Tips for accessing the last autoincrement id.

As a followup on my previous post on the potential of a Smart Meter API, I’ve put together a quick proof of concept using the rate chart located here. Ideally, you’d want this data to be supllied live by the LDC or lacking such support, screen scraped from the LDC’s website to automatically monitor unexpected on-peak periods. A basic HTTP request with the parameters will return the current rates. A brief demo is available at http://dev.thinkit.ca/testpi.php. Don’t expect anything too exciting unless you’re sitting there just prior to a rate change. It will update itself every 60 seconds with a little Ajax magic.

37Signals, the makers of Basecamp, and Ruby on Rails recently released a free html version of their book Getting Real. I had purchased the book several months ago and there are some useful approaches in there and if you’re a developer, UI engineer, or even a project manager, it’s probably worth a read. Grab a cup of coffee, and get a copy of the free version here.

There was a liquidation book sale over at the Lincholn Heights mall. For $20, they let you fill up a plastic bag with as many books as you could fit in one bag. For $40, they’d let you fill a box. We headed over a little late, but I still managed to make some great finds. It was a lot of scanning the areas for titles I recognized – some are a little dated, but most of the principles remain relevant. I picked up:

• Bricks to Clicks, Ed McMahon
• Creative Strategy in Direct Marketing
• The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers, Douglas Atkin
• The Value Profit Chain, James L. Heskit et al.
• The Cluetrain Manifesto, Rick Levine, Chirtopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger

Now I just need to find the time to read them.

Seth Godin speaks at Google

Watch the Video