It seems that whenever I have some free time coming up and I want to spend time working on one of my “projects” (in this case MyVoteforPrez.com) I get another idea that consumes me for a few months until the next great idea pops into my head. This scenario played out big time when I took some time off around New Years. I put The People’s Ticket on the shelf to create JessesGadgets.com. I’m taking off next week from work and I still plan on making MyVoteforPrez.com usable. The big thing will be setting up the voting tracking and displaying the results on a map.
However I had another idea today that I'd love to develop and hopefully will in the near future. I'd like to create a website where users can select and display information such as news, events, driving directions etc.. for different cities and places they plan on visiting in a portal-type layout . I thought of this idea while travelling to Philadelphia for work last year. I thought it would be great to have a one-stop shop website for everything related to my travel to and within Philadelphia. For example, my Amtrak train information, my car rental information, my hotel address and directions, my work address and directions with a stop along the way to pick up Dunkin Donuts coffee and general Philadelphia local news and upcoming events. I would like the layout to look similar to Google Personalized Homepage for each city/trip.
I think a site like this could also be monetized because contextual regional ads would show up in each city/trip personalized page. Maybe this will follow in the footsteps of one of the coolest sites I've ever seen, SeatGuru.com, and get big enough to warrant full time employees.
I'm still thinking of a name for the website. Recommendations are welcome.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Thursday, February 08, 2007
JessesGadgets.com Updates
I have two updates for JessesGadgets.com today.
Yesterday JessesGadgets.com announced an apparel affiliation with Burntees which is a CafePress t-shirt store that sells funny t-shirts relating to a variety of designs including "Dirty Jersey", "Graphic Tees", "Custom Shirts" and more. One of Burntees' founders, Matt Reiffe, is a childhood friend of mine; we grew up around the corner from each other in Fair Lawn, so we decided to team up. Initially JessesGadgets.com will choose a "shirt of the week" to list for sale. All Burntees purchases will be processed through the Burtnees website for the time being. In the future I hope to allow JessesGadgets.com customers to order shirts directly from our site. This will require Burntees to store an inventory on hand rather than use the CafePress order fulfillment system which prints and ships shirts directly to customers.
In addition JessesGadgets.com is now listed as a Top NJ site. This site ranks New Jersey sites by popularity and user-submitted reviews. Feel free to visit the ranking site and add your reviews. You can view our rank on the bottom right side of the JessesGadgets.com web page.
Yesterday JessesGadgets.com announced an apparel affiliation with Burntees which is a CafePress t-shirt store that sells funny t-shirts relating to a variety of designs including "Dirty Jersey", "Graphic Tees", "Custom Shirts" and more. One of Burntees' founders, Matt Reiffe, is a childhood friend of mine; we grew up around the corner from each other in Fair Lawn, so we decided to team up. Initially JessesGadgets.com will choose a "shirt of the week" to list for sale. All Burntees purchases will be processed through the Burtnees website for the time being. In the future I hope to allow JessesGadgets.com customers to order shirts directly from our site. This will require Burntees to store an inventory on hand rather than use the CafePress order fulfillment system which prints and ships shirts directly to customers.
In addition JessesGadgets.com is now listed as a Top NJ site. This site ranks New Jersey sites by popularity and user-submitted reviews. Feel free to visit the ranking site and add your reviews. You can view our rank on the bottom right side of the JessesGadgets.com web page.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Update: MyVoteforPrez.com
One feature I'd like MyVoteforPrez.com to show off is a bio page for each 2008 Presidential candidate with a dynamic listing of current news articles about the candidate. I've been experimenting with the Google AJAX Search API to provide these recent news clippings. Yesterday I was able to get the AJAX Search API working the way I want it to. Basically when the bio page is loaded an Google News Search is executed for the candidate whose bio page is loaded. This is done by configuring a Google Search control to query Google News for the candidate and display a list of resulting news stories with links to the full article. Google makes it very easy to configure the AJAX search control by making the search sources and result displays configurable with simple JavaScript. In order to hide the search control I added a CSS rule and added a DOM element to show the Google branding "Powered by Google" image. Check out the finished AJAX Search control on Joe Biden's Bio Page.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
New Invention Idea: Next Generation Public Transportation SmartCards
I have a lot of ideas for new inventions. Some are good, some are silly and some are designed backwards with the idea of trying to retrofit a solution to an existing "cool" technology. This idea, however, is money and one-ups a lot of RD-ID smart card solutions that already exist. I thought of this idea this morning when considering what time I need to leave work today to catch the 4:43 NJ Transit train from Penn Station to Radburn. The proposed invention combines some three concepts I've seen in practice:
1. Smart cards like the Washington DC Metro system-these cards allow you to have an online account to track your balance and add funds. Nothing new here, this is in practice in a number of cities globally.
2. Text Message bank system- a system that receives text messages and performs a business operation. GoMobo.com, a New York City based company uses this technology to allow customers to order food on the go from participating restaurants. I use this pretty often to get my morning coffee from Dunkin Donuts or lunch from Subway. I'm very intrigued by this concept and I've joined the GoMobo Advisory Council which acts as a sounding board and suggestion forum for the company since its still a relatively new concept.
3. Driver License bar code scanners-most of us have seen these in use by bouncers at bars. A few weeks ago I visited a friend in Chicago and I saw an interesting use of the bar code scanners at a gym. My friend's gym scans his license to read his identity into the check-in system. This works better than forcing everyone to carry a FOB or key chain card or something since you generally take your drivers license with you whenever you leave your home.
I think it would be great if public transportation systems can use a combination of all three concepts to provide better service. If each customer could create an online account to add funds and track balances it would be very helpful. If a customer could send a text message while running close or late to a train like "1 ticket from Penn Station to Radburn" it would be even better. The train conductors could then use a barcode reader to scan in a customer's driver license. The only thing I haven't really worked out in my head is how a customer's account can be verified and charged wirelessly from a moving train. Maybe WiMax is the answer? Maybe the train conductor can even act as a point of sale and we won't even need the text message system. Any comments?
1. Smart cards like the Washington DC Metro system-these cards allow you to have an online account to track your balance and add funds. Nothing new here, this is in practice in a number of cities globally.
2. Text Message bank system- a system that receives text messages and performs a business operation. GoMobo.com, a New York City based company uses this technology to allow customers to order food on the go from participating restaurants. I use this pretty often to get my morning coffee from Dunkin Donuts or lunch from Subway. I'm very intrigued by this concept and I've joined the GoMobo Advisory Council which acts as a sounding board and suggestion forum for the company since its still a relatively new concept.
3. Driver License bar code scanners-most of us have seen these in use by bouncers at bars. A few weeks ago I visited a friend in Chicago and I saw an interesting use of the bar code scanners at a gym. My friend's gym scans his license to read his identity into the check-in system. This works better than forcing everyone to carry a FOB or key chain card or something since you generally take your drivers license with you whenever you leave your home.
I think it would be great if public transportation systems can use a combination of all three concepts to provide better service. If each customer could create an online account to add funds and track balances it would be very helpful. If a customer could send a text message while running close or late to a train like "1 ticket from Penn Station to Radburn" it would be even better. The train conductors could then use a barcode reader to scan in a customer's driver license. The only thing I haven't really worked out in my head is how a customer's account can be verified and charged wirelessly from a moving train. Maybe WiMax is the answer? Maybe the train conductor can even act as a point of sale and we won't even need the text message system. Any comments?
Thursday, February 01, 2007
General Updates JessesGadgets.com and MyVoteforPrez.com...
This week I haven't had the chance to do too much development. I've been real busy with work and haven't been that motivated after work to work on my side projects. Here's some brief updates to a few projects I'm currently working on:
MyVoteforPrez.com: Currently there isn't a whole lot to look at. I've listed all of the candidates who have either declared they will run or officially filed papers to run for President in the 2008 elections. My next steps are:
1. Post detailed information about each candidate and create a candidate bio page. In the bio page I would like to use the Google AJAX Search API to show a list of recent news articles for each candidate. I'm excited to learn another Google API and use some AJAX on the site! Check out my progress here.
2. Start tracking votes. I need to set up some PHP/HTML forms to submit votes to a MySQL database back-end
3. Display the results on a Google Map.
JessesGadgets.com: Unfortunately I've had to put the "KissNet" gadget (detailed here) on hold for now to work on MyVoteForPrez.com which is more exciting to me right now. The functionality on JessesGadgets.com is all set so now it's just a matter of running/maintaining the site. Yesterday one of my friends gave me some inspiration to sell my extra Yankees tickets on JessesGadgets.com. I checked and ticket sales are allowed on Froogle so I think I will post all of my extra tickets on JessesGadgets and see what happens. Since I can email-forward my tickets the whole process will be very smooth. If anyone wants to sell sporting events/concert tickets on JessesGadgets let me know. I will not charge any listing fees.
MyVoteforPrez.com: Currently there isn't a whole lot to look at. I've listed all of the candidates who have either declared they will run or officially filed papers to run for President in the 2008 elections. My next steps are:
1. Post detailed information about each candidate and create a candidate bio page. In the bio page I would like to use the Google AJAX Search API to show a list of recent news articles for each candidate. I'm excited to learn another Google API and use some AJAX on the site! Check out my progress here.
2. Start tracking votes. I need to set up some PHP/HTML forms to submit votes to a MySQL database back-end
3. Display the results on a Google Map.
JessesGadgets.com: Unfortunately I've had to put the "KissNet" gadget (detailed here) on hold for now to work on MyVoteForPrez.com which is more exciting to me right now. The functionality on JessesGadgets.com is all set so now it's just a matter of running/maintaining the site. Yesterday one of my friends gave me some inspiration to sell my extra Yankees tickets on JessesGadgets.com. I checked and ticket sales are allowed on Froogle so I think I will post all of my extra tickets on JessesGadgets and see what happens. Since I can email-forward my tickets the whole process will be very smooth. If anyone wants to sell sporting events/concert tickets on JessesGadgets let me know. I will not charge any listing fees.
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