Internet Application Dev Lectures <- IAD Lectures <- Sean Forman <- You Are Here

Sean Forman
Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science
Saint Joseph's University
Philadelphia, PA
Topic: Loose Ends and evals
Props needed:
Note: this lecture contains freely-available, copyrighted material from Internet Application workbook by Philip Greenspun, Eve Andersson, and Andrew Grumet.

Today's Topics

Search
Wireless Access
Voice Interfaces
Teaching Evaluations

Search

Search is hard.
As websites grow, search becomes more difficult.
As websites grow, search becomes more important.
The quality of a site's search is often a prime determinant of how users view the site. Quick, accurate searches = Quality website.

Searching in SQL

We are storing everything in our DB, so we could just query the db.
```
SELECT * FROM content where body like '%typing%';
```

Case-sensitive

SELECT * FROM content where upper(body) like upper('%typing%');

Won't find phrases like ``types'' or ``typewriter'' or ``word processing''.
These searches will be very slow.
Search through each entry and each word. The discussion forums on Baseball Primer have generated around 20 million words in two years. (small to medium size).
Indexes won't help as they only index on the beginning of the entry.

Beyond SQL searches

Create a dictionary of all words used.
Ignore extremely common words.

List documents in which the words exist.

WORD     DOCS
XML      100, 102, 103
HTML     100, 101, 102, 104, 108
cats     33, 59

This will be much faster to query, though inserts may be slow.
Oracle implements an advanced version of this using Oracle Text.

Working with existing search engines

Can sometimes be used as your site's search engine. Google Example
This requires the search engine's bots to crawl your website. GoogleBot and Google Sitemaps
Website designers will often attempt to trick search engines to improve their placement.
- Repeat key words
- hidden text
- tiny text
- meta tags
- redundant linking
If a search engine catches you trying to do this, you will likely be banned.
You can guide bots away from sensitive areas or programs using a robots.txt file. an example

Other search issues

Keep search boxes simple and big.
Check for common searches that return nothing.
Failed searches are one of your best research tools.
A high-quality information architecture can keep users from having to search.

Wireless Access Protocols

Internet browsers appear in cell phones, mini-laptops, cars. We will probably have ubiquitous wireless access in the next 15 years or less.
Cellphones read pages in WML (wireless mark-up language, an XML flavor).
Applications for phones should be brief and timely. It is unlikely someone would want to read a book online, but they might want to read an Amazon.com book review while at barnes and noble.
WAP emulater (crashed my firefox browser)
Demo with google: pizza 19119

WML

Requires strict adherence to the syntax.
Uses <cards>...</cards> to represent new screens.
WAP has been largely a commercial failure. The most common phone internet uses are IM or SMS.
I-mode is used in Japan is much more popular. It is always on and revenue can be passed onto to content providers. In 2000, 80% of all mobile internet use was in Japan. 0.9% in the U.S.
I-mode is a complete service (think AOL) and not a protocol like WAP is.
In western countries, there is a charge for access both to the user and to the content provider. In Japan, the charge was to the user for the service and the phone company made a commission. A micropayment scheme.
At some point phones will support voice and browsing at the same time through General Packet Radio Service.

Voice

SERVER -> HTML -> internet -> BROWSER
SERVER -> VXML -> internet -> VoiceXML Gateway -> phone line -> phone

Example (800-555-TELL).

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<vxml version="2.0">
  <form id="animal_questionnaire">
    <field name="favorite_animal">
      <prompt>
        <audio>Which do you like better, dogs or cats?</audio>
      </prompt>
      <grammar>
      <![CDATA[
          [
            [dog dogs] {<option "dogs">}
            [cat cats] {<option "cats">}
          ]
        ]]>
      </grammar>
      <!-- if the user gave a valid response, the filled block
           is executed. -->
      <filled>
        <if cond="favorite_animal == 'dogs'">
          <!-- this would take the user to a form called
               popular_dog_facts within the same VoiceXML
               document -->
          <goto next="#popular_dog_facts"/>
        <else/>
          <!-- this expression is an EMCAScript (Javascript)
               expression, composed of a concatenated string
               and variable; this will take the user to the
               URI psychological_evaluation.cgi?affliction=cats
               -->
          <goto expr="'psychological_evaluation.cgi?affliction='
                + favorite_animal"/>
        </if>
      </filled>
      <!-- if the user responded but it didn't match the
           grammar, the nomatch block is executed -->
      <nomatch>
        I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you said.
        <reprompt/>
      </nomatch>
      <!-- if there is no response for a few seconds, the
           noinput block is executed -->
      <noinput>
        I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
        <reprompt/>
      </noinput>
    </field>
  </form>
  <!-- additional forms can go here -->
</vxml>

This example asks if you prefer dogs or cats, listens for a response and redirects the caller.
There are companies that will host your voiceXML offerings. BeVocal and VoiceGenie

The Future

We have little idea what the future will hold on the internet.
For example, one year ago no one had heard that much about Ajax.
The tools may change, but your goal is to provide a service to your customer.
Customer-focused design always defeats more technical solutions.
We don't know what tools will be the more important tools.

About this document ...

This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 2002 (1.62)

The command line arguments were:
latex2html lecture_16 -split 0 -init_file ./.latex2html-initOne -t ' Loose Ends and evals'

The translation was initiated by Sean Forman on 2005-11-30