Yet another Camp

You've guessed it right:

BarCampPune4 is coming up yet again! This time on 16th Feb @ ThoughWorks. I will be speaking but haven't yet decided on the topic.

I am excited!

For more details:http://barcamp.org/BarCampPune4

Business Buzz

I have started another site: BusinessBuzz (http://www.businessbuzz.in)

There will be different topics like BusinessGyan,IT & ITES, Marketing, Stock, B-Schools etc.

It will work this way:
We'll have bloggers who already blog in their respective site. They will also blog on this new site.
It will be like a group 10-15 bloggers blogging/writing articles on different topics.

Check out the screenshot:

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my birthday! I just had a great party with some great friends.

Thank you to all my friends for making today special.

Sachinism.com Widget

Yet another of my widget creation! This time a widget for Sachinism.com



Get you own Sachin Widget @ SACHINISM.COM

Sachinism site launched: www.sachinism.com

I am pleased to announce the launch of www.SACHINISM.com - My latest site on God of Cricket Sachin Tendulkar. If Cricket is one's religion then Sachin is the GOD and the religion he spreads : Sachinism.



I was lucky to have got this domain. The response was awesome. The was live countdown being followed by fans and over 100 registration in the first 3 hours! The site is in continuous development with new features getting added each day.

Thanks to all the guys(specially Ved and Bhel) who have made this site come true.

The site was developed completely from scratch using simple php scripts with modular design. There is a good security which I have implemented: HTML syntax checking, SQL injection attacks etc. Currently we're developing an admin panel to give it a good backend for moderation.
I am also planning to launch an E-Magazine for Sachin which will be completely like the normal magazines that we get but in the form of a PDF which can be distributed on the internet free of cost.

Lots more to come... Stay connected!

Here's one of the banner which fan's made:

Flex builder free for students

If you're a student or a faculty at educational institutions worldwide, its time to rejoice. You can now get Adobe Flex Builder 2.0 for free!

Adobe Flex 2 will be available to qualified education end-users for free download on Adobe.com in early November.

Catch the full news here

WebOSS 07: The Event

On 13th October Teknowledge Software conducted the first "Free for All" Open Source Web Technology conference called WebOSS '07.

The event was the first of its kind to be held in Kolkata. Teknowledge Software, a software house based in Kolkata hosted the event along with WBUT as the venue sponsor.

Volunteers dressed in white T-shirts with WebOSS '07 logo worked hard to put the event together.

The event started at around 11:30. I was the first one to speak and spoke on RIA: Which technology one should choose? Slides can be found here

I attended the next session by Pradeep on how to build application with AJAX. Pradeep's presentation can be found here

There was a lunch break after this which contained burgers, cakes, ladoo! and Frooti!

The next session was of Shabbir's on Speeding up your websites. A great session which included tips and tricks to speed up the sites from network and client browser point of view. Shabbir's content can be found here

The next session was of Naveen. He really went dirty into the code like Pradeep. It was really a good session and I have started respecting Perl (i'm more a PHP Guy!)

It was a good conference, the jam packed audience was eager to know more and more!

Overall, a fun event like barcamps! Its great to see such events happening in Kolkata! Go ahead Kol!

You can find ALL pictures here:


Hussain on RIA


Pradeed, Naveen and Shabbir

Jam Packed Audience


Pradeep, Naveen and Shabbir again.

WebOSS '07 : The Web Technology Conference

The first of its kind Web Technology Conference on Open Source Technologies, WEBOSS ‘07 is being organised in Kolkata on Saturday 13th October, 2007.

I am the organizer and speaker.
The conference is going to be held at West Bengal University of Technology Main Campus.
Topics include: RIA, AJAX, ROR, PHP VS PERL, speeding up your websites. I'm going to speak on RIA and RoR.
There is also going to be a panel discussion on Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

Hope to catch some action!

Apache Ant

My slides on Apache Ant. Ant is really a powerful and object oriented tool.

www.livinonjovi.com Launched

Hi Guys,

As promised , I have launched http://www.livinonjovi.com/

Bon Jovi Fan club

I have started a forum on Bon Jovi for their fans(I'm one).

There are some really die hard fans out there. The forum basically has two sections: 1) Bon Jovi the band 2) Bon Jovi Fans which have forums on General talks, Downloads, Music News. Apart from these, there are forums on RockTalk, Gossip, Polls and to top it all, Bon Jovi Vs Other Bands.

You can catch the site at: http://bonjovi.teks.co.in

There are 133 articles in just 2 days of its opening. Great start!

I will book the domain soon and keep you updated.

Single line of HTML crashes IE 6

A Japanese blogger who goes by the name Hamachiya2 has discovered a single line of HTML and CSS that crashes IE 6. The line is:

<style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input></table>

If you’re brave, you can click here to try it out. The code is rendered correctly in Firefox, Safari and Opera (didn’t get a chance to try any other browsers, but presumably they work too). But in IE 6 it raises a fatal error in mshtml.dll.

Deep Linking How to avoid

A deep link is a direct link to a web site's resource without accessing the main page of the site. For example your site is http://www.abc.com and your contact page is at http://www.abc.com/contactus/contact.html. If a user types the 2nd link without going though the main page, he is called as The Deep Linker.

It becomes a problem for many of the sites which display ads on their first page(the index page). The HTTP protocol doesn't bother if the user is asking for a resource via a deep link or via a normal link. After all, the request which goes to the server is something like this :

GET /contactus/contact.html

for both cases 1. When you access it through a deep link or 2. When you access it normally via first page's link.

So, how to avoid people from linking deep?
Here's a small trick:

1. Check for a cookie at each deep link. If it doesn't exist, redirect to index page.
2. On the index page insert a cookie which gets killed when the browser is closed.


Anyone knowing a non cookie based solution to this problem do post it in the comments

BarCampPune3 - My Slides

I gave a brief tutorial on How to make a Flash Widget



I also talked about my research topic on Mobile Navigation - Point and Locate buildings

BarCampPune3- My Experiences

9:30: I am attending BarCampPune3 and am at Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd. I got some cool logistics - Tshirt, pen , pad. I am also having breakfast! The weather is lovely!

The Barcamp Schedule

10:23: I am attending the first session by Rakesh Raju on TVGuide.in
Feedback: This session was the first one and packed with people. Rakesh discussed about how he created a TV guide because India didn't have one which could crawl contents across 100+ channels daily!

The next session was on Micro$oft $ilverlight by Aditya Thatte. He talked about M$ answering to JRE and Flash plugins. $ilverlight is still novice and at least I am not going to move to it seeing the amount of code one has to write!

The next session was again by Rakesh Raju on 2D and 3D game development. He was talking more on what games his company had built rather than on the framework. Marketing might be the right word but I don't want to use it as he did show something in the end to develop a scenario out of Torque and TorqueScript! But still everything was pre-made and a person new to game development would never know how to get started.


13:52 After having attended three session, and a wonderful lunch. Right now I am all set to give my first talk of the day: Flash Widget Tutorial. Looking forward to see many questions!

There were a fewer questions than expected.

The next session I attended was of Abhijit: FaceBook and RoR. It was again a complete NO NO for novice on RoR. I am happy that I had worked with Facebook API for PHP before else RoR went above my head!! It was a good session otherwise.

The next session was again mine on Mobile Navigation and boy! I got so many queries. I am happy I got a new idea into people's mind!

I regret to have missed many sessions like:
How to start a company(I am sure Jatinder attended it and will blog on it).
IPR and Cyber Laws
Writing a Firefox addon by Vinod

I also missed Abdul Qabiz and I found that I wasn't the only guy who missed him!

BarCamp the night before

And so finally it comes - BarCampPune3.

My desktop is cleaned(less icons),
My wallpaper is set to its logo!
My Slides are almost done!



and I feel good about it!

There are some really cool sessions which I'm really looking forward to attend:

Wishlist includes:

MySQL using JRuby - Priyank Kapadia
Microsoft Silverlight, A new dimension to build rich UI applications by Aditya Thatte
Indian Technology Laws, Indian laws on cyberspace, copyright, trademark and patents by Gokul Narayan
Self Hosting - Is it the future ? by Milind Pandit

I'm disappointed I'll miss sessions by Abdul Qabiz. I don't know why he has cut his name!

So see you guys tomorrow at BarCampPune3!

BarCamp3 Preview

Finally BarCamp3 is here and I'm already excited.

The event will take place at Persistent System Pvt. Ltd, Pune on 7th July(Sat) 2007.

I will be speaking on two topics:

1. Mobile Visualization.
2. How to make a Flash Widget.

Free Software Song by RMS

Recently I found the lyrics of The Free Software Song by Richard Stallman.

Before the lyrics here a short history of the song: Richard Stallman was attending some get together where everyone had to either sing or perform something. He knew his turn was coming so he quickly scribbled this song. He also thought of the tune that very moment. When he sung the song, people said it sounded like an anthem and one lady said that he should show it to Richard Stallman. He replied that he was Richard Stallman!

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.

Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.

When we have enough free software
At our call, hackers, at our call,
We'll throw out those dirty licenses
Ever more, hackers, ever more.

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free

Original Posting : http://www.gnu.org/music/writing-fs-song.html
Wikipedia Entry : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Song

VB6 and IE7 problem

One may no longer be able to use the ieframe.dll when using IE7 with VB6's Web Browser Control

Here's a quick tip:
On your component selection dialog box, Point the Microsoft Internet Controls to SHDOCVW.dll instead of ieframe.dll and bingo!

Add external deployable files to Java EE projects on netbeans

Ever wondered how you'd deploy external CSS/JavaScript with servlets or JSPs?
This article will guide you on how to add a CSS/JavaScript (.css, .js) or any file in your project so that it gets inside your .WAR file too!

Here's how to:

1) Start your netbeans: I am using 5.5
2) Goto Tools>Template Manager
3) Select or Expand "Other"
4) Click "Add..." and select the file which you want to include.
5) After selecting the file will appear in your "Others" list
6) In your project navigator, add a new file of this type.
7) Give a name to this file and feel excited!

Netbeans - My Favorite IDE

Netbeans is my favourite IDE when it comes to Java. Although its too slow but the way it arranges stuff for me is quite COOL!

Some facts that I have noticed so far:

1. It takes request from doGet or doPost and sends it to another method. So it doesn't matter if the parameters come from GET or POST, you simple work with them! (Really cool for beginners)

2. It creates a dist directory for each project which means you don't have to explicitly make any such deployment folder. You'll never want a WAR file unless really required. Just copy the contents of this folder and paste it to your deployment folder.

3. It has also got this feature of starting and stopping the bundled Apache Tomcat server as and when required. You can even configure server's port with a GUI which netbeans provides.


4. Netbeans mobility pack is just so awesome. Just drag and drop all basic components(reminds me of VB6).

5. Netbeans generates codes for such UML style drag drop behind the scene. Its got this wonderful feature called as Lazy Initialized. This feature is a coding style where the main thread will not initialize all the form elements instead call methods as an when the form/component is required.
I personally find this very interesting as when I program in J2ME, Its really good to initialize the forms as and when the user needs them. For example: Why would you initialize a form which contains About & Version infomation. It will use up unnecessary space if that form was never visited!

6. Netbeans can also adhere to different Mobile environments and JDKs. For example, If you have a Black Berry's JDE installed, you can make netbeans to compile/run/use Black Berry's APIs. Which means you work with your favourite editor even if the platforms differ.
My Netbeans is configured with mobility pack which has configured sun's WTK 2.2, Black Berry JDE 4.1 & JDE 4.2.

7. If you're connected to the internet, netbeans' welcome page displays latest happennings with Blogs, articiles posted daily. I always make a point to check out whats the latest there!

8. The overall look and feel is quite good. I have been using it since v.4.x and it has improved a lot.


Although Netbeans is slow(Tell me which one is not!), I'll still give it preference over any other IDE available for the complete Java Technology I.e Java SE, Java EE and Java ME platform. I wont give preference to Eclipse (from where netbeans has derived!).

Flash and JavaScript Integration

Flash and JavaScript Integration

Follow these easy steps to make flash communicate with JavaScript code and vice versa.

a) Flash to JavaScript: Making Flash call a JavaScript function

JavaScript Function Code. To be put in the HTML

<script language="JavaScript">
function alertMe(){
alert("Hello, world");
}
</script>

Flash Code. To be put in any event of button, frame, where ever required:

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
function callJavaScript(){
ExternalInterface.call("alertMe");
}

Please note that due to default security these codes will not work if the flash is loaded locally.
To test this, you will either need to upload your .swf and .html to a server and request the files from the server.
OR you will need to set the global security settings( Google it to know how!)


b) JavaScript to Flash : Making JavaScript call a Flash Function.

Flash function code that needs to be called:

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
function startPlaying(){
play();
}
ExternalInterface.addCallback("startPlaying", this, startPlaying);

Java Script code to call the method in the flash:

<script language="JavaScript">
var myflashref;
function getReference(){
if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1 )
myflashref = window.flashObject;
else
myflashref = window.document.flashObject;
}
function playFlash(){
getReference(); //getting the flash reference.
myflashref.startPlaying(); //call the method in the flash
}
</script>

Well, I leave it up to you now to do some R&D and make data pass through flash and JavaScript and vice-versa!

Feel free to leave clarification requests.

GNUnify '07 : My Experiences

GNUnify is a very sweet event that takes place at Symbiosis Institute of Computer studies and Research(SICSR), the very same place BARCAMP, Pune was held. I was glad to be a part of it on its 5th year on 27th and 28th January 2007. It gave me double pleasure! On the first day I was a volunteer while on the second day I was a speaker.

The event that attracted many students and IT professionals from Pune was very well organized and had a lot of good sessions. I myself conducted many installation sessions of Linux for novices on day one. I also managed to catch up some interesting sessions like "RIA with Lazlo" by Vijay Khambalkar and Debugging apps with GNU Debugger" by Prakash Varandani and some glimpses of jam packed session of Network Security by Atul Kahate.

The evening has a wonderful Networking Party at Symbiosis Institute of Management Sciences-SIMS poolside. Dinner was quite good with some interesting talks with Mr.Narain who had come from Chennai. I also managed to get a good number of pictures along with other volunteers.

Day two started with my workshop on LAMP(Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP) along with Gaurav Pant. It was a 2 hour workshop which lasted for over 3 hours. The very thing that surprised me was there were more number of people who were turned down due tounavailability of space. Instead of Gaurav and me taking simultaneous sessions, two separate tracks could have solved the problem. May be next year!

After I finished with my workshop, I managed to get into two more sessions: "Identity Management" by Pradeep Sinha and "Backup Management" by Anand Bhalve.

I really liked this product Amanda which Anand talked about. I was wondering to create a UI for that! At the end I attended Matt Barker's session on the next version of Ubuntu called "Feisty Fawn". He was like a rock star with all girls going crazy about having a photograph with him!

There were many sessions that I missed due to my own workshop.Session that I MISSED and REGRET were like of Tony Wasserman about "Management of Open Source Projects", "Open Solaris" by "Moinak Ghosh". Hopefully I will get to see them on the video recording.

Day-2 ended with a photo shoot of all the volunteers.





At the end, another successful event! Hope to see the same next year!

Feel Good

It feels really good after winning the technical quiz at I2IT.

On the first thought I never wanted to participate but when my friend Manish insisted, We formed a team and went there. It was a 3 day event. The questions were from all streams of computers and weren't easy! The best thing I liked was the last round in which a caselet was given and one had to present a solution to the given problem in about 7 mins. We were given "Air Traffic Modelling". I remembered my friend Naved doing a case study on Air Traffic System the very instance we got the caselet!



Finally there was an award ceremony where we were given certificates and a gift vouchers from crossword worth 2k(Atleast something as ROI).

Overall experience was good but really really poor management. Anyway, All's well that ends well!