Unique serial numbers from Autorun?

[Squishy]

Hello,

My company is giving out USB drives at trade shows that will have an autorun on them -- most likely built from Autoplay Media Studio 7.5.

My question is about customizing links to our website from the autorun. We want to track usage and the plan is as follows:

1. Put a text file on the USB drive with a serial number in it.
2. Have the autoplay read the serial number from the file and append it to links in the autorun, example: www.mysite.com?id=SERIALNUM

Is #2 possible? It doesn't seem feasible to make a unique autorun for each drive with a serial number embedded, since the plan is to distribute thousands of the devices.

Can some kind person let me know if this method will work, any insights on how to do it with AMS, or if there is a better approach?

Much thanks,

-Tim

[Ulrich]

Hi,

if you need only a way to identify the users individually, you could use System.GetLANInfo(). You could use the NIC as unique identifier (of the LAN card), perhaps performing a XOR with a "magic number" on the identifier before sending it over the web server. You wouldn't need to include another unique serial number on the USB drive.

Ulrich

[Squishy]

That's a pretty nifty idea... thanks for sharing! If they use the drive from different computers / networks, the number will be different though, right?

We'd like to know which unique ID is associated with which drive, so we can track which users use them and which don't, as well as which trade shows get better responses. In order to do that, we were planning on noting "drive #1234 was given to customer X" and running reports off that.

Do you have any ideas on how to pull off something like that?

[DaSoulRed]

What Kind off info do want to collect and send.?

Just info.

do u want a file to be send?

:)

[Ulrich]

Well, in this case, I would make it slightly different.

At the start of the project, I would check for the existence of a certain file on the USB drive, for example call it "fair.lic" or something like that. If the file does not exist, or has invalid contents, show a page in your project, where the user has to tell on which fair he got the USB drive (and perhaps leave some additional personal data). Send the data with HTTP.Submit() and retrieve a "serial number" as a response. Save this serial in the "lic" file on the USB drive, which from this point on identifies the device, even if it changes hands. The identification page should not be shown again, as long as the file is kept on the device.

Ulrich

[DaSoulRed]

What Kind off info do want to collect and send.?

Just info.

do u want a file to be send?

:)

What Kind off info do want to collect and send.?

[Squishy]

Very helpful, appreciate the info.