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Mr Euro
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Post by Mr Euro »

EuroBillTracker wrote: I understand very well what you would benefit from getting access to EBT's database: more bills, more hits, more interest,more users
Sounds like mr Euro :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

I tell you why I am a happy Eurobilltrackeruser and plan to stay for a long time.

1. We have the most users/bills/countries participating
2. Our online-community is very close one. You can learn about euro in general, about coins, bills and heck there are even funny and stupid polls. The frequent posters are respecting each others opinions AND talking to everyone on equal grounds. A newbie is respected like a veteran (Although 8 months is not really that veteran :wink: ).
3. We have had and will have good mediacoverage. I'm a true believer in EBT.
4. Hits are moderated! A small group of users are keeping close eye on the new hits. Fake hits are moderated out of our system. People checking out the hits are the best way to garante a hit, but 100% sure you never are.
5. EBT is just fun and EBT-people are doing everything to let it be that way.
6. We have some interesting people who help grow the site grow. Webmaster and some people who help him out, the forummoderators, the hitmoderators, the translators, the heavy bill-input people, like bankemployers, shopowners, pubowners, ... and then you have some journalists and PR people, graphical ones who help make banners and stuff... like thousands active users... need I go on???


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Post by Skylimit »

I agree to most of what Mr Euro wrote above.

I have registered to EBT after checking out some other sites. By merely looking at the stats, the number of new users per day, the notes entered (which you can monitor) I thought it was worth while to give it a try.

I believe it is just a matter of time before I will have a real hit. This is not a feeling I get when looking at the competing sites. You need a critical mass of real users, who are also willing to spread the word. You also need strong communities in different countries. The chat forum where people can socialize in their own language is a good initiative. Also the site has been translated into all relevant languages.

Each country has a few strong members, who are lighting the path.

What we have seen this weekend is that also media attention can give a sudden boost. I am however very fond of referral too. Where existing users give a hint to non-existing users to give EBT a try. The best way to grow however is to produce real hits at a daily basis. And that is why the hit list is closely monitored and moderated. Nobody is interested in false hits here I think. That's the culture around here. I like Thomas' idea of 7 people to reach everybody on the planet, but we will have to wait a bit more to see this happen through real hits

It's saturday, lets go out, not type...
Ciao
Time is on our side ...
thomas

Post by thomas »

EuroBillTracker wrote:I see absolutly no reason for you to use this communitie's forum to advertise your own site.
sorry for advertising and thank you for not deleting all of my posting. But it wasn't meant as advertising. It was meant as a response to
1. proposals by EBT-users to "unite the forces" of our two sites, and
2. the email-offer by one of the EBT webmasters to cooperate (s. the quoted EBT-forum track for the "history").

You and your users asked me to cooperate - and I'm not against cooperation. But no cooperation without coexistence :-)
EuroBillTracker wrote:I also do not agree with your theory of false hits. Our hit list is very moderated and I have in fact confirmed via emails the most interesting hits so I have to respectfully disagree with you here.
I don't have a theory about false hits, only an opinion about hits:

1. On my site, any "real" hit is welcome. By "real" I mean: two different persons (with different user names) register the same note at two sufficiently different times (and hopefully at different locations); "same note" means: note with same serial number and same value. [According to the ECB, on X-notes of the German NCB the same serial number might appear on all 7 denominations, while some other NCB encodes the value into the serial number.]

2. On EBT, only "random" hits are welcome. By "random" I mean that there is no relationship between the two users and both users have picked the note randomly out of the circulation, registered it and gave it back to the circulation.

3. My personal opinion about hits is, that I like "artificial" hits in the sense of my earlier posting: they generate a sociogram of a community. The notes are actually "tokens" which are carried around to related persons, not "money" with a certain value, with the additional advantage that the token is uniquely identfiable by its serial number.

But as I said, I have nothing against "random" hits and I admire the EBT community's effort to ensure randomness by monitoring.
EuroBillTracker wrote:I'd like the hundreds of hours spent on this project to be worth my time.
I understand, not only because it holds true for the webmasters of all the other sites :-)
EuroBillTracker wrote:So, to repeat myself, I see no reason whatsoever to send users from this site (the number 1 site!) to other sites in whatever capacity. It doesn't make sense for the site and it doesn't even make sense for them.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. I don't want to lure EBT users to switch to my site. They should stay here and continue to build the EBT community - of which I am a part as long as you don't throw me out.

All I want is to exchange euro note data. The users can stay where they prefer.

You see, your site doesn't give me the data of the notes I need, when I want to check something like: All N-notes of printer F have a "0" as the third digit of the serial number. How do I "prove" this on your site? No way. On my site your execute the retrieval "Serial number REGEXP 'N..[^0]'" and "Printer code LIKE 'F%'" - with the result that only one note is found (it has a "9" as the third digit, probably a typo for a "0" which didn't alter the checksum so it could pass the insert-tests) compared to 825 N-notes of F with a "0". And so on: at my site you can retrieve all kind of data as you like, but I stop here in order not to advertise ...

One model of cooperation by data exchange would be that the receiving site checks and monitors the incoming notes (and notifies the own site's users in case a hit note was received) as if they were inserted manually, while doing nothing with the notes or the users of the giving site. So, every site has to keep itself clean as it does anyway, and the unique characteristics, services and policies of each site is kept untouched. Only the pool of notes is shared and thus enlarged, so all users benefit: they can use FME for fast input of notes, EBT for clean hit lists, rankings, community and fun, and ET for data mining, collecting coins and getting background information (sorry again :-) ).
EuroBillTracker wrote:I understand very well what you would benefit from getting access to EBT's database: more bills, more hits, more interest,more users.
more bills: yes
more hits: yes, its nice but thats not my purpose
more interest: yes, but EBT users profit most
more users: no, most will stay at EBT - and why not
EuroBillTracker wrote:I am not sure what EBT would benefit from yours; in fact, like I wrote above; I know that I would have to pay a hefty cost just to do so.
OK, the cost (of programming) is high - but lower than your wonderful Babel (I'm looking forward to the public domain version - I can imagine how difficult it is to juggle with 9 languages since I have 8 myself).

But more important: EBT users would benefit most (s. above). After all, EBT users asked me to consider joining the forces - and certainly not because they wanted to see my site closed.
TC wrote:Indeed, waste time to encode bills one per one... not for me... especially after the advanced form of EBT... and especially too if i am "obliged" to mark all the bills...
Indeed, advanced input is quite a help, that's admitted. But at my site no one is obliged to mark bills. First, marking bills is usually done at wheresgeorge. Second, EBT users discuss and sometimes use marking themselves. And third, marked bill hits are not "false": they are "real" and they are "random" (only the registration as such is "encouraged", but the notes are picked up randomly - by strangers - out of the circulation). And no one is forced to mark notes.

So much for tonight,
Thomas
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Post by EuroBillTracker »

Thomas,

I appreciate your balanced response and I think I understand your motivations better.

Babel might be out by the end of the week on sourceforge because I'm taking a week off before starting my new job. It's still very early stage but I'm sure you'll find it useful, I hope you'll contribute a bit back if you use it :)
BTW, I think your new design is really good !

Anyway, about the sites... I remember we had a little discussion about this by email a couple months/weeks ago and I suggested that you merge your notes section into my site and I would add a coin section to your site. You declined the offer because I think you were disappointed in closing part of your site and because you felt your statistics were more precise, as you describe above. Were there other reasons I don't remember ?

Here are a few ideas...
- I have a bill tracking site
- You have a coin tracking site
- I add a coin entry front end to your site for all my users as well as stats. IE coin entries on my site go into your database
- You add a bill entry front end to my site for all your users. IE bill entries on your site go into my database. I have already done such a frontend project for a euro website and it worked well.
- We add offline stats to each other's sections to keep users interested

- I ask you to help me write the extra bill queries on my site so you can query to your heart's delight (I think you're just doing an SQL pass-through so that would be quick) [this needs some thinking because of scalability issues]

You benefit
- I think quite a few EBT users will enter coins too, into your site
- You get press coverage because you would be mentioned in the credits section and in the coins section !
- You don't get censured in the forum for blatant advertising ;)
- You get bill rankings & stats for free... no extra programming
- you get thousands new users for a little extra programming cost and therefore increase the value of the time you spent on making your site
- others ?

I benefit
- I keep users interested by adding a new feature to the site with little extra programming
- I keep that feature on a different server which balance the load
- I make you a partner rather than a competitor
- I (maybe?) get someone who might help on some code
- I get more users too :)
- I get another german translator ? ;)
- others ?

On another note, how is your site hosted ? Dedicated ? What bandwidth do you have ?

Cheers
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Post by EuroBillTracker »

thomas wrote: You see, your site doesn't give me the data of the notes I need, when I want to check something like: All N-notes of printer F have a "0" as the third digit of the serial number.
I confirm this, I just looked. So it seems each country/printer is doing things a little differently like you said...
thomas

Post by thomas »

Webmaster,

thanx for your reply, too.
EuroBillTracker wrote:Babel might be out by the end of the week on sourceforge because I'm taking a week off before starting my new job. It's still very early stage but I'm sure you'll find it useful, I hope you'll contribute a bit back if you use it :)
Yes, why not, if I can. Just curious, does Babel support 2-byte characters?
EuroBillTracker wrote:BTW, I think your new design is really good !
Thank you very much! My son did most of the design/layout.

Yes, concerning your offer some time ago, I didn't like the idea to close my note section: I need access to the data for the satistics, and: notes and coins belong together :-)
EuroBillTracker wrote:Here are a few ideas...
- I have a bill tracking site
- You have a coin tracking site
- I add a coin entry front end to your site for all my users as well as stats. IE coin entries on my site go into your database
Please allow some questions: what would "as well as stats" on your site mean, when the coin database is on my site?
EuroBillTracker wrote: - You add a bill entry front end to my site for all your users. IE bill entries on your site go into my database. I have already done such a frontend project for a euro website and it worked well.
- We add offline stats to each other's sections to keep users interested
"offline" would exactely be what? Is it "not real-time" (like you do your stats update only every ten minutes)?
EuroBillTracker wrote: - I ask you to help me write the extra bill queries on my site so you can query to your heart's delight (I think you're just doing an SQL pass-through so that would be quick) [this needs some thinking because of scalability issues]
To create those cross tables I use, one needs more than one SQL-query, but "SQL pass-through" means: "A-site sends a WHERE-clause to B-site, B executes a SELECT and sends the result in some format to A", right? Could also all of my users query thru my site to their heart's delight?
EuroBillTracker wrote:On another note, how is your site hosted ? Dedicated ? What bandwidth do you have ?
Oh, I have to ask my son. He got me the host in the US and their sponsoring the web hosting - at least for some time, depending on the traffic ...

Cheers,
Thomas
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Post by EuroBillTracker »

thomas wrote:Yes, why not, if I can. Just curious, does Babel support 2-byte characters?
it (will) supports HTML entities which allow having greek or cyrillic or other characters
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote:Here are a few ideas...
- I have a bill tracking site
- You have a coin tracking site
- I add a coin entry front end to your site for all my users as well as stats. IE coin entries on my site go into your database
Please allow some questions: what would "as well as stats" on your site mean, when the coin database is on my site?
I mean that we would just find a way of integrating a coin entry form on my site which would POST to your site.
As for stats, it would have to be static HTML pages or serialized PHP objects that could be retrivied fast and updated every so often. Obviously, the links to the coin stats on my site could also go directly to yours as long as the layout stays consistent.
The same applies for the converse (my notes in your site=>the design would have to be consistent with yours and the upcoming traffic increase won't allow stats to be generated at every query)
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote: - You add a bill entry front end to my site for all your users. IE bill entries on your site go into my database. I have already done such a frontend project for a euro website and it worked well.
- We add offline stats to each other's sections to keep users interested
"offline" would exactely be what? Is it "not real-time" (like you do your stats update only every ten minutes)?
Yes that's what I mean. This is something you'll have to come to in time if you build up traffic !
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote: - I ask you to help me write the extra bill queries on my site so you can query to your heart's delight (I think you're just doing an SQL pass-through so that would be quick) [this needs some thinking because of scalability issues]
To create those cross tables I use, one needs more than one SQL-query, but "SQL pass-through" means: "A-site sends a WHERE-clause to B-site, B executes a SELECT and sends the result in some format to A", right? Could also all of my users query thru my site to their heart's delight?
No I meant that you seem to be using '%' as a matching character and that's exactly the SQL match-anything character so I figured you were just constructing the query directly from the various form entries.
What I think would be even better is
- user is surfing SITE A
- user clicks on section belonging to SITE B and gets directed to site B but with A's layout
- user uses site B

Notice that this means we have to synchronize user databases which poses some interesting questions as to how we need to go about that : explicit agreement with users or not...
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Re: Newspaper!

Post by bhoeyb »

DoubleYou wrote:I'm not going to advertise for my site
But you have a nice map system. Maybe you can share the principle with this EBT-site to visual real hits?
thomas

Post by thomas »

still being in the asking mode ...
EuroBillTracker wrote: As for stats, it would have to be static HTML pages or serialized PHP objects that could be retrivied fast and updated every so often.
static HTML I understand (although a tricky thing because there might be many many different queries to satisfy), but what do you mean be "serialized" objects?
EuroBillTracker wrote:Obviously, the links to the coin stats on my site could also go directly to yours as long as the layout stays consistent.
That was basically your original proposal: to have a link on your site to my coins?
EuroBillTracker wrote:What I think would be even better is
- user is surfing SITE A
- user clicks on section belonging to SITE B and gets directed to site B but with A's layout
- user uses site B
"using" site B ... by POSTing HTML-forms to site B?
EuroBillTracker wrote:Notice that this means we have to synchronize user databases which poses some interesting questions as to how we need to go about that : explicit agreement with users or not...
Wrt data protection: I don't have user registration, therefore all data (except user email address) is openly retrievable anyway; so basically no problem on my side.

But wrt copy right: who owns the copyright of a data entry in a database: the one who has entered the data or the one who owns/operates the database?

Interesting question!

Thomas
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Re: Newspaper!

Post by DoubleYou »

bhoeyb wrote:
DoubleYou wrote:I'm not going to advertise for my site
But you have a nice map system. Maybe you can share the principle with this EBT-site to visual real hits?
I got the proposal to work this out but EuroBillTracker doesn't answer for 2 months now. I'd like to do it, but it needs some adjustments. At school I had Java programming, so I know a lot more than before. Now some time...
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Post by EuroBillTracker »

thomas wrote:still being in the asking mode ...
EuroBillTracker wrote: As for stats, it would have to be static HTML pages or serialized PHP objects that could be retrivied fast and updated every so often.
static HTML I understand (although a tricky thing because there might be many many different queries to satisfy), but what do you mean be "serialized" objects?
it means that the files contain the PHP objects. For example, the rankings can be stored directly as a PHP array in a file. When you load the file you get the array back and you can play with it and make it look whatever way your want
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote:Obviously, the links to the coin stats on my site could also go directly to yours as long as the layout stays consistent.
That was basically your original proposal: to have a link on your site to my coins?
My original proposal was to add a link to your site in the links seciton. My new proposal is to integrate your site into mine and vice-versa. Although each of us would continue working on maintaining and adding features to his part.
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote:What I think would be even better is
- user is surfing SITE A
- user clicks on section belonging to SITE B and gets directed to site B but with A's layout
- user uses site B
"using" site B ... by POSTing HTML-forms to site B?
if you are refering to the last line, the user would be switching from one site to another transparently so yes. The URL would change at the top of the screen too (we COULD hide it in a frame but...)
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote:Notice that this means we have to synchronize user databases which poses some interesting questions as to how we need to go about that : explicit agreement with users or not...
Wrt data protection: I don't have user registration, therefore all data (except user email address) is openly retrievable anyway; so basically no problem on my side.
ok. Since every email in my database is unique I guess we could work something out... this needs some thinking..
thomas wrote: But wrt copy right: who owns the copyright of a data entry in a database: the one who has entered the data or the one who owns/operates the database?
Hummm... does it matter at all ?
thomas

Post by thomas »

EuroBillTracker wrote:
thomas wrote: ... "serialized" objects?
it means that the files contain the PHP objects. For example, the rankings can be stored directly as a PHP array in a file. When you load the file you get the array back and you can play with it and make it look whatever way your want
ok, so in this case one would not request a (static) .html-file, but load a .php-file containing an array. But this .php-file would have to be stored on one's own site to be readable, so it would have been downloaded first, right?
EuroBillTracker wrote:My new proposal is to integrate your site into mine and vice-versa. Although each of us would continue working on maintaining and adding features to his part.

[ ... ]

the user would be switching from one site to another transparently [...]. The URL would change at the top of the screen too (we COULD hide it in a frame but...)
no frames please :-)

To integrate B-site into A-site with A's layout on the one hand, and to switch to B-site including URL-change (and therefore switching into B's layout) on the other hand: how is that? Maybe I still quite understand :-(.

And what if I'd like to add some features in my note part (if it exists anymore), be it for technical reasons to make retrievals more efficient, be it for reasons to add other note characteristics like the "invisible" bar code or "banknote gradings"?
EuroBillTracker wrote:Since every email in my database is unique I guess we could work something out... this needs some thinking..
you have users' registration and therefore some of their "private" data, but I have no registration so all data are openly displayed in the listings except possibly the email address (because my users can choose to hide the email address), which in that case should not be displayed.
EuroBillTracker wrote:
thomas wrote: But wrt copy right: who owns the copyright of a data entry in a database: the one who has entered the data or the one who owns/operates the database?
Hummm... does it matter at all ?
Well, maybe some users would insert their data assuming that no other site is allowed access to them ...

Thomas
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Post by bhoeyb »

Sounds all like Chinese for me ... :? . It was just an idea :roll:.
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Post by EuroBillTracker »

thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote:
thomas wrote: ... "serialized" objects?
it means that the files contain the PHP objects. For example, the rankings can be stored directly as a PHP array in a file. When you load the file you get the array back and you can play with it and make it look whatever way your want
ok, so in this case one would not request a (static) .html-file, but load a .php-file containing an array. But this .php-file would have to be stored on one's own site to be readable, so it would have been downloaded first, right?
No, you would use fopen and use a URL to the other server as a file name. then you would insert to data and format it as you wish in your templates.
thomas wrote:
EuroBillTracker wrote:"]My new proposal is to integrate your site into mine and vice-versa. Although each of us would continue working on maintaining and adding features to his part.

[ ... ]

the user would be switching from one site to another transparently [...]. The URL would change at the top of the screen too (we COULD hide it in a frame but...)
To integrate B-site into A-site with A's layout on the one hand, and to switch to B-site including URL-change (and therefore switching into B's layout) on the other hand: how is that? Maybe I still quite understand :-(.
You define your HTML as a template that's compatible with mine, I improve my CSS and then we can use the same code to format the data but in different styles and colors.
Whenever, I get a request from a user in your site I use your templates. By default I use mine.
And what if I'd like to add some features in my note part (if it exists anymore), be it for technical reasons to make retrievals more efficient, be it for reasons to add other note characteristics like the "invisible" bar code or "banknote gradings"?
You don't have a notes part per se and I don't have a coin part. All URLS in my coins sites are actually URLs to your site and vice-versa. Except maybe images !
EuroBillTracker wrote:Since every email in my database is unique I guess we could work something out... this needs some thinking..
you have users' registration and therefore some of their "private" data, but I have no registration so all data are openly displayed in the listings except possibly the email address (because my users can choose to hide the email address), which in that case should not be displayed.
Yes, this needs some thinking over, but let's try to synchronize on the other aspects of this discussion first.

PS: I'm starting a new job and so I'm not very likely to be able to spend time on this right now!
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Post by Donald »

EuroBillTracker wrote:I'm starting a new job and so I'm not very likely to be able to spend time on this right now!
Don't know if this has been mentioned before in this forum. It's good to know you're back to the working world. I wish you lots of success.
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