I am wondering how to go about implementing Location Automation Field, as suggested in this article: http://uxmovement.com/forms/new-form-techniques-proven-to-save-time-and-money/
Are there libraries or services that can help me figure out City/State given the zipcode? I know Google has the Geocoder/decoder or Google Places search that could potentially be useful but their Terms of Use mandate that you must use their services in conjunction with displaying the results on their map, which is a weird thing to do when the user is filling out billing info...
Cheers to you for observing TOS. That's good business.
You could use SmartyStreets. LiveAddress API supports city/state and ZIP code lookups. It now has auto-complete as you type an address, too.
I work at SmartyStreets. In fact, we developed the jQuery plugin which does address validation and auto-complete for you. It even supports freeform address fields.
Related question by yours truly, over on UX stack exchange: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/22196/combining-all-the-address-fields-into-one
Related
Dear stack overflowers,
I am not sure if this is the best place for this question, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
I am currently working on an API that will allow consumers to read/write data about users. i.e. name, emails, phoneNumbers, etc. And, as you could guess by the title, I am also storing ims.
Since users may contain multiple im addresses that belong to different services (e.g. skype, google talk, AIM, etc.), there is a type attribute associated with each im address.
I am at the point where I am attempting to validate the user attributes, and when I arrived to ims I was unable to find a formal specification, or normative document that dictates how these should be formatted/validated.
My question is the following:
Is there a general format that im URI's follow?
*note:*I have stumbled upon RFC 3861 that touches on im addresses. But it seems like this isn't a standard. Additionally, there is only one example here that has the following format:
im:fred#example.com
Since emails are effectively unique identifiers, it seems reasonable that they could be represented in this way.
Could anyone shed light on this?
After looking in several sites, I was unable to find a standard that applies to all IM providers. I even looked in some API documentation (Yahoo and Jabber) without any luck. If anyone else finds anything that leads them to think any different, please share the knowledge. But as for right now, it appears I am out of luck...
The service or library that cleans the address needs to be callable from a custom .NET wrapper service or library. There is no UI requirement to display a map, or track delivery of a physical package to a postal address.
https://www.usps.com/business/webtools.htm is out as an option because the terms of use are restricted to applications supporting the physical delivery of packages.
It seems that both google and Bing have terms of use that restrict application development usage to presentation of maps in a UI.
Here's an example of using google JavaScript library for geocoding address lookups. It seems to work well. Unfortunately I can’t use this, but looking for something that works nearly as well.
http://jsfiddle.net/Robotronic/ayfgT/
I have been looking for the same thing lately, and have a couple of possibilities. Since I don't have my home computer at work, the only one I can remember now is SmartyStreets.com. They give you a small number for free, then you have to pay after that. I have one more, which I can get a little later tonight.
It may be out of your price range, but my company has used Melissa Data for quite a while and the only failures were on super-new housing developments. I think they also send us periodic database updates.
While brainstorming about six years ago, I had what I thought was a great idea: in the future there could be webservice standards and DTDs that effectively turn the web into a decentralized knowledgebase. I listed several areas where I thought this could be applied, one of which was:
For making data avail. directly from a business's website: open hours, locations, and contact phone numbers. Suggest a web service standard by which businesses have a standard URL extended off the main (base) URL for there website, at which is located a webservice. That webservice as well has a standardized set of services for downloading a list of their locations, contact telephone numbers, and business hours.
It's interesting looking back at these notes now since this is not how things have evolved. Instead of businesses putting this information on only their website then letting any search engine or other data aggregator to crawl it, they are updating it separately on their website, their Facebook page, and Google Maps. Facebook and Google Maps, due to their popularity, have become the solution to the problem I though my idea would solve.
Is the way things are better than the way I thought they could be? If so then why doesn't my idea fit the reality? If not then what's holding my idea back from being realized?
A lot of this information is available via APIs, that doesn't mean that it doesn't get put other places as well, through a variety of means. For example, a company may expose information via an API, and their Facebook app might use that API to populate a Facebook page.
Also, various microformats are in use that encapsulate some of this information.
The biggest obstacle is agreeing on what meta-information should be exposed, how it should be exposed, and how it should be accessed.
I decided to look into using Google Identity Toolkit. I knew I liked the UI, and the idea of using a "federated" login system. I'm now having my doubts, as while my site works well with gmail/ymail/hotmail etc, it doesn't seem to support any of the social platforms.
Essentially, I just need an email address from people to be registered with the site, so I thought GITKit was the perfect solution.
Should I have gone down a custom route (like stackoverflow?), or have I missed some of the GITKit documentation?
Any help would be much appreciated.
I did do a fair amount of googling prior to posting that question. However, I have come accross some answers. Rather than delete my post - I guess I should share the information. If others thought the information was clear, please delete this thread!
Firstly, there is a page identifying how to add custom IDP's: https://sites.google.com/site/gitooldocs/customidps
There is also a sample site (http://www.openidsamplestore.com/localmapping/) which uses facebook.
How does the advanced demo work for identity providers who are not
E-mail providers, such as social networks?
The hardest part about
designing the advanced site was to find a way to handle all the
edge-cases that can happen with these types of identity providers.
Google previously published a summary of best-practices for
account-linking that describes why these types of identity providers
are so much harder to support. However this demo provides a user
self-service mechanism for all the tricky cases to avoid the costs
that a website might otherwise occur if those users contact a customer
support representative.
Finally, a best practices run-down is available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/UXFedLogin/loginlogic
EDIT 1 :
If that identity provider asserts email addresses that it does not
host, we suggest you also implement additional account linking logic.
A future version of GITKit will add support for these type of
identity providers, such as social networks, which will avoid the need
to implement that logic
Perhaps GITKit is the future after-all... Would be nice to have an idea of the time-frame in which this support will be added though...
EDIT 2 :
Direct from the horses mouth (Eric Sachs # Google - Source Link):
That feature is not expected to be generally available in 2011. We
are shooting for Q1 2012
Looks like someone got it working back in Dec 2011 but there is still an outstanding issue with mapping the id returned to an email address. It was probably resolved:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/google-identity-toolkit/facebook/google-identity-toolkit/2218yW4zXw8/28X7btJEh_sJ
Here is the documentation for the sample store including brief info on basic, mobile and advanced mode (using facebook):
https://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/Home/openidsamplesite
An out-of-the-box IDP for facebook and twitter has not yet been released.
I'm new to programming, and my only area of expertise is web design/simple development on platforms like wordpress/expression engine. (Yea, you guys can laugh).
I have a new client who currently receives medical faxes through an online form (the user fills out a form concerning their prescriptions and once submitted, it faxes the info).
I'm completely redesigning their site, and I'm not sure how online faxing works.
Has anybody dealt with internet faxing? How does it work? Does/can it go through email?
And is it possible to send a fax through a form with javascript/php or route it through email?
Don't pay for it! All you need is a modem on the server and a standard phone line. Then set up a fax print driver under your os (you can do it on windows and unix).
The unix way is mgetty/sendfax : http://mgetty.greenie.net/doc/mgetty_3.html#SEC3
The Windows way : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306657
There are other ways but unless you can't get a phone line you'd be mad to pay fees for it.
Would it not be helpful to look at how it is currently being done, that way you can learn a thing or two about the process before trying to go do it again? That way you can find if it is using any special libraries or techniques or services to send the fax and you can then either duplicate the code or use it as a template to get started on your own solution.
All of what your asking is possible. I would recommend finding a service provider who can send the fax for you. They all have different interfaces requirements and pricing. I used to use DataOnCall which is now called Fax.com
They had a web service which we would post the document to be faxed plus additional information. They were a preety reasonable service. This was several years ago so I can't speak how they currently fair.
Take a look at eFax's SDK. I haven't used it, but it looks like it might be useful to you.
Yes, you can send faxes via email through several services; this link seems to have some useful information. I worked at a company previously that did this same sort of thing, and while I don't recall the exact service we used, most of them are very similar, and they work reasonably well.