Anybody had experience using either of the following;
MapQuest platform: http://platform.mapquest.com
OpenLayers: http://openlayers.org
Which of the above would you recommend, any feedback from use of the service?
Or do you think it is worth paying for a commercial license from either Virtual Earth or Google Maps, get more available documentation online and more users to get knowledge and help from with the API?
Cost is an obvious issue hence why we are looking at the free commercial options.
Many Thanks
When my company evaluated this, we eventually ended up buying Google Maps.
Mapquest, in my biased opinion, looks like crap.
Google Maps everyone is already familiar with, works well, and has a large enthusiast community
We could afford it
That said, Google Maps is expensive, starts at 10K. We never got into contract discussions for VE so I don't know what they charge.
Another thing you need to consider is if you're going to be putting hundreds or thousands of markers on the map. If so, no solution will work out of box for you - they'll all run too slow in javascript. In that case you'll need to add the markers in a custom tileset or tile overlay on the server. And I suspect there are a lot of latency issues that go hand in hand with that.
OpenLayers coupled with OpenStreetMap may be sufficient for your needs.
OpenLayers isn't directly comparable to the other mapping providers. It is only a front end script to display various maps, it doesn't include any maps of it's own. There are various free and commercial maps you can use with it (for example OpenStreetMap.org), and it is also capable of embeding things like Yahoo maps or Google maps and providing the same APIs for all of them.
Related
So, I was developing an Android Application which uses AltBeacon Library for detecting beacons and get its advertising content, but I don't seem to find a good solution as to how I can use this library for indoor positioning, I was searching through google for some answers, and I think its a better option to use an SDK for indoor-positioning, since I need information like the geolocation(lat,long etc) which is not easy to calculate using Altbeacon, I am a bit confused on how to start this, need suggestions ?
Saying you want to make an indoor positioning system with a beacon detection library is kind of like saying you want to make a house out of a pile of bricks. While it is certainly possible, it is a huge amount of work that requires all kinds of other tools and technologies. A library lets you detect beacons is just one small thing that is needed.
Rather than taking on the huge job of trying to build one yourself, I would research a dedicated indoor positioning SDKs.
See a related question here
I'm looking for a place API that can be used with a map API. Here are three APIs I've been thinking about:
- Google Maps/Places: https://developers.google.com/maps/
- Microsoft Bing: https://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers/mapapps.aspx
- Nokia Maps: http://api.maps.nokia.com/2.1.0/devguide/overview.html
They seem to be likely to give good results. The application I'm going to work on is on travel information. So we would like to use the best API for finding sightseeing, accommodations, restaurants, but we don't care about dentists, grocery stores, etc., which are not related to travel.
Which one do you guys think would be the best for our needs? (if you think of another good API that I didn't mention, make sure to let me know!)
Thank you,
J
It is difficult to give an absolute answer here because the quality of the data behind each of the APIs will vary from place to place, and what is "best" will depend on the nature of your app and the questions it solves - For example the extent of Google data (to pick one of your options) is generally perceived to be stronger in the Americas and weaker in Europe. Another example I have heard of is a Brazilian company that decided on using Nokia Maps because it had better coverage in rural areas even though it was weaker in the big cities. And of course the breadth and quality of the data may change with time.
I would guess that your best option here would be to run a simple beauty contest.
Take as a starting point the code examples from the relevant API developer sites
Bing Search
Google Search
Nokia Search
Then modify the code to obtain the same results for some of your typical use cases e.g. accommodations, restaurants then score each API according to your criteria
What sort of coverage is obtained in an area that is relevant for
you?
How easy is it to modify the code?
Do you like the way the results are presented?
How easy is it to get more detailed information?
How much does a data plan for the API cost?
Then use the score card to work out which API is the best for you.
Here is an example of difference in coverage from all three APIs for "bookshops" in Berlin
In this particular case the Nokia API returns more data, but a different result may be given if you look for say "Bookshops in Boston" - you need to decide which locations and which queries are most relevant to your application.
I think following list of APIs will be helpful to you.
http://www.programmableweb.com/news/134-travel-apis-kayak-yahoo-travel-and-hotelscombined/2012/02/28
There are about 134 APIs specifically meant for Travel App.
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I would like to know what are the main tools in the market for analysing/implementing E-customer behaviour in a Web application.
I just know Google Analytics which tracks client-side activity but maybe there are many alternatives using client and server-side scripts.
I already posted this question on webmasters.stackexchange.com E-customer behaviour in a Web application, but it has been closed and cannot understand why!
There are a vast array of tools to analyse user behaviour on a website. Ecommerce or otherwise.
Google analytics has options like:
Ecommerce
Ecommerce custom variables
Goals & Funnels
Goal flows
etc. which are useful in understanding things like drop off points, conversion rates, typical customer path and other shopper metrics.
Other analytics packages useful for ecommerce / website behaviour:
Clicktale
Crazy egg
Getclicky
and more. Some of these have a live / spy feature that allows you to see what users are doing realtime.
And the best way is to actually watch a recording of your users behaviour complete with keystrokes and mouse clicks / movements.
User recording tools:
MouseStats
Ghostrec
Inspectlet
Mouseflow
Most of the above also do aggregated heatmaps and overlays to give you an insight into what users click most or what catches their eye etc.
Incremental improvement to your website:
A/B testing or multi-variate testing are all the rage now. With A/B testing be aware of local maximum and also avoid the common mistakes people make with testing. Google content expirements (formerly known as google website optimizer) now is part of Google Analytics and you can use this to do testing.
References / more reading for analysing and setting up ecommerce user behaviour:
Stalking Users
Driving online sales
Web Analytics Solution
First of all you need to choose a general propose Web Analytics Solution. Since you are an E-commerce you want to choose one that has good support for tracking E-commerce data.
Google Analytics is the obvious choice here not only because it's free but also because it's better documented and easier to implement.
depending on your size it may make sense to implement a more Enterprise level Ecommerce solution. You may want to take a look at Adobe Omniture and IBM CoreMetrics. They are much more expensive not only because of the licenses but on an implementation perspective. It may take months to implement one of these other tools and the cost of the implementation can be almost the same as the costs for the licenses. Still if you need more enterprise level analysis and integrations with other BI solutions it may be worth taking a look at these.
Note that Google Analytics also has a Premium Edition. This is a fairly new alternative and provide some extra features and early access to beta features.
Product Recommendation
Depending on your Ecommerce platform you might already have some kind of product recommendation or up-selling. You usually can improve these systems based on analytics data. There are just a few options on the market, and most companies doing this tend to develop their own recommendation engine.
If you're just getting started with it, it might be worth looking at LiftSuggest. I haven't tried it but they seem easy enough to implement and leverage Google Analytics data to improve cross-selling.
HeatMap
It's easy enough to implement and may provide some nice isights. I find them more distracting usually but every now and then you can make good use of them. The most common seen around are CrazyEgg and ClickTale.
Behavioral Targeting
This is a technique to customize your site based on a previous knowledge you have about the visitor in order to increase his conversion rate. Tools don't help you much here, since you have to customize your site and no tool can predict how to do that. One common approach is to create buckets depending on factors that you can infer. For example: Users with Internet Explorer might be less tech savvy and thus might be more interested in non-tech products. On the other side Linux users are probably on the technology field. So you can put users on buckets depending on which country they came from, which browser they're using or if they are logged in you can use the information they entered on their profile or based on previous purchases. One tool that helps you doing that is called BTBuckets.
A/B and Multivariate Testing
Google analytics has an A/B testing tool integrated with the tool. Another Good tool that provides both A/B and Multivariate testing are Unbounce, Optimizely and Webtrends Optimize.
Custom Solution
Everybody these days are developing custom solutions. If you still have money and time to spend on Web Analytics after you exausted the other options you can look into building your own. Collecting the data the way you want and analyzing the granular data. Here solutions range fro server side to client side collection, but for the analysis they are usually done with Hadoop or with a OLAP Business Intelligence Tool like Microstrategy.
What you're looking for is a called Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM. They vary greatly, so without an in-depth understanding of your exact needs it's impossible to recommend specific ones. Any good CRM will let you analyze your site visitors in various ways. For example, you can see if customers bought X, they often came back and bought Y one month later.
The difficult part is integration because these systems need information about orders and other user actions. If you're using an off-the-shelf e-commerce package, there are often CRM options readily available.
For a "lighter" system you can use Google Analytics or similar, since it lets you send tracking, conversion, and sales information from the browser. It's great for analyzing the overall success of the site and tracking user actions across pages, but less powerful for sales-specific reporting and analysis.
I'm planning to set up an online store for a friend, unfortunately his product line introduces some demands most out-of-the-box solutions don't fit. I'm hoping somebody here has had some experiences with an open source package that they can recommend.
The specific issue is that the products are going to number in the hundreds of thousands. Since the type of products have a lot of clearly defined specifics, searching and sorting can be (and needs to be) very granular and efficient. For this reason, the primary requirement is that I replace the product and search-related parts of the app, but only those parts. I'm hoping that there's an ecommerce solution with the product segment abstracted so that I can change the database tables, product display code, search code, and create the obvious code to interact with the database.
I'd prefer something that's built on ASP.Net MVC since it'll play nicely with some extensions I am considering for the future but I'd consider WebForms. I'd also like it to be something that functions on GoDaddy's Hosting, though I'm not optimistic, I just got the account before I discovered how terrible of an ASP.Net web host they are. And finally I need something that's reasonably mature as I don't have time up front to deal with a system that hasn't been tested, and the majority of issues worked through already.
I'd appreciate any ideas.
Edit: I've done a bit of searching already and I've found several (at least 8) MVC projects, but I haven't had time to examine them properly for the needs listed above. I also can't be sure which ones have matured from real world application...So I'm mostly looking for advice either based on a familiarity with using the app or at least reading enough about it that you would feel it's good to recommend.
Thanks Everybody!
Check out http://code.google.com/p/sutekishop/
Check out http://thebeerhouse.codeplex.com/
While developing products, we often need to create proprietary tools to test some of their unique features or diagnose problems. In fact the tools can be at lest as interesting as the products themselves, and some of our internal groups have asked for copies of them.
So, aside from the obvious business-driven rules (e.g. don't retrieve sensitive data), what do you differently when you build personal or internal tools, as opposed to for-sale products, and why?
What's more (or less) important to you in internal tools, and do you consider overall value to the company when you build them?
Thanks for your thoughts!
First, internal tools are always developed quick and dirty. Almost no testing - it just has to do the work.
UI is not as important as with a customer-facing app.
Internal tool can use internal/private/proprietary knowledge of the products and frameworks they test. For example, our last product bypassed part of our published API and used a non-documented web service call to achieve better results.
This is an important point,but a losing battle: NEVER EVER leave internal tools with a customer.
As a consultant, I sometimes had to use and even develop those tools in the field. I try to hide it from my clients, but from time to time, they demand I leave the tool with them (or worse, call the sales rep and ask for that "magic tool"). You don't want customers judging your entire company's production level based on tools build according to points 1-3.
From an engineering perspective, I wouldn't do anything differently:
Both internal and for-sale tools need to be well-written and well-documented
Both need to be created given a set of requirements, deadlines, budgetary restraints, etc.
Both need to be tested or validated
The one big difference I see would apply to the for-sale products as opposed to the internal tools: for-sale products need marketing, support, etc that internal tools can do without.
Additionally, since internal tools will be used in a somewhat more controlled environment, they don't need to be tested against different computer systems, Internet browsers, etc.
The biggest difference:
It's with the personal and internal tools that you can be more free to try out a new technology, the latest fashion. You can take risks that you wouldn't take with the application that you are actually shipping to customers.
Since the diagnostics I build are usually very special-purpose, I tend to provide more options and built-in examples than I would for customer-facing products. In other words, I assume the user is more familiar with the technology than a customer would generally be, and I provide more ability to tweak the way the tool operates without worrying that it might overwhelm the user. But I also try to make it satisfy 80% of the use cases without much "help" from the user.