Archive for the ‘Life: Work and Techy’ category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Google Transit Maps

January 16th, 2009

Cool – I’ve been thinking about something like this for a couple of days ago, and Google has just announced nearly what I was thinking: a transit/transport map of London showing where the tubes/lines actually go so you can easily plot alternative routes from not being underground – see London’s map.

Now they just need the following options and they’ve saved me a development job:
* Distance between stations: yes, I can see Regent Street is an inch away from Great Portland Street by “the crow flies”, but I’ve still got to do the conversion using the manual scale. If I could just click on “Great Portland Street” and get a list of “Walking distance to nearby stations: Regent Street 0.5miles (10 minutes), Euston Square 1mile (20 minutes)” etc it’ll be brilliant.
* Alternative routing. I travel from Harrow on The Hill to Great Portland Street, so what are the routes I could take (Metropolitan Line from HOH to GPS, Metropolitan to Wembley Park then Jubilee to Baker Street then Metropolitan/Circle/Hammersmith to GPS, Walk to Harrow and Wealdstone and then catch overground to Euston…): perfect if a line or station is closed (as has happened with the Metropolitan and Great Portland Street several times this year. If it includes additional distance travelled/time needed, it’ll be perfect.

Comments Off »

Posted in Life: Work and Techy

Tags:

Snippet: London Underground “Tube” – Oyster or Travelcard

January 13th, 2009

I’ve suspected it, but it’s nice to have confirmation -it is cheaper for me to use Oyster Pay as you go then a Transport For London (TfL) travel code for my commutes between Zone 5 and Zone 1. Is it cheaper for you? (by looks of things, only if you regularly travel in to London during the weekend is it even worth considering a TravelCard).

Comments Off »

Posted in Life: Work and Techy, Snippet

Tags:

Snippet: Weird Pricing on TheCloud

January 13th, 2009

I’m just helping somebody find temporary wireless internet access (ideally free wireless in London), and I remembered The Cloud. Their pricing is a bit odd: for Pay as you go access, the price if £6.99 for 3 hours or £9.99 for 24 hours, or you can go for their subscription wireless access, it’s £6.99 for a whole month.

There must be a snag there – who would pay for 24 hours access, when it’s cheaper to get 30 days?

1 comment »

Posted in Life: Work and Techy, Snippet

Tags:

ClickCartPro: Extracting Sales Figures

December 31st, 2008

If you want to get an idea of the stock you’ve sold using the ClickCartPro UK e-commerce software, then you may find the following SQL query useful. Run in phpMySQL to be able to export the data into a spreadsheet.

SELECT SUM(itemquan) as itemssold, count(*) AS timesordered, itemname, itemnum, itemopts, SUM(itemquan)/COUNT(*) AS average FROM `gbu0_orderitems` WHERE FROM_UNIXTIME(epochorder) BETWEEN ’2007-01-01′ and ’2008-12-31′ GROUP BY itemnum,itemopts ORDER BY itemssold DESC

What does this mean?
Well, “SUM(itemquan) AS itemssold” grabs the number of items sold, “count(*) AS timesordered” grabs the number of times that item has actually been ordered (as an order could be for 2 or more items), “itemname, itemnum, itemopts” grabs the items name, item number and the options ordered (handy for sizes), “SUM(itemquan)/COUNT(*) AS average” works out the average number of items per order, “FROM `gbu0_orderitems`” says to look at the order table (ok, I’m not distinguishing between cancelled, pending and completed orders at the moment), “FROM_UNIXTIME(epochorder) BETWEEN ’2007-01-01′ and ’2008-12-31′” says to only include orders placed between the 1st of January 2007 and the 31st of December 2008 and “GROUP BY itemnum,itemopts ORDER BY itemssold DESC” means group the items for the counts by the item number and options and then order everything by the number of times sold in decending order.

Comments Off »

Posted in Life: Work and Techy

Tags:

Facebook: Copyrighted Content

December 23rd, 2008

I’ve just answered a post on LinkedIn where somebody asked (in the “Casual Games” discussion group):

“There is a hacked flash version of one of our games listed as an application at facebook. I could not find any real support contact information at the facebook website. Just FAQs and canned responses. Do you know anybody working at facebook whom I could contact in this matter? Thank you!”

As I think this may be an issue I’ll have to look at in the future, I’m copying my reply here:

You’ll probably be best sending them a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) request as detailed on http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php and their form on http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php#/copyright.php?notify=1 . (See also http://www.facebook.com/help.php?topic=copyright )

As long as you provide the full details requested (including detailing the exact URL the content can be found: “A page on your site…” isn’t detailed enough to be an official request). Basically, if the DMCA is sent and is correctly detailed (see http://www.blogherald.com/2008/08/04/dmca-safe-harbor-part-two-the-dmca-checklist/ ), then Facebook may then become liable for any penalties for copyright breaches from 14 working days from that point (as, by notifying them via a DMCA complaint, they then lose the “safe harbour” provision for user generated content).

If the content is hosted by a third party (which may be difficult to tell if it is integrated using the FBML canvas frame method: if it’s integrated via an iFrame, it should be easier to tell: if you want assistance, feel free to contact me with the page on Facebook and I’ll try to help), then you can also contact the third party webhost/ISP for assistance.

Comments Off »

Posted in Life: Work and Techy

Tags:

gamy-dance