RadioList Geoff Van Ess Malcolm Bixby

What is it? Who will use it? 1.RadioList is a service that gives people a list of radio stations in a given area. 2.This application is targeted for businesspeople, salesmen, tourists, and travelers in general. 3.Quickly give clients access to the music that they enjoy!

Scenario Jason works as a traveling salesman for a high performance vacuum seal company. He travels at least twice a month for his company, flying in to major cities and renting a car to make his various appointments. Jason is an avid music listener and is always seeking new artists. As a result, he often listens to the radio when he drives. Unfortunately, whenever he arrives in a new city he has to spend a great deal of time scanning through the radio stations to find one he likes. Unless he gets very lucky, this process can take up quite a bit of time. While he is searching for a good station, he is often frustrated, and at potential risk for road-rage syndrome. Instead of being a hazard to other drivers, Jason connects to the internet on his cell phone upon arrival in a new city. He types in either the zip code (obtained from any passer-by) or the city-state combination. RadioList quickly sends his request to the servelet and he is given a list of all the radio stations in his area. He scrolls down the list until he finds two stations that play the format he likes. Easily remembering and 92.7 he then picks up his rental car and keys the numbers into the rentals radio and away he goes.

Interface Result : Enter in City, State OR Zip code: Seattle, WA Enter in City, State OR Zip code: WQRZ Classic Jazz WSOB Bad Country WBUT Mullet-Rock

Architecture Cell Phone Data Sent: RadioList Servelet Input String:h ttp:// locator.com/cgi- Seattle &state= WA Radio- Locator.com WQRZ Classic Jazz WGHB Bad Country WBUT Hard Rock Data Received: WQRZ Clas sic Jazz WGHB Bad Radio List Servelet Output String: R adio-Locator: Radio Locator Search Results, etc. Radio- Locator.com

Lifecycle Plan Who benefits? Who Maintains? Major stakeholders are, obviously, the clients. Radio Stations themselves will benefit from this technology as they will be able to reach a much larger audience. Eventually, we envision Radio-Locator monitoring the number of requests for given areas, this will give Radio Stations the ability to track a rather elusive demographic: people who travel through a given region. (salesmen, conventions, recreational areas, etc.) Radio-Locator already supports a small program that allows clients to utilize PDA’s to view their site information but currently offer no cell phone support.. We can either support the RadioList package independently from Radio- Locator, developing it further as Radio-Locator evolves or. since cell phone connections are apparently an unexplored area for Radio-Locator, we may possibly be able to sell our product to them, leaving further development of RadioList to the team at Radio-Locator.

Can We Do It? From the last assignment, we have seen that it is relatively simple project to send a request to a server and have the server package the information in a displayable manner for the client to view. We built a sample servelet that successfully extracted the information we required from the Radio-Locator website. This is located at WA Radio-Locator is very stable, has an easily parsed format and has been in existence for several years, ostensibly indicating that it’s value is such that it will not be disappearing anytime soon. Should the Radio Locator page go offline – we are confident that alternative sources for this information can be found and adapted quickly for our needs, such as the FCC website or similar.

Open Issues: Error Handling 1. If the client enters a non-existent zip code s/he will receive a message indicating a likely typo and an option to return to the input screen. 2. If the client enters a non-existent city-state combo s/he will receive a message indicating a likely typo and an option to return to the input screen. 3. If the Radio-Locator site is down, non-functioning, or returns invalid data the Midlet will display an appropriate error message and give the client the option to try again. 4. The RadioList Midlet will check that entered zip codes contain 5 digits, that city names contain no numbers, and the state abbreviation is two letters.

Open Issues II 1. Screen and menu size. Since city name can be anywhere from 1 to 80+ characters (we checked), the city name will have to auto-wrap around the screen which may be annoying for some users. 2.Radio-Locator.com may possibly want to sue us for developing this technology without their approval. Especially since they already have a program that performs the same service on PDA’s.

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