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Python Success Stories Introduction This story is about applying Python in the automated CD/DVD disc packaging industry. In the wholesale market, CD/DVD discs are sold in units of 10, 20 or 50 in one shrink-wrapped bulk package. Counting out stacks of discs for these packages is labor-intensive and requires several steps to accomplish: picking up an estimated number of discs from a large stack, verifying the correctness of the number of discs using a disc counter, adding or removing discs t...
Python Success Stories Introduction The Blind Audio Tactile Mapping System (BATS) seeks to provide access to maps for the blind and visually impaired. Our goal is to devise ways to present traditionally visual information to the user's other senses. The need for this project became clear when Jason Morris came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study Classics. Morris works at the Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC), a foundation to advance the field of ancient studies with ...
Python Success Stories Introduction This is a story about how Python's elegant design can make the language useful in an unexpected way. Carmanah Technologies Inc. (http://www.carmanah.com/) was conceived in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The founder, David Green, was sailing his boat from Fiji, bound for Victoria, British Columbia. He was running low on battery power for his navigation lights, and had an insight. The eventual result of that mid-ocean idea was the world's first self-conta...
Python Success Stories Introduction Cog is a simple code generation tool written in Python. We use it or its results every day in the production of Kubi. Kubi is a collaboration system embodied in a handful of different products. We have a schema that describes the representation of customers' collaboration data: discussion topics, documents, calendar events, and so on. This data has to be handled in many ways: stored in a number of different data stores, shipped over the wire in an XML repr...
Python Success Stories Introduction The Devil Framework is a multi-platform (Linux, OS X, Windows), multi-user, multi-tier, distributed platform for developing process and technology integration solutions: developers can easily collect, integrate, correlate, control and visualize all information produced and consumed by heterogeneous networked hardware and software technologies. The project started in 1999 as a network security data integration system, but when we "discovered" that...
Python Success Stories Introduction DevNet provides a convenient way to keep up with changes on IT related news sites, without re-visiting those sites manually to look for new articles. It acts as a gateway to multiple news sites, organizes news by topic, and keeps track of which articles have already been seen by a given user. DevNet works by watching news feeds based on Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a popular standard for syndicating web-based news. RSS packages news articles as XML docu...
D-Link Australia Uses Python to Control Firmware Updates Introduction D-Link Australia's RMA department provides warranty services to Australiasia. Warranty services consist of diagnosing, fixing, testing, refurbishing, and packaging security cameras, modems, voip hardware, switches and router products. Problem Description Prior to the development of the software described below, the standard method of upgrading firmware during warranty service was to load settings and firmware onto a modem...
Python Success Stories Introduction I have been programming in C and C++ since 1994 and have led many teams in Windows system programming. In 2007, in the context of the Armadillo anti-spam software project at Enovad, I was given the requirement that the software must run both under Windows and Linux. To do this, I had to re-train my team of seasoned Windows system developers to also be able to deliver a product on Linux. I chose to re-evaluate the tools and programming language available to ...
Python Success Stories Introduction Development InfoStructure (devIS) is a small consulting firm in Arlington, Virginia that is well known for its work in the eGovernment sector. This includes development of small, medium, and large-scale systems. devIS EZ Reusable Objects (EZRO) is a content management system which can be used for many different kinds of websites, including traditional information presentation sites such as http://www.devis.com/, portals like http://www.milspouse.org/, train...
Python Success Stories Introduction ForecastWatch.com, a service of Intellovations, is in the business of rating the accuracy of weather reports from companies such as Accuweather, MyForecast.com, and The Weather Channel. Over 36,000 weather forecasts are collected every day for over 800 U.S. cities, and later compared with actual climatological data. These comparisons are used by meteorologists to improve their weather forecasts, and to compare their forecasts with others. They are also used...
Python Success Stories Introduction Frequentis is one of the world's leading providers for safety-critical solutions in the field of Air Traffic Management and Public Safety & Transport. With over 500 employees world-wide, it provides innovative, user-centered solutions to its customers. Frequentis has been using Python in its TAPtools® product family, which focuses on the Tower and Airport Tools segment of Air Traffic Control. These tools are used by air traffic controllers to track weat...
Python Success Stories Introduction The GravityZoo Company, founded in late 2005 is a pioneering innovator of Software as a Service (SaaS) enabling technology, Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence Systems. The core technology of the Company is its framework. This GravityZoo Framework is designed to develop and host any kind of application while simultaneously making these applications available at anytime, anyplace. The latter on any type of client device, be it a PC, a mobile client...
Python Success Stories Introduction Internet connectivity is omnipresent, finding new applications and giving old designs a new lease on life. In this age of small IC devices boasting TCP/IP stacks and wireless connectivity, one no longer needs a standalone PC to harness the Web. VAHNZ Controls developed its eBukal[1] remote alarm device to leverage their knowledge of microcontroller interfacing and Internet protocols, creating an innovative solution for the field of building automation. Re...
Python Success Stories Introduction Gusto.com began as an online travel site under the domain name EZTrip.com which catered to the traveler looking to make online flight, hotel and car reservations. As our customer base grew we started seeing a need to allow our customers to report on their journeys in the form of travel reviews, blogs, sharing photos and other post trip needs. While we've continued to develop and improve our online booking engines and related systems that communicate with...
Python Success Stories Introduction This article shows how I integrated Python, COM, DocBook, OpenJade, and Word together to create a documentation tool for BEACON, a visual programming environment. This documentation tool was used for code reviews in the software development methodology at my company, and led to significant (>$1M) in cost savings. Before starting this project, I had no prior experience using SGML, XML, or other document markup languages. It was only when I was perilously ...
Python Success Stories Introduction Journyx Timesheet (tm) is a commercial application that provides time, expense, and project tracking. In 1996, Curt Finch, Journyx CEO and founder, was working in the staffing industry when he saw an opportunity to use the web to accurately collect and store employee timesheet information. Journyx Time Entry Screen Zoom in The first version of Timesheet focused on collecting accurate cost information, with an eye towards applying that data in the formul...
Python Success Stories Introduction LoveIntros is an online singles community for people living in the Northwest United States. The LoveIntros Web application allows members to create personal profiles, send and receive anonymous e-mails, create private Web journals, perform advanced profile searches, and execute many other functions. By providing a safe and effective way for individuals to find each other, LoveIntros makes it easier to meet new people who have similar interests and values an...
Python Success Stories Background MayaVi is an open source scientific data visualization tool written entirely in Python. I started work on MayaVi in 2000. At that time, a few colleagues of mine needed to visualize their computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data but the only suitable tools available were commercial, closed source programs that were prohibitively expensive. We looked at some open source tools as alternatives. OpenDX had just been released to the public and at that time was har...
Python Success Stories Background The Molecular Modeling Toolkit (MMTK) is a open source Python library for molecular modeling and simulation with a focus on biomolecular systems, written in a mixture of Python and C. It provides standard techniques such as Molecular Dynamics or normal mode calculations in a ready-to-use form, but also provides a basis of low-level operations on top of which new techniques can easily be implemented. I started developing MMTK in 1996. I had some experience wit...
Python Success Stories Introduction My son Nat is autistic. He likes to look at pictures of familiar places, things, and people. We bought a digital camera so we could take as many pictures of as many ordinary things as we wanted, without having to worry about the cost and bother of film and development. Nat's tastes are difficult to predict, so we might take pictures of a subject certain to please him, only to find that he has no interest in them at all. We wanted to be able to cast a wi...
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