palfrey / Travel_compare

README for Travel compare
-------------------------

This isn't really a proper readme yet, more a "here's some notes". Patches for this as well as 
everything else are very welcome (send them to palfrey@tevp.net). This project was originally 
generated as part of the EcoMo '09 developer sprint.

Setup
=====

* Copy tc.ini.example to tc.ini
* Copy a Yahoo AppID (you can get one by registering your own copy of the app at 
  https://developer.apps.yahoo.com/wsregapp/) to the yahoo_id. 
* Copy a Mapquest AppID (registration at http://developer.mapquest.com/) to mapquest_key
* Download the AppEngine environment from 
  http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/devenvironment.html and run the 
  development server (http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/devserver.html) to get
  the system running on your local machine.

One TODO item is making this work without all that setup....

Technical details
=================
I used the <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html">Yahoo Geocoding API</a> 
to get locations from whatever strings users gave me, then scraped 
<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/">Google Maps</a> for travel distances (admittedly for cars, 
but a reasonable first approximation to trains). Using the <a href="http://www.amee.com/">AMEE data</a>
for carbon footprints, I could then get approximate CO<sub>2</sub> values for planes/trains (assuming
there's trains everywhere, and airports outside your front door). I then scraped
<a href="http://www.ebookers.com/">ebookers</a> for plane times/prices (bit unreliable and darn 
slow, but got some data). I also used carbon.to's data for "bottles of beer equivalents" to the CO<sub>2</sub>.