Developer Tip: Yahoo Pipes Make You Expert-in-a-Minute

So the developers here at PointAbout found an awesome new tool this week that has some really useful applications. It’s called Yahoo Pipes, and there’s a demo video below that shows you how to use it do do all kinds of RSS-enabling things to make your content more versatile than ever. For example, AppMakr is all about RSS. But, regular RSS– not Atom. If this was a problem before, it definitely isn’t any longer, thanks to Yahoo Pipes.

And, did you know that you can use Pipes to “mash-up” RSS feeds– that is, get a single, combined feed from multiple sources? Now think of how much better that’ll make your finished product inAppMakr!

How to format your RSS feeds for PointAbout

Want it to look snazzier? See how we can customize the look & feel.

Setting multiple RSS feeds up in a PointAbout iPhone/Android application:

Each feed corresponds to the icon at the bottom of the application.  For example, this example is for the “Business” feed.  Each icon in the app corresponds to its own feed.  The more feeds you want to include in the app, the more icons we’ll have.  Here’s how to format a feed:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″?>
<?xml-stylesheet href=”/css/rss20.xsl” type=”text/xsl”?>
<rss xmlns:pheedo=”http://www.pheedo.com/namespace/pheedo” version=”2.0″ xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”>
<channel>
<title><![CDATA[Business]]></title> This corresponds to “Business” in the left image title bar, above
<!– title><![CDATA[Business News & Economic Policy]]></title –> (This is not used by PointAbout, but must be in the feed)
<link><![CDATA[http://www.samplesite.com/business/index.html]]></link> (This is also not used by PointAbout, but must be in feed)
<item> This tag is just duplicated for as many items as you have.
<title><![CDATA[ In the Chevy Malibu, GM's Pride and Its Challenge ]]></title> This is the first item in the list (just duplicate the item tag for other items)
<link>http://feeds.samplesite.com/click.phdo?i=53695</link>  This maps to the “Web Link” button on the 2nd image to the right, in the header bar.
<guid isPermaLink=”false”>company_name_12345</guid> Globally unique identifier for item (Must be globally unique among all RSS feeds worldwide.  Can also be an HTML link, since that would be unique)
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:19:55 EDT</pubDate> Publish date, displayed to right of Title on the image at left
<geo:lat>37.86885</geo:lat> If your item has a physical location, include the latitude here. Click here for more info on GeoRSS.
<geo:long>-122.27293</geo:long> If your item has a physical location, include the longitude here.
<description><![CDATA[
Consumer prices rose at a surprisingly steep rate in June and the nation's factories continued to pull back production, according to new data released today that affirm that the economy remains weak but is not entering a dangerous cycle of falling prices.
<br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/>
<br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/>
<a href="http://ads.samplesite.com/click.phdo?s=53695dc3777fd5113da50d3c72ca99a5&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.samplesite.com/img.phdo?s=53695dc3777fd5113da50d3c72ca99a5&p=1"/></a>
]]></description>  This tag is the “meat” of the RSS feed.  The CDATA tag allows for this to be HTML and it can be as short or as long as you’d like.  Also, if you include an HTML link in this description tag, it will activate the web slide-in.  So you could, for example, include a link to a Google Map, as follows:  <a href =”http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1600+Pennsylvania+Ave+NW,+Washington,+DC%E2%80%8E&sll=38.900251,-77.036562&sspn=0.035135,0.103254&ie=UTF8&ll=38.89935,-77.036626&spn=0.008784,0.025814&z=16&iwloc=A”>The White House</a> and it would display in the description area (right image above) as a link.  When clicked, it would open up a web slider with the Google Map, which could then be closed, and the user would be back in the description area.
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Using GeoRSS in PointAbout apps

PointAbout utilizes GeoRSS to create location-aware RSS feeds.  You can find more detail on the GeoRSS spec here.

The best way to set a GeoRSS feed up is to have the mobile app (i.e., the iPhone app) send its lat + long coordinates to a server, and have the server crunch the data as follows:

Step 1: Have the server find all the data points near the user.  The way you do this is by incrementing the long & lat by 0.1 in each direction.  For example, if the phone sends you its location as “Latitude = 38.8977, Longitude = -77.0366″, then you can take plus/minus 0.1 on each of the values the phone gave you to give you about a 10 mile radius. (use something like where lat between currlat+.1, currlat-.1 and lon between currlon+.1, currlong-.1).

Step 2: Now that you have a ~10 mile radius bounded box, you want to take all the data points that fall within those lat & long values, and order them based on where the phone is.  You can calculate distance in a langauge, sql, script, or compiled serverside language:

var R = 6371; // km
var dLat = (lat2-lat1).toRad();
var dLon = (lon2-lon1).toRad();
var a = Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
Math.cos(lat1.toRad()) * Math.cos(lat2.toRad()) *
Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2);
var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a));
var d = R * c;

Then you want to return an ordered list of RSS items to the phone based on the calculations above.  Every time the “update” button is pressed by the user, the location is re-sent to the server for a new list of RSS items to be passed back to the phone.

Here are some other resources for calculating distance and “nearest” items:

• How to calculate the distance between two points on the Earth
• SQL Server Zipcode Latitude/Longitude proximity distance search

Here’s what the finished app looks like (uses our new mashup product):

PointAbout presents at MobileMonday’s Peer Awards Competition

PointAbout presented last night at Mobile Monday’s Peer Awards competition.  The video above shows what was displayed on the screen to the audience.

PointAbout Adds a “Speak Your Mind” UGC Component

PointAbout, in a partnership with FortiusOne, added a User Generated Content (UGC) component to its 2009 Inauguration Application called “Speak Your Mind” which lets users of the application answer a series of questions, and then view how their answers compare to the entire USA with FortiusOne’s visual analytics mapping tools.  

The stunning power of mobile User Generated Content (UGC):

We’ve just today made this system live at www.NavigatingWashington.com and it’s already starting to show some interesting results.  For example, in Louisiana, both respondents “strongly disagree” that Barak Obama will be able to get the US out of the recession, while in Washington, DC, all respondents “strongly agreed” that that was the case.  The geographic differences are just fascinating and this will just continue to grow as more and more users respond across the US by using our application.

This is a great example of the power of using a mobile device to create UGC and then using the PC to analyze and display  it.

PointAbout Releases 2009 Inauguration App for BlackBerry

Today we’re announcing the release of our 2009 Inauguration application for the BlackBerry Bold.  Video of it in use is above!

University Mobile Alerting System

PointAbout Extends iPhone Accelerometer to Web

Private Labeling PointAbout – A Case Study

PointAbout Submits 14 Applications to Apps For Democracy Competition

PointAbout has submitted the following 14 applications (!!!) for iStrategyLabs ”AppsForDemocracy” competition utilizing the Office of the CTO’s data feeds:

• Marinas near you
• Libraries near you
• Gas stations near you
• Banks near you
• Hotels near you
• Construction projects near you
• Embassies near you
• Places of worship near you
• Vacant properties near you
• Building permits pulled near you
• Crime alerts near you
• Post offices near you
• Housing code violations near you
• Police stations near you

You can see screenshots of the applications below.

PointAbout will be submitting all of these applications to Apple’s iTunes App Store, so each will be available for download on the iPhone, and soon, the Blackberry.  The Apple approval process takes approximately 21 days.  However, all the applications above will be available for use by Thursday 11/13 just by downloading our flagship application, titled “PointAbout” in the iTunes App Store (click here to open the app’s iTunes page on your computer), and then “checking out” the applications from our Application Gallery of 100+ applications we’ve made location aware.  Detailed instructions are in the video above, so start using these applications on your iPhone today!

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