facebook uses PHP for its application framework.
I agree with MrEdmundo and would upvote him if I were registered. Dont fall victim to "It wasnt invented here" syndrome. I bet your boss is like "we need something like facebook".
If it makes you feel better... here is a little story:
I was trying to implement some sort of group chat so fellow employees could ask quick questions to eachother online without having to get up or if someone was on the phone, etc. However, the service I installed (some sort of jabber daemon, i forget which one) never really got used. The solution? Just install the facebook chat client because all the co-workers are already on facebook most the day anyways!
plus, the "screen name" is appropriate because it is our real names, not stuff like "Out Into Space", "theman", or "fly-mystikal-dj-69"
You might want to consider something like Drupal. It's technically a CMS, but it's extremely customizable, and there are a lot of modules available that provide social-networking-style features.
Use Office Messenger for communication. It's basically like MSN Messenger but run on the company's servers so they can monitor all traffic. To know who has expertise in what area, it can't be too hard to build your own simple CRUD application to record profiles of employees and have each profile tagged with key skills, that the employee has and build a search function to find the people with the skills you need at any given time.
You can create an application using the Facebook SDK (PHP, java or any other language) and moderate it so that only employees can use it. That way you can use the existing Facebook features and add the tag clouds and other stuff your boss wants.
I've not used it, but Dolphin might be worth downloading to try out.
elgg.org
LAMP easy to install and setup, looks like your requirements would all be easily satisfied by the official plugins that are available.
Another option: http://buddypress.org/