DuoMesh Project Blog

After deciding on a list of questions that should asked in my questionnaire, I have posted it online.

This will allow a greater user base access to my survey, and it also makes it significantly superior for distribution. There are various different websites which allow you to create online surveys, but most of them will start charging a fee after a certain number of people have taken part in it.

In order to combat this problem I researched into different self hosted surveys. I found 2 open source questionnaire PHP scripts:

• PHPSurveyor
• phpESP

After experimenting with both of these software packages I found that the installation and setup of phpESP a better experience and also had similar features as its rival PHPSurveyor.

The online questionnaire can be found here:
http://www.sebflipper.com/questionnaire
(this maybe moved once I find a suitable domain name to host the website)

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Update: this has now been moved to:
http://questionnaire.duomesh.com

Today I managed to install PHP 5.1.6 and MySQL 4.1.21 on my Mac mini, it required a bit of tweaking to get PHP to talk to MySQL and so that it automatically starts up the servers when the machine loads up. But other than that it seems to be working fine.

I have thought long and hard about a name for my project and I still seem to be struggling to find a name for my project, some of the naming requirements I have determined are:

• Needs to be related to project subject
• It should be available to register as online domain name (preferable a .com name)
• It could be an acronym
• It should sound meaningful
• It should be easy to remember
• People should be able to know roughly what the website is about from its name
• Could be powerful/strong

So far all the names I have thought of have either already been registered or they have been bought by domain squatters

Yesterday I had my 3rd meeting with my project tutor Paul Kyberd we discussed all my project ideas and features.

I had quite a few ideas about how the site will function and what users will be able to use the site for. After going though a few of the ideas, he suggested that it may be too complex to code within the project time frame and to take the core ideas and make some of the other features optional rather than required (descope).

So I have decided to draw up a brainstorm to isolate and identify the core features and optional features.

He also suggested looking for mobile phone emulator which can be used for testing purposes, after some research there only seems to be a few mobile simulators an online version at: dotMobi, Palm OS (which requires that you actually have the phone so that you download the ROM from it), there’s also one for Windows Smartphones (or Windows Mobile) called Microsoft Mobile Explorer Emulator which doesn’t seem to be supported by Microsoft anymore (I am guessing that they have integrated it as part of Microsoft Visual Studio)

I will be using a combination of the dotMobi emulator and I will be using my own mobile phone which is an O2 XDA IQ running Windows Mobile 5.0 this can access the internet free of charge by using my laptops Bluetooth connection. I will also be using my Sony PSP to test that my website works on it, I will also use my old Dell PDA which uses an older version of Windows Mobile (2003).

Chumby is an open source device which is primarily a radio alarm clock, but also serves as a wireless internet access device which could be customised to allow users to view their custom content from my project on their alarm clock.

This information could be live updating every 30 minutes or at a customisable interval. As its always online users are able to see all there important or favourite websites at a glance any time, day or night.

Other site features could include a cut down version of their customised page as a small box that could be placed on the users own website or on their social networking site (such as MySpace)

Also I could provide dynamic RSS feeds for each users custom page by merging all their content into one feed to allow users to view their favourite content from another RSS aggregator.

Here’s a list of all the features I hope to include in my project:

• Content rich RSS/XML content reader module, which could interpret:
  • Latest news
  • Weather
  • Travel Information
  • Stocks
  • Blogs
  • Photo Blogs
  • Reviews and Magazine Articles
  • Podcasts
  • Vidcasts
• Access to content via a mobile device
• Self user registration and profile management
• Access to non-RSS information such as stripping out the only the text
• Friends system to allow users to see their friends interests
• Feed discovery system where users can add feeds and allow others to find them
• To be able to see how many people are subscribed to a particular feed and see other users with familiar interests
• Allow users to tag/categories each feed for themselves and to be able to view a real time tag cloud of the most popular categories
• Special modules/items that can contain other dynamic content such as:
  • Email
  • Clock
  • Calendar
  • Games
  • Other useful gadgets (such as unit conversions, timers/count down scipts)

I will be adding more features to this list throughout the year

Today I have settled on my project idea, which is one of the ideas I have been thinking about over the summer.

“Social Networking Website for RSS feeds and Mobile content”

Really Simple Syndication (RSS for short) is what most website use to allow their viewers keep track of their latest publications without having to manually go to their website and see what’s changed.

I hope to build a fully functioning website that will allow users to add/browse different RSS feeds and create a custom page where they can keep track of all their most important websites. Then I will allow users to access their custom page via a mobile device.

I have also chosen Paul Kyberd as personal project tutor as he has experience with web applications and databases so hopefully I can use his expertise to process with my ideas and any technical requirements.

I have setup this blog to act as my final year project journal/log in order to track my progress, development and thoughts throughout the next 6 months. It uses the WordPress engine which is a highly customisable self-hosted personal publishing platform.

At the moment the blog hasn’t been customised to any design theme yet, but I will be giving it the same styling, look and feeling as the final project.

I have been brainstorming for the pass few weeks to gauge what area I am good in and what sort of things will push my creativity, coding and theoretical skills.

So far I have been working around the idea’s of Web 2.0 and all the social networking concepts it brings with it.

More news to follow soon!