[GASM] Robotic High Weirdness by Mail

[Golden Applesauce]

So basically, this project requires two components
-a collection of letter pieces and images, and a collection of names/address to mail them two
and
-a program to assemble the letters and send them to whatever company which makes them in to paper letters, automates the Paypal transactions, etc.

Essentially anyone (this means you!) can help with Part 1, although I guess Part 2 requires some actual programming ability.  I haven't actually done any programs that make use of the interwebs, although since nobodies hiring this summer I have plenty of time to learn.

yes that's also what i found. they dont have a public API for that. probably because of copyright. however someone else might have written one. such things are called "scrapers". let's see.

hahahaha they *really* dont like it if you do that, it seems check this out

http://igargoyle.com/streetview/

There's always the Amazon Mechanical Turk, whose innovative approach to solving Hard Problems is to connect you to a guy with an internet connection in India who'd be happy to take screen shots of a dozen StreetView locations for USD $.03.

If we do go the Memebomb-on-a-picture-of-your-house route, we'd have to be careful which ones we use.  "Spoiler Alert: You Die At The End" has very different context on an image of where you live...

[Golden Applesauce]

Oooh, POSTFUL has its own API!  Note the sandbox available towards the bottom of the page.  Also, mailing lists - we could send the same few dozen people a different postcard every month!
http://www.postful.com/developer/guide

As originally posted, the bot would use del.ico.us tags for material - but that worries me a little because (unless I'm mistaken) we have no control over what gets tagged RHWBMgasm.  So, say, Daruko could tag 1000 images of, I dunno, Lemonparty, and we'd be in trouble.  Plus its harder for the bot to access such materials.  Seems like it'd be easier to just have our own FTP server or something where people could upload material.  Then, we could either approve things first or remove things later, or sort them.  e.g., mission header folder, image folder, mission body folder, etc.

Although I do like the idea of linking it to the OLMB rating site.

[Triple Zero]

yeah postful API is pretty simple and straightforward. I haven't checked out how to connect it with a Paypal acct though.

For the record, accessing delicious URLs based on tags is stupidly easy, but I totally agree with you about the abuse / subversion problem.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

It would totally be possible to create a PDF of all possible permutations (or a lot of them -- depends on if we have 30 pics and 30 memebombs or 60 pics and 60 memebombs) and sell it on cafepress, though I am unsure of whether or not that would violate something.

It would also be perfectly possibly to sell overpriced mousepads/tshirts/buttons/panties on cafepress for like a 3 or 4 dollar markup, which would give us a couple mailings for every purchase.

[the last yatto]

thousand 4x6 postcards seem to be in the 70* to 100(local green shop) dollar range
*http://myworld.ebay.com/joseluisdesigns/ via  ebay store gives you 100 free business cards too

[Cramulus]

Hey chaps, it's me, Discordia's Tom Cruise. I'm filthy fucking rich from genius endeavours, and hundred dollar bills are falling out of my pocket to fuel weird crazybots not unlike myself

and win

[Triple Zero]

OKAY

I CAN START SOME MORE SERIOUS CODING IN MAYBE A WEEK OR SO

(CAUSE I NEED TO MAKE €€€ MYSELF FIRST FOR FOOD AND FURNITURE AND STUFF)

[the last yatto]

here are some images that I had in mind:
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/HIMEOBSISWATCHING.jpg
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/VISION.png
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/gustavedorestamemora.png
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/himeobsscorpie.jpg
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/windmill.png
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb163/wompcabal/Stallin.jpg

http://yfrog.com/41adiosj
http://yfrog.com/epalohowdyj
http://yfrog.com/0roverthefallsj
http://yfrog.com/13twofacexj

[Cramulus]

YES those are perfect

[the last yatto]

CRAM THIS IS ALSO PERFECT

"3, 2, 1, PULL!"

[Triple Zero]

im totally swamped with this freelance gig that i need to finish (1 month past deadline wooo)

remind me in a week or two.

[the last yatto]

uh hey guys
postcrossing.com/about
flickr.com/groups/postcrossing/
twit @postcrossing

[NotPublished]

Ok, I'm reading up on the Developer API on the website.

Do we have our own webserver to use? If so, can we run cron-jobs/automated schedules?

For the mailing list the data will need to be stored as seperate fields

name           required
company  
address        required
address2
city           required
state          required
postal-code    required

I can simply POST data to the webserver, so I will muck around with it


So sending a letter is as simple as posting the following XML to the server

Code: [Select]

<mail>
  <documents>
    <document>
      <type>html</type>
      <url>http://webserver.com/document.pdf</url>
    </document>
  </documents>
  <addressees>
    <addressee>  
      <name>Winnie the Pooh</name>
      <address>4568 Main St</address>
      <city>Kenosha</city>
      <state>WI</state>
      <postal-code>53140</postal-code>
    </addressee>
  </addressees>
</mail>

They have sandbox accounts so I'll sign up and experiment with that

[NotPublished]

Double sweet!

http://www.christopherstevens.cc/blog/2009/05/php-post-cards/

He's basicly gone through the trouble already and made an API to use. I'm testing it out and it works perfect! From the examples I got some respones back

gallery Postcard: Image fill front Text Hello from my office tent. Hope all is great! Love, Your Friend Image 174056367-3191 Alabama 4-H Center Alabama 4-H Center
892 4-H Road
Columbiana AL 35051 Success! Order ID is: 373732

So after getting the response back successfully, I logged into the website and It had ordering history



And the full preview is a PDF document.

Fark this is soo cool! I'll test out the Page styled one (So postcards are good to go )


edit : Ok tested the letter function. Have to becareful with file formats with this one, you can't upload images for the Letter function, images only work on Postcards - which you can make as both Front/Back, where as Letters can only have images if its done via PDF (and I think quite possibly HTML also - need to test that)

- but here is the history I got after doing the letter one.

This API rules its soo simple

Code: [Select]

include_once "../PostfulMail.php";

$mail = new PostfulMail("spaceants@live.com", "******");

if(!$contentID = $mail->uploadFile("letterText.txt")) {
    die($mail->errors);
}
$mail->letter($contentID, "txt");

$mail->domesticAddress("Alabama 4-H Center", "Alabama 4-H Center", "892 4-H Road", "", "Columbiana", "AL", "35051");

$orderID = $mail->sendMail();
if($mail->errors == "") {
echo "Success! Order ID is: " . $orderID;
} else {
echo $mail->errors;
}

I can use my host space at ulmb to use this. I guess next step is gathering a shit load of addresses, and a interface to make new properganda to send out.

[tjg92]

This is awesome! You can use some of my "comics" if you want, they're suitably absurd.
http://bestcomikeva.smackjeeves.com/comics/161348/first-page-eva/