PubWanScenarios

Describe Scenarios of PubWan use here.

So how does a humble consumer go about using PubWan to find information on software? What's that scenario? StarPilot sits down in front of his computer, and then what? Does StarPilot start a PubWan application to connect, or does StarPilot punch in the PubWan URL into his broswer? Can StarPilot review the historical pricing of certain software products? The difference in ordering them online versus buying from a local brick and mortar location?

'Pubwan client'

Pubwan should support multiple clients. Pubwan priorities should be stupid simple and militantly nonproprietary to facilitate development of many clients.

web clients

' MOO (multi-objective optimizer) query. I envision a number (say 10?) of rows. Each is a combo box listing cataloged objectives, a radio cluster consisting of "minimize" and "maximize" and another radio cluster consisting of "high priority" and "low priority". And an option for more than 10 objectives.

other internet clients

' ftp client for uploading XML, csv and other nonproprietary files to pubwan ftp server, as well as downloading data dumps. ' telnet client for SQL queries.

PC applications

' [[|http://www.geocities.com/n8chz/ent.htm spreadsheet-like front-ent]].

dedicated hardware

' [[|http://www.brightidea.com/obviewidea.asp?ideaid{7643717A-C33F-419C-9DC6-45CBCB0A77FE}&bucketid network-aware scales]] for weighing full and empty containers ' network-aware TV's for [[|http://www.brightidea.com/obviewidea.asp?idea_id={F1B2288B-7980-4273-9888-D2745AA53F73} TVNB]] ' [[|http://www.cuejack.com/ CueJack]]-like devices for leveraging the UPC system, which not surprisingly is coming under broader and broader intellectual property protection.

'Historical pricing'

Pubwan endorses the idea of time, date and GPS-stamping field observations. This is an example of how pubwan not only takes intelligence from the commercial sector...it offers intelligence in return. Software is one of many product classes that often come with contractual strings attached to end-user prices. Also time windows during which sales are allowed at all.

'Online vs. offline ordering'

This is an optimization problem. Precise solution requires cataloging of shipping and handling charges. This is probably impossible on a case-by-case basis due to restrictions imposed by conditions of use of retail websites. Hopefully pubwan can get away with charting industry averages for retail shipping with some vague cataloging of outliers. I| would guess that this is already being done as a "consulting" service.