User talk:Aperfectring/Notification

Notification areas

This section is for discussing how to define a notification area. The current implementation is of a "centicule" type, but I am still open for suggestions for future enhancement.

I envisioned that the user would create a text file with lines of the form:

lat long min min km

59 -139 59 0 3

54 -131 4 50 10

49 -123 11 7 10

That is asking to be notified of points falling within 3 km of N59 59' W139 00' (the bit of that graticule in BC), points falling within 10 km of N54 04' W131 50 (the bit of that graticule on land), and within 10 km of my house. I would definitely want e-mail notification. You register to be informed if your numbers come up, and then go about your daily life.

Thinking about that, I realize that calculating radii of coordinates takes a lot of processing power, so perhaps we just divide a graticule into some number (64?) squares, and you just specify which squares you care about. The numbering on the squares could be reversed and flipped at the equator and 0 meridian so that any one set of coordinates fell in the same numbered square all over the world. There could be an interface that overlays the numbered grid on the graticule so you can choose your squares. If you want to get fancy there could be a graphical interface where you choose your graticule, click on the squares you want, then fill in the 'description' and e-mail address.

You would just specify:

email lat long square description

user@isp.org 49 -123 53 Robyn's house

The program only need look at the 'square' number, the rest is for reporting. You send your list in and then every Dow Jones opening the program

1) calculates which square the coordinates fall in (astonishingly easy)

2) finds all the users who requested notification for that square

3) sends them an e-mail saying "Today's coordinates for the 49 -123 graticule look like they are near Robyn's house.

If any of this isn't clear, ask me. Tell me what the hard part is, if there is one, and I can come up with an alternate idea. -Robyn 22:01, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Distance between two points on a globe doesn't really take all that much processing power, but it wouldn't scale all that well. If we were to go about this by dividing up the graticule into parts, I would suggest 100 parts, and the boundaries would be on the tenths of degrees. If we were to use a graphical setup, I would suggest it being an extension to the mapping tool we already have. --aperfectring 22:17, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Danatar suggested some sort of wildcard or range system applied to the centicule area definition to reduce replicated information.

A wildcard has been added which will match all centicules for a graticule. I have also added the ability to match multiple centicules for a single comment. --aperfectring 07:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Implementation Progress

This is the section where I will let everyone know about how things are progressing. I will post any and all known bugs, and how new features are progressing here.

I have a prototype which does everything but send the actual mail message to its destination. Currently it will only notify about the current day's (or the next day's for east of -30) hash being near a specific point.

That's awesome. Do you want some test data for it to watch? It could put the notifications on my user page or something. -Robyn 03:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, right now it will only put out messages to the command line when something matches. I have been using some basic test data to verify it works as I expect it to, and it seems to so far. I plan to try and implement the mailing part tomorrow, and after that I will ask for some people to provide test data.

I am still working on this project. However, since work has been busy recently, I haven't had much time to get to this. I should get back to it in the next couple of weeks. --aperfectring 18:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I have gotten a prototype which will e-mail out a notification. However, the only way I have gotten it to work prevents me from being able to distribute working source code (it has my gMail u/p in plain text). When I get home from work today, I will see what I can do about getting a new gMail account which I will send this notifications from. This will solve multiple problems:

1. People will get an e-mail from a person whose name is "Geohashing Notification" (weird, I know).

2. I would be willing to publish (in an obscure fashion to prevent spam) the e-mail address here for people to subscribe to the service.

3. If I forget to scrub the source of password information before sending a version out, my own personal e-mail address/pass will not be compromised.

I will put another post up here with how to subscribe when I am ready. Hopefully it won't be too long now! --aperfectring 17:50, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I have just updated the preferred format for subscription requests. I have also included wildcards and multiple sections per line. In addition, I have cleaned up the e-mail format. I feel it looks a whole lot cleaner, and less hacked together by a programmer at the last minute. --aperfectring 07:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions for Improvement/Enhancement

Danatar suggested that each user have their own page on the wiki, which would define their notification criteria, and the program would pull from there to notify.

I think it would be a neat option to be able to have an optional link to the peeron map in the e-mail. Also, it might also be cool to include a screenshot of the location, like the template on the wiki. --aperfectring 07:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Notifications for Sunday (East) and Monday (East) are sent on Saturday and Sunday respectively. Could you send the notifications for all of the weekend on Friday when they are announced, together with Saturday's coordinates? Everything else is working fine so far. - Danatar 09:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Other Thoughts

This project looks very interesting and I currently can think of nothing to improve the basic idea or your thoughts. What I'd like to know is, are you still working on this or has the project died? I have no programming skills, so I don't know how difficult it is. Danatar 18:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi aperfectring, I was wondering how this is going? It is a wonderful idea. Since I still have trouble uploading my photos I don't think I can be much use to you, but if you'd like a Guinea pig to test things on, I'm more than willing! Kate 01:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

This looks like a great tool. I've been kicking myself ever since I realised I missed a geohash on my university campus, and was just about to start tackling programming something exactly like this for myself. It wouldn't be hard to write a form in php or something that would save a properly formatted line to a text file. Booberfish 08:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)