Development WG's famous to do list

[maarsy]

cant we select like 25 notes at the same time to edit the same thing in them

a small nuke explodes when i notice the town name changed after i enterd the notes without me doing anything

[Dakkus]

It is possible. Click the link "Contact" on left hand side of the EBT site, under "Mijn Profiel".
On the page that opens, there is a link saying "Nieuwe aanvraag Support" in the upper right corner of the screen. Click it.
Now you see a dropdown menu. Choose "Wijzig meerdere biljetten" and click the button saying "Verder >>"

The note entry date is given in the same format as shown in EBT. For example:
2009-02-01 13:56:01

Keep in mind that all times are east European time (EET), which is the central European time (CET) plus one hour.

[Ord€p]

news.jpg (47.61 KiB) Viewed 1009 times

Today, is February 14th but in the news area, there is a reference to choose the date of the Florence's summer meeting until February 7th.

[Phaseolus]

I would like to add a possibility to enter the position of a bill whilst using GPS-coordinates.

I am back once more from Portugal where its was very difficult to find out a precise postcode. Furthermore the current system of entering name of city + postcode is sometimes not adequate, for example for Ireland (already mentionned on the website) but also for other countries ; two weeks ago I was in SOuth-Africa and again, finding out a postcode was tricky as they do not really use these kind of feature...

Anyway, for some cases, it would be nice to be able to add GPS-coordinates.

Just my two-cents...

[WinstonSmith]

In my opinion, the user should still be asked to enter city name and post code even if s/he enters notes with GPS coordinates. Otherwise, city profiles would completely lose their role... unless somebody from the support team assigns every GPS coordinate to a single location, but then, it's better if the user himself does so...

[googlejaps]

Maybe GPS coordinates are not a good idea. Imagine someone entering the a note at a point in the middle of the sea/ocean. That'd be weird. Plus I haven't got that much of a problem finding out postcodes.

[Nerzhul]

I think the only useful application for GPS-codes would be an automatic matching to our internal location system. So user enters 52.518333°, 13.408333°, the bill gets registered in Berlin. The devil is in the details ... lots of zip codes in our location database don't explicitly have coordinates assigned, so you'd need heuristics for a good match.

What would you do with border cases where GPS coordinates lie NEAR a major city, but according to our DB not within? What to do with bogus coordinates, e.g. in the middle of the Atlantic?

Lots of trouble for very little gain in usability. I certainly won't touch this issue for the next couple of years

[Phaseolus]

Could there then be a tool making possible to give hints about cities and locations already existing in the database ?

I would imagine a kind of zoom-in map from the google-type where the closer you get to a point you could see what are the profiles of the (in the database) existing cities, together with post code. The Main profile could be identified by marking it with anotehr colour...

This could help whilst dot-hunting : I often has the case for toll-gates, or Portuguese Gas stations (all tickets bear the name of the location of the central office and the Motorway area name refers to a city that is sometimes miles away from the real location), or airports that are given the name of Paris, whilst it is Roissy-en-France, etc...

The problem is more specific in Portugal or in the Netherlands where the postcodes are really accurate ; a row of 4 houses in Portugal can be granted another postcode... And to find out precisely which postcode to use is very difficult.

The other solution would be for me to avoid going to Portugal... Obviously !

[CarlosManta]

The problem is more specific in Portugal or in the Netherlands where the postcodes are really accurate

I would hesitate before calling it a problem.
Yes, there is a 7 digit postal code, which for a country of the size of Portugal means you can have several postal codes on the same street, or a individual postal code for a toll booth.
As you know, however, you can use only the first four digits, you don't need the full seven digits. Even to send a letter you can do this. You don't get 24 hour delivery, since it goes through more elaborate processing. In EBT that also works, of course, but it is terrible for dot-hunting. Some cities (like Montalegre) are starting to print the 7 digit postal code on street signs. To sum up, Easy and inaccurate or hard and precise. What you can't have is like we say here "sun in your balcony and rain in your garden".
The issue of the postal codes and addresses on receipts, I find in every country. I guess it is some kind of financial regulation that the receipt must have the address of the company's main office... On motorway stops or toll booths even asking the people there for postal code is not useful, since nobody gets mail delivered to such places...
These limitations come from using a system created for delivering mail as a means of geo-localization. It kind of works, but of course there are limitations (toll booths...)

What I like about your idea of using GPS coordinates is actually getting rid of them. I would go directly to a GoogleMaps insert on the EBT page. The user just needs to zoom and drop a flag on the appropriate place in the map. You know, like the features on Flickr or Picasa to localize the photos you take.
Matching the coordinates to existing "city-profiles" would not be a straight forward task though. I would do this matching at the lowest branch of the tree. Assuming a big city includes in its profile several different profiles (e.g. different postal codes in the same vity), and these have individual coordinates I would try to match with the "lowest level". The user could have the choice of "validating" (You chose Berlin in the map, agree?) or even choosing the top3 or top5 closest matches.

I understand this is a lot of development work. Will the improvement really justify the effort? There's only one way to find out, and that is to motivate our amazing development team.

[maarsy]

Maybe GPS coordinates are not a good idea. Imagine someone entering the a note at a point in the middle of the sea/ocean. That'd be weird. Plus I haven't got that much of a problem finding out postcodes.

il buy something on the eurostar when im in the tunnel crossing the sea in that case

[lmviterbo]

There was another change on the "note report" sites.
When i look at a note-report, there is a link to enter more notes from that city, thats okay.

Thank you!!! This has been my top request for years!

Over-refinement: I would prefer the top line to say "Enter notes from $location ($zipcode)".

[Nerzhul]

I thought about the GPS thing for a bit ... I think what you really want is a reverse geocode lookup? I think this should be doable, especially with a prototype implementation readily available.

[Phaseolus]

I I think this should be doable, especially with a prototype implementation readily available.

I clicked on the link but could not really understand the link : indeed a map on which you focus and givingbthe name + postcode the closest to the point you located the bill would be VERY convenient !

[CarlosManta]

I thought about the GPS thing for a bit ... I think what you really want is a reverse geocode lookup? I think this should be doable, especially with a prototype implementation readily available.

It looks GREAT. You just zoom and click, and it returns both the coordinates and the address, including postal code.
(Unfortunately in the pt case it returns only the 4 digit postal code, not the full 7 digit one)
I believe it is extremely useful, I will bookmark it, thanks.

[Dakkus]

I thought about the GPS thing for a bit ... I think what you really want is a reverse geocode lookup? I think this should be doable, especially with a prototype implementation readily available.

It looks GREAT. You just zoom and click, and it returns both the coordinates and the address, including postal code.
(Unfortunately in the pt case it returns only the 4 digit postal code, not the full 7 digit one)
I believe it is extremely useful, I will bookmark it, thanks.

Just FYI, in case that you would happen to be entering notes somewhere, where you can't reach your bookmarks:
This functionality also exists in the normal google maps. Just right-click the location and choose "What's here?" from the appearing menu.