One of the things I get asked a lot about are the JavaScript widgets that I make, that can be installed on third party websites. The VenueMirror VenueSearch widget at the top of this page is an example of this. The search bar is actually loaded through a JavaScript call that pulls the information from another server. This technique for loading content onto third party websites is not unusual, but it seems there are too few tutorials out there about how to do this. Firstly though – one must question why indeed you would do this.
Archive for the ‘VenueMirror’ Category
Creating Line Graphs in JPEG Format through PHP
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010A while ago I wrote about making use of information collected by websites – I find graphs a great way to do this. And while there are lots of great graphing objects, or tools available today, it can be a hectic scene to try and find a free one that you want for basic use. So quick modifications to existing code can sometimes be exactly what you need! Below is the code that was used to create the graphs seen in that previous post.
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Useful Currency Information by Accident
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
If you run a website, have you ever noticed how much data it accumulates? Usually, quite by accident as well… I was poking through some old parts of the VenueMirror website today and stumbled across a feature that I had totally forgotten we had implemented. It is of course one of those features that the code makes use of everyday, but it has become so inherent that it gets taken for granted!
There is a need for our system to perform currency conversions as transactions can take place across multiple currencies, and so currency updater was created to provide live exchange rates. Our currency updater is quietly used by our currency and transaction objects, and so once built there’s very little need for us to even think about how it works! Essentially it collects the latest currency conversion rates and builds a currency table for the whole system to use. In the process though, it has collected historical currency data.
So I thought it would be interesting to render this data into charts that show how exchange rates fluctuate. I built a quick bit of PHP to take daily spot rates out of the data at 11.30am and see how they compared to the previous days! The images below are dynamic PHP images, and should show you exchange rates for ten days started from 25 days before yesterday!
The script takes parameters that allows it to be customised on how many data points it shows, which currencies it compares, and how many days into the past it should end. Tomorrow, I’ll post the source to the graphing code, and the tutorials that are available online for you to get more information from.
Cheers,
K
P.S: Thanks to Mukumbura for the opening photo!
VenueMirror enters semi-finals for 3 categories of TravelMole awards!
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
I just found out this morning that VenueMirror has been shortlisted as a semi-finalist in 3 categories of the TravelMole Web Awards! There are 10 categories, and they saw approximately 150 submissions! The first category we made semi-finalist in is “Travel Innovator of the Year”, and we’re up against well known innovators such as the GlobeNet Travel Group. Who incidentally has already been highlighted as a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 company! We’re hoping our custom branded solution along with our iPhone application is what tips us as the winner in this section – but lets see!
The next category we were admitted into as a semi-finalist is the “Most Exciting New Use of Technology in Travel”! We’re competing against heavyweights like Intrepid Travel and The WHL Group in this category – and they have a pretty serious history in what they’ve been able to do! Against these big boys, we’re hoping that our extensive venue content distribution network across thousands of websites is what gives us the boost to take us into winning place! These guys do present serious competition though!
And the third category that we’re in the final running for is the “Best Travel Startup of the Year” award! We’re really excited about this one as we have to compete against industry leaders launching new startups like Virgin Blue’s new venture called VAustralia! With such mammoth competition, and to be among the top 4 shortlisted in this category – we’re proud to have got this far! I have a lot of respect for Virgin as a company, as they have a lot of experience across many service industries, and competing against them is a privilege.
For those of you that don’t know TravelMole that well, it is newswire specifically for hospitality related items. It sees a lot of traffic (and news!) from industry veterans and researchers, and is involved with many key hospitality conferences and trade shows.
I would like to congratulate all of the contestants so far! And say that we’re proud to be recognised along with such well known companies! Best of luck to all!
Share on FacebookiVinca Announces Partnership with VenueMirror
Friday, April 23rd, 2010Today iVinca announced its partnership with VenueMirror – one of the premier companies offering a whole range of services from the best hotels, meeting and conference facilities. iVinca has extended its services as a holiday provider for requests coming through VenueMirror. iVinca will also leverage its trip planning platform to Venue Mirror customers, in an effort to make trip planning simple. In this venture, iVinca hopes to get one step closer to the needs of the direct consumer and continue its stride in creating memorable holiday experiences.
About VenueMirror
VenueMirror is a two year old company based out of Bangalore and London which is helping to grow the MICE industry. VenueMirror is a website and software solution company that specifically targets the MICE industry, and aims to attract more MICE business to hotels and venues. In the last two years VenueMirror has grown at a tremendous rate, they currently work with nearly 1000 hotels around the world, with a large volume in India. VenueMirror has also stamped it’s name in the Asian MICE industry by acting as the official hospitality partner for some of the largest exhibitions in India.
About iVinca
iVinca is a trip planning and experience provider aiming to redefine the way holidays are planned, experienced and shared. It has a very innovative trip planning technology platform which allows B2B travel customers like Airlines, Hotels, Travel Agents, Tour operators, Online Travel Agents to leverage their platform for creating highly personalized holidays for their customers. The platform can be integrated in variety of ways including as a white label solution with the web site of the B2B travel customers.
iVinca’s key differentiator is its unique destination experiences in India and abroad with variety of diverse tours like Heritage tours, Adventure tours, Wildlife Safaris, Eco-friendly tours, food trails to name only few. With already more than 50 such experiential tours in its kitty it is striving to add many more in the days to come.
For more details, please visit www.ivinca.com. You could also follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ivinca and Twitter at www.twitter.com/ivinca
For partnership enquiries, please send an email to partners@ivinca.com
Share on FacebookVenueMirror gets a facelift and celebrates by giving away a week in Goa!
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
The VenueMirror website has had a fantastic facelift done to it! Everything about the website is now much more intuitive and it provides a richer experience when looking for great places to stay in various destinations.
In line with our ideals of only relevant information – we’ve tried to make it easier to gather as much information as possible about each hotel, their location, and what they look like in comparison to other hotels around it.
We are so happy with the new design that we’re giving away a whole week in Goa to celebrate!
There’s no catches, no restrictions, and no funny stuff. The give away is simple – the person that gets the most people to enter the competition before 11:59pm November 19th wins an entire week at a luxury resort in Goa at a date they choose! So start winning!
Share on FacebookOfficial Online Hospitality Partner for the Economic Times AceTech 2009!
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009VenueMirror is proud to be marked as the official online hospitality partner for the Economic Times AceTech 2009!
For any questions, concerns, or enquiries related to accommodation for this event, please feel free to contact us on the VenueMirror hotline at +91 80 4190 3290.
Cheers!
K
Crowdsourcing User Generated Content for your weekends!
Thursday, August 6th, 2009Yesterday I wrote about the concepts behind crowdsourcing and user-generated content (UGC), and the idea behind the post was that by using the collective intelligence of everyone on the internet that you could engage in, and learn, some incredibly useful things.
The biggest requirements however, are direction and structure. When totally unstructured environments are created – then the content can go any in direction, and it may not necessarily be directly related to what you want.
Take Facebook for instance: it provides an open area for content to be created – but with defined structures so that everything is consistent. This ensures that not too much deviation is seen from page to page. Thereby making browsing through profiles and applications much easier – the interface and the information on each page is considered relevant to the previous page. You know where to look for a particular link, you understand what each button is likely to do, and you have some degree of confidence about what you are going to see on the next page.
On the other hand, if you think about blogs, each and every blog is completely different and there doesn’t necessarily have to be any consistent structure. Photo blogs are different to text blogs to start, and text blogs differ not only just on layout but the type of content that they may be presenting.
Both are examples of user-generated content, and both demonstrate the difference between structured environments and unstructured environments. And both, contain massive amounts of useful information! So the challenge we were working with, was to understand how we could merge the two so that it became useful in a structured manner. We wanted to put together something which helped people decide what they want to do on weekends, and where to go on holiday.
With that in mind, we put together a user-generated content application, that relies on crowdsourcing to measure the reliability of user suggestions. And in order to make available much greater information, the application is designed to be linked to blogs with deeper information about the same content. What does all of this mean? Let me walk you through what we’re doing…
We’ve created a space for people to highlight and write “mini-reviews” on places worth seeing, or going to. So if you’ve visited a place recently that you think is noteworthy – in a either a positive or negative fashion, then you can write a mini review within 60 seconds about the place.
So, now image that lots of people write these reviews after they’ve been out for the weekend, or on holiday. Very quickly, there’s a lot of things to read through about places that you can go, and what that other person thought of. If the reviewer wants to provide more information, then the review can link back into their blog so that any interested reader can find out more. That’s the user-generated part, and on it’s own, would produce a lot of reading material!
The next question then becomes – how you sift through all of this to figure where to go, and what to avoid? And there’s where our idea of using the crowd sourcing element comes in.
While people go about making reviews, we thought that it would be good if those that are liked get bumped back up to the top and earn a point. That way, others that notice the item – if they still like it, can bump it back up again by liking it.
Very quickly, the most liked entry at that time stays at the top. As the place is visited by everyone and stops proving to earn “new” points (i.e. by different people) it slowly begins to fall off the top 40 list as newer more liked places replace it.
We thought that this would be a great way for people to find new places to go on the weekend and before they go on holiday! There’s nothing like going to a new city, and checking out a recommended club or bar by a friend that went there 3 months ago – only to find that the place has shut down. Then where do you go? (That happened to us!)
So we’re trying to help others in that same predicament by putting this out there!
If you have any suggestions or ideas on how we can make this better – then please let us know!
You can find the application today on Facebook at http://www.venuemirror.com/facebook
Thanks!
K
Crowdsourcing user-generated content so that it’s useful!
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009“Crowdsourcing” is one of those “new” internet words that Wiktionary defines as: “delegating a task to a large diffuse group, usually without monetary compensation”. It’s an incredible feature of the internet, and makes use of all those willing to share their thoughts or opinions on various topics.
The first articles about the concept hit mainstream media in 2006 through large magazines like Wired, and BusinessWeek. Coverage has continued over the years as the use of the concept has increased with ReadWriteWeb and even the Economist covering it.
Social networks like Facebook are based on a different premise known as “user-generated content” (UGC). UGC “refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users” according to Wikipedia. Social networking websites are great examples of this because they are typically structured environment for users to create material that is interesting to others.
UGC enables the public themselves to express their opinions, and this was initially noticed through the blogging craze that swept the globe. Now large media houses such as the BBC use UGC portals when researching and tracking major events. Blogs are definitely here to stay, as they provide great insight into thoughts, opinions, and happenings all over the globe that you may never have found otherwise!
Twitter is an incredible portal that allows for micro-blogging, thus becoming a hotspot for UGC – and even lends itself to live crowdsourcing of opinions across hot current topics.
When you put this all together – it represents a great way to discover new things, that you can have great confidence in being trustworthy! Tomorrow – I’ll post an article about how we think this can help you with your travels!
Share on FacebookWhat is "Make an Offer" all about?
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009The “make an offer ” idea is all about being able to travel comfortably, both in preference and in price.
The hotels that work with VenueMirror are all about helping people travel, enjoy themselves, and do business – so to that end, they are more than willing to listen to what you – their valued customer – has to say!
“Make an Offer” allows you to tell the hotel that you want to stay at their hotel, but the special rate isn’t the price that you’re comfortable paying! Sometimes this is because you want to stay at a particular hotel and have a tighter budget. So you can use our normal list view for this purpose and once you’ve found your preferred hotel – you can just click “Make An Offer”. Then jump to step 2!
But other times, it may be because you know you want to stay in a particular area, and don’t mind staying in any of three hotels around that point. In this case, you should use our “Map View” and for each hotel that you would be happy staying at, click the red marker, and then click “Make Offer” on that hotel. You can select up to 3 this way.
After you’ve clicked “Make Offer” you will see that the text changes to “Added”, that means that you’ve added the hotel to your list – not too different from adding it to a “shopping cart”. Once you’re happy with your selection – and you know you’re comfortable with staying at one of the hotels that you’ve selected, you will see a list of the hotels you’ve select in the black box on the right hand side – so click the “Make Offers” button to begin your discussion with the hotels!
Once you’ve clicked “Make Offers”, you are taken to a new page where you are asked to tell the hotels what your budget is for staying there per room per night.
Here, you can enter whatever budget you have for each of the hotels – this may be the same or different for each individual hotel – it’s entirely to your preference. Once you’re happy with the room selection, and the prices you’ve offered – you can click “Make these Offers!”. You will hear a response within 3 working hours of making the offers to the hotels!
After clicking “Make these offers!” you will be taken to a page where you will be asked for your credit card information. You aren’t billed until a hotel accepts your offer, but your card is used to secure your rooms and lets the hotel know that you want to go there! If you selected more than one hotel to make an offer to – the hotel that you will stay at, is dependent on which hotel accepts your offer first!
This was designed to make life easier for the traveler – as all of the hotels that work with us believe that travel should be comfortable, and they’re willing to help customers make that happen!
It should be pointed out that this is sometimes called “bidding” for a room. We don’t really believe that it’s a “bid”, because that implies you’re competing against somebody else. In this case, the discussion is between you and the hotel – nobody else is involved!
Let us know if you have any questions about any of this! I hope the explanation was clear!
Cheers,
K
