Developing @cric : An SMS based app on TXTWEB

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 :

1. View summary of all the live matches in progress
2. View detailed score of a match
3. Set a match as Favorite
4. View schedule of upcoming ODIs, Tests and T20s.
5. 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

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

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

 

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

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.