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Introduction

There are several very large online communities that each share information on upcoming sales, specials and discount coupons for all kinds of electronic goods. The wealth of information that these communities provide is immense, but they also tend to overlap and visiting each site in search of a great deal tends to take a long time.

The HotDealMap project is designed to solve the problems with the most popular 'hot deals' websites. HotDealMap will provide a centralized source of information for finding special sales and will also provide a location based representation of 'hot deals' within a user-defined proximity to a location. This new approach eliminates the problem of having to visit multiple websites and scrolling through several pages of posts only to discover there is nothing 'hot' near your city.

Organization

Database stores - city locations city name, lat, lon (of city) stores - stores store type, city, address, lat, lon (of store address), phone etc..

index.php (map is built) Event triggers JS, which reads current values from select boxes.

showUser(); [all.js] These values are sent via xmlHTTP request to a php page, where they are fed into two queries. This function waits for the request to be complete(below), then calls another function loadPoints.

getCityRadius.php Results from one query are used to fetch the city lat/lon (center point). Results from the other query are used to build an xml file of store locations (used for markers).

loadPoints(); [index.php] parses the xml file and plots the markers. Depending on attributes, uses different markers for each store.

User Experience

• Following the pattern of usage of 'hot deal' websites, users first choose to display a 'feed.'
• The generated list will only contain deals that can be found in a physical store location (Brick & Mortor or B&M).
• Upon finding an interesting deal from the list, users can then query the map to find out if there are any stores near their city.
• The map defaults to showing stores within 10 miles of the selected city; if there are no stores within that radius, users can then increase the radius from their city by changing the 'Display Stores' value.
• Map marker info-windows display useful store information; telephone number and address.

Limitations

• The application currently displays stores in California only.
• Future revisions could include the ability to specify any city rather than choosing from a predefined list.
• Currently only displaying deals and locations of BestBuy, CompUSA and Fry's.