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'Electric Eye' Geolocation

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What Is It?
The 'Electric Eye' is an application extension added to the Diskery website that allows it Geo-location ability. Other than the website HTML content itself, the application only requires an additional 2K of data approximately. It was named after the Judas Priest song of the same name about a spy satellite.

Geo-location is the process by which your current location on Earth is computed and then used by a computer program. This program can plot you on a map (the old "you are here" sort of thing), give you directions, drive vehicles, access databases, you name it.

Where Do I Find It
It is located on the main search screen.

It is also located on the menu with this symbol:

What Does It Do ... and What Information Does It Use?
Diskery's 'Electric Eye' uses your geologic data to access the name of the city you are currently in and automatically inputs that into the Diskery lexicon to find artists from the city you are currently in. Because this information could be used to personally identify you, your permission is needed by your device to allow Diskery to collect this information. Diskery is sent a massive amount of information related to you (or specifically your device's) location. The information Diskery actually uses is:
  • City Name
  • Country
  • State/Province/Territory
  • County (Regional administrative district name)
  • Street Name
  • Building number (address)
  • Postal/Zip code
  • Latitude & Longitude coordinates
This information is NOT stored at Diskery, but is retained on your device. It is used by Diskery to access its database and is then immediately forgotten by the server. The information is stored on your device for 10 minutes before the cookie is automatically deleted.

Managing Error Messages:
You may access the the Geolocate feature only once every 10 minutes. Accessing it more often will force your device to simply regurgitate the information it currently has from the previous attempt - this is to reduce the workload on all devices involved, if Diskery's use of the geolocation database exceeds its daily quota you will receive an error. Often, the geolocation feature becomes more accurate after the second attempt. Other errors you may receive while using the application:

PERMISSION_DENIED:
You said 'NO' when the device asked to share your data with Diskery.

POSITION_UNAVAILABLE:
Your device cannot locate you. Perhaps your GPS chip is turned off, perhaps you are obscured by thick walls (such as a cellar or tunnel), bad weather or you are not near a structure that was archived in the geologic database.

TIMEOUT:
Diskery allows the device to take up to 30 seconds to find you. If it cannot locate you in that time nor has access to data less than 10 minutes old it will give up.

UNKNOWN_ERROR:
Some other error has occurred.

How Does It Work?
The Diskery 'Electric Eye' will work on laptop and Desktop computers, tablets and cellular phones. How it locates you depends on the device, but several methods are employed: direct communication with a GPS satellite, tracing of your IP address, triangulation based on the cellular towers relaying your signal, among others. Once the application has your latitude and longitude it contacts a mapping service to translate that into an actual address - the accuracy is not always perfect, as all Diskery is interested in is the city. Once the address is determined, the data is reconfigured and fed into Diskery's database to search for artists from that city. Diskery can conduct a search even if all it gets is a city name and country, all other information serves to increase accuracy.

The more accurate the information Diskery receives, the more precise it can search. For example, did you know that there are several cities in North America under the name of "Burlington" or even "Toronto", for that matter? There is a Burlington in Ontario, another in Newfoundland, there is also several Burlington's in the USA, most notably Burlington, Vermont. We all know of Toronto, Canada, but did you know that there is also a town called Toronto in the US state of California? There is a "London" in Ontario, Canada not just the one we all know in the UK! Therefore, having only the city name "Burlington" or "Toronto" may not be enough, even "Burlington, Canada" will be very vague and will cause Diskery to spit out all bands in Canada from any city named Burlington. However, "Burlington, Ontario, Canada" is spot on precise. (BTW: Diskery does not have any listings for Burlington, Newfoundland, Canada or Toronto, California, USA... we checked!)

There is a glitch in the accuracy... but it is one deliberately installed into the program to speed up the process and reduce overuse of the various computers involved. If you have used your device on any application that uses geologic services, your device may have stored your previous location discovery in its cache (pronounced like "cash"), a fancy computer word meaning "very short term memory"; memory used by the machine like you would use a yellow sticky note in the office, "Call Joe by 5PM at 000-000-0000". Diskery allows the device to re-use this old information as long as it is no older than 10 minutes old. Diskery also stores it's geo-location data in a section of your device's memory as well to ensure the behavior is practiced if you use Diskery again within 10 minutes. It is therefore possible that if you are in transit that you crossed a city boundary and the device reports to Diskery your old location. Wait 10 minutes, the program is not really designed to be used while you are in transit, rather - use it 10 minutes after you arrive at your destination.

How To Use It:
Let's say you and your buddies are sitting at the bar at the Queen's Head Pub in downtown Burlington, Ontario, Canada. You get into a discussion on what bands are from this city... so you tap the "Geolocate" icon on your mobile with Diskery running on your browser. A box appears asking permission to access your geo-data. You say "Yes". Another box appears introducing the application, you press "OK". A moment passes while your device has a chat with a GPS satellite and Google's mapping service who decides that you are located at "400 Brant Street, Burlington, Ontario, Halton Regional Municipality, Canada.". Diskery then responds with something like this:

Geolocation Screenshot

If no bands were found then you will receive an error message screen saying that there were no artists found in the database for your location. In the event you get the error: TIMEOUT try again in a few moments as the geolocation server database was busy, Diskery allows it up to 30 seconds to produce results.

To successfully use the 'Electric Eye', you must have the following:

  • GPS ability switched on (mobile phones only)
  • Data Allowance (mobile phones only)
  • Internet access and web browser
  • Allow 'Cookies' (normally automatically turned on)
  • Allow Javascript (normally automatically turned on)
  • Log into diskery using a secure socket connection (HTTPS:)
Manual Override:
This procedure is often referred to around Diskery as "the Dreaming Eye". The 'Electric Eye' can be overridden and made to believe it is looking at any city you tell it. This operation does not access your device GPS location systems nor transfers any personal data. See the article for information on how to do this.

Safety Notice:
Do not operate the 'Electric Eye' while you are driving a motorized vehicle, a bicycle or any other vehicle while on public roads as it can be distracting and endanger you or others around you. Note also that in some jurisdictions it is illegal to use mobile communication devices while on the public roads.

File record #: 52


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