Book tracker App

Introduction

Problem: Sharing books (hardcopy), Having a collection of books to be managed without missing any, this may include hard to find out of print ones and some might have been received as gifts or for reviews.

Present Scenario - Needs/Goals/Tasks:

No repository of Names (books)

Manual tracking

Difficult to recollect Borrower's Name due to big friend circle

No duration check

No status check about availability when needed

No track of Lost/Missing books

Expensive and time consuming excercise to search and buy new one

Category -Technical, Management

Background

There are many solutions to tackle this problem.

1.Tracking on a sheet of paper with -SR.No, UID, Book Name, Availability, Issued Date, Friend's Name, Category - Technical, Management taken care in UID - Unique Identifier.

2.Tracking by using Simple Excel sheet/doc/Text -SR.No, UID, Book Name, Availability, Issued Date, Friend's Name.

3.Generating unique bar code/QR Code for each book.

Sticking print outs of QR Code/NFC tags on books

Using NFC-Near Field Communication feature of Intel Ultrabook for sharing (lending, borrowing) and tracking books.

Database/App design using fields - SR.No, UID, Book Name, Availability, Issued Date, Friend's Name

Sending Alerts, and Requests in the form of email to identify availability of books though App.

4.Making a Dashboard with Watchlist having info - SR.No, UID, Book Name, Availability, Issued Date, Friend's Name.

5.Using existing Social networking site like Facebook, using Facebook API for automation with SR.No, UID, Book Name,

Availability, Issued Date, Friend's Name fields.

6. Keeping track of books in Oulook/email client calendar.

7. Keeping track of books by drawing on a clean Wall of your room.

8. Email To: < Borrower's name> CC: Self with Acknowledgement Subject: Book Name with Date time stamp.

9. Having Tokens with Book Names and keeping track of the same while lending and borrowing books.

10. Using RFID tags on books with SR.No, UID, Book Name, Availability, Issued Date, Friend's Name, and having readers or Mobile based hardware for reading those tags.

11. Having pinterest type site for displaying, tracking, lending, borrowing books.

Solution

This Project uses Storyboarding tool of VS 2012 has been used to depict various screens of the Ultrabook Windows 8 App, Since Ultrabook is loaded with NFC reader too and other hardware necessary for proper functioning of the App with Windows 8, this would be a best platform to showcase features of Intel Ultrabook.Prototype- http://fldt.st/9zk44o

Code Snippets

//
// HTML5, Javascript, CSS. At present coding is in progress.
// 

Points of Interest

Architecture of the App - There is a Windows Azure component (Web Role) which allows friends to submit requests to the application into a queue that's polled at certain intervals of time by calling a WCF service via WWSAPI. Client App in HTML5, Javascript, CSS using backend as IndexedDB and/or SQL server/SQL Azure.

History

Screenshots of the App for UI and coding in VS 2012 are presented.