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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 14, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 14, 2010New ProjectsBD File Hash: BD File Hash is a convenient file hash and hash compare tool for Windows which currently works with MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 algorithms. FileScan: This is an application that searches through a drive or directory structure for files matching a filter. This project was converted from VB to ...genesis9: genesis9HeinanOS: HeinanOS is an operating system developed mainly in C++. HeinanOS is a light OS (1.44 MB image) with a lot of capabilites and many more are being ...MediaBrowserWS - Creates a Web Service for the popular MediaBrowser plugin: Creates a web service in Media Center for accessing your MediaBrowser collection. Allows for external devices (Tablets/phones/laptops) to access a ...MME: New Edition of Managed Menu Extensions for Visual Studio 2010 The Main goal of "MME" is to provide easy access to adding Right Click menus in the ...MVMMapper: Generate the ViewModel and its mapping to the Model when implementing MVVM in .NET. Developed using T4 templates. Current version supports Silver...ProjectArDotNet: Si te agarro te parto! Si te agarro te emperno no me importa que seas menor de edad!Scriptagility for DotNetNuke: Scriptagility is a DotNetNuke module for Javascript developers. This module provides dynamic client scripting infrastructure for developing javascr...simpleLinux Distro: SimpleLinux. is a Linux distributions that is easy to use. Simple Linux website: http://simplelinux.tkTag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net allows the user to display the most important keywords to display in tag cloud. Each Tag has it own navigation url to...thefreeimdb: fsadie qwUppityUp: UppityUp is a simple and light-weight tray application which monitors a remote server and shows a notification when it comes online. This is usefu...Vivid3D 2 - DirectX 10 3D ToolKit: The sequel to my first ever engine wrote several years ago. It is not based on it in anyway. VSIDev: VSI DevXTQXK_WORK: Actionscript 3.0东坡博客: 这是一个ASP。net mvc 2博客。New Releases.NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library: Release 2010.08: Added extension methods for Bitmap manipulation (scaling for now): - Bitmap.ScaleToSize() - Bitmap.ScaleToSizeProportional() - Bitmap.ScaleProport...Black Falcon Software's Database Data-Access-Layers: “SQLHELPER”, “ORAHELPER” - Handling Binary Data: See attached document...BTech Networking Library: BTech Networking Library: Same as pervious just new namespace, extended networking coming soon!!!Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V37: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Generic Entity Model 2: GEM2 build 54383: This is second BETA release of GEM2! Please see source code change sets for updates! Following implementation is not included in this release: My...Hades: Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.0 Beta: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.0 Beta ------------------...HeinanOS: HeinanOS M1 Source Code: You can download HeinanOS M1 Source Code and contribute to HeinanOS development! Be aware that you should not use this code for your own systems! ...HeinanOS: Milestone 1: This is the first major release for HeinanOS 1.0 Please note this is a PRE-RELEASE! This release includes the following features: -Bootable DOS-...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006131900): New features: (None) Bug fix: Incorrect message submit date of message/ replies. (Note: Showing message submit date is enabled since Build 20100...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006140110): New features: (None) Bug fix: (None) Improvements: (None) Other changes: Set time zone of message date as Hong Kong. Adjusted the format of messa...MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 Beta 1.5: Installer file for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta 1.5. Now converts multiple files.MME: First release: Features of this release 1. One installer MME.msi. However you can also install MMEMenuManagerSetup.vsix which installs a project template that e...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): 1.1 Beta 1: Platform selection box is added.MVMMapper: MVMMapper Release v 1.0.1: This release has no downloadable documentation. Please use the Documentation section to get started.NginxTray: NginxTray 0.7 RC2: NginxTray 0.7 RC2PowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta3: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...PowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta4: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...Scriptagility for DotNetNuke: Scriptagility 1.0 (Beta): Initial public release please evaluate and feedbackSharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.0 Beta 1: Release notes: http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/11388.aspxsimpleLinux Distro: Project X3: This is an example of download for simpleLinuxSOAPI - StackOverflow API Parser/Wrapper Generator: SOAPI Beta 3: The SOAPI Beta 3 download will be made availabe later today when the initial documentation is complete. The previously available Beta 1 download h...Sofa: Initial release V1.0: This is the first release of Sofa. As it is made of code being previously used, as we tested it is a stable release. But bugs are always possible,...Tag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net allows the user to display the most important keywords to display in tag cloud. Each Tag has it own navigation url to...UppityUp: UppityUp v0.1: First functional version, supports monitoring availability by ping (ICMP) requests. Fit for general use. Consists of one standalone .exe file - no...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30613.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWindStyle ExifInfo for Windows Live Writer: 1.1.0.0: Add: Multiple Language(English and Simplified Chinese); Add: Insert multiple files; Fix: Error when insert pictures without Exif info; Update: Icon...Work Recorder - Hold on own time!: WorkRecorder 1.2: +Add a whole day chartXsltDb - DotNetNuke Module Builder: 01.01.24: Syntax highlighting delivered!New samples for RadControls. On single page you can find RadTreeView, RadRating, RadChart, RadFormDecorator, RadEdito...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib 0.4 (ReSharper 5.0 RTM + dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 5.0, 4.5 and 4.1, targetting all versions of x...Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRIA Services EssentialsNeatUploadBxf (Basic XAML Framework)Agile Personal Development Methodology.NET Transactional File ManagerSOLID by exampleASP.NET MVC Time PlannerWEI ShareSiverlight ProjectMost Active ProjectsjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonBlogEngine.NETLightweight Fluent WorkflowMediaCoder.NETAndrew's XNA Helpers

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010New ProjectsA2Command: Apple 2 port of CBM-Command (http://cbmcommand.codeplex.com)AgUnit: AgUnit is a plugin for Jetbrains ReSharper (R#) that allows you to run and debug Silverlight unit tests from within Visual Studio.BSonPosh Powershell Module: A collection of useful Powershell functions I have written and collected over the years. It is a Powershell v2 Module composed of mostly scripts.DB Restriker: Simple tool for lookup, parsing, searching some standard databases using wildcards and pattern recognition.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: T4 Template for Entity Framework 4 for creating a data access layer using the repository and unit of work patterns. Designed to work well with dep...Fiction Catalog: A catalog project designed to store information about fictional literature.Giving a Presentation: Useful for people doing presentations, this application hides desktop icons, disables screensaver, closes chosen programs when presentation starts,...glueless: Glueless is a local message bus which allows architect to design highly decoupled systems and applications. Glueless is a step beyond dependency i...HtmlCodeIt: Take any code and format it so that it can be viewed properly on a web browser, blog post or website.just testproject :): just have a test!KanbanTaskboard: The aim of the project is to design and implement a functional prototype for visualizing and operating a multi-platform virtual "Kanban Taskboard”Life System: Life SystemOaSys Project: Project Oasys is a project that aims to help solve desertification. Scoring of pingPong Game: Scoring of pingPong GameSilverlight Web Comic: The Silverlight Web Comic makes easier for the people create your own comic with your own pictures o drawings, and add the globes of text like the ...TickSharp: C# Wrapper for http://TickSpot.com RESTful API.Traductor: El Traductor es una aplicación de escritorio para traducción de frases entre distintos idiomas basada en la plataforma Silverlight Out Of Browser y...WatchersNET.SkinObjects.ModulActionsMenu: Displays the Module Actions Menu as a Unsorted CSS Menu.xxfd1r4w96: testingNew ReleasesAgUnit: AgUnit 0.1: Initial release of AgUnit. Copy the extracted files from AgUnit-0.1.zip into the "Bin\Plugins\" folder of your ReSharper installation (default C:...ASP.NET MVC | SCAFFOLD: ASP.NET MVC SCAFFOLD - Beta 1.0: Release versão betaBizTalk Server 2006 Documenter: Documenter_v3.4.0.0: This is the new release of the documenter which has the following highlights Support for 64 bit systems Support for SxS scenarios (so now the sys...CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1 Beta 2- VS 2008 Replacement: The CassiniDev Visual Studio build is a fully compatibly Visual Studio 2008/2010 Development server drop-in replacement with all CassiniDev enhance...CBM-Command: 2010-05-22 Beta: Release Notes - 2010-05-22 BetaNew Features Simple text file viewer. Now when you use SHIFT-RETURN to open a file, it will ask if you want to view...Easy Validation: Documentation: Documentation for easyVal was created and presented at University of Texas at Austin in May of 2010.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: 1.0: Initial ReleaseFrotz.NET: FrotzNet 1.0 beta: Many, many changes, including: - Got Adaptive Palette working for graphics - Got undo working - Implemented all zcodes - Added scripting as well as...Giving a Presentation: CTP: This release includes basic extensibility infrastructure and three extensions: hides desktop icons, disables screensaver, closes chosen programs wh...Gov 2.0 Kit: SharePoint 2010 MyPeeps Mysite Accelerators: SharePoint 2010 MyPeeps Mysite Accelerators. Attached are the installation and documentations files.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201005221900): New features: (None) Bug fix: Hong Kong special characters now can be posted without encoding problem. Improvements: (None) Other changes: (None) K...Intellibox - A WPF auto complete textbox search control: Beta 2: Updated the namespace of the Intellibox control from "System.Windows.Controls" to "FeserWard.Controls". Empty binding Path properties now work on...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.14.59111: Fixed DepositFile provider. Fixed FileFactory provider. Added simple fakeness detector (can check if .rar, .zip, .7z files have valid signature...Mute4: V1: Initial version of Mute4NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.22.003: Changes since the last build:No changes. Unit test results:Passed 191/191 (100%) Passed 191/191 (100%) Passed 214/214 (100%) Passed 216/216 (100%)...NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.9: This release includes source code, executable binaries and example materials.Silverlight Gantt Chart: Silverlight Gantt Chart 1.3 (SL4): The latest release mainly makes the Gantt Chart useful in Silverlight 4 applications.SqlServerExtensions: V 0.2 beta: V 0.2 Beta release: New features available TrimStart - trim leading characters TrimEnd - trim trailing characters Remove - remove characters f...Traductor: Version 3.1: Nuevo en esta versión: El Traductor ahora permite escoger entre los motores de Microsoft y Google. El Text to Speech is es ahora habilitado por...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30522.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVDialer Add-In for Outlook 2007 & 2010 - Dial your Vonage phone from Outlook: VDialer Add-In 1.0.3: This release adds new features related to Journal and use of Vonage API Changes in version 1.0.3 Added configurable option to automatically open J...WatchersNET.SkinObjects.ModulActionsMenu: ModulActionsMenu 01.00.00: First Release For Informations How To Install, the Skin Object Read the DocumentationMost Popular ProjectsCodeComment.NETRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlightpatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsBlogEngine.NETCodeReview

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• Speeding up a search .net 4.0

  - by user231465

  Wondering if I can speed up the search. I need to build a functionality that has to be used by many UI screens The one I have got works but I need to make sure I am implementing a fast algoritim if you like It's like an incremental search. User types a word to search for eg const string searchFor = "Guinea"; const char nextLetter = ' ' It looks in the list and returns 2 records "Guinea and Guinea Bissau " User types a word to search for eg const string searchFor = "Gu"; const char nextLetter = 'i' returns 3 results. This is the function but I would like to speed it up. Is there a pattern for this kind of search? class Program { static void Main() { //Find all countries that begin with string + a possible letter added to it //const string searchFor = "Guinea"; //const char nextLetter = ' '; //returns 2 results const string searchFor = "Gu"; const char nextLetter = 'i'; List<string> result = FindPossibleMatches(searchFor, nextLetter); result.ForEach(x=>Console.WriteLine(x)); //returns 3 results Console.Read(); } /// <summary> /// Find all possible matches /// </summary> /// <param name="searchFor">string to search for</param> /// <param name="nextLetter">pretend user as just typed a letter</param> /// <returns></returns> public static List<string> FindPossibleMatches (string searchFor, char nextLetter) { var hashedCountryList = new HashSet<string>(CountriesList()); var result=new List<string>(); IEnumerable<string> tempCountryList = hashedCountryList.Where(x => x.StartsWith(searchFor)); foreach (string item in tempCountryList) { string tempSearchItem; if (nextLetter == ' ') { tempSearchItem = searchFor; } else { tempSearchItem = searchFor + nextLetter; } if(item.StartsWith(tempSearchItem)) { result.Add(item); } } return result; } /// <summary> /// Returns list of countries. /// </summary> public static string[] CountriesList() { return new[] { "Afghanistan", "Albania", "Algeria", "American Samoa", "Andorra", "Angola", "Anguilla", "Antarctica", "Antigua And Barbuda", "Argentina", "Armenia", "Aruba", "Australia", "Austria", "Azerbaijan", "Bahamas", "Bahrain", "Bangladesh", "Barbados", "Belarus", "Belgium", "Belize", "Benin", "Bermuda", "Bhutan", "Bolivia", "Bosnia Hercegovina", "Botswana", "Bouvet Island", "Brazil", "Brunei Darussalam", "Bulgaria", "Burkina Faso", "Burundi", "Byelorussian SSR", "Cambodia", "Cameroon", "Canada", "Cape Verde", "Cayman Islands", "Central African Republic", "Chad", "Chile", "China", "Christmas Island", "Cocos (Keeling) Islands", "Colombia", "Comoros", "Congo", "Cook Islands", "Costa Rica", "Cote D'Ivoire", "Croatia", "Cuba", "Cyprus", "Czech Republic", "Czechoslovakia", "Denmark", "Djibouti", "Dominica", "Dominican Republic", "East Timor", "Ecuador", "Egypt", "El Salvador", "England", "Equatorial Guinea", "Eritrea", "Estonia", "Ethiopia", "Falkland Islands", "Faroe Islands", "Fiji", "Finland", "France", "Gabon", "Gambia", "Georgia", "Germany", "Ghana", "Gibraltar", "Great Britain", "Greece", "Greenland", "Grenada", "Guadeloupe", "Guam", "Guatemela", "Guernsey", "Guiana", "Guinea", "Guinea Bissau", "Guyana", "Haiti", "Heard Islands", "Honduras", "Hong Kong", "Hungary", "Iceland", "India", "Indonesia", "Iran", "Iraq", "Ireland", "Isle Of Man", "Israel", "Italy", "Jamaica", "Japan", "Jersey", "Jordan", "Kazakhstan", "Kenya", "Kiribati", "Korea, South", "Korea, North", "Kuwait", "Kyrgyzstan", "Lao People's Dem. Rep.", "Latvia", "Lebanon", "Lesotho", "Liberia", "Libya", "Liechtenstein", "Lithuania", "Luxembourg", "Macau", "Macedonia", "Madagascar", "Malawi", "Malaysia", "Maldives", "Mali", "Malta", "Mariana Islands", "Marshall Islands", "Martinique", "Mauritania", "Mauritius", "Mayotte", "Mexico", "Micronesia", "Moldova", "Monaco", "Mongolia", "Montserrat", "Morocco", "Mozambique", "Myanmar", "Namibia", "Nauru", "Nepal", "Netherlands", "Netherlands Antilles", "Neutral Zone", "New Caledonia", "New Zealand", "Nicaragua", "Niger", "Nigeria", "Niue", "Norfolk Island", "Northern Ireland", "Norway", "Oman", "Pakistan", "Palau", "Panama", "Papua New Guinea", "Paraguay", "Peru", "Philippines", "Pitcairn", "Poland", "Polynesia", "Portugal", "Puerto Rico", "Qatar", "Reunion", "Romania", "Russian Federation", "Rwanda", "Saint Helena", "Saint Kitts", "Saint Lucia", "Saint Pierre", "Saint Vincent", "Samoa", "San Marino", "Sao Tome and Principe", "Saudi Arabia", "Scotland", "Senegal", "Seychelles", "Sierra Leone", "Singapore", "Slovakia", "Slovenia", "Solomon Islands", "Somalia", "South Africa", "South Georgia", "Spain", "Sri Lanka", "Sudan", "Suriname", "Svalbard", "Swaziland", "Sweden", "Switzerland", "Syrian Arab Republic", "Taiwan", "Tajikista", "Tanzania", "Thailand", "Togo", "Tokelau", "Tonga", "Trinidad and Tobago", "Tunisia", "Turkey", "Turkmenistan", "Turks and Caicos Islands", "Tuvalu", "Uganda", "Ukraine", "United Arab Emirates", "United Kingdom", "United States", "Uruguay", "Uzbekistan", "Vanuatu", "Vatican City State", "Venezuela", "Vietnam", "Virgin Islands", "Wales", "Western Sahara", "Yemen", "Yugoslavia", "Zaire", "Zambia", "Zimbabwe" }; } } } Any suggestions? Thanks

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• Problem with jQuery plugin TinySort

  - by Volmar

  I'm trying to sort a list with the help of jQuery and the TinySort-plugin, and it works good but one thing is not working as i want. My Code is: <!doctype html> <html> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8" /> <title>TinySort problem</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://so.volmar.se/www/js/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://so.volmar.se/www/js/jquery.tinysort.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> function pktsort(way){ if($("div#paket>ul>li.sortdiv>a#s_abc").text() == "A-S"){ $("div#paket>ul>li.sortdiv>a#s_abc").text("S-A"); $("div#paket ul li.sortable").tsort("",{place:"org",returns:true,order:"desc"}); }else{ $("div#paket>ul>li.sortdiv>a#s_abc").text("A-S"); $("div#paket ul li.sortable").tsort("",{place:"org",returns:true,order:"asc"}); } } </script> </head> <body> <div id="paket" title="Paket"> <ul class="rounded"> <li class="sortdiv">Sort: <a href="#" onclick="pktsort();" class="active_sort" id="s_abc">A-S</a></li> <li class="sortable">Almost Famous</li> <li class="sortable">Children of Men</li> <li class="sortable">Coeurs</li> <li class="sortable">Colossal Youth</li> <li class="sortable">Demonlover</li> <li class="sortable">Femme Fatale</li> <li class="sortable">I'm Not There</li> <li class="sortable">In the City of Sylvia</li> <li class="sortable">Into the Wild</li> <li class="sortable">Je rentre à la maison</li> <li class="sortable">King Kong</li> <li class="sortable">Little Miss Sunshine</li> <li class="sortable">Man on Wire</li> <li class="sortable">Milk</li> <li class="sortable">Monsters Inc.</li> <li class="sortable">My Winnipeg</li> <li class="sortable">Ne touchez pas la hache</li> <li class="sortable">Nói albinói</li> <li class="sortable">Regular Lovers</li> <li class="sortable">Shaun of the Dead</li> <li class="sortable">Silent Light</li> <li class="addmore"><b>This text is not supposed to move</b></li> </ul> </div> </body> </html> you can try it out at: http://www.volmar.se/list-prob.html MY PROBLEM IS: I don't want the <li class="addmore"> to move above all the <li class="sortable">-elements when i press the sort-link. i wan't it to always be in the bottom. you can find documentation of the TinySort plugin here. i've tried loads of combinations with place and returns propertys but i just can't get it right.

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• Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData

  - by Stephen Walther

  At the last MIX conference, Netflix announced that they are exposing their catalog of movie information using the OData protocol. This is great news! This means that you can take advantage of all of the advanced OData querying features against a live database of Netflix movies. In this blog entry, I’ll demonstrate how you can use Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData to create a simple movie lookup form. The form enables you to enter a movie title, or part of a movie title, and display a list of matching movies. For example, Figure 1 illustrates the movies displayed when you enter the value robot into the lookup form.   Using the Netflix OData Catalog API You can learn about the Netflix OData Catalog API at the following website: http://developer.netflix.com/docs/oData_Catalog The nice thing about this website is that it provides plenty of samples. It also has a good general reference for OData. For example, the website includes a list of OData filter operators and functions. The Netflix Catalog API exposes 4 top-level resources: Titles – A database of Movie information including interesting movie properties such as synopsis, BoxArt, and Cast. People – A database of people information including interesting information such as Awards, TitlesDirected, and TitlesActedIn. Languages – Enables you to get title information in different languages. Genres – Enables you to get title information for specific movie genres. OData is REST based. This means that you can perform queries by putting together the right URL. For example, if you want to get a list of the movies that were released after 2010 and that had an average rating greater than 4 then you can enter the following URL in the address bar of your browser: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=ReleaseYear gt 2010&AverageRating gt 4 Entering this URL returns the movies in Figure 2. Creating the Movie Lookup Form The complete code for the Movie Lookup form is contained in Listing 1. Listing 1 – MovieLookup.htm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Netflix with jQuery</title> <style type="text/css"> #movieTemplateContainer div { width:400px; padding: 10px; margin: 10px; border: black solid 1px; } </style> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <label>Search Movies:</label> <input id="movieName" size="50" /> <button id="btnLookup">Lookup</button> <div id="movieTemplateContainer"></div> <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnLookup").click(function () { // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); }); function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } </script> </body> </html> The HTML page in Listing 1 includes two JavaScript libraries: <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> The first script tag retrieves jQuery from the Microsoft Ajax CDN. You can learn more about the Microsoft Ajax CDN by visiting the following website: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/cdn.ashx The second script tag is used to reference Resig’s micro-templating library. Because I want to use a template to display each movie, I need this library: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/ When you enter a value into the Search Movies input field and click the button, the following JavaScript code is executed: // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); This code Is used to build a query that will be executed against the Netflix Catalog API. For example, if you enter the search phrase King Kong then the following URL is created: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=substringof(‘King%20Kong’,Name)&$callback=callback&$format=json This query includes the following parameters: $filter – You assign a filter expression to this parameter to filter the movie results. $callback – You assign the name of a JavaScript callback method to this parameter. OData calls this method to return the movie results. $format – you assign either the value json or xml to this parameter to specify how the format of the movie results. Notice that all of the OData parameters -- $filter, $callback, $format -- start with a dollar sign $. The Movie Lookup form uses JSONP to retrieve data across the Internet. Because WCF Data Services supports JSONP, and Netflix uses WCF Data Services to expose movies using the OData protocol, you can use JSONP when interacting with the Netflix Catalog API. To learn more about using JSONP with OData, see Pablo Castro’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/pablo/archive/2009/02/25/adding-support-for-jsonp-and-url-controlled-format-to-ado-net-data-services.aspx The actual JSONP call is performed by calling the $.ajax() method. When this call successfully completes, the JavaScript callback() method is called. The callback() method looks like this: function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } The movie results from Netflix are passed to the callback method. The callback method takes advantage of Resig’s micro-templating library to display each of the movie results. A template used to display each movie is passed to the tmpl() method. The movie template looks like this: <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script>   This template looks like a server-side ASP.NET template. However, the template is rendered in the client (browser) instead of the server. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to demonstrate how well jQuery works with OData. We managed to use a number of interesting open-source libraries and open protocols while building the Movie Lookup form including jQuery, JSONP, JSON, and OData.

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• Fraud Detection with the SQL Server Suite Part 1

  - by Dejan Sarka

  While working on different fraud detection projects, I developed my own approach to the solution for this problem. In my PASS Summit 2013 session I am introducing this approach. I also wrote a whitepaper on the same topic, which was generously reviewed by my friend Matija Lah. In order to spread this knowledge faster, I am starting a series of blog posts which will at the end make the whole whitepaper. Abstract With the massive usage of credit cards and web applications for banking and payment processing, the number of fraudulent transactions is growing rapidly and on a global scale. Several fraud detection algorithms are available within a variety of different products. In this paper, we focus on using the Microsoft SQL Server suite for this purpose. In addition, we will explain our original approach to solving the problem by introducing a continuous learning procedure. Our preferred type of service is mentoring; it allows us to perform the work and consulting together with transferring the knowledge onto the customer, thus making it possible for a customer to continue to learn independently. This paper is based on practical experience with different projects covering online banking and credit card usage. Introduction A fraud is a criminal or deceptive activity with the intention of achieving financial or some other gain. Fraud can appear in multiple business areas. You can find a detailed overview of the business domains where fraud can take place in Sahin Y., & Duman E. (2011), Detecting Credit Card Fraud by Decision Trees and Support Vector Machines, Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2011 Vol 1. Hong Kong: IMECS. Dealing with frauds includes fraud prevention and fraud detection. Fraud prevention is a proactive mechanism, which tries to disable frauds by using previous knowledge. Fraud detection is a reactive mechanism with the goal of detecting suspicious behavior when a fraudster surpasses the fraud prevention mechanism. A fraud detection mechanism checks every transaction and assigns a weight in terms of probability between 0 and 1 that represents a score for evaluating whether a transaction is fraudulent or not. A fraud detection mechanism cannot detect frauds with a probability of 100%; therefore, manual transaction checking must also be available. With fraud detection, this manual part can focus on the most suspicious transactions. This way, an unchanged number of supervisors can detect significantly more frauds than could be achieved with traditional methods of selecting which transactions to check, for example with random sampling. There are two principal data mining techniques available both in general data mining as well as in specific fraud detection techniques: supervised or directed and unsupervised or undirected. Supervised techniques or data mining models use previous knowledge. Typically, existing transactions are marked with a flag denoting whether a particular transaction is fraudulent or not. Customers at some point in time do report frauds, and the transactional system should be capable of accepting such a flag. Supervised data mining algorithms try to explain the value of this flag by using different input variables. When the patterns and rules that lead to frauds are learned through the model training process, they can be used for prediction of the fraud flag on new incoming transactions. Unsupervised techniques analyze data without prior knowledge, without the fraud flag; they try to find transactions which do not resemble other transactions, i.e. outliers. In both cases, there should be more frauds in the data set selected for checking by using the data mining knowledge compared to selecting the data set with simpler methods; this is known as the lift of a model. Typically, we compare the lift with random sampling. The supervised methods typically give a much better lift than the unsupervised ones. However, we must use the unsupervised ones when we do not have any previous knowledge. Furthermore, unsupervised methods are useful for controlling whether the supervised models are still efficient. Accuracy of the predictions drops over time. Patterns of credit card usage, for example, change over time. In addition, fraudsters continuously learn as well. Therefore, it is important to check the efficiency of the predictive models with the undirected ones. When the difference between the lift of the supervised models and the lift of the unsupervised models drops, it is time to refine the supervised models. However, the unsupervised models can become obsolete as well. It is also important to measure the overall efficiency of both, supervised and unsupervised models, over time. We can compare the number of predicted frauds with the total number of frauds that include predicted and reported occurrences. For measuring behavior across time, specific analytical databases called data warehouses (DW) and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) systems can be employed. By controlling the supervised models with unsupervised ones and by using an OLAP system or DW reports to control both, a continuous learning infrastructure can be established. There are many difficulties in developing a fraud detection system. As has already been mentioned, fraudsters continuously learn, and the patterns change. The exchange of experiences and ideas can be very limited due to privacy concerns. In addition, both data sets and results might be censored, as the companies generally do not want to publically expose actual fraudulent behaviors. Therefore it can be quite difficult if not impossible to cross-evaluate the models using data from different companies and different business areas. This fact stresses the importance of continuous learning even more. Finally, the number of frauds in the total number of transactions is small, typically much less than 1% of transactions is fraudulent. Some predictive data mining algorithms do not give good results when the target state is represented with a very low frequency. Data preparation techniques like oversampling and undersampling can help overcome the shortcomings of many algorithms. SQL Server suite includes all of the software required to create, deploy any maintain a fraud detection infrastructure. The Database Engine is the relational database management system (RDBMS), which supports all activity needed for data preparation and for data warehouses. SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) supports OLAP and data mining (in version 2012, you need to install SSAS in multidimensional and data mining mode; this was the only mode in previous versions of SSAS, while SSAS 2012 also supports the tabular mode, which does not include data mining). Additional products from the suite can be useful as well. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a tool for developing extract transform–load (ETL) applications. SSIS is typically used for loading a DW, and in addition, it can use SSAS data mining models for building intelligent data flows. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is useful for presenting the results in a variety of reports. Data Quality Services (DQS) mitigate the occasional data cleansing process by maintaining a knowledge base. Master Data Services is an application that helps companies maintaining a central, authoritative source of their master data, i.e. the most important data to any organization. For an overview of the SQL Server business intelligence (BI) part of the suite that includes Database Engine, SSAS and SSRS, please refer to Veerman E., Lachev T., & Sarka D. (2009). MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance. MS Press. For an overview of the enterprise information management (EIM) part that includes SSIS, DQS and MDS, please refer to Sarka D., Lah M., & Jerkic G. (2012). Training Kit (Exam 70-463): Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012. O'Reilly. For details about SSAS data mining, please refer to MacLennan J., Tang Z., & Crivat B. (2009). Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Wiley. SQL Server Data Mining Add-ins for Office, a free download for Office versions 2007, 2010 and 2013, bring the power of data mining to Excel, enabling advanced analytics in Excel. Together with PowerPivot for Excel, which is also freely downloadable and can be used in Excel 2010, is already included in Excel 2013. It brings OLAP functionalities directly into Excel, making it possible for an advanced analyst to build a complete learning infrastructure using a familiar tool. This way, many more people, including employees in subsidiaries, can contribute to the learning process by examining local transactions and quickly identifying new patterns.

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• Metro, Authentication, and the ASP.NET Web API

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Imagine that you want to create a Metro style app written with JavaScript and you want to communicate with a remote web service. For example, you are creating a movie app which retrieves a list of movies from a movies service. In this situation, how do you authenticate your Metro app and the Metro user so not just anyone can call the movies service? How can you identify the user making the request so you can return user specific data from the service? The Windows Live SDK supports a feature named Single Sign-On. When a user logs into a Windows 8 machine using their Live ID, you can authenticate the user’s identity automatically. Even better, when the Metro app performs a call to a remote web service, you can pass an authentication token to the remote service and prevent unauthorized access to the service. The documentation for Single Sign-On is located here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826544.aspx In this blog entry, I describe the steps that you need to follow to use Single Sign-On with a (very) simple movie app. We build a Metro app which communicates with a web service created using the ASP.NET Web API. Creating the Visual Studio Solution Let’s start by creating a Visual Studio solution which contains two projects: a Windows Metro style Blank App project and an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application project. Name the Metro app MovieApp and the ASP.NET MVC application MovieApp.Services. When you create the ASP.NET MVC application, select the Web API template: After you create the two projects, your Visual Studio Solution Explorer window should look like this: Configuring the Live SDK You need to get your hands on the Live SDK and register your Metro app. You can download the latest version of the SDK (version 5.2) from the following address: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29938 After you download the Live SDK, you need to visit the following website to register your Metro app: https://manage.dev.live.com/build Don’t let the title of the website — Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect – confuse you, this is the right place. Follow the instructions at the website to register your Metro app. Don’t forget to follow the instructions in Step 3 for updating the information in your Metro app’s manifest. After you register, your client secret is displayed. Record this client secret because you will need it later (we use it with the web service): You need to configure one more thing. You must enter your Redirect Domain by visiting the following website: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index Click on your application name, click Edit Settings, click the API Settings tab, and enter a value for the Redirect Domain field. You can enter any domain that you please just as long as the domain has not already been taken: For the Redirect Domain, I entered http://superexpertmovieapp.com. Create the Metro MovieApp Next, we need to create the MovieApp. The MovieApp will: 1. Use Single Sign-On to log the current user into Live 2. Call the MoviesService web service 3. Display the results in a ListView control Because we use the Live SDK in the MovieApp, we need to add a reference to it. Right-click your References folder in the Solution Explorer window and add the reference: Here’s the HTML page for the Metro App: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>MovieApp</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Live SDK --> <script type="text/javascript" src="/LiveSDKHTML/js/wl.js"></script> <!-- WebServices references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <div id="tmplMovie" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="movieItem"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> <br /><span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span> </div> </div> <div id="lvMovies" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemTemplate: select('#tmplMovie') }"> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains a Template and ListView control. These controls are used to display the movies when the movies are returned from the movies service. Notice that the page includes a reference to the Live script that we registered earlier: <!-- Live SDK --> <script type="text/javascript" src="/LiveSDKHTML/js/wl.js"></script> The JavaScript code looks like this: (function () { "use strict"; var REDIRECT_DOMAIN = "http://superexpertmovieapp.com"; var WEBSERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:49743/api/movies"; function init() { WinJS.UI.processAll().done(function () { // Get element and control references var lvMovies = document.getElementById("lvMovies").winControl; // Login to Windows Live var scopes = ["wl.signin"]; WL.init({ scope: scopes, redirect_uri: REDIRECT_DOMAIN }); WL.login().then( function(response) { // Get the authentication token var authenticationToken = response.session.authentication_token; // Call the web service var options = { url: WEBSERVICE_URL, headers: { authenticationToken: authenticationToken } }; WinJS.xhr(options).done( function (xhr) { var movies = JSON.parse(xhr.response); var listMovies = new WinJS.Binding.List(movies); lvMovies.itemDataSource = listMovies.dataSource; }, function (xhr) { console.log(xhr.statusText); } ); }, function(response) { throw WinJS.ErrorFromName("Failed to login!"); } ); }); } document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", init); })(); There are two constants which you need to set to get the code above to work: REDIRECT_DOMAIN and WEBSERVICE_URL. The REDIRECT_DOMAIN is the domain that you entered when registering your app with Live. The WEBSERVICE_URL is the path to your web service. You can get the correct value for WEBSERVICE_URL by opening the Project Properties for the MovieApp.Services project, clicking the Web tab, and getting the correct URL. The port number is randomly generated. In my code, I used the URL  “http://localhost:49743/api/movies”. Assuming that the user is logged into Windows 8 with a Live account, when the user runs the MovieApp, the user is logged into Live automatically. The user is logged in with the following code: // Login to Windows Live var scopes = ["wl.signin"]; WL.init({ scope: scopes, redirect_uri: REDIRECT_DOMAIN }); WL.login().then(function(response) { // Do something }); The scopes setting determines what the user has permission to do. For example, access the user’s SkyDrive or access the user’s calendar or contacts. The available scopes are listed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243646.aspx In our case, we only need the wl.signin scope which enables Single Sign-On. After the user signs in, you can retrieve the user’s Live authentication token. The authentication token is passed to the movies service to authenticate the user. Creating the Movies Service The Movies Service is implemented as an API controller in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API project. Here’s what the MoviesController looks like: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using JWTSample; using MovieApp.Services.Models; namespace MovieApp.Services.Controllers { public class MoviesController : ApiController { const string CLIENT_SECRET = "NtxjF2wu7JeY1unvVN-lb0hoeWOMUFoR"; // GET api/values public HttpResponseMessage Get() { // Authenticate // Get authenticationToken var authenticationToken = Request.Headers.GetValues("authenticationToken").FirstOrDefault(); if (authenticationToken == null) { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized); } // Validate token var d = new Dictionary<int, string>(); d.Add(0, CLIENT_SECRET); try { var myJWT = new JsonWebToken(authenticationToken, d); } catch { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized); } // Return results return Request.CreateResponse( HttpStatusCode.OK, new List<Movie> { new Movie {Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} } ); } } } Because the Metro app performs an HTTP GET request, the MovieController Get() action is invoked. This action returns a set of three movies when, and only when, the authentication token is validated. The Movie class looks like this: using Newtonsoft.Json; namespace MovieApp.Services.Models { public class Movie { [JsonProperty(PropertyName="title")] public string Title { get; set; } [JsonProperty(PropertyName="director")] public string Director { get; set; } } } Notice that the Movie class uses the JsonProperty attribute to change Title to title and Director to director to make JavaScript developers happy. The Get() method validates the authentication token before returning the movies to the Metro app. To get authentication to work, you need to provide the client secret which you created at the Live management site. If you forgot to write down the secret, you can get it again here: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index The client secret is assigned to a constant at the top of the MoviesController class. The MoviesController class uses a helper class named JsonWebToken to validate the authentication token. This class was created by the Windows Live team. You can get the source code for the JsonWebToken class from the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/liveservices/LiveSDK/blob/master/Samples/Asp.net/AuthenticationTokenSample/JsonWebToken.cs You need to add an additional reference to your MVC project to use the JsonWebToken class: System.Runtime.Serialization. You can use the JsonWebToken class to get a unique and validated user ID like this: var user = myJWT.Claims.UserId; If you need to store user specific information then you can use the UserId property to uniquely identify the user making the web service call. Running the MovieApp When you first run the Metro MovieApp, you get a screen which asks whether the app should have permission to use Single Sign-On. This screen never appears again after you give permission once. Actually, when I first ran the app, I get the following error: According to the error, the app is blocked because “We detected some suspicious activity with your Online Id account. To help protect you, we’ve temporarily blocked your account.” This appears to be a bug in the current preview release of the Live SDK and there is more information about this bug here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/messengerconnect/thread/866c495f-2127-429d-ab07-842ef84f16ae/ If you click continue, and continue running the app, the error message does not appear again.  Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe how you can validate Metro apps and Metro users when performing a call to a remote web service. First, I explained how you can create a Metro app which takes advantage of Single Sign-On to authenticate the current user against Live automatically. You learned how to register your Metro app with Live and how to include an authentication token in an Ajax call. Next, I explained how you can validate the authentication token – retrieved from the request header – in a web service. I discussed how you can use the JsonWebToken class to validate the authentication token and retrieve the unique user ID.

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• Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

  - by Roger Hart

  Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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• An Introduction to Meteor

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog post is to give you a brief introduction to Meteor which is a framework for building Single Page Apps. In this blog entry, I provide a walkthrough of building a simple Movie database app. What is special about Meteor? Meteor has two jaw-dropping features: Live HTML – If you make any changes to the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or data on the server then every client shows the changes automatically without a browser refresh. For example, if you change the background color of a page to yellow then every open browser will show the new yellow background color without a refresh. Or, if you add a new movie to a collection of movies, then every open browser will display the new movie automatically. With Live HTML, users no longer need a refresh button. Changes to an application happen everywhere automatically without any effort. The Meteor framework handles all of the messy details of keeping all of the clients in sync with the server for you. Latency Compensation – When you modify data on the client, these modifications appear as if they happened on the server without any delay. For example, if you create a new movie then the movie appears instantly. However, that is all an illusion. In the background, Meteor updates the database with the new movie. If, for whatever reason, the movie cannot be added to the database then Meteor removes the movie from the client automatically. Latency compensation is extremely important for creating a responsive web application. You want the user to be able to make instant modifications in the browser and the framework to handle the details of updating the database without slowing down the user. Installing Meteor Meteor is licensed under the open-source MIT license and you can start building production apps with the framework right now. Be warned that Meteor is still in the “early preview” stage. It has not reached a 1.0 release. According to the Meteor FAQ, Meteor will reach version 1.0 in “More than a month, less than a year.” Don’t be scared away by that. You should be aware that, unlike most open source projects, Meteor has financial backing. The Meteor project received an $11.2 million round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz. So, it would be a good bet that this project will reach the 1.0 mark. And, if it doesn’t, the framework as it exists right now is still very powerful. Meteor runs on top of Node.js. You write Meteor apps by writing JavaScript which runs both on the client and on the server. You can build Meteor apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux (Although the support for Windows is still officially unofficial). If you want to install Meteor on Windows then download the MSI from the following URL: http://win.meteor.com/ If you want to install Meteor on Mac/Linux then run the following CURL command from your terminal: curl https://install.meteor.com | /bin/sh Meteor will install all of its dependencies automatically including Node.js. However, I recommend that you install Node.js before installing Meteor by installing Node.js from the following address: http://nodejs.org/ If you let Meteor install Node.js then Meteor won’t install NPM which is the standard package manager for Node.js. If you install Node.js and then you install Meteor then you get NPM automatically. Creating a New Meteor App To get a sense of how Meteor works, I am going to walk through the steps required to create a simple Movie database app. Our app will display a list of movies and contain a form for creating a new movie. The first thing that we need to do is create our new Meteor app. Open a command prompt/terminal window and execute the following command: Meteor create MovieApp After you execute this command, you should see something like the following: Follow the instructions: execute cd MovieApp to change to your MovieApp directory, and run the meteor command. Executing the meteor command starts Meteor on port 3000. Open up your favorite web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 and you should see the default Meteor Hello World page: Open up your favorite development environment to see what the Meteor app looks like. Open the MovieApp folder which we just created. Here’s what the MovieApp looks like in Visual Studio 2012: Notice that our MovieApp contains three files named MovieApp.css, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.js. In other words, it contains a Cascading Style Sheet file, an HTML file, and a JavaScript file. Just for fun, let’s see how the Live HTML feature works. Open up multiple browsers and point each browser at http://localhost:3000. Now, open the MovieApp.html page and modify the text “Hello World!” to “Hello Cruel World!” and save the change. The text in all of the browsers should update automatically without a browser refresh. Pretty amazing, right? Controlling Where JavaScript Executes You write a Meteor app using JavaScript. Some of the JavaScript executes on the client (the browser) and some of the JavaScript executes on the server and some of the JavaScript executes in both places. For a super simple app, you can use the Meteor.isServer and Meteor.isClient properties to control where your JavaScript code executes. For example, the following JavaScript contains a section of code which executes on the server and a section of code which executes in the browser: if (Meteor.isClient) { console.log("Hello Browser!"); } if (Meteor.isServer) { console.log("Hello Server!"); } console.log("Hello Browser and Server!"); When you run the app, the message “Hello Browser!” is written to the browser JavaScript console. The message “Hello Server!” is written to the command/terminal window where you ran Meteor. Finally, the message “Hello Browser and Server!” is execute on both the browser and server and the message appears in both places. For simple apps, using Meteor.isClient and Meteor.isServer to control where JavaScript executes is fine. For more complex apps, you should create separate folders for your server and client code. Here are the folders which you can use in a Meteor app: · client – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the client. · server – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the server. · common – This folder contains any JavaScript code which executes on both the client and server. · lib – This folder contains any JavaScript files which you want to execute before any other JavaScript files. · public – This folder contains static application assets such as images. For the Movie App, we need the client, server, and common folders. Delete the existing MovieApp.js, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.css files. We will create new files in the right locations later in this walkthrough. Combining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files Meteor combines all of your JavaScript files, and all of your Cascading Style Sheet files, and all of your HTML files automatically. If you want to create one humongous JavaScript file which contains all of the code for your app then that is your business. However, if you want to build a more maintainable application, then you should break your JavaScript files into many separate JavaScript files and let Meteor combine them for you. Meteor also combines all of your HTML files into a single file. HTML files are allowed to have the following top-level elements: <head> — All <head> files are combined into a single <head> and served with the initial page load. <body> — All <body> files are combined into a single <body> and served with the initial page load. <template> — All <template> files are compiled into JavaScript templates. Because you are creating a single page app, a Meteor app typically will contain a single HTML file for the <head> and <body> content. However, a Meteor app typically will contain several template files. In other words, all of the interesting stuff happens within the <template> files. Displaying a List of Movies Let me start building the Movie App by displaying a list of movies. In order to display a list of movies, we need to create the following four files: · client\movies.html – Contains the HTML for the <head> and <body> of the page for the Movie app. · client\moviesTemplate.html – Contains the HTML template for displaying the list of movies. · client\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for supplying data to the moviesTemplate. · server\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for seeding the database with movies. After you create these files, your folder structure should looks like this: Here’s what the client\movies.html file looks like: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} </body>   Notice that it contains <head> and <body> top-level elements. The <body> element includes the moviesTemplate with the syntax {{> moviesTemplate }}. The moviesTemplate is defined in the client/moviesTemplate.html file: <template name="moviesTemplate"> <ul> {{#each movies}} <li> {{title}} </li> {{/each}} </ul> </template> By default, Meteor uses the Handlebars templating library. In the moviesTemplate above, Handlebars is used to loop through each of the movies using {{#each}}…{{/each}} and display the title for each movie using {{title}}. The client\movies.js JavaScript file is used to bind the moviesTemplate to the Movies collection on the client. Here’s what this JavaScript file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; The Movies collection is a client-side proxy for the server-side Movies database collection. Whenever you want to interact with the collection of Movies stored in the database, you use the Movies collection instead of communicating back to the server. The moviesTemplate is bound to the Movies collection by assigning a function to the Template.moviesTemplate.movies property. The function simply returns all of the movies from the Movies collection. The final file which we need is the server-side server\movies.js file: // Declare server Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Seed the movie database with a few movies Meteor.startup(function () { if (Movies.find().count() == 0) { Movies.insert({ title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas" }); Movies.insert({ title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" }); Movies.insert({ title: "King Kong", director: "Jackson" }); } }); The server\movies.js file does two things. First, it declares the server-side Meteor Movies collection. When you declare a server-side Meteor collection, a collection is created in the MongoDB database associated with your Meteor app automatically (Meteor uses MongoDB as its database automatically). Second, the server\movies.js file seeds the Movies collection (MongoDB collection) with three movies. Seeding the database gives us some movies to look at when we open the Movies app in a browser. Creating New Movies Let me modify the Movies Database App so that we can add new movies to the database of movies. First, I need to create a new template file – named client\movieForm.html – which contains an HTML form for creating a new movie: <template name="movieForm"> <fieldset> <legend>Add New Movie</legend> <form> <div> <label> Title: <input id="title" /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Director: <input id="director" /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Add Movie" /> </div> </form> </fieldset> </template> In order for the new form to show up, I need to modify the client\movies.html file to include the movieForm.html template. Notice that I added {{> movieForm }} to the client\movies.html file: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} {{> movieForm }} </body> After I make these modifications, our Movie app will display the form: The next step is to handle the submit event for the movie form. Below, I’ve modified the client\movies.js file so that it contains a handler for the submit event raised when you submit the form contained in the movieForm.html template: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Movies.insert(newMovie); } }; The Template.movieForm.events property contains an event map which maps event names to handlers. In this case, I am mapping the form submit event to an anonymous function which handles the event. In the event handler, I am first preventing a postback by calling e.preventDefault(). This is a single page app, no postbacks are allowed! Next, I am grabbing the new movie from the HTML form. I’m taking advantage of the template find() method to retrieve the form field values. Finally, I am calling Movies.insert() to insert the new movie into the Movies collection. Here, I am explicitly inserting the new movie into the client-side Movies collection. Meteor inserts the new movie into the server-side Movies collection behind the scenes. When Meteor inserts the movie into the server-side collection, the new movie is added to the MongoDB database associated with the Movies app automatically. If server-side insertion fails for whatever reasons – for example, your internet connection is lost – then Meteor will remove the movie from the client-side Movies collection automatically. In other words, Meteor takes care of keeping the client Movies collection and the server Movies collection in sync. If you open multiple browsers, and add movies, then you should notice that all of the movies appear on all of the open browser automatically. You don’t need to refresh individual browsers to update the client-side Movies collection. Meteor keeps everything synchronized between the browsers and server for you. Removing the Insecure Module To make it easier to develop and debug a new Meteor app, by default, you can modify the database directly from the client. For example, you can delete all of the data in the database by opening up your browser console window and executing multiple Movies.remove() commands. Obviously, enabling anyone to modify your database from the browser is not a good idea in a production application. Before you make a Meteor app public, you should first run the meteor remove insecure command from a command/terminal window: Running meteor remove insecure removes the insecure package from the Movie app. Unfortunately, it also breaks our Movie app. We’ll get an “Access denied” error in our browser console whenever we try to insert a new movie. No worries. I’ll fix this issue in the next section. Creating Meteor Methods By taking advantage of Meteor Methods, you can create methods which can be invoked on both the client and the server. By taking advantage of Meteor Methods you can: 1. Perform form validation on both the client and the server. For example, even if an evil hacker bypasses your client code, you can still prevent the hacker from submitting an invalid value for a form field by enforcing validation on the server. 2. Simulate database operations on the client but actually perform the operations on the server. Let me show you how we can modify our Movie app so it uses Meteor Methods to insert a new movie. First, we need to create a new file named common\methods.js which contains the definition of our Meteor Methods: Meteor.methods({ addMovie: function (newMovie) { // Perform form validation if (newMovie.title == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing title!"); } if (newMovie.director == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing director!"); } // Insert movie (simulate on client, do it on server) return Movies.insert(newMovie); } }); The addMovie() method is called from both the client and the server. This method does two things. First, it performs some basic validation. If you don’t enter a title or you don’t enter a director then an error is thrown. Second, the addMovie() method inserts the new movie into the Movies collection. When called on the client, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection just updates the collection. When called on the server, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection causes the database (MongoDB) to be updated with the new movie. You must add the common\methods.js file to the common folder so it will get executed on both the client and the server. Our folder structure now looks like this: We actually call the addMovie() method within our client code in the client\movies.js file. Here’s what the updated file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Meteor.call( "addMovie", newMovie, function (err, result) { if (err) { alert("Could not add movie " + err.reason); } } ); } }; The addMovie() method is called – on both the client and the server – by calling the Meteor.call() method. This method accepts the following parameters: · The string name of the method to call. · The data to pass to the method (You can actually pass multiple params for the data if you like). · A callback function to invoke after the method completes. In the JavaScript code above, the addMovie() method is called with the new movie retrieved from the HTML form. The callback checks for an error. If there is an error then the error reason is displayed in an alert (please don’t use alerts for validation errors in a production app because they are ugly!). Summary The goal of this blog post was to provide you with a brief walk through of a simple Meteor app. I showed you how you can create a simple Movie Database app which enables you to display a list of movies and create new movies. I also explained why it is important to remove the Meteor insecure package from a production app. I showed you how to use Meteor Methods to insert data into the database instead of doing it directly from the client. I’m very impressed with the Meteor framework. The support for Live HTML and Latency Compensation are required features for many real world Single Page Apps but implementing these features by hand is not easy. Meteor makes it easy.

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• PHP issue json_decode echo array

  - by dfdf

  <?php $string = file_get_contents("http://www.reddit.com/r/news.json"); $array = json_decode($string, true); echo $array['data'][0]['children'][0]['data'][0]['title'][0]; ?> I've got a problem- the code doesn't echo anything. I'm kinda new to json_decode, so any help is appreciated :-) Edit: As a response to a comment, here's what print_r results to: Array ( [kind] => Listing [data] => Array ( [modhash] => [children] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [kind] => t3 [data] => Array ( [domain] => syracuse.com [banned_by] => [media_embed] => Array ( ) [subreddit] => news [selftext_html] => [selftext] => [likes] => [secure_media] => [link_flair_text] => [id] => 1qdtqr [secure_media_embed] => Array ( ) [clicked] => [stickied] => [author] => cadencehz [media] => [score] => 1552 [approved_by] => [over_18] => [hidden] => [thumbnail] => [subreddit_id] => t5_2qh3l [edited] => [link_flair_css_class] => [author_flair_css_class] => [downs] => 978 [saved] => [is_self] => [permalink] => /r/news/comments/1qdtqr/thousands_defend_grocery_store_employee_with/ [name] => t3_1qdtqr [created] => 1384215998 [url] => http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/11/thousands_come_to_defense_of_clay_wegmans_employee_with_aspergers_syndrome_after.html#incart_m-rpt-2 [author_flair_text] => [title] => Thousands defend grocery store employee with Asperger's syndrome after customer yells at him for being too slow [created_utc] => 1384187198 [ups] => 2530 [num_comments] => 401 [visited] => [num_reports] => [distinguished] => ) ) [1] => Array ( [kind] => t3 [data] => Array ( [domain] => bostonherald.com [banned_by] => [media_embed] => Array ( ) [subreddit] => news [selftext_html] => [selftext] => [likes] => [secure_media] => [link_flair_text] => [id] => 1qddl6 [secure_media_embed] => Array ( ) [clicked] => [stickied] => [author] => boxofrain [media] => [score] => 2086 [approved_by] => [over_18] => [hidden] => [thumbnail] => [subreddit_id] => t5_2qh3l [edited] => [link_flair_css_class] => [author_flair_css_class] => [downs] => 2556 [saved] => [is_self] => [permalink] => /r/news/comments/1qddl6/motorcycle_stolen_in_1961_found_is_recovered_and/ [name] => t3_1qddl6 [created] => 1384199801 [url] => http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/offbeat_news/2013/11/man_glad_stolen_motorcycle_found_after_46_years [author_flair_text] => [title] => Motorcycle stolen in 1961 found is recovered and will be returned to it 73 year old owner. [created_utc] => 1384171001 [ups] => 4642 [num_comments] => 141 [visited] => [num_reports] => [distinguished] => ) ) [2] => Array ( [kind] => t3 [data] => Array ( [domain] => hosted.ap.org [banned_by] => [media_embed] => Array ( ) [subreddit] => news [selftext_html] => [selftext] => [likes] => [secure_media] => [link_flair_text] => [id] => 1qe6gp [secure_media_embed] => Array ( ) [clicked] => [stickied] => [author] => donkey-kick [media] => [score] => 415 [approved_by] => [over_18] => [hidden] => [thumbnail] => [subreddit_id] => t5_2qh3l [edited] => [link_flair_css_class] => [author_flair_css_class] => [downs] => 334 [saved] => [is_self] => [permalink] => /r/news/comments/1qe6gp/atheist_mega_churches_take_hold_in_the_us_and/ [name] => t3_1qe6gp [created] => 1384224670 [url] => http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ATHEIST_MEGACHURCH?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-11-10-17-03-15 [author_flair_text] => [title] => Atheist Mega Churches take hold in the US and around the world. [created_utc] => 1384195870 [ups] => 749 [num_comments] => 368 [visited] => [num_reports] => [distinguished] => ) ) [3] => Array ( [kind] => t3 [data] => Array ( [domain] => abcnews.go.com [banned_by] => [media_embed] => Array ( ) [subreddit] => news [selftext_html] => [selftext] => [likes] => [secure_media] => [link_flair_text] => [id] => 1qdie4 [secure_media_embed] => Array ( ) [clicked] => [stickied] => [author] => Hoosier_made [media] => [score] => 984 [approved_by] => [over_18] => [hidden] => [thumbnail] => [subreddit_id] => t5_2qh3l [edited] => [link_flair_css_class] => [author_flair_css_class] => [downs] => 400 [saved] => [is_self] => [permalink] => /r/news/comments/1qdie4/abc_news_amy_robach_has_mammogram_live_on_gma/ [name] => t3_1qdie4 [created] => 1384206209 [url] => http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/11/11/abc-news-amy-robach-reveals-breast-cancer-diagnosis/ [author_flair_text] => [title] => ABC News’ Amy Robach has mammogram live on GMA. Results Reveal Breast Cancer Diagnosis. [created_utc] => 1384177409 [ups] => 1384 [num_comments] => 130 [visited] => [num_reports] => [distinguished] => ) ) // ECT... I CUT HERE BECAUSE IT WENT ON FOR A WHILE [after] => t3_1qdinr [before] => ) ) Here's the url to the exact output, I had to trim the code to fit the character limit so maybe there's something I messed up ! :P Okay: Link goes here...

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• Google Maps API v3 - Different markers/labels on different zoom levels

  - by krikara

  I was wondering if it is possible that Google has a feature to view different markers on different zoom levels. For example, on zoom level 1, I want one marker over China with the label saying "5". And as the user zooms in, lets say on zoom level 4, I want the previous marker and label to disappear. And I want to have 5 new markers/labels, each on a different city in China all saying "1". Thus China will say a number and all the cities in China will say numbers adding up to China's number. The key concept I am trying to figure out here is how to hide markers and labels based on zoom levels. A constraint for me is that I am living in China currently where google is censored, so a lot of online documents are censored for me, including many of google's documentations. Here is my code thus far <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /> <title>TM China</title> <style type="text/css"> html, body, #map_canvas { margin: 0; padding: 0; height: 100% } .labels { color: red; background-color: white; font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; width: 60px; border: 2px solid black; white-space: nowrap; } </style> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=AIzaSyDV0lcdK7C2GHbQAmdkBID70Uppuf-D030&sensor=true"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,r){e=function(c){return(c<a?'':e(parseInt(c/a)))+((c=c%a)>35?String.fromCharCode(c+29):c.toString(36))};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--)r[e(c)]=k[c]||e(c);k=[function(e){return r[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--)if(k[c])p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c]);return p}('7 m(a){2.3=a;2.8=V.1E("1u");2.8.4.C="I: 1m; J: 1g;";2.k=V.1E("1u");2.k.4.C=2.8.4.C}m.l=E 6.5.22();m.l.1Y=7(){n c=2;n h=t;n f=t;n j;n b;n d,K;n i;n g=7(e){p(e.1v){e.1v()}e.2b=u;p(e.1t){e.1t()}};2.1s().24.G(2.8);2.1s().20.G(2.k);2.11=[6.5.9.w(V,"1o",7(a){p(f){a.s=j;i=u;6.5.9.r(c.3,"1n",a)}h=t;6.5.9.r(c.3,"1o",a)}),6.5.9.o(c.3.1P(),"1N",7(a){p(h&&c.3.1M()){a.s=E 6.5.1J(a.s.U()-d,a.s.T()-K);j=a.s;p(f){6.5.9.r(c.3,"1i",a)}F{d=a.s.U()-c.3.Z().U();K=a.s.T()-c.3.Z().T();6.5.9.r(c.3,"1e",a)}}}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1d",7(e){c.k.4.1c="2i";6.5.9.r(c.3,"1d",e)}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1D",7(e){c.k.4.1c=c.3.2g();6.5.9.r(c.3,"1D",e)}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1C",7(e){p(i){i=t}F{g(e);6.5.9.r(c.3,"1C",e)}}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1A",7(e){g(e);6.5.9.r(c.3,"1A",e)}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1z",7(e){h=u;f=t;d=0;K=0;g(e);6.5.9.r(c.3,"1z",e)}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1e",7(a){f=u;b=c.3.1b()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1i",7(a){c.3.O(a.s);c.3.D(2a)}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1n",7(a){f=t;c.3.D(b)}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"29",7(){c.O()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"28",7(){c.D()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"27",7(){c.N()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"26",7(){c.N()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"25",7(){c.16()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"23",7(){c.15()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"21",7(){c.13()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1Z",7(){c.L()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1X",7(){c.L()})]};m.l.1W=7(){n i;2.8.1r.1q(2.8);2.k.1r.1q(2.k);1p(i=0;i<2.11.1V;i++){6.5.9.1U(2.11[i])}};m.l.1T=7(){2.15();2.16();2.L()};m.l.15=7(){n a=2.3.z("Y");p(H a.1S==="P"){2.8.W=a;2.k.W=2.8.W}F{2.8.G(a);a=a.1R(u);2.k.G(a)}};m.l.16=7(){2.k.1Q=2.3.1O()||""};m.l.L=7(){n i,q;2.8.S=2.3.z("R");2.k.S=2.8.S;2.8.4.C="";2.k.4.C="";q=2.3.z("q");1p(i 1L q){p(q.1K(i)){2.8.4[i]=q[i];2.k.4[i]=q[i]}}2.1l()};m.l.1l=7(){2.8.4.I="1m";2.8.4.J="1g";p(H 2.8.4.B!=="P"){2.8.4.1k="1j(B="+(2.8.4.B*1I)+")"}2.k.4.I=2.8.4.I;2.k.4.J=2.8.4.J;2.k.4.B=0.1H;2.k.4.1k="1j(B=1)";2.13();2.O();2.N()};m.l.13=7(){n a=2.3.z("X");2.8.4.1h=-a.x+"v";2.8.4.1f=-a.y+"v";2.k.4.1h=-a.x+"v";2.k.4.1f=-a.y+"v"};m.l.O=7(){n a=2.1G().1F(2.3.Z());2.8.4.12=a.x+"v";2.8.4.M=a.y+"v";2.k.4.12=2.8.4.12;2.k.4.M=2.8.4.M;2.D()};m.l.D=7(){n a=(2.3.z("14")?-1:+1);p(H 2.3.1b()==="P"){2.8.4.A=2h(2.8.4.M,10)+a;2.k.4.A=2.8.4.A}F{2.8.4.A=2.3.1b()+a;2.k.4.A=2.8.4.A}};m.l.N=7(){p(2.3.z("1a")){2.8.4.Q=2.3.2f()?"2e":"1B"}F{2.8.4.Q="1B"}2.k.4.Q=2.8.4.Q};7 19(a){a=a||{};a.Y=a.Y||"";a.X=a.X||E 6.5.2d(0,0);a.R=a.R||"2c";a.q=a.q||{};a.14=a.14||t;p(H a.1a==="P"){a.1a=u}2.1y=E m(2);6.5.18.1x(2,1w)}19.l=E 6.5.18();19.l.17=7(a){6.5.18.l.17.1x(2,1w);2.1y.17(a)};',62,143,'||this|marker_|style|maps|google|function|labelDiv_|event|||||||||||eventDiv_|prototype|MarkerLabel_|var|addListener|if|labelStyle|trigger|latLng|false|true|px|addDomListener|||get|zIndex|opacity|cssText|setZIndex|new|else|appendChild|typeof|position|overflow|cLngOffset|setStyles|top|setVisible|setPosition|undefined|display|labelClass|className|lng|lat|document|innerHTML|labelAnchor|labelContent|getPosition||listeners_|left|setAnchor|labelInBackground|setContent|setTitle|setMap|Marker|MarkerWithLabel|labelVisible|getZIndex|cursor|mouseover|dragstart|marginTop|hidden|marginLeft|drag|alpha|filter|setMandatoryStyles|absolute|dragend|mouseup|for|removeChild|parentNode|getPanes|stopPropagation|div|preventDefault|arguments|apply|label|mousedown|dblclick|none|click|mouseout|createElement|fromLatLngToDivPixel|getProjection|01|100|LatLng|hasOwnProperty|in|getDraggable|mousemove|getTitle|getMap|title|cloneNode|nodeType|draw|removeListener|length|onRemove|labelstyle_changed|onAdd|labelclass_changed|overlayMouseTarget|labelanchor_changed|OverlayView|labelcontent_changed|overlayImage|title_changed|labelvisible_changed|visible_changed|zindex_changed|position_changed|1000000|cancelBubble|markerLabels|Point|block|getVisible|getCursor|parseInt|pointer'.split('|'),0,{})) var map; var mapOptions = { center: new google.maps.LatLng(35, 105), zoom: 3, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP }; var locations = [ ['Hong Kong', 22.39, 114.10, 1885], ['Shanghai', 31.232, 121.47, 5885], ['Beijing', 39.88, 116.40, 6426], ['Guangzhou', 23.129, 113.264, 4067], ['Shenzhen', 22.54, 114.05, 3089], ['Hangzhou', 30.27, 120.15, 954] ]; var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow(); var i; /* for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), map: map }); google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', (function(marker, i) { return function() { infowindow.setContent(locations[i][0]); infowindow.open(map, marker); } })(marker, i)); } */ function myMarker(options) { if(!options.labelAnchor) { options.labelAnchor = new google.maps.Point(30, 50); } if(!options.labelClass) { options.labelClass = "labels"; } options.map = map; return new MarkerWithLabel(options); } function initialize() { map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), mapOptions); for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { var marker = new MarkerWithLabel({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), draggable: false, map: map, labelContent: locations[i][3], labelAnchor: new google.maps.Point(30, 0), labelClass: "labels", // the CSS class for the label labelStyle: {opacity: 0.75} }); } /* var marker2 = new myMarker({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(20,20), draggable: true, labelContent: "second" }); */ } google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'load', initialize); </script> </head> <body onload="initialize()"> <div id="map_canvas" style="width:85%; height:85%"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> </script> </body> </html> EDIT I have been trying to experiment with the MarkerManager, but I can't get the markers to create successfully on different zoom levels. First, I changed my default zoom level to 1, and then I changed my code to what is shown below. function initialize() { map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), mapOptions); /* for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { var marker = new MarkerWithLabel({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), draggable: false, map: map, labelContent: locations[i][3], labelAnchor: new google.maps.Point(30, 0), labelClass: "labels", // the CSS class for the label labelStyle: {opacity: 0.75} }); } */ var listener = google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'bounds_changed', function(){ setupMarkers(); google.maps.event.removeListener(listener); }); } function createCityMarkers() { for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { var marker = new MarkerWithLabel({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), draggable: false, map: map, labelContent: locations[i][3], labelAnchor: new google.maps.Point(30, 0), labelClass: "labels", // the CSS class for the label labelStyle: {opacity: 0.75} }); } } function setupMarkers() { mgr = new MarkerManager(map); google.maps.event.addListener(mgr, 'loaded', function(){ mgr.addMarkers(createCityMarkers(), 4); mgr.refresh(); }); } I have also tried applying the source code of this link as well, but nothing is working out. And when I copy the source code directly to my computer and replace all the icons with markers, the markers still don't appear. I can't seem to figure how to make markers appear using the marker Manager. http://google-maps-utility-library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tags/markermanager/1.0/examples/weather_map.html

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• Generating a drop down list of timezones with PHP

  - by Xeoncross

  Most sites need some way to show the dates on the site in the users preferred timezone. Below are two lists that I found and then one method using the built in PHP DateTime class in PHP 5. I need help knowing which of these would be the best to attempt to use when trying to get the UTC offset from the user on register. One: <option value="-12">[UTC - 12] Baker Island Time</option> <option value="-11">[UTC - 11] Niue Time, Samoa Standard Time</option> <option value="-10">[UTC - 10] Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, Cook Island Time</option> <option value="-9.5">[UTC - 9:30] Marquesas Islands Time</option> <option value="-9">[UTC - 9] Alaska Standard Time, Gambier Island Time</option> <option value="-8">[UTC - 8] Pacific Standard Time</option> <option value="-7">[UTC - 7] Mountain Standard Time</option> <option value="-6">[UTC - 6] Central Standard Time</option> <option value="-5">[UTC - 5] Eastern Standard Time</option> <option value="-4.5">[UTC - 4:30] Venezuelan Standard Time</option> <option value="-4">[UTC - 4] Atlantic Standard Time</option> <option value="-3.5">[UTC - 3:30] Newfoundland Standard Time</option> <option value="-3">[UTC - 3] Amazon Standard Time, Central Greenland Time</option> <option value="-2">[UTC - 2] Fernando de Noronha Time, South Georgia &amp; the South Sandwich Islands Time</option> <option value="-1">[UTC - 1] Azores Standard Time, Cape Verde Time, Eastern Greenland Time</option> <option value="0" selected="selected">[UTC] Western European Time, Greenwich Mean Time</option> <option value="1">[UTC + 1] Central European Time, West African Time</option> <option value="2">[UTC + 2] Eastern European Time, Central African Time</option> <option value="3">[UTC + 3] Moscow Standard Time, Eastern African Time</option> <option value="3.5">[UTC + 3:30] Iran Standard Time</option> <option value="4">[UTC + 4] Gulf Standard Time, Samara Standard Time</option> <option value="4.5">[UTC + 4:30] Afghanistan Time</option> <option value="5">[UTC + 5] Pakistan Standard Time, Yekaterinburg Standard Time</option> <option value="5.5">[UTC + 5:30] Indian Standard Time, Sri Lanka Time</option> <option value="5.75">[UTC + 5:45] Nepal Time</option> <option value="6">[UTC + 6] Bangladesh Time, Bhutan Time, Novosibirsk Standard Time</option> <option value="6.5">[UTC + 6:30] Cocos Islands Time, Myanmar Time</option> <option value="7">[UTC + 7] Indochina Time, Krasnoyarsk Standard Time</option> <option value="8">[UTC + 8] Chinese Standard Time, Australian Western Standard Time, Irkutsk Standard Time</option> <option value="8.75">[UTC + 8:45] Southeastern Western Australia Standard Time</option> <option value="9">[UTC + 9] Japan Standard Time, Korea Standard Time, Chita Standard Time</option> <option value="9.5">[UTC + 9:30] Australian Central Standard Time</option> <option value="10">[UTC + 10] Australian Eastern Standard Time, Vladivostok Standard Time</option> <option value="10.5">[UTC + 10:30] Lord Howe Standard Time</option> <option value="11">[UTC + 11] Solomon Island Time, Magadan Standard Time</option> <option value="11.5">[UTC + 11:30] Norfolk Island Time</option> <option value="12">[UTC + 12] New Zealand Time, Fiji Time, Kamchatka Standard Time</option> <option value="12.75">[UTC + 12:45] Chatham Islands Time</option> <option value="13">[UTC + 13] Tonga Time, Phoenix Islands Time</option> <option value="14">[UTC + 14] Line Island Time</option> Or using PHP friendly values: <option value="Pacific/Midway">(GMT-11:00) Midway Island, Samoa</option> <option value="America/Adak">(GMT-10:00) Hawaii-Aleutian</option> <option value="Etc/GMT+10">(GMT-10:00) Hawaii</option> <option value="Pacific/Marquesas">(GMT-09:30) Marquesas Islands</option> <option value="Pacific/Gambier">(GMT-09:00) Gambier Islands</option> <option value="America/Anchorage">(GMT-09:00) Alaska</option> <option value="America/Ensenada">(GMT-08:00) Tijuana, Baja California</option> <option value="Etc/GMT+8">(GMT-08:00) Pitcairn Islands</option> <option value="America/Los_Angeles">(GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)</option> <option value="America/Denver">(GMT-07:00) Mountain Time (US & Canada)</option> <option value="America/Chihuahua">(GMT-07:00) Chihuahua, La Paz, Mazatlan</option> <option value="America/Dawson_Creek">(GMT-07:00) Arizona</option> <option value="America/Belize">(GMT-06:00) Saskatchewan, Central America</option> <option value="America/Cancun">(GMT-06:00) Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey</option> <option value="Chile/EasterIsland">(GMT-06:00) Easter Island</option> <option value="America/Chicago">(GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)</option> <option value="America/New_York">(GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)</option> <option value="America/Havana">(GMT-05:00) Cuba</option> <option value="America/Bogota">(GMT-05:00) Bogota, Lima, Quito, Rio Branco</option> <option value="America/Caracas">(GMT-04:30) Caracas</option> <option value="America/Santiago">(GMT-04:00) Santiago</option> <option value="America/La_Paz">(GMT-04:00) La Paz</option> <option value="Atlantic/Stanley">(GMT-04:00) Faukland Islands</option> <option value="America/Campo_Grande">(GMT-04:00) Brazil</option> <option value="America/Goose_Bay">(GMT-04:00) Atlantic Time (Goose Bay)</option> <option value="America/Glace_Bay">(GMT-04:00) Atlantic Time (Canada)</option> <option value="America/St_Johns">(GMT-03:30) Newfoundland</option> <option value="America/Araguaina">(GMT-03:00) UTC-3</option> <option value="America/Montevideo">(GMT-03:00) Montevideo</option> <option value="America/Miquelon">(GMT-03:00) Miquelon, St. Pierre</option> <option value="America/Godthab">(GMT-03:00) Greenland</option> <option value="America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires">(GMT-03:00) Buenos Aires</option> <option value="America/Sao_Paulo">(GMT-03:00) Brasilia</option> <option value="America/Noronha">(GMT-02:00) Mid-Atlantic</option> <option value="Atlantic/Cape_Verde">(GMT-01:00) Cape Verde Is.</option> <option value="Atlantic/Azores">(GMT-01:00) Azores</option> <option value="Europe/Belfast">(GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Belfast</option> <option value="Europe/Dublin">(GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin</option> <option value="Europe/Lisbon">(GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Lisbon</option> <option value="Europe/London">(GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : London</option> <option value="Africa/Abidjan">(GMT) Monrovia, Reykjavik</option> <option value="Europe/Amsterdam">(GMT+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna</option> <option value="Europe/Belgrade">(GMT+01:00) Belgrade, Bratislava, Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague</option> <option value="Europe/Brussels">(GMT+01:00) Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris</option> <option value="Africa/Algiers">(GMT+01:00) West Central Africa</option> <option value="Africa/Windhoek">(GMT+01:00) Windhoek</option> <option value="Asia/Beirut">(GMT+02:00) Beirut</option> <option value="Africa/Cairo">(GMT+02:00) Cairo</option> <option value="Asia/Gaza">(GMT+02:00) Gaza</option> <option value="Africa/Blantyre">(GMT+02:00) Harare, Pretoria</option> <option value="Asia/Jerusalem">(GMT+02:00) Jerusalem</option> <option value="Europe/Minsk">(GMT+02:00) Minsk</option> <option value="Asia/Damascus">(GMT+02:00) Syria</option> <option value="Europe/Moscow">(GMT+03:00) Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd</option> <option value="Africa/Addis_Ababa">(GMT+03:00) Nairobi</option> <option value="Asia/Tehran">(GMT+03:30) Tehran</option> <option value="Asia/Dubai">(GMT+04:00) Abu Dhabi, Muscat</option> <option value="Asia/Yerevan">(GMT+04:00) Yerevan</option> <option value="Asia/Kabul">(GMT+04:30) Kabul</option> <option value="Asia/Yekaterinburg">(GMT+05:00) Ekaterinburg</option> <option value="Asia/Tashkent">(GMT+05:00) Tashkent</option> <option value="Asia/Kolkata">(GMT+05:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi</option> <option value="Asia/Katmandu">(GMT+05:45) Kathmandu</option> <option value="Asia/Dhaka">(GMT+06:00) Astana, Dhaka</option> <option value="Asia/Novosibirsk">(GMT+06:00) Novosibirsk</option> <option value="Asia/Rangoon">(GMT+06:30) Yangon (Rangoon)</option> <option value="Asia/Bangkok">(GMT+07:00) Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta</option> <option value="Asia/Krasnoyarsk">(GMT+07:00) Krasnoyarsk</option> <option value="Asia/Hong_Kong">(GMT+08:00) Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi</option> <option value="Asia/Irkutsk">(GMT+08:00) Irkutsk, Ulaan Bataar</option> <option value="Australia/Perth">(GMT+08:00) Perth</option> <option value="Australia/Eucla">(GMT+08:45) Eucla</option> <option value="Asia/Tokyo">(GMT+09:00) Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo</option> <option value="Asia/Seoul">(GMT+09:00) Seoul</option> <option value="Asia/Yakutsk">(GMT+09:00) Yakutsk</option> <option value="Australia/Adelaide">(GMT+09:30) Adelaide</option> <option value="Australia/Darwin">(GMT+09:30) Darwin</option> <option value="Australia/Brisbane">(GMT+10:00) Brisbane</option> <option value="Australia/Hobart">(GMT+10:00) Hobart</option> <option value="Asia/Vladivostok">(GMT+10:00) Vladivostok</option> <option value="Australia/Lord_Howe">(GMT+10:30) Lord Howe Island</option> <option value="Etc/GMT-11">(GMT+11:00) Solomon Is., New Caledonia</option> <option value="Asia/Magadan">(GMT+11:00) Magadan</option> <option value="Pacific/Norfolk">(GMT+11:30) Norfolk Island</option> <option value="Asia/Anadyr">(GMT+12:00) Anadyr, Kamchatka</option> <option value="Pacific/Auckland">(GMT+12:00) Auckland, Wellington</option> <option value="Etc/GMT-12">(GMT+12:00) Fiji, Kamchatka, Marshall Is.</option> <option value="Pacific/Chatham">(GMT+12:45) Chatham Islands</option> <option value="Pacific/Tongatapu">(GMT+13:00) Nuku'alofa</option> <option value="Pacific/Kiritimati">(GMT+14:00) Kiritimati</option> Or just using PHP it's self $timezones = DateTimeZone::listAbbreviations(); $cities = array(); foreach( $timezones as $key => $zones ) { foreach( $zones as $id => $zone ) { /** * Only get timezones explicitely not part of "Others". * @see http://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.others.php */ if ( preg_match( '/^(America|Antartica|Arctic|Asia|Atlantic|Europe|Indian|Pacific)\//', $zone['timezone_id'] ) && $zone['timezone_id']) { $cities[$zone['timezone_id']][] = $key; } } } // For each city, have a comma separated list of all possible timezones for that city. foreach( $cities as $key => $value ) $cities[$key] = join( ', ', $value); // Only keep one city (the first and also most important) for each set of possibilities. $cities = array_unique( $cities ); // Sort by area/city name. ksort( $cities ); It seems like the last one would be the safest as it would grow with the PHP release being used. You could also flip that array around when needed to tie timezones to city names.

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