The application comes in 3 parts; Containerizer, ContainerShip and ShippingLines:
Containerizer: An application for creating a shipping container and filling it with contents. To use it, simply drop files onto the application; the application will create a uniformly sized container with a unique id number on the desktop. Each container will hold up to 500K.
(Technical Overview: This is a GUI front end for a simple BASH shell script; which creates the container (a 600K Disk Image), with a unique id.)
ContainerShip: An application for loading containers onto the ship for delivery. To use it, drop a container onto the application; you will be asked for an email address for the recipient, the sender’s email address and a password, which will allow the recipient to download their container.
(Technical Overview: This application, again a GUI front end for a simple BASH shell script, sends a POST request to the web server, passing the recipient’s email address, the sender’s email address, the password and the disk image. On receipt of the data, the container is assigned to a ‘ship’; if that ship is full it is given a ‘sailing date’ and a new ship is created ready to take the next consignment of cargo.)
ShippingLines: This application is used for showing the progress of a container. To use it, drop a container onto the application; assuming the container has been loaded onto a ship, it will show the progress of the container.
(Technical Overview: A GUI front end for a simple BASH shell script, which simply opens the user’s browser to the progress page on the web server passing the name of the container. The progress page checks the current date against the sailing date for the container’s ship and works out what percentage of the journey has been completed.)
When a container reaches its destination, an email will be sent to both sender and recipient informing them of the arrival. The recipient will be able to then download the container from the system using the password set by the sender.
(Technical Overview Behind the Scenes: A timer runs an update script on the web server twice per day, checking for arrivals (ships where the journey percentage is 100%) and emailing recipient and sender with details of the transaction.)
