Notes

Is Schema.org the right way to go?

2011-10-12T21:56:00.000+05:30

[ Originally written for Kuliza Technologies on June 14th, 2011 ]
Did the three big companies take the correct decision in introducing Schema.org ?

Semantic web is a web of information, which is marked with machine understandable metadata in addition to the Human readable web-content. Recently, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft collaborated and came up with Schema.org, which is their privately hosted Semantic mark-up vocabulary.
This introduction has been a hot topic of discussion in the Semantic web community, majorly because of the syntax chosen by the three companies to develop the vocabulary. The major issue with this release has been that the terms in Schema.org are expressed in microdata syntax, as opposed to the currently popular RDFa serialization of RDF. I am currently contributing open-source code to the Semantic web community through my project, which involves creating an RDF Vocabulary publishing platform. So maybe I might appear a bit biased towards RDFa over microdata here.

Bit of History -

RDF is a knowledge representation framework that encodes data as subject-predicate-object triples. When you combine triples, they form graphs. Initially, RDF/XML serialization format was used for semantic marking, and it separated the semantic marking from the HTML content. Over the course of time, Microformat syntax emerged, wherein the Semantic metadata content was integrated into the HTML itself. RDFa is another serialization of RDF, that was based on Microformat, i.e., integrating HTML Content and the metadata. Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, which claimed to improve upon RDFa.
An important thing to note here is that RDFa and Microdata – both are syntaxes. Both are both Entity-Attribute-Value models that support using URIs as universal identifiers. There also exists an algorithm for converting Microdata to RDF. On the other hand, Schema.org is a vocabulary. A vocabulary has terms, which can be specified in any syntax. Schema.org terms have been originally specified in Microdata syntax.

Can’t we just specify all the terms in RDFa syntax and continue using them?

The answer is Yes, and as a matter of fact, the work is already in progress as I write this post. People in the RDFa community, Richard Cyganiak (My Google summer of code 2011 mentor) and Michael Hausenblas, have worked to develop an RDFS definition for the terms of Schema.org, and hosted it at http://schema.rdfs.org/.

So what is the issue here?

Google has asked the web community to use either microdata or RDFa since using both the syntaxes confuses its parsers.

“While it’s OK to use the new schema.org mark-up or continue to use existing Microformat or RDFa mark-up, you should avoid mixing the formats together on the same web page, as this can confuse our parsers.” … “If you have already done mark-up and it is already being used by Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo!, the mark-up format will continue to be supported. Changing to the new mark-up format could be helpful over time because you will be switching to a standard that is accepted across all three companies, but you don’t have to do it.”

And then it adds:

“We will also be monitoring the web for RDFa and Microformat adoption and if they pick up, we will look into supporting these syntaxes.”

This sounds as if Google is pushing developers who are looking for SEO to start using microdata syntax, a standard that is not in much use yet, since it gets a sort of priority in its parsing algorithms. This takes away the freedom from the developers to choose whatever syntax works best for them. Although RDFa is a bit more complex than Microdata, it can covers more use cases, and some developers might be more comfortable using it.

Few years ago, the web-developers community was reluctant in semantically marking their web-content. The semantic web community worked hard to make the web developers understand the future benefits of having linked data all over the web. So, many of the developers slowly started using RDFa and Microformat, and a recent survey showed that 4% of websites used RDFa, which is more than any other. See http://tripletalk.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/rdfa-deployment.png for the comparison.

RDFa is being used by Drupal 7, Facebook OGP, Best Buy, all e-commerce sites which use the GoodRelations Vocabulary and many more major deployments globally.
And now schema.org asks them to learn a new syntax yet again. Lets face it; if Google, MS and yahoo declare that they would support only microdata for parsing content on the web, most of the web developers who are majorly looking for SEO would definitely follow. This would adversely affect the growth of RDFa deployments.

Thus, a large portion of the Semantic Web community is not happy with the decisions. Some believe that the vocabularies provided by schema.org won’t suffice if you want to cover complex domains since it is not extensible.

Another matter of concern is that it seems w3c was not consulted at all, while schema.org was developed. Commercialization of standards is never a good thing, and that’s what Schema.org does. In fact, Manu Sporny, chairperson of RDFa group in w3c, has been very aggressive in opposing schema.org and he goes to the extent of saying that he would soon start a revolution against “The false choice” of using microdata in schema.org. I have been following him on twitter and he has been gathering support there to put pressure on the three big Companies. He also believes that “Microdata doesn’t scale as easily as RDFa – early successes will be followed by stagnation and vocabulary lock-in.”

The solutions-

The most obvious solution to this problem is that Google, bing and yahoo announce that they would treat RDFa and microdata with equal priority in their parsing algorithms.
Bing has already stated that it can parse a page that includes multiple syntaxes. However, Google parsers cant do this, and needs to incorporate this feature in their parsing algorithms as soon as possible.

However…

Schema.org does seem to have a created a lot of negative buzz, but lets not forget that some kind of RDF vocabulary standardization like this was long due. Currently, due to lack of a definite standard, it is difficult for developers to decide on which one to use for mark-up. Schema.org does solve this problem and makes life easier for developers as well as for search engines. As Google states:

“Creating a schema supported by all the major search engines makes it easier for webmasters to add mark-up, which makes it easier for search engines to create rich search features for users.”

Kuliza@Mysore Day 1

2011-09-16T11:08:00.000+05:30

We want to implelemt a working prototype of a sharing/analytics widget like easyshare, within 7 days. The widget is targetted at e-commerce platforms.

Problem :

Person 1 shares a link through our widget on facebook.
Person 2 shares the same link through our widget on facebook.
Person 3 reshares the same link on facebook by seeing Person 1's shared link.
Person 4,5 and 6 reshare the same link on facebook by seeing Person 2's shared link.
Person 7,8,9 and 10 see Person 3's link and reshare it.

We need to find who was the most influential person among each one who shared.

Tree models :
1 --- 3 --- (7,8,9,10)
2 --- (4,5,6)
As we can see here, Person 3 is the most influential here.

Solution :

Consider Person 1 and 2 as the root users. When a root user shares our link on facebook, we store the following in the backend :
1. Our system generated userid
2. Facebook id of the person
3. URL shared
4. parent Id : null

Then we append a query parameter to the URL which is the facebook User Id of the root user and shotren it using bit.ly, and then this link is shared.

eg. Person 1 shares http:www.hostname/productpage
we store Person 1's facebook userId and the URL http:www.hostname/productpage in the backend.

Now we append the url with a query parameter and shorten the url using bitly.

http:www.hostname/productpage/?q=userid
bit.ly/Li32df34

Then we share this link on facebook.

When a new person Re-shares the same link on facebook using the link provided by person 1:

Store the following in the database :
1. Our system generated userid
2. Facebook id of the new person
3. URL shared (got through the parent)
4. parent Id : id retrieved from the query parameter.

In this way, we can track the most influential user by querying to get the id which appears maximum time in the parentid.

Using bitly APIs, we can track the number of hits for a particular URL and hence find out the most influencial person.

#Note PHP get contents of a remotely hosted file without cross-domain ajax

2011-08-04T23:43:00.001+05:30

$file = file_get_contents('http://qa.agrinova.intuit.com/webmetrics/farmerCount.groovy');
echo $file;

Output :

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<webmetrics xmlns='http://agrinova.intuit.com'>
<farmer_count>290158</farmer_count>
<statewise_count state='GJ' count='135070' />
<statewise_count state='AP' count='155088' />
</webmetrics>

Updates : Porting Neologism to Drupal 7 [3]

2011-06-25T12:52:00.000+05:30

A lot has happened in the project since the last post. In fact, I am ready with my mid-term submission.

The three content types : vocabulary, class and property have been added to the port. The fields that have been added are :

Vocabulary :

Title
Namespace URI
Authors
Abstract
Body
Additional Custom RDF

Class :

Related vocabulary
Class URI
Label
Comment
Superclass
Disjoint with
Details

Property :

Related Vocabulary
Property URI
Label
Comment
Details
Functional Property
Inverse Functional Property
Domain
Range
Superproperty
Inverse

The vocabulary, class and property are correctly being registered with evoc.

Next steps are mentioned by Richard here-
http://drupal.org/node/1196510

Updates : Porting Neologism to Drupal 7 [2]

2011-05-26T13:25:00.001+05:30

Coding period has started.

We decided to start by creating bundles for :

Vocabulary
Class
Property

References module will be used for creating fields field_type Node Reference.

Updates : Porting Neologism to Drupal 7

2011-05-16T15:21:00.001+05:30

Wiki page of the Project : http://groups.drupal.org/node/145269

Project page on drupal.org : http://drupal.org/project/neologism

We would be using the issue queue on drupal.org for all discussions related to the project and the entire drupal community can provide suggestions. This is the link to the issue queue of Neologism :
http://drupal.org/project/issues/neologism?categories=All

Lin Clark gave a short introductory session over skype on how to use the issue queue on drupal.org and the git and told about various portals which could be useful during the project like http://drupal.stackexchange.com/

Richard created a branch for the project on the drupal.org Neologism repository. We had two options, either we could clone the entire D6 code into the branch and then transform it to a D7 Module step by step, or start with an empty branch and then add feature after feature. We chose the second option since it was cleaner and always gave us a working drupal 7 module.

Also, I would be working on my new MacBook Pro for GSoC and since I had previously worked only on Windows while developing on Drupal, I contacted Guido, who is currently the main developer of Neologism, so he could help me with the development environment for the project.

I have a basic Drupal 7 website running on MAMP and will be using Komodo for development and Command Line Interface for GIT.

GSoC 2011 Proposal for Drupal : Porting Neologism to Drupal 7

2011-05-16T14:52:00.002+05:30

I support Drupal's vision to become the best CMS in projects related to Semantic web.

In view of the above initiative, Drupal 7 comes with a core RDF module. There is a contributed RDF module as well which allows us to extend the functionality of the core module through :
1. RDFx - Provides additional serialization formats.
2. RDF-UI - UI to specify RDF Mappings.
3. Evoc - UI to import Vocabularies and store them in DB.

For different sites to have perfectly interoperable RDF, they should use the same RDF vocabulary. It is a fact that presently no comprehensive vocabulary exists which can provide predicates to suit each and every Semantic web-development project. For instance, foaf may be a very good choice of RDF vocabulary when it comes to building social networking web-sites. However, if one wants to create a project which involves Learning Resource Objects, foaf would not be able to provide predicates for all the Learning object metadata elements. That's why it's important to be able to create new vocabularies according to the specific requirements of the project.

As of now, there is no standard User interface for creating an entire RDF Vocabulary in Drupal 7. One has to write an RDF Schema in XML format and then register it with Drupal using Evoc.

My initial idea :

I initially wanted to extend the functionality of the Contributed RDF Module by adding a User Interface to "create" and "register" customised RDF-vocabularies. The module would generate the corresponding RDFS in backend and allow the user to register the vocabulary with the Drupal and provide an easy UI for creating the vocabularies in the frontend.

Why I felt the Need for this extension :

Since the Drupal has a relatively steep learning curve, we must try to make things as easy as possible for the newbies so that more and more people can enthusiastically join Drupal's Semantic initiative and start using Drupal for their Semantic Web Projects.

Using the User Interface that I planned to develop, someone with even a little knowledge of writing an RDF Schema would be able to create and register his own vocabulary.

Change of Plans :

I thus went ahead and posted my proposal on GSoC-11 Drupal Group.

As you can see here(http://groups.drupal.org/node/136969), the discussions turned out to be very fruitful indeed. Lin Clark advised me to have a look at the ongoing Neologism Project(http://neologism.deri.ie/), which provided a free and open-source vocabulary publishing platform. It turned out to be functionally very similar to what I had planned for my project. However, Neologism is not yet available as a module for Drupal 7, Lin also advised me to get in touch with Richard Cyganiak (http://richard.cyganiak.de/), who was actively working on Neologism development.

Neologism is a powerful codebase for publishing customised vocabularies that is already in quite some use in the RDF community, but using it in existing Drupal sites is difficult since there is no dedicated D7 Module. Moreover, the code is hosted on Google Code Repositories. To confuse matters further, there is a very old version of the neologism module on Drupal.org, which was not updated as the project progressed on Google Code. It also has several dependencies, a few of which are not even easily available on the internet since the previously existing links are now broken. So there was scope of collaboration.

I contacted Richard and we discussed my project proposal over several emails. Richard informed me that he would soon be working to port Neologism to D7. I offered to do it as a part of my GSoC project. I felt it was better to contribute to Neologism module rather than creating another module from scratch which overlaps in functionality with the upcoming Neologism module. Moreover, Neologism has many good features like a vocabulary overview diagram and a time tested User Interface, due to which it makes even more sense to port it to D7. Richard liked the idea of pooling our resources to work for a common cause. He also agreed to mentor the project.

Finally, we came up with the following abstract for the project :

Porting Neologism to D7
Migrating the Neologism code-base and documentation from Google Code to drupal.org
Updating the documentation and informing existing users about the change.
Testing that the Neologism module works well in existing D7 sites

I intend to carry forward the work that has already been put into creating the Neologism vocabulary publishing platform by porting it to D7 and making it available to the huge Drupal community and any existing Drupal sites that want to use RDF with custom vocabularies.

At this moment, I believe that that the Evoc module in D7 provides all the features that we need to successfully create the Neologism module.

Timeline for the Proposed Project:

April 25 - May 23 (Before official coding period starts) [Information Learning Curve and Background readings]

Familiarise with the current Neologism codebase and Drupal RDF modules.
Go through the current documentation of the Neologism project.
Discuss the implementation plans and risks with the mentors.
Familiarise the coding standards and development practices followed while creating Drupal modules.
Get used to working on the Drupal Repositories since code migration from Google code to Drupal repositories would also be a part of the SoC project.

May 23 - 29 (First week) [Familiarizing]

Fix some bugs/implement simple features for the current Neologism platform to familiarize further with the codebase.
Create a document for general reference which describes how the module would appear at the end of the Summer of Code. Documentation at this stage would not go into the technical details but only describe how the module would appear to the end user at the end of the project.

May 30 - June 5 (1 week) [DB Migration]

Neologism is currently running on D6. There are a lot of differences between the Evoc module in D6 and D7. Thus, we need to change the DB Schema of Neologism to match the D7 Version of Evoc.

This marks the End of Phase-1.
At this moment, we are ready to start porting Neologism to D7.

June 6 - July 24 (7 weeks)[Porting Neologism to D7]
This is the major task of the project. This task has been further divided into sub-tasks as follows :
Week 1 : Port the menu system and vocabulary list to D7
Week 2 : Port the vocabulary overview page to D7
Week 3 : Port the RDF output to D7
Week 4 : Provide the feature of importing and loading vocabulary by using the evoc module
Week 5 : Port the vocabulary creation/edit form to D7
Week 6 : Port the class/property creation/edit forms to D7
Week 7 : Port content negotiation and caching to D7

Also, during this period, I would need to carry out integration testing for the module.

This marks the end of Phase 2.
At this stage, we have a functional D7 port of Neologism module.
July 25 - July 31 (1 week) [Documentation Migration/Upgrading and Migrating the code to Drupal Repository]

The tasks planned for this phase are as following :

Set up Drupal.org infrastructure for neologism module
Coordinate with documentation team to move existing documentation to drupal.org
Update documentation wherever needed
Notify existing users of the changes

August 1 - August 7 (1 week) [Test the module on existing Drupal sites]We would need to evaluate how the Neologism module works if installed into existing D7 sites and identify any issues. Currently Neologism is built as an installation profile which installs an entire site that provides just a vocabulary editor. There might be some initialization which was previously done during the installation procedure which would now need to be done when the Neologism module is installed into existing sites. We need to make sure there are no issues faced when the module is installed or reinstalled into existing D7 sites.

August 8 - August 14 (1 week) [Buffer period]

Buffer for general Neologism bugfixing/improvements as identified throughout the project

August 15 - GSoC Ends.
End of Phase 3.

Deliverables :

A functional D7 Port of Neologism, which isntalls on existing sites without any major issues.
Updated Documentation of Neologism.
Documentation of the status of the module at the end of GSoC completes and the plan of action for the future.
List of known issues in the module.

Link to Discussion created in on Drupal Groups

I had already planned my idea well before GSoC. Thus, I was quick to draft my proposal initially on the Drupal GSoC-11 Group. You may find the discussion here : http://groups.drupal.org/node/136969

I also asked the members of the Semantic Web Group in Drupal-Groups to provide me feedback on my proposal. http://groups.drupal.org/node/137274

On the IRC Channels of drupal, (drupalcommerce and drupal-contribute) I got the opportunity to discuss my idea with a few people who provided me with useful bits of information and guidance.

Mentors:

I tried to contact the people who have been actively involved with the development of RDF and related Modules in Drupal 7. Lin Clark(linclark) (http://lin-clark.com/), suggested I get in touch with Richard Cyganiak (cygri) (http://richard.cyganiak.de/), for mentoring me on my project since it relates to the Neologism project(http://neologism.deri.ie/) he had started and has been working on. I contacted Richard and he generously agreed to mentor me on my GSoC project.

Lin Clark (linclark) has offered to help me during the first few weeks to learn the customs of using Drupal.org issue queue and creating clean patches.

Guido Cecilio, (guidocecilio) who is the current main developer of Neologism, will also be available to answer questions regarding Neologism code and coordinate his work with me.

Stephane Corlosquet (scor) has agreed to help by answering questions regarding D6 to D7 migration.

Thus, I have the overwhelming support of the Drupal community to assist me during the course of my project.

Project Plan for BIOMOD-2011

2011-04-17T22:46:00.007+05:30

I am a part of the team DA-NanoTrons, representing my college DA-IICT in BIOMOD-2011.

Our team is -

Faculty mentors
- Manish K. Gupta [DA-IICT, Gandhinagar]
- Taslimarif Saiyed [NCBS, Bangalore]
Team members

Avinash Parida
Denny George
Mayank Kandpal

Project plan :

Part 1 : (BIOMOD-2011)

Providing an interface for the users to input equations corresponding to 2-D shapes, which will generate a caDNAno friendly .json file output. This can directly be opened with cadnano and the structure can be further edited there. (So its like a basic cadnano template creator which can then be used and made into more complex structures on caDNAno)

The application will be a standalone for now and might be integrated into caDNAno later on.

We can even provide some default templates for some very basic equations.

Plan of Action :

1.1 Understand the format of cadnano gerenated json files and try to create simple files which are correctly displayed in cadnano. this would be done by creating some simple files in caDNAno and understanding the structure of files after saving them. Initially dont worry about 3d, just create 2d .json file structures and run them on caDNAno.

1.2 Hack through the cadnano ActionScript code-base to understand their auto-stapling algorithm.

1.3 What would the program do :

1.3.1 Take equation as input

1.3.2 Generate the outline of the corresponding 2D shape

1.3.3 Generate a single loop which fills the entire structure

1.3.3 Divide the loop into 7000 parts (there is a reason behind 7000)

1.3.4 Select a point to break the loop and thus create a single long scaffold.

1.3.5 Assign each division a base-pair (ACGT) ordered in the sequence of the standard M13mp18 virus DNA sequence. I have a rough visualization of the expected output after this stage, which I would share soon.

1.3.6 Use the auto stapling algo to generate staples in the structure. (optional)

1.3.7 Automatic StapleError correction feature (optional, will skip this most probably in Phase-1)

1.3.8 Create the cadnano friendly json file corresponding to the structure and staples we generated.

How we could divide the work :

For parallely working on different things, we all need to be clear on how we would be storing the structure in each stage in the backend. In other words, what the output format/structure of each stage would look like.

For example, if we are clear initially how the backend would look like in step 1.3.6, then one person can start working directly on a manualy created output of step 1.3.6 and work on how to create a cadnano friendly json from the structure that we finally come up with.

Thus, before we begin with any coding, we need to be clear with what output we expect in each stage. For this, we need to first of all decide a platform which we would be working on. Considering the requirements. I am assuming java (or python) would be the best choice.

In case we find other platforms with better library support we would use that. So first step is to hunt down the available libraries for each task.

Parallel task 1 : 1.3.1 - 1.3.5

Parallel task 2 : 1.3.6

Parallel task 3 : 1.3.7

FallBack Plan for part 1:

If we are too technically handicapped to understand the auto-stapling algorithm, we can simply skip step 1.3.6 and jump to 1.3.7, i,e, just generate the single long scaffold corresponding to the 2D structure represented by the equation and convert it to .json format which would can be opened in cadnano. The user can then use the autostapling feature within cadnano.

Part 2 : (to be done in the next year’s Biomod, OR if time permits(unlikely), within the current Biomod timeline)

2.1 Provide support for equations of 3D structures.

2.2 Either create Views Interface so that the user doesnt need to switch to cadnano just for checking out the output. OR port the entire application as a cadnano plugin itself.

Developing @cric : An SMS based app on TXTWEB

2011-03-07T01:00:00.006+05:30

My first project at Kuliza was to create an SMS based application for mobile phone users, through which they could receive live cricket scores updates and cricket schedule through SMS. As you might have guessed, the application was made keeping in mind the potentially huge user-base during the ICC Cricket World-cup.

The main features of the Application are :

View summary of all the live matches in progress
View detailed score of a match
Set a match as Favorite
View schedule of upcoming ODIs, Tests and T20s.
Predictor feature which enables users to vote who will win the match.

The application was immediately pushed into live production and within 3 matches, the app had already got a total of 16,000+ hits!

The usage statistics have been scaling new heights with each World-Cup match. Recently it crossed a total of 100,000 hits. We expect to cross 200,000 SMSes by the end of the World-Cup.

You may wish to try out the App: SMS @cric to 9243342000 to know live cricket scores and schedule of upcoming matches.

The Development :
The @cric Application runs on three core technologies :

1) TXTWEB SMS EngineTXTWEB is Intuit's SMS Platform for Mobile App Developers. http://www.txtweb.com/ is an online network for developers of SMS based apps to showcase and promote apps and connect with each other.

2) Google App Engine
From http://code.google.com/appengine/ :

"Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow."

I used the The Datastore Java API of Google App Engine for storing data, which is a schemaless object datastore, with a query engine and atomic transactions.

3) Google Web Toolkit
From http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/ :

"GWT is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications."

I used the Eclipse-GWT plugin for development.

The live scores are scraped from http://www.espncricinfo.com. JSoup HTML Parser library is used to get the data. In case there is a problem with CricInfo, I have implemented a backup scraper which uses http://scores.sify.com/index.shtml to get live-scores data. Schedule of upcoming matches is obtained from http://www.cricschedule.com.

New kid on the corporate block

2011-03-06T23:39:00.000+05:30

It has been a couple of months since I joined Kuliza. The journey so far has been a wonderful experience and I could not have wished for a better or happier start to my corporate career.

Like most freshers, the 'One' big question that troubled me before I joined Kuliza was whether the work which would be assigned to me, be of my liking. I love to do work which involves lot of logical thinking, coding and using the latest technologies. And I was happily surprised when I was assigned my first live project within two weeks. n/ I was asked to create an application for mobile phone users to receive live cricket scores and cricket schedule updates through SMS. The application was easy to code but I learnt a lot of new things since I worked on the latest technologies like the Google web toolkit(GWT), Google App Engine and the TxtWeb SMS Engine. Moreover I also learnt how projects are managed in an organisation using Versioning and other Project Management tools. The best part about this project was that it was immediately pushed into live production and people actually started using it to keep track of live scores.

It is always a dream come true for a Developer to see their app being used by the masses. And I was overwhelmed when within 3 matches, the App had already got a total of 16000+ hits. :) With the Cricket World-Cup round the corner, hopefully the app will gain wide popularity.

You may wish to try out the App : SMS @cric to 9243342000 to know live cricket scores and schedule of upcoming matches.
[Normal SMS charges apply. No extra charges.]

Currently I am working on a project related to Semantic Web which involved Intelligently fetching data from a set of resources according to the need of the user using LOM and RDF to add intelligence to the system. I will soon blog more about this project.

Inspite of possessing an array of hard-core technologists who are ready to work round the clock when the situation demands, we never lose out when it comes to having fun. My short stint at Kuliza has been a delightful experience, not only because I love the work I am doing, but because of so many enjoyable moments I spent here. Be it my first 'official' outing experience was with the gDev team (Uday, Rohit, Nikhil and Gaurav) or the 'Resort-cum-Paint-Ball' Interns'-day-out with Deepak 'Sir', Achal and all the other interns. We are always looking for a reason to celebrate at Kuliza, be it Christmas or Kite-Flying. For the Gamers, Friday nights are reserved exclusively for Lan-Gaming
.

Apart from all this, the weekly bizKul sessions for the Interns, which are meant to help us transcend from college culture to the corporate culture provide a refreshing change with their innovative activities.

My Internship will continue another couple of months. I am happy to have learnt so much new and met so many wonderful people over such a short span of time at Kuliza.

ZA-Life ftW!!!

P.S. Looking forward to the next Hackathon :D

Installing windows 7 over existing Windows 7

2010-12-06T06:58:00.001+05:30

5:00 AM

I installed the Windows 7 Ultimate Edition over the existing Windows 7 Tweaked Gamer edition which had a lot of bugs and minor issues here and there.

5:30 AM

Not able to delete the Windows.old and Windows.old000 folder which were automatically created, due to some issue with access permissions. Moreover there is a huge clutter of folders in the C: which are now of no use. These folders were not removed during the install and Windows is not allowing me to delete them now.

http://www.geckoandfly.com/5864/force-delete-locked-or-undeletable-files-and-folder-in-windows-7/

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/#download

5:40 AM

I guess I’ll format C: and again install a fresh copy of windows through USB into it to clean up all the clutter. zzZZ…

6:15 AM

Done. Laptop is as good as new .

Installing Windows 7 from USB stick

2010-12-05T07:38:00.001+05:30

The shortest and simplest way :

Download Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool

Fix for the error :

“The selected file is not a valid ISO file. Please select a valid ISO file and try again.”

is as follows :

Open your .iso file in Power-ISO(full version if .iso > 300 MB)
Go to File–>Image properties
Check UDF
Press ok
Save your file

Now use the Windows 7 USB/DVD tool!!

No need to open command prompt at all .

Other method :

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-create-bootable-windows-7-usb-to-install-windows-7-from-usb-flash-drive-using-windows-7-dvdusb-tool/ [However this above method didn’t work out well using virtual drives (win-7 .iso mounted on Power-ISO). ]

Customized 404 Not Found Page for your website

2010-11-02T02:37:00.003+05:30

A 404 error is the response given by the web server when we try to open a page on the internet that does not exist.

If you don’t specifically tell your web server how to handle 404 errors, it will serve up a very plain and generic looking error page. That just says something like “Not Found – The requested URL was not found on this server.” on a plain white page.”

A 404 page should look like an error page, but it should still look like your website. If you are using a CMS, this is probably already handled for you. If you have a static site, you can specify a 404 template through your .htaccess file.

- source http://css-tricks.com/

Here is how you make your custom 404 page :

Step 1:

Suppose your Web-project folder is xampp/htdocs/test

Create a new text document in your website’s folder.

Type the following inside the text file:

ErrorDocument 404 /test/error404.php

Save the file as .htaccess

Step 2:

Next create the error404.php page in the path specified above, i.e. in the test folder in this case.

This is the page which will be shown instead of the normal 404 error page.

Sometimes there might be some Webserver issues which can be rectified as follows :

A directive should be added to your httpd.conf for the directory which your website lives in. Let's say for this example it's /www/htdocs. Here's a line in your httpd.conf that you must have for this .htaccess file to work:

<Directory /www/htdocs/yoursite>
AllowOverride FileInfo
</Directory>

- source http://www.devarticles.com/

Good read : http://css-tricks.com/404-best-practices/

Dedicated to X[a]T!, Os!r!S & KenSe! for their constant effort in reducing the load on Mother Earth.

Complete guide for Installing and Running your first GUI Application in Qt c++ in Windows 7 (for Newbies)

2010-06-04T18:35:00.005+05:30

Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework. Using Qt, you can write web-enabled applications once and deploy them across desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems without rewriting the source code.

Recently I installed Qt 4.5.2 on my Windows 7 PC and had some minor installation and post-installation issues which I shall discuss here.

Step 1.

Download Qt SDK: Follow this link to download

Qt is available for download as a free 30-day commercial evaluation, or under the LGPL open source license. Choose whichever license you want. However, every time you build projects using commercial edition Qt will display a license popup.

Step 2.

Install Qt to whichever directory you want. Like i installed it at C:\Qt\2009.03\ . This path will be needed later.

Step 3.

Write a simple Qt-c++ program like the one given below just so that we can use it to test if the installation is properly done and the environment variables are properly set. Just write this piece of code in notepad and save it as HelloQt.cpp in a directory HelloQt. Remember the path since it will be used later.

#include <QtGui/QApplication>

#include<qlabel.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])

{

QApplication app(argc, argv);

QLabel *label = new QLabel(" Hello Qt!",0);

label->show();

return app.exec();

}

Step 4.

Setting Environment variables.

From the desktop, right-click My Computer and click Properties.

In the System Properties window, click on the Advanced tab.

In the Advanced section, click the Environment Variables button.

Finally, in the Environment Variables window (as shown below), highlight the Path variable in the Systems Variable section and click the Edit button. Add or modify the path lines with the paths you wish the computer to access. Each different directory is separated with a semicolon as shown below.

Append the following variable value to Path : C:\Qt\2009.03\bin; C:\Qt\2009.03\qt\bin

Note that the above Path depends on the directory where Qt was installed previously, like mine was C:\Qt\2009.03\.

Step 5.

Open Qt command prompt which is installed along with Qt and has a shortcut in Start-menu.

Step 6.

Change directory to where you have saved HelloQt.cpp in your system.

cd C:\QtProj\HelloQt

Step 7.

Type the following commands …

qmake –project

qmake HelloQt.pro

nmake

The first command will generate a .pro file (HelloQt.pro)

The next command will generate a MakeFile for your project

Finally nmake shall create a .exe file of your project and the .exe shall be saved inside either the debug or the release folder by the name HelloQt.exe

Problem with using nmake command

If windows shows some error like “nmake is not a recognised internal or external command”, this means nmake is not installed on your system. To install, you need to downloading, extract, and place two files into your C:\WINDOWS\system32 or C:\WINDOWS\ folder.

Follow the steps below to install nmake on your PC

Download nmake : Use this link or Google nmake15.exe if this links is broken -http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/Nmake15.exe
Extract nmake: Run the Nmake15.exe file which will extract two files to the directory where it is located. These files will be nmake.exe and NMAKE.ERR.
Now move those two extracted files to C:\WINDOWS\system32.

This should install nmake on your system.

If you follow the above steps correctly, you are ready to use Qt to create GUI applications on your Windows PC.

Nokia establishes Symbian Foundation …WHY? … Future consequences?

2008-07-18T16:29:00.000+05:30

The recent “Open at own risk” promo disaster (yes it was a disaster) of Nokia has left quite a few Nokia fans including me annoyed. However that certainly doesn’t mean that Nokia has turned evil.

Around four weeks ago, on June 24th, 2008, Nokia purchased the whole of Symbian (for EUR 264 million) (previously it owned 48% of Symbian). And the reason why I said Nokia isn’t evil is the fact that despite the purchase, Nokia has decided to gradually open-source the entire Symbian platform code including even its own S-60 variant, over the next couple of years, under Eclipse Public License (EPL).

Nokia went further and established the non-profit Symbian foundation (www.symbianfoundation.org) which includes leading phone manufacturers like LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson; wireless carriers AT&T, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone; plus semiconductor firms STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. A huge ecosystem is already committed to the foundation:

WHY …. ?

Symbian OS is presently the leading most popular Smartphone platform in the world. Symbian started in 1998 and thus it also recently celebrate 10 years of its successful journey in the market (www.symbian.com/tenyears) 60% of the Smartphones manufactured today are built on Symbian platform which is a greater percentage than any other platform by far. Symbian OS represented approximately 7% of all mobile device sales in 2007. To date, more than 200 million Symbian OS based phones have been shipped, over 235 models, from 8 vendors and on more than 250 mobile networks around the world. More than 4 million developers are engaged in producing applications for Symbian devices.

According to a source, four billion people are expected to have joined the global mobile conversation by 2010. The mobile devices are now being looked upon more and more as a multi-utility gadget which is expected to provide the added functionality of a decent camera, music player a gaming console, internet browsing and virtually replace the personal computer. These advancing features must be accommodated while simultaneously lengthening battery life from model to model. That job falls largely to the OS and Open software is the basic building block for delivering this future as it accelerates and enhances the software development process to a large extent.

Since Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices the establishment of the Symbian Foundation is expected to make it the undisputed platform for mobile innovation. The Symbian Foundation will promote the Symbian OS and provide royalty-free open platform and accelerate innovation.

As the Symbian foundation says, the purpose of Symbian is to:

“Bring to life a shared vision and to create the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform - available for free.”

But there is another good reason for Nokia to make such a move … The move is also a response to Google's cheap Android (Wikipedia) platform which is already open source and threatens to potentially replace Symbian as the choice of a device-independent platform. The Open Handset Alliance (Wikipedia) is working on Android and includes Symbian producers LG, Motorola and Samsung as part of its membership.

Moreover the OS X platform which is used in the powerful and popular iPhone also pose a severe threat to Symbian. The OS X platform, unike Android, is a closed platform, and has been increaing its market share at a brisk rate.

Thus basically the Symbian foundation came together because its members felt the need to join hands in order to keep up with the ever-rising demands of the consumer and to rise above their competitors.

According to Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian:

“Ten years ago, Symbian was established by far sighted players to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry…Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet and indeed today Symbian OS leads its market by any measure. Today’s announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision by embracing a complete and proven platform, offered in an open way, designed to stimulate innovation which is at the heart of everything we do.”

FUTURE CONSEQUENCES …. ?

One can safely say that the Symbian foundation has a really bright future owing to a number of good reasons.

Firstly, because the minds of the world’s leading mobile manufacturers will unite to develop a single grand platform. This will lift the burden of developing the core OS from the individual. The move will let each phone maker shift attention to making devices unique rather than rewriting some or all of the basics. Thus the development takes lesser time and resources for each member.

Moreover each manufacturer has agreed to provide the various smart developments they have made so far to the cause:

Nokia has agreed to contribute their popular S60 platform to the foundation.
Motorola and Sony Ericsson will contribute the developments made in their special variant of Symbian, called UIQ.
NTT DoCoMo will also do the same with the MOAP software it uses for many of its phones.
Nokia intends to combine Symbian, S60, UIQ and MOAP platforms and that is an absolutely brilliant strategy as each platform contains its own pros and cons. The unison to create a single open mobile software platform will drive the development of newer and highly advanced software and incredible applications for the phones to the delight of the consumer.
And that’s not it. There are lots of other affiliates which further strengthen the Symbian Foundation by providing services in the areas where they specialize.

Moreover when the code will become completely open-source which is expected to be in around 2 years then the innovations will be further boosted as the code will be available to a wider community.

The carriers are also happy with the union and say that the Symbian Foundation will alleviate a great deal of market confusion and disparity. The Symbian Foundation will reduce fragmentation in the industry and holds the promise of incorporating leading technology and the most mature software into a unified platform for the entire industry.

On the whole… the foundation is a gleaming prospect as ultimately the value of a phone depends not on the hardware but on the underlying software. Nokia bought Symbian with the stated long-term intention of giving the OS away as proper open source and to me it appears to be a wise decision on the part of Nokia as it protects the Symbian OS from upcoming rivals.
The move is also hugely beneficial for us the users as it would be great for us to get more and more innovative Smartphones with lots of wonderful features. This can certainly be a reality if the super powers of mobile software development industry honestly join hands and work in collaboration.

Already, there is lots of great news about the upcoming Nokia touch-phone tagged Nokia-tube which is expected to release until next year. Having seen some of the video releases that Nokia has provided for the S60 platform and if the leaks about the configuration of the Tube are to be believed, then I must say that even much hyped iPhone will soon be given a run for its money.

I really do hope that the Symbian Foundation provides a wonderful environment to its members and marshals a new era in the mobile software industry.

Cheers!!

Press release
whitepaper

Useful Firefox 3 add-on extensions for the 'common' user:

2008-07-17T20:56:00.000+05:30

Before I write this post, I want to make it clear that this is not like some other top-ten add-on extensions list. Neither is this a must-have list. Actually I personally feel there is no such thing as a must-have list. It just depends upon the need of the user.
However the add-ons on list which I have made here are quite handy and helpful for the common Firefox user and not meant for needs of a web-developer or some other advanced user.

So here we go...

1. Interclue:
This is a link augmentation tool. In simpler terms, it lets you view what is behind a link without having to actually open the link in another tab. Interclue will open a small window where you can see what the link looks like before opening it … it is highly customisable and can be turned off for specific sites or for a specific session too. Small icons appear on moving our mouse over links to warn you about dead links, Malware or Phishing Sites, etc, and for any valid links Interclue provides compact link previews, relevant extra information and useful next action buttons.
From the developer:

“Here are some sites that Interclue works really well on: Most search engines, and local site searches. Google Reader. Bloglines. Gmail. Del.icio.us, Digg, other social bookmarking sites. Bugzilla and Trac ticketing systems. Most news sites. Almost any given blog. If you're a knowledge worker, don't forget to try it on your intranet. Interclue generates page summaries inside the browser rather than getting them from a server, so there is no privacy risk involved in using it on your intranet. Interclue is fast, smooth, and easy to use.”

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4999

2. Webmail notifier:
Webmail Notifier automatically checks your webmail accounts and notifies the number of unread emails and new mails … it fit nicely in one corner of my status-bar and I just need to move my cursor over it to check the number of new/unread mail!!!
It supports Gmail, yahoo, hotmail, daum, naver, empas and nate.
I use it for my yahoo account since it is cumbersome to have the yahoo-mails checked through my e-mail client 'thunderbird'.
download webmail-notifier:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4490

3. Down-Them-All:
The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox! The mass downloader for Firefox. However, if already use Internet Download Manager (IDM), you won’t need this one embedded to your browser.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201

4. Ad-block 'Plus':
This will ruin my ad-sense’ earnings but still… :-) … Adblock plus is good for if you get annoyed by ads…actually I myself have this one installed and it works quite well.
Pages load faster and appear cleaner.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

5. ColorfulTabs:
Surely you want this one in your browser. As the name suggests, it colours every Tab in different colour and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appeal of the interface… And if u are like “ i-open-20-tabs-at-a-time-and-have-a-hard-time-locating-them” kind of surfer…then don’t miss it because you can even choose to colour the tabs according to your choice !!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1368

6. ScribeFire:
Ok you can skip this one if you are not into blogging … but u must definitely check this out otherwise …. Its a fully featured blog editor that integrates with your Firefox web browser and lets you easily post your blogs...
Well if I were to have a browser with only one add-on allowed [as stupid as it may sound], I would choose scribefire … because it is the best offline bogging tool I have… I have written this blog on scribefire itself…. even inserted the images while I was offline and then I had to connect to the internet just to post my completed blog.
It provides a “lot” of features … actually all the features you can think of while writing your posts offline … if your internet is not free or too costly then this is the best blogging tool for you… just type out your post while you are offline and then you need to connect to the net just to post your blog complete with all the pictures and videos added.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730

7. All in one sidebar:
All-in-One Sidebar (AiOS) is an award-winning sidebar control, inspired by Opera's. It lets you quickly switch between sidebar panels, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source or websites in the sidebar.
Comprehensive Sidebar management and enhancement…has a lot of options and can be set on
auto-hide mode too.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1027

8. IE tab:
Ofcourse there are few occasions where you want to use internet explorer to open some particular site … with this addon internet explorer can be opened as a tab of ff3 itself without you having to open i.e. in another window … saves time and provides easy browsing by embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

9. pdf download:
PDF Download helps encounter PDF files on the Web. Whenever you click on a PDF file, PDF Download lets you know before trying to open it, and then offers you choices such as downloading, opening, or converting it straight to HTML.
Developer :

PDF Download helps to stop PDF files crashing your browser, stop PDF files taking forever to open and make PDF files download like other files in Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/427

10. All-in-One-Gestures:
This extension allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures, rocker navigation, scroll wheel navigation and page...
It does simplify browsing but needs little time to get used to
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/31871/all-in-one_gestures-0.19.1-fx.xpi

11. NoScript: (Security tool)
It speeds up your browsing by stopping the big scripts loading up, and can improve your anonymity and security. It allows you to selectively disables browser scripting (JavaScript)…Allow active content to run only from sites you trust.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

12. Sage Too:
Newer version of the popular RSS manager ...Sage 1 was a basic and lightweight RSS Reader and Atom feed aggregator extension for Mozilla Firefox.
The newer version has a lot more to offer and the detail is presented nicely on the download page. Worth trying out...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7263

13. Del.icio.us and stumble upon:

‘Delicious Bookmarks’ is the official Firefox add-on for del.icio.us, the world's leading social bookmarking service. It integrates your del.icio.us bookmarks and tags with Firefox and keeps them in sync for easy, convenient access.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615

With StumbleUpon you can also connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering. StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138

14. Flagfox:
Well if you care to know about the location of the server of the website you are visiting, then flagfox displays a country flag in the status bar depicting the location of the current website's server, and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5791

15. Firefox 3 universal uploader:
As the name says, this firefox extension allows you to upload/download files from any website using a friendly interface. Upload files/photos/videos to Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net, Facebook, Webshots, OmniDrive, SME Storage and Google Docs in this version.You can add multiple files to the queue at a time. Extension will take care of uploading them for you.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4724
New Firefox 3.0 compatible version is posted on http://www.fireuploader.com

16. Hyperwords:
Select any word or words on any web page. A menu pops-up. Choose from any one of the many powerful commands. Customizable menu and behavior.
Select any text on any page for one-click access to References, Searches, Conversions, Translations, Email, Blogging & more.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1941

17. Video Download Helper:
The easy way to download and convert Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites. This works also for audio and picture galleries.
DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many sites. Just surf the Web as you are used to, when DownloadHelper detects it can do something for you, the icon gets animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item. For instance, if you go to a YouTube page, you'll be able to download the video directly on your file system. It also works with MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

18. Flashblock:
Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

Finally ……
The add-ons certainly do add a great flavour to browsing but one should try to keep only those add-ons in their browser which they really require and not just because someone says they are good. They need to be carefully chosen to give the user maximum ease in browsing. For instance, if you are not comfortable with the sidebar, there is no point keeping it. Too many add-ons slow down your browser and it takes a long time to start. Moreover it can give your browser a messy look.

Other then extension add-ons you also have lots of Firefox themes add-ons to choose from and also plugins which are installed as and when they are required.

Happy browsing!!

Apple releases iTunes 7.7 : A review

2008-07-14T21:09:00.001+05:30

iTunes is Apple’s media player, media organization and sync software. Apple released iTunes 7.7 recently on 10 July, adding support for the iPhone 3G and the iTunes App Store.

This latest version of iTunes is required for the iPhone 3G, Firmware 2.0, App Store and MobileMe.iTunes is available for free download. Get the latest version here:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
(System Requirements: Mac OS X(10.4.7 or later) or Windows
File Size: 48MB)

Whats new ?

The App Store:
iTunes Version 7.7 contains support fo making downloads from the App Store. The app store will have Applications and games for the iPhone and iPod touch. However the highly awaited store has not yet been launched as I write this post. One of the most awaited applications is the all new remote application…

The Remote application:
The iTunes users can utilise the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback remotely. The iPhone/iPod touch remote application will be available as a free download from the App Store.
According to Apple:

" The new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home — a free download from the App Store."

The software is a 50MB download.

iTunes 7.7 support:

iTunes 7.7 is available for Mac and Windows. The iTunes Music Store offers Windows users the same online music store as Mac users, with the same music catalogue, the same personal-use rights, and the same 99-cents-per-song pricing.
However, iTunes runs slower on windows and eats away lots of system resources. However there is no such problem on Mac.

iTunes Store:

The iTunes store has been enormously successful and has gained wide popularity. One can Shop the itunes store for music, TV shows, applications and audio-books. One can also download free podcasts from the iTunes store 24*7.

Music: it has More than 8 million songs for 99¢ each with music from all five major music companies and more than 600 independent labels.
Movies: Rent from $2.99, buy from $9.99.
Music Videos: More than 11,000, from 99¢ each.
TV shows: Over 20,000 episodes.
Applications: Hundreds of apps for iPod touch and iPhone.
Audio-books: More than 35,000 titles.Podcasts: 100,000 and counting. 100% free.
iPod Games: lots of games at $4.99 each.

Other older Features :

Media management: iTunes keeps track of songs by creating a virtual library, allowing users to access and edit a song's attributes. iTunes supports ripping from CDs.

Library views: three different views for the music library

File format support: iTunes can currently read, write, and convert between MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC and Apple Lossless. The Windows version of iTunes can automatically convert but doesn’t support direct playback of WMA. It is well known to support a large number of ‘audio’ formats for playback.

Sound processing: There is a feature called "Sound Check" which automatically adjusts the playback volume of all songs to the same level.

Video support: iTunes did not come with video support initially. But with each new version, video capabilities are getting further enhanced and it has improved a lot. However, I still prefer VLC player for playing my video files as iTunes is still no match for VLC (click here to view my review of VLC player).

Smart Playlists support: Smart playlists are playlists that can be set to automatically filter the library based on a customized list of selection criteria.

Integrated Audio and video Podcasting support: Apple's iTunes player is also considered the dominant podcatching client. It also lets us manage podcasts on iPod.

Synchronizing with iPod and iPhone the moment it connects, can also sync with Apple TV.
Integration with other applications like iWork and iLife and Garage-band.

iPhone activation: Since the introduction of the original iPhone, users could use iTunes to activate their phone through their mobile carrier. However, a worldwide crash of iTunes’ authentication servers on the day that the iPhone 3G was released has caused major issues.

iMix: It is a user-created playlist published in the iTunes Store. Anyone can create an iMix free of charge.

Internet radio supported

Plugins: iTunes supports visualizer plugins and device plugins.

Finally….
Well since iTunes is easily available for windows, it has become a must have, not only because of the popular Apple tag behind it but also because of so many unique features and audio-format support it provides the user. Apple is expected to also released the 2.0 Firmware and App Store shortly, as well as launching MobileMe. Moreover the iTunes store which guarentees 24*7 entertainment has gained incredible success and all that it has in store is another big attraction towards iTunes.

Part-2 : " Open at Own RISK ! " gets crazier

2008-07-07T15:27:00.000+05:30

This post is in continuation to the post made by me on July 1 {click here to see previous post} about the new Nokia promotional campaign "Open at own Risk" which nokia had been spreading through an exclusive website.

I had giving a few screen-shots of the website as it appeared at that time and it seemed to indicate that Nokia may release something nice on the coming Monday, i.e. today.

But shockingly enough, when I opened the website today to find out if there had been any launch, I was greeted by a "Notice of immediate Termination" for the website. I back-checked to see if I had made any typos in the address. No ... not the case. Better check out the site yourself here :
www.openatownrisk.com

What is more insane is that the notice says says that the owner of the website

...will stand before the trial, accused of intent to publish content driving peope insane.

Are you kidding me ??

People are still checking the site for some new developments but in vain {until now}. Maybe by the time you read this blog the site would be updated again but I would certainly try to keep a track of that.

What to say ... great creativity or foolishness on the part of Nokia ...

OK i do agree that the promotional campaign has been an interesting one and can be termed successful. Normally I do not follow these promos or write about them in my blog but this one promised something good and Nokia is quite trustworthy.

But since the release date was today and there has not yet been any change to the site, i hope that Nokia doesn't make a fool of itself. Because after so much of hype if the mobile phone manufacturing Giant fails to please us with something grand then its reputation is truly going to suffer.
Nokia, though, is still silent on what is going on.

Lets optimistically hope for the best ... !!

to be continued ...

P.S. : The original site is still available here in case you missed it : http://www.openatownrisk.com/teaser.swf

VLC Media Player : A review

2008-07-04T00:58:00.001+05:30

VLC Media player is simply incredible .... I have been using it for more than an year now and it has never let me down ... the best thing is that it plays just about any file format you wish to ... it really does ... even in this pathetic era where everyone is trying to develop a new format of audio/video.

And the other great thing about it is that it is opensource and free to use !!!

The popularity of this player is well reflected by the 89 million downloads {wow !} reported on its website as of now. { The current download rate is 1.1 downloads per second ! }

Presently the latest release is version 0.8.6h. This is a bugfix release.
You can download the player right here right now:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ {9 MB }
or you can have the source code here:
Source-code

The interface of the VLC player appears really simple as compared to some of the other players available i.e. Windows Media Player and Real Player etc. But do not get deceived by its simple looks ... it is compact but highly loaded and fully featured as i shall elaborate below :

Positives :

1. It is a Cross-platform open source media player with a very simple user- friendly interface; The setup file size is small and download and installation is easy and free.
OS supported: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP/Vista/OS X/linux{various versions}
However in the upcoming versions, the support for older OS will be dropped.
2. Plays most formats : As i said above, a whole lot of formats are available these days and most players play only certain formats and display error messages for the rest. But VLC plays most audio and video foramts. Infact there are so many formats i cant mention them here. So you can get the list on here -
supported formats: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html
Running DVDs of any kind is really easy and the playback quality is very good too. According to a review at sol4.net :
"....It not only plays them with support for menus etc regardless of the drive used for playback....VLC bypasses the drive, ignores the region setting on the disk and retrieves the encryption keys as it plays the title....."
3. Plays incomplete video files too: Well if there is any part of the file which is playable then vlc will play it. I have experienced this a lot. I download lots of TV series from the net and occasionally i have files which are corrupted but still vlc plays a part of it. But when i try to play the same file in other players they completely refuse to play it.
4. Lots of skins : you can modify your vlc and give it a Windows media player look or an OS X look. Download skins here : http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.html
5. Other common features include a graphic equaliser, adjustment of video colours and options to take a snapshot of the screen while playing a video and the ability to increase the volume to 400% level { with notable loss in sound quality}. Also, the hotkeys are really helpful once you get used to them. eg. ctrl + up to increase volume upto 400% mark.
Lots of option for the advanced user are available in the preference window but the normal user never needs to disturb those settings.

Negatives :

1. When i run videos in the player and try to simultaneously perform other operations on my computer {why would i do that? :) } then sometimes my CPU gets overloaded and the colour theme of my PC automatically changes to vista-basic theme to save memory...
No i am not using an antique machine but the fact is that CPU overloading has been a problem with earlier versions of VLC and they have not completely sorted out the problem in the latest version as well.

2. The all too simple interface can be a bit problematic initially if you are used to working with some other player which have some features more user friendly than the others like creating playlists. However once you get used to the hotkeys things do get a lot simpler.

SUMMING UP ...
Even if you dont use VLC player as your default media player because of its not-so-inspiring looks, it is still a must for your PC as a fall-back player because of its ability to run a great variety of formats. while i Tunes gives a fair competition when it comes to playing audio files, when it comes to playing video there is hardly a player so diverse as VLC player. And it keeps improving with each version update. The next version 0.9.0 is going to be released soon ...

screenshots: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/screenshots.html

advanced users: http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/play-howto-en.html

Open at Own Risk : New Promo by Nokia

2008-07-03T18:56:00.000+05:30

While browsing the net today, I came across this really creepy looking website: http://www.openatownrisk.com

Well you do need some brains to be able to enter the site {you need to solve the simple puzzle that appears on the opening page} and then you will be shown some strange text .

And this is what you get there …

“Hundreds of years ago, scientists, artists and members of Royal families gathered to produce a clip of grand weirdness. A clip stranger and more amazing than anything that had ever been made before.But the clip turned out to o weird! People went mad from seeing it and it was too much for the common man to handle. Thus the clip was locked away, in a mysterious box with four seals.The knowledge of how to break the seals has been passed down from one generation to another, hidden within the technological masterpieces of history.Edison’s light bulb, the Wright Brothers’ airplane and Apollo 11 all held the secret of unlocking the box. A secret that can now be found within Nokia Download service, allowing the public – you, to find the key to break the seals. And see...the weirdest clip. Ever made... ”

Well I didn’t type out all that stuff ; I simply copied the page source … smart :)

OK so what is it all about … well this is actually a promotional site of Nokia … but it doesn’t still tell you about any specific product yet …
well if you look carefully there is a timer that appears occasionally on that site … it actually would count down to zero on Monday … so you can expect a big release by Nokia this Monday ...

By the way the upcoming releases of Nokia include the Nokia N96 expected to release o the 31st of this month. Others in the upcoming release category are include N77 ,N78, 6210, 6220, 6120 and also the N81[8 GB].

However, the biggest expected release is a Nokia touch phone [codenamed TUBE] which is expected to release late this year and is expected to be tough competition for the iPhone ... well that would certainly be amazing but for the time being let see what Nokia has to give us on Monday.

Mozilla THUNDERBIRD : Complete Review of Latest Version 2

2008-06-29T01:39:00.001+05:30

Mozilla Thunderbird, just like Mozilla Firefox, is another highly successful opensource software developed by Mozilla Corp. It is a great e-mail and news client and offers RSS feed reader and a good contacts management system too. Thunderbird is safe and fast and has a great user interface, nice spam filters, quick message search, and can be customized to a large extent.

The areas where it scores over the other software offering similar functionality like MS Outlook and Windows Mail are the ease of use, better speed and a few more good features which offer better functionality. And of course the best thing is that it is free !!!

The version 2.0 was released a few months back and is available in over 35 languages. It is compatible with windows vista and has been undergoing constant updates since release as expected. Mozilla claims it to be a reloaded version more powerful than ever.

You can download the latest version of Thunderbird [presently 2.0.0.14] here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

I am a Gmail user and the the first impression was simply fantastic. The ease with which a new Gmail account gets created in Thunderbird 2 is worth appreciation, very unlike Windows Mail where I had to go to my Google accounts page and check out few things. AMAZINGLY all you need to do is to type in your user name and password in the account creation wizard and the client will do the rest of the required settings for you.

Here is all I had to do:

step 1 :

step 2:

And that's it :

Easyyy ... ehh ??? that’s the Gmail support it offers. It does rest of the settings by itself via POP3 access. [POP 3 access has to be enabled in gmail account setting though ! ] Moreover the default settings leave a copy of the mail on the server upon download so the mail on the server doesn’t get removed … good work. And we can customise any of the settings as per your requirement in the account manager window.

And this is what I got in windows mail when I tried to open an account in gmail. I had to visit my google account settings page to fill up this stuff:

Another great feature if you are a windows vista user is that you can get all your mail indexed in windows vista and you can find yor e-mail directly from start menu search box.

No integrated calendar??? Not a problem …
Yes there is no inbuilt calendar in Thunderbird like the one in MS Outlook but that’s not a problem as you can download an extension called LIGHTNING which adds an integrated calendar.
Download the extension here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/download.html

When Thunderbird 1.5 was released it promised better security, automatic updating, automatic spell checking, anti-phishing technology, and other useful features. The newer version has got even more in its arsenal. Let's take a look at the impressive list of new features in the version 2 :

Message tagging:
Message tagging is a nice little feature that allows you to add tags to individual emails using available tags or you can create your own tags too. Each tag comes has a corresponding colour so when we tag a message, it gets colorized in the mail folder. We can add multiple tags to a mail and it allows a great way of organizing the mail.

Contact management:
The address book is divided into two : first is the personal address book and the other is the collected addresses book. This allows better sorting of the addresses too. You can easily import address book entries. Auto complete results of the address while sending a mail is done according to how often you send e-mail to each recipient.

Add-ons and updates:
There are quite a few handy addons available which can furthur enhance your experience of working with Thunderbird. They can add lots of new features to thunderbird. One of the most important ones was mentioned by me above called as Lightning for adding an integrated calendar.
There is an add-on manager available [Tools ...- add on] for this purpose just like the one in Firefox. Over 170 extensions for Thunderbird are available. Thunderbird add-on can let you manage contacts better, place voice over IP calls, listen to music, keep track of birthdates all from your inbox , add mouse gestures support, dictionary search, a tool that can switch between multiple proxy configurations and a lot more !!! Really cool !!!
You can configure Thunderbird 2 to automatically download new product versions and security updates.

Themes:
We can look for themes for thunderbird and install or uninstall them using the add-on manager [Tools ... -add on]. These add to its user friendly nature even more by allowing you to change the look of the interface. Initially though, only one theme is available as the default theme.

Configuration:
Thunderbird is hugely configurable and an editor is available for this but it is definitely not a place that I would like to visit because one really needs to have some good knowledge before making any changes there.

Mail filtering:
Sorting : The message filters are easy to design and do come handy when we need to manage large volumes of mail. They give a great way to organize our mail folders.
Spam Filtering: Mozilla has updated Thunderbird’s popular junk mail folders to stay ahead of spam. Each email you receive passes through Thunderbird's leading-edge junk mail filters. Each time you mark messages as spam, Thunderbird “learns” and improves its filtering so you can spend more time reading the mail that matters. Thunderbird can also use your mail provider's spam filters to keep junk mail out of your inbox.

Find as you type:
Finds and highlights message text as you type. This speeds up the search process. It is identical to that in firefox for searching the text in the current page. Thunderbird also supports a Saved Searches feature, which is like the one available in vista explorer. A saved search is a folder that contains the results of a search you previous performed.

New mail alerts:
The notification appears in the system tray. In addition to the subject of the email, you'll see information about the sender and the part of the body text when possible. Thunderbird's notifications are usually quite a bit bigger than those offered by Outlook. The program doesn't remain in the tray to check mails once it is closed which obliges you to manually open the program to check e-mail and feeds.

A notification :

Wide support:
The version is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It supports POP, IMAP, Gmail and .Mac [on OS X] accounts for e-mail.I did write about how easy it was for me to open my new gmail account in Thunderbird. Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.It works fine with multiple accounts of all kinds.

Security:
Phishing protection :Thunderbird protects you from email scams which try to trick users into handing over personal and confidential information by indicating when a message is a potential phishing attempt. As a second line of defense, Thunderbird warns you when you click on a link which appears to be taking you to a different Web site than the one indicated by the URL in the message.{For knowledge on phishing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing }

Thunderbird will display an information bar with a graphical red shield any time it believes the currently-selected email is an email scam. You can then tell the application the email is not a scam, or delete it. Suspicious emails are allowed to display simple text only, so they can't access your system programmatically.

{ I tried to explore the net and found out that more security features in Thunderbird include S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. I do not have a clear idea of how all that works but anyhow I felt like including it here. }

Image blocking:
Remote images in the e-mail messages are blocked by default in Thunderbird 2. However you can tell mark certain addressed as trusterd and for mails from these addresses the image loads automatically.

Navigation:
Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation that allows you to click “forward” and “back”. These back and forward buttons are provided in the interface for easier navigation while we are viewing our messages.

Finally…
Well it can obviously be difficult for a long time MS outlook user to switch to thunderbird as few of the features and few shortcuts do differ. But Thunderbird is a fully featured e-mail client with lots of extra functionality and people are working to constantly keep improving the software. The user-friendliness of Thunderbird and the fact that it is free is ensuring that lots of new users are opting for it. Lets hope the versions to come will be even better than the present one and provide lots of interesting features.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 : A personal review

2008-06-23T18:50:00.000+05:30

Well I came across the Mozilla Firefox Browser only around an year ago and the first thing I noticed and really liked about it was its comparatively higher speed than the other available browsers. As I got acquainted with more of its features, I realized what an amazing browser it is. Thus I dumped the Internet Explorer Browser which I had been ignorantly using till then. and now I fully support the “Spread the Firefox” campaign.
Actually it is not just me but the whole world is slowly becoming a fan of this small, fast and easy to use ‘opensource’ browser which scores over its rivals in so many aspects has gained global appreciation.

The huge popularity that this browser has gained was evident when the new version 3.0 was released on the 18th of June at 10:00 PST. Mozilla had been hyping this day as the DOWNLOAD DAY for around a week and had urged the people around the globe to download the new version on the release day itself so that a new world record could be created. The response was amazing : a whopping 8 million downloads on the very first day . It is being claimed by Mozilla as a new world record for release day downloads.

And ofcourse one can download the latest version here :

The servers reported serving almost 9,000 downloads a minute day on the “download day” and exceeded the first day download mark for Firefox 2 of 1.6 million after just five hours of availability for Firefox 3 ... Over 700 community launch parties were registered on http://www.mozillaparty.com You can find out the present number of downloads of firefox here

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

I too got a taste of the latest version too. It claims to be {and is !! } even faster than the previous version and boasts of malware protection and many other features. Some of the new features which I liked are :

1. QUICK BOOKMARKING AND EASIER TO SORT BOOKMARKS :
Now we can quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click on the star icon in address bar and a second click lets us file and tag them. Tags are keywords that we can associate with our bookmarks to sort them by topic so now we can quickly access our recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on the bookmark toolbar.

2. AUTO-CHECK FOR ADD-ONS:
Various add-ons are available for further enhancing the firefox browser and the add-ons of the 2.0 version may not necessarily be compatible with the 3.0 version. There is no need to hunt for the add-ons anymore. Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugins versions and will disable older, insecure versions. Earlier version we had to go to install required plugins from http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/addons.html and other such sites.
Users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager. The Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from the community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.

3. ONE CLICK SITE INFO:
Click the site favicon (the small icon before address) in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to.

4. IMPROVEMENTS IN TABS :
Tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quick-menu. To drag a tab simply click on the tab and pull it along the tab-bar. Right click on the tab bar for a variety of cool options. You can even undo closing of a tab and Firefox will also prompt users to save tabs on exit.

5. SECURITY AND PROTECTION :
Malware Protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. The content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. Clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. To improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled. Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.

6. NEW DOWNLOAD MANAGER:
The revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. The active downloads and time remaining is always shown in the status bar as your files download.
Users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.

7. FULL PAGE ZOOM :
Zoom in : ctrl ++ ; zoom out : ctrl -- ; additionally there is a feature which allows us to zoom only the text portion.

8. FASTER :
Improvements to JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.

9. EATS UP LESSER MEMORY:
Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.

Yes it is true that some bugs have been reported for 3.0 version already. But that is and always will be the case. As a matter of fact updates are constantly made available and it keeps improving with each and every update.

One can confidently say that firefox is currently leading from front in the battle among opensource softwares and the rest. What I believe is that ultimately it is going to be the former which come out as the victors just because of the way they are spreading and gaining wide acclaims.

Blu-RAY Disc --- the next generation optical disc

2008-06-16T13:56:00.000+05:30

Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the next-generation optical disc format and is jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple , Dell , Hitachi , HP , JVC , LG , Mitsubishi , Panasonic , Pioneer , Philips , Samsung , Sharp , Sony , TDK and Thomson ).

The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc.

The project was originally started by SONY and initially it faced competition from a similar format of optical disc called HD DVD which was initially more popular. But this changed when Playstation 3 was launched, since every PS3 unit also functioned as a Blu-ray Disc player. By January 2007, Blu-ray discs had outsold HD DVDs. Finally, by February 2008, Toshiba announced it was pulling its support for the HD DVD format, leaving Blu Ray as the ultimate victor.

The current optical discs, i.e., the DVDs and the CDs use a red and near infrared laser [650nm to 780nm] to read and write data, the Blu-ray Disc uses a blue (technically violet) laser [405nm] instead, hence the name Blu-ray.

Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit.

The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB. Initially it was more prone to scratches than the normal DVD but with advances in the polymer technology this problem has also been solved.

Blu-ray is currently supported by more than 180 of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has broad support from the major movie studios as a successor to today's DVD format. In fact, seven of the eight major movie studios (Disney , Fox , Warner , Paramount , Sony , Lionsgate and MGM) have released movies in the Blu-ray format and six of them are releasing their movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format.

For information about new and upcoming Blu-ray releases, as well as what movies are currently available in the Blu-ray format check out

www.blu-ray.com/movies/ .

LATEST NEWS :
After the Blu-ray disc manufacturers have eliminated the rival HD DVD format its prices are rising gradually these days. Since the Blu-ray format is being supported by almost every major Hollywood studio, it is bound to gain popularity in the upcoming years and together with its high-storage capacity it is correctly being termed as the next generation optical disc which will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.
Recently Samsung released a 100GB Blu-ray Disc which is a four-layer disc compared to the normal single layered 25GB disc.

Computer programming in Hindi ???

2008-06-07T16:08:00.000+05:30

Open source softwares are developing globally and gaining wide popularity at a brisk rate. Indian developers are playing a key role on the development of the open source software industry. The Indian developers have come up with a variety of open source software solutions which is helping millions of users in India and globally.

One such really smart desi open source software is Hindawi programming system.
Hindawi is a multilingual programming language tool. This means that using this software, we can program in languages other than English.

Hindawi is also the winner of the FOSS India awards for 2008 which clearly shows how successful it has been. [the FOSS india awards is a well recognied initiative to appreciate free and open source softwares developed by indians and the award is supported by the LINUX FOR YOU magazine ]

The users can write programs in various Indian languages including Hindi, Guajarati, Bengali, assamese etc

The great thing is the wide varieties of programming languages it supports. It allows the user to program in the equivalents of C, C++ , lex , yacc , BASIC , LOGO and even assembly and many more computer languages.

The equivalent languages are called Hindi C or Hindi assembly or bangle C correspondingly.

Moreover these equivalent languages are syntax-compatible with their traditional English counterparts and can therefore utilize the existing libraries such as glibc etc in a manner similar to the way C++ is syntax compatible to C and hence can use most of the C libraries.

After winning the FOSS '08' award, key developers of Hindawi , Abhishek Choudhary and Sweta (Karwa) Choudhary shared, "Hindawi Programming System has shattered the technological myth that full-fledged programming systems cannot be feasibly developed in non-English languages. This is evident from the flurry of activity seen towards reproducing our results globally, and especially the interest of commercial entities in doing so... Let us think of our brothers and sisters who have not been privileged enough to go to English-medium schools. Even they have a right to benefit from the ICT revolution at all levels of technology, from primary school education to robotics and super-computing in their mother tongue, without the need to master English."

download Hindawi here : http://hindawi.in/en_US/download.php

This is just a warm-up post

2008-05-31T23:44:00.000+05:30

Hi there ... an empty list of published posts never looks so cool ... so if you happen to be here and read this then just feel good about it ... coz i will definitely be updating soon ...

SAYONARA