More from the Bali diaries: Itinerary | Experience | FAQs
Bali – 4N/5D trip itinerary
Planning a trip there was quite a experience as I’ve already detailed here. But after much research, we finally had a plan for Bali and I want to share the detailed itinerary so you don’t have to go through the drill. We were traveling on budget – not the usual honeymoon splurge – so using the services of an agent was not going to help. I still checked with a couple and on hearing my budget (more on this here), they said I should look at another place as the airfares itself very quite expensive for Bali. But I was determined to work something out.
Day 1:Water sports
- Marine sport activities at Tanjung Benoa
Day 2: Head North (East route)
- Goa Gajah Temple
- Ubud art village (drive-by)
- Monkey Forest (skip)
- Coffee plantation & tasting
- Tegalalang rice terrace (drive-by)
- Kintamani: View of Mt.Batur & Batur lake
- Singaraja beach (sunset)
Day 3: Back to Kuta (West route)
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Ulun Danu temple Dolphin tour (missed due to bad weather)
- Gitgit Water Fall Continue reading Bali – 4N/5D trip itinerary
Padang Padang beach, Bali
More from the Bali diaries: Itinerary | Experience | FAQs
Ideas for a trip/vacation planner app – Part II
In the last 2 posts, I detailed the market needs, and the itinerary planner user story. Continuing with more features around maintaining content, creating a transactional marketplace for revenue generation, and finally some integration ideas to piggy-back on the success of others.
Content
- Search public itineraries based on destination
- System should suggest ‘hot’ holiday options – not in a salesy way – but genuine, recent itineraries that are verified for feasibility, cost estimate, etc.
- Suggestions/searches should be based searches based on demographic information: age, gender, marital status, profession, origin city
- Rate, review itineraries
- Maintain places with linked information: map, entrance fees, best-time-of-day, visit duration
- Maintain cities, categories, modes of transport, currencies, exchange rates
- When creating my itinerary, similar itineraries from other users should be suggested – verified, promoted, voted itineraries on top
Marketplace
- Directly contact agents on public itineraries
- Agents can view & receive alerts for shared itineraries in their service area
- Agents can submit bids that be reviewed compared side-by-side with included places/meals & merge itineraries or individual items [versioning]
- Collaborate/negotiate with agents on a bid, and finally award
- Allow agents to attach confirmations, visas, etc. – that remain private even when the itinerary is shared
Integration
- Accommodation: get best prices from top 3 websites for the selected date location
- Transport: get best prices to the destination, with “flexible dates” option, and suggest best transits worth a stop-over
- Rentals: for road journeys, suggest available rental options
- Traffic: use traffic information to estimate journey times between places
- Fares: get entrance fees and estimated taxi fares
- City cards: analyze entrance fees and suggest savings from city cards (e.g. iVenture card)
Strengths:
- Solves a real problem for backpackers
- Integration & market-place: lot of stickiness for a content + transaction website
Challenges:
- It might be a while before there is enough content – itineraries
- Ensuring simple design to handle required interactivity on all browser
Ideas for a trip/vacation planner app
Being a product manager is about not being content with what is around. I looked all around the place for a complete vacation planner app and finally created a wish list of what such an app would constitute. Continuing from the previous post on the topic, here is a high-level user story for each of my needs:
Itinerary Planner
- Start with a destination of my choice and add places to it [content]
- Each place can be placed on an interactive itinerary map
- Add category, description, images, comments, expenses (entrance fees, meals), attachments (bookings, etc.), hyperlinks, mark them as optional
- View ratings [integration]
- Auto-insert the place on the interactive calendar based on best-time-of-day information [content] and allow me to adjust
- Plan the journey between places by specifying mode of transport, journey time & estimate cost [content, integration]
- Add meals to places & journey with preferred joint & cost estimate
- Validate if too much is planned for a day based on visit duration [content] and highlight optional places from the ‘Going to’ bucket that can be moved to a ‘May be’ bucket
- When moving places around, system should remind to update the journey between places
- Total itinerary cost should be constantly updated and displayed in local currency so I can budget; highlight places & journeys without estimates
- Filter places on the by category, expense
- Share my itinerary with others on the website; email the web link
- Collaborate with co-travellers on the itinerary [roadmap]
Travel
- Print/Email the itinerary with selected elements
- Allow including embassy information, emergency numbers, weather, etc.
- Mobile site to rate places, enter actual cost & time, add public & private notes
- Update current location, upload photos & add notes that loved ones can view on a shared link
- Mobile app [roadmap], share location on social media [integration]
In Part 2 of this post, we talk about more features ideas and concept’s strengths and challenges.
There isn’t one great trip planner for my vacation!
A few months back I was planning my vacation and things weren’t as easy as I thought. I had figured out the destination, booked air tickets, short-listed places to see and hired a car. The challenge however was to set up a local itinerary. I had X places to cover in Y days with optimized routes so we weren’t spending all our time travelling. This required finding exact locations & distances between them so as to figure how much could be covered in available time. I had nothing at my disposal but Google Maps & notepad.
Based on my own needs, and the way I go about planning my vacation, here are some high-level ‘market needs’:
- Itinerary Planer: Create, visualize & execute itineraries on interactive maps & calendar
- Vacation Content: Genuine holiday suggestions, based on demographics, with verified itineraries[
- Marketplace: Get quotes from interested agents on my itinerary
- Integration: Link with booking, review, customer engagement & social media platforms
Am I working on this project? Continue reading There isn’t one great trip planner for my vacation!
10 international air travel tips
1. Keep copies of travel docs
Nothing is worse than losing your passport or tickets and getting stranded in foreign land. Always keep a copy of your passport in every piece of baggage. An extra copy of air ticket & visa won’t hurt if you recycle them when you return.
2. Distribute your currency
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket; spread money across your bags and some in your wallet. Use a spare purse or a self-sealing bag to keep the currency of the port you’re leaving that you can move back in when you return.
3. Check local weather
Weather can be a real spoiler. Quite a few parts of Asia & Europe are infamous for random showers. Be prepared. A folding umbrella or a monkey cap – or at least, the right pair of shoes – can really save a day.
4. Know about your consulate
It is essential to know how your country is represented in places you are visiting. It could be an embassy, a consulate or served by the diplomatic mission of another country. Fortunately, I have never had to use this information. But this is the first place and your last resort if shit hits the roof.
5. Download offline maps on your device
Avoid messy paper maps by downloading local road & public transport information on your smartphone, tablet or pad. If Google doesn’t let you, use Maps (-) on Android to save maps offline. And then if you have a local SIM, Continue reading 10 international air travel tips
Everything has an expiry date – except software?
I was having a discussion with my friend/colleague Amit Shinde about the quality of things, and he brought up this topic of expiry dates. Fortunately for us, here in India, we now – at least – have an expiry date for most food stuff sold on the primary economy. The underground economy – or System D as it is known – is so vast and so uncontrolled that the government cannot even dream of regulating it.
But Amit’s concern was much beyond perishables. He mentioned his iPlugs for example (I’m not a Apple guy and don’t know if they call the iPhone earplugs that). He said that although there was no visual damage, they weren’t performing as they did. After all, everything has a shelf life – which may or may not be straight-forward to predict.
Take vessels for example. The old copper & brass vessels – now costly souveniers – have served families for years. There even exists a maintence process to extend its life. But the non-stick we use today in our fast lives is not built for centuries. Who knows how the coating disintegrates or how the lower layers react with oil/soap. I’m sure there is a point at which it has to be discarded – which is left to the consumer’s discretion. And when it comes to Indians, experimenting overage tolerances on expiry dates
Continue reading Everything has an expiry date – except software?
PHP: Print amount or number in words
Its been real long since I updated this space. And instead of adding something for the heck of it, I thought of posting something really useful. This is a piece of PHP code that returns an amount/number in words. This is in English, but you can easily translate it to your own. Hope this helps!
This reminds me of Semester 1 assignment given by Shalini Puri ma’am to determine the optimal number of currency coins & notes required to put together a specified amount. Good old days!
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class Money { // Uses the Thousand, Lakh, Crore format CONST ThouLakhCrore = 0; // Uses the Thousand, Million, Billion format CONST ThouMilBil = 1; public static function amountToWords($no, $currency='INR', $formatString = '%UNIT% %WHOLE% & %FRACTION% %SUBUNIT%', $option = self::ThouLakhCrore) { if ($no == 0) return "Zero"; $words = $formatString; $whole = ''; $fraction = ''; $wholeInt = floor($no); $whole = ($wholeInt == 0) ? 'Zero' : self::words_big($wholeInt, $option); $fracInt = (int) (($no - $wholeInt) * 100) % 100; $fraction = ($fracInt == 0) ? 'Zero' : self::words_tens($fracInt); // TBD: Lookup unit, subunit for $currency & replace values below $curr_unit = 'Rs.'; $curr_subunit = 'paise'; $words = str_replace('%WHOLE%', $whole, $words); $words = str_replace('%FRACTION%', $fraction, $words); $words = str_replace('%UNIT%', $curr_unit, $words); $words = str_replace('%SUBUNIT%', $curr_subunit, $words); return ucfirst($words); } protected static function words_big($no, $option) { $descSingular = $option == 0 ? array("Thousand", "Lakh", "Crore", "Thousand Crore") : array("Thousand", "Million", "Billion", "Trillion"); $descPlural = $option == 0 ? array("Thousand", "Lakhs", "Crores", "Thousand Crores") : array("Thousand", "Million", "Billion", "Trillion"); $compare = $option == 0 ? array(1000, 100000, 10000000, 10000000000) : array(1000, 1000000, 1000000000, 1000000000000); $divide = count($descSingular); $loop = $divide; $words = ''; /* handle upto thousand */ for ($i = $loop - 1; $i >= 0; $i--) { $nos = ($i == $loop - 1) ? $no : $no % $compare[$i + 1]; $split = (int) floor($nos / $compare[$i]); if ($split > 0) { if ($split < 100) $words .= ' ' . self::words_tens($split) . ' ' . ($split == 1 ? $descSingular[$i] : $descPlural[$i]); if ($split >= 100 && $split < 1000) $words .= ' ' . self::words_hundreds($split) . ' ' . $descPlural[$i]; else if ($split >= 1000) $words .= ' ' . self::words_big($split, $option) . ' ' . $descPlural[$i]; } if ($i == 0) { $hundred = (int) $no % 1000; if ($hundred > 0 && $hundred < 999) $words .= ' ' . self::words_hundreds($hundred); } } return trim($words); } protected static function words_hundreds($no) { $words = ''; if ($no > 999) throw new Exception("Invalid call to hundreds function"); $hundreds = 0; if ($no > 99) { $hundreds = floor($no / 100); $words = self::words_units($hundreds) . ' ' . "Hundred"; } $words .= ' ' . self::words_tens($no - (100 * $hundreds)); return trim($words); } protected static function words_tens($no) { $words = ''; if ($no > 99) throw new Exception("Invalid call to Tens function"); $tens = floor($no / 10); if ($tens > 1) { switch ($tens) { case 2: $words = "Twenty"; break; case 3: $words = "Thirty"; break; case 4: $words = "Forty"; break; case 5: $words = "Fifty"; break; case 6: $words = "Sixty"; break; case 7: $words = "Seventy"; break; case 8: $words = "Eighty"; break; case 9: $words = "Ninety"; break; default: break; } $words .= ' ' . self::words_units($no - $tens * 10); } else $words = self::words_units($no); return trim($words); } protected static function words_units($no) { $words = ''; if ($no > 19) throw new Exception("Invalid call to Units function"); switch ($no) { case 1: $words = "One"; break; case 2: $words = "Two"; break; case 3: $words = "Three"; break; case 4: $words = "Four"; break; case 5: $words = "Five"; break; case 6: $words = "Six"; break; case 7: $words = "Seven"; break; case 8: $words = "Eight"; break; case 9: $words = "Nine"; break; case 10: $words = "Ten"; break; case 11: $words = "Eleven"; break; case 12: $words = "Twelve"; break; case 13: $words = "Thirteen"; break; case 14: $words = "Fourteen"; break; case 15: $words = "Fifteen"; break; case 16: $words = "Sixteen"; break; case 17: $words = "Seventeen"; break; case 18: $words = "Eighteen"; break; case 19: $words = "Nineteen"; break; default: break; } return $words; } } |
Rapid application development & web frameworks
Rapid Development
Over the last decade, there has been a massive growth in the number of web-based applications. For every category – email, collaboration or knowledge management to name a few – there are a large number of applications available, and new ones on their way. This has created extreme competition in the market with each application claiming to be better than the other. Even if a new concept exists that is strong enough to drive the market, time-to-market is a crucial factor that will decide the success of the product.
To address this, a rapid application development strategy needs to be in place so that the product and incremental features can be delivered at the expected rate which is dictated by the market & customers. Besides this, development needs to also follow an agile model so as accommodate ever-changing business requirements. This is especially true in the case of product development, where a single product must fit multiple customers with varying business requirements, and the classic waterfall model can lead to complete failure.
Web Application Frameworks
A web application framework (‘framework’ hereon) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, Web applications and Web services by providing core, non-functional features out-of-the-box. A framework streamlines application development by automating many of the patterns employed for a given purpose and thus resolve the overheads associated with common activities performed in web development.
A framework also adds structure to the code, prompting the developer to write better, more readable, and more maintainable code. It promotes code reuse through the use of libraries for database access (using ORM), template engines, session and user management, logging, internationalization, etc.
Framework selection (we’ll elaborate this in the next post) is thus crucial in delivering the required functional & non-functional requirements within stipulated timelines. Non-functional are the primary influencers Continue reading Rapid application development & web frameworks