MindFeed

Good news - MindFeed now works with both devices on board GPS without the need for Bluetooth dongle! Awesomeness. I don’t know why the devices needed a hard reset to achieve this, clearly some setting somewhere was not playing nice. Anyways it works so all is good.

After getting a second X800, I now have managed to get valid GPS strings from the device on COM7 which is a tad confusing as this is not mentioned anywhere in the settings - all options point to COM2 or COM4 for on board GPS integration. This was doable after I performed a hard reset of the device - beforehand I got nothing. I have found the updates to be much slower than my dedicated bluetooth GPS receiver, but shall test it out to see how accurate it is and if it is fast enough for a moving object!

Time to hard reset the other device and see if I get the same joy!

More to report soon!

Today I converted the smoothing algorithm I have previously been doing server side so that it runs in parallel with the client, thus taking load off the server when displaying maps and allowing for more accurate live feed information.

I have also updated the live feed user indicator icon to make it more visible.

Also on a good note, I have just heard that my other test GPS device has been fixed after some newbie broke the screen, so I should have two devices to play with soon!

I have successfully finished the rough template for the profile pages and also integrated with scriptaculous javascript functions for better usability. Scriptaculous allows you to apply javascript based effects to your divs and adds that little bit of extra shine to your site! Check it out by signing up and logging in!

A good days work.

I am not one to get annoyed easily. However today I spent an hour trying to figure out why my web template for my profiles section worked fine in every browser apart from IE. Now clearly I understand IE has issues and doesn’t like real code and over the years I have been quite understanding that Microsoft write bad web browsers that do not work with correct code. However today I found a new bug that I had not encountered before. By having two div’s floated left, the last letter of the text in the right most div was repeated by IE outside the div on a new line for no reason at all. My code after much checking was perfect. This baffled me for sometime. I then very luckily found that if you provide a comment before hand eg:

<!– Include other stuff –>
<div id=”profileColHolder”>
<div id=”profileThinColumn”>
<p>thiin</p>
</div>
<div id=”profileThickColumn”>
<p>thick</p>
</div>
</div>

This will cause IE to produce:

<!– Include other stuff –>
<div id=”profileColHolder”>
<div id=”profileThinColumn”>
<p>thiin</p>
</div>
<div id=”profileThickColumn”>
<p>thick</p>
</div>
</div>
k

Notice the k on the end for no reason at all. All I had to do was remove the leading comment so that it looked like this:

<div id=”profileColHolder”>
<div id=”profileThinColumn”>
<p>thiin</p>
</div>
<div id=”profileThickColumn”>
<p>thick</p>
</div>
</div>

And now the extra k has gone. Now forgive me for being slightly annoyed but why on earth can I not put comments in my code!? They are supposed to be IGNORED anyways! This is just plain stupid. Someone needs to invent Double Glazing and put Microsoft Windows out of business by fixing all the annoying bugs they have.

Finally got round to updating the live feed system with a new sexy Ajax version. No more horrid page refreshes and instead we have a smooth auto updating Google map with zoom controls and choice of hybrid, satellite, or regular map options.

MindFeed now has a fully functioning contact form. W00t! Send me some love.

I have also realised that the latest version of Franson BlueTools seems to crash the whole application upon discovery of certain Bluetooth devices. I am not sure why, so I have gone back to the previous version which is much more stable and works. However something to consider if anyone else out there is just starting out and is having issues. I have sent a request to Franson to look into this issue.

The mobile client has also been improved:

- Now has option to delete XML files after upload to avoid cluttering up and saving space.

- Can now specify output location (under options) of the compressed ‘upload.zip’ so you can locate it and upload it easier when submitting your recorded data. Some folders on WM6 are not accessible from a web form upload component!

It occurred to me last night that cookies can easily be spoofed. I am not sure why it has taken me so long to realise this but thankfully I have. Thus, to ensure someone doesn’t just create a cookie with someone else’s user name and use that to log on, I have created a system where by the value stored in the cookie is based on randomness and this is then matched with a value in the database.

The cookie also contains uniqueness ie if it was based on randomness alone, there may be the occasion where the same random number is generated and thus 2 users would have the same cookie which is bad.  Thus to ensure randomness it is paired with other details that are unique. The exact details can be found in my report.

Now that the mobile client is pretty much finished I decided to test it out again on a trip to London. I am glad to say it worked, though I ran out of money on my mobile phone for the live feed half way! Oops.

Some photos are below:

Today I have successfully configured Apache to use secure connections when sending data to and from the site. This allows me to send users data in a secure manner considering the sensitive nature of it. I have created my own signature that I have digitally signed myself, and thus browsers will pop up a message “are you sure you wish to trust this site” as it is not signed by an official certificate authority. However, everything works correctly, and this could easily be rectified by getting the signature signed by an official authority, though I do not have the money to do this currently.

I have also modified the mobile client to use https in all of its URL’s now too and configured PHP sendmail to work so I can set up the contact form on the website.