AM22 Technologies

[Guide] Set Up CloudFront With Custom Domain As Mirror CDN

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:53:00 +0200

CDN is a an acronym for 'content delivery network' which is used to speed up the content delivery over internet. The content could be anything like images, CSS files, JS files or may the whole page. All major high traffic websites use it to delievr content as fact as possible to the end user.

What is Mirror CDN?

A mirroring CDN is just like a normal CDN minus the need to upload your data. Mirror CDN acts just like a mirror to your existing dta store. For example, if you already host a web site and have kept all the data (like images, CSS files, JS files etc.) on the same web host, you do not need to move/copy it to CDN. The Mirror CDN can straightaway read it from your existing web host/server location itself.

Amazon CloudFront as a Mirror CDN

Amazon cloudFront is actually a CDN service which can be configured to act as a Mirror CDN. We will walk you through the steps of set up with an active example which we did for one of our sister concern website: inHouseRecipes.com. Here, we used the CloudFront Mirror CDN for delivering the site images.

Register with Amazon:
If you are already registered with Amazon.com, you can straightaway log in to "Amazon web services". Once the account is created and confirmed, log in to your cloudFront account here.
Set Up CloudFront as Mirror CDN:
The first step is to create a 'Distribution' as they call it in Amazon terms. It is nothing but an entry in the CloudFront system for various settings that you would make for getting things done. It also makes tracking things easier. Click on Create Distribution button.
Select Download Option:
Create Distribution wizard opens up. Select 'Download' option here and click 'Continue'. The other option is for creating a CDN for media files like streaming videos which is out of scope of this article.
Choose Origin:
Origin means the source of the file. This is very important as we need to point it to our custom doamin and web server.

Origin domain Name:This should be the name of your website. In our case, it is inHouseRecipes.com
Origin ID: This is nothing but a simple identifier string just like your name. You can give it any name of your choice to easily identify later in various Amazon consoles/reports.
Origin Protocol Policy: Select HTTP only. If your site also expects https connections, you should select the "Match Viewer" option.
Leave all other things as default and click 'Continue'.
Cache/Mirror-CDN behavior:
Choose and set the values as shown in the image here:
We have set the Minimum TTL as 2592000 seconds (means that cache is valid for 30 days). If you want a lower value for your cache, you can change this value. In our case, the images are not going to change frequently and hence we have kept it as 30 days.

If you think that once uploaded, your images are NOT going to change at all, you can choose the option 'Use origin cache header' and then set the 'header expires' value in your application to an infinite value. Do not select this value unless you are sure what you are doing.
Distribution Details:
NOTE: CloudFront creates a fresh and new URL for your specific 'Distribution' in the form of
SomeID.CloudFront.com

It is recommended that you create a new sub-domain (like img.inHouseRecipes.com) of your primary domain and MAP it to the URL created by CloudFront.
This makes your CDN strategy future prrof and SEO friendly. Imagine that you decide to change your CDN vendor from cloudFront to someone else tomorrow. In this case, you would need to re-map all your existing images to the NEW URL provided by the your new CDN vendor. You can save yourself from this pain if you use your own custom subdomain and simply map it to the CDN URL using CNAME facility.

Enter the values as shown in the image:

Alternate Domain Names (CNAMES): This should be your CUSTOM domain or the sub-domain. In our case, it is img.inhouserecipes.com and www.img.inhouserecipes.com. We want both www and non-www to use this mirror CDN.
Default Root Object: In asp.net, the default home page is always 'default.aspx'. Leaving it blank will also work if your web host is smart enough to handle this situation. If you are not sure if it can handle or not, enter the home page name here.
Distribution State:It is important to select 'Enabled' here. If you do not select enabled, the Mirror CDN will NOT be active.

Click 'Continue' and finish the wizard.
Deployed Status:
Once done with the wizard, you should be able to see the Status as 'Deployed' (Will change from 'In Progress' to 'Deployed' in about 5 min. after you complete wizard).
The State should be 'Enabled' to make this 'Distrubition' active.

NOTE: The Domain Name (circled in green) is the URL that is created for your Mirror CDN by CloudFront. Note it down as you need it in next step while creating a CNAME record in your DNS manager.
Set up Mirror-CDN mapping with your web server:
Mirror CDN is now set up and the only thing left is to connect it with our web server (The home of our images).

Go to your web site's DNS manager and create a NEW CNAME record. The image that we have shown here is from GoDaddy's DNS manager.

Create a sub-domain with name img and map it with the domain name provided by CloudFront (see image in above step). Save and exit. CNAME records generally get activated immediately but may take upto 48 hours depending upon the service level of your web host company.
Change Image URL's in your web application code:
Last but not the least, you now need to replace all your image tag's SRC URL's to the new sub-domain you have created.

For example, if an old URL is something like this:

<img src="http://inHouseRecipes.com/images/ABCD.jpg"></img>

It should now be changed to

<img src="http://img.inHouseRecipes.com/images/ABCD.jpg"> </img>

Note: No need to worry about the folder structure embedded in your URL or its mapping. It will automatically work.

That's it. You are done. Now, the images which have been mapped to new URL will be served from cloudFront Mirror CDN.

I will share the performance improvements after making this change soon. I would appreciate if you can also share the performance improement statistics in comments below.

This article, titled [Guide] Set Up CloudFront With Custom Domain As Mirror CDN was originally published at AM22 Technologies under How To Guides,Technology.
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[Guide] Integrate YAF Yet Another Forum with BlogEngineDotNet

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 11:48:00 +0200

If you are reading this article, then you probably know about YAF (Yet Another Forum) and looking to use it.

For those who do not know, it is an open source forum (discussions) application written in asp.net and C#. It can be easily integrated with your current website to provide the Forum (Asking questions, getting answers) facility to your website users.

We also use the same forum application to power our community on this site here.

YAF can be used independently or can be integrated with your existing website. We are going to talk about the integration with another popular open source application for blogging called BlogEngine.net

Download YAF

The current version of YAF can be downloaded from here. I am using the v1.9.6.1 RTW BIN Zipped YAF. If you want to play with the YAF code or want to customize it, you should download the SRC code zip.

Download BlogEngine 2.6

The BE 2.6 can be downloaded from here. I am using the BlogEngine.NET 2.6 (web). If you want to play with the BE code or want to customize it, you should download the SRC code zip.

Integration of YAF 1.9.6.1 with BlogEngine 2.6

Start with BE 2.6:
Extract BlogEngine.NET zip folder. We will start copying the YAF code in BE 2.6 code step by step.
Set up Forum in a subfolder:
The best and clean approach of using Forum is to keep all the code related to Forum in a separate subfolder under your root website. For example, if your website code is placed at YOURWEBSITE.com (called root), then we should set up forum at YOURWEBSITE.com/Forum. The word Forum can be anything of your choice.

So, create a folder Forum in your website's root (BlogEngine.NET/Forum in our case).
Unzip YAF and copy to existing website:

Unzip the YAF BIN code that you have downloaded. The file structure would look something like this:

YAF-v1.9.6.1-RTW-BIN\YetAnotherForum.NET[All Files and folders]

Copy all files and folders from above path to BlogEngine.NET/Forum folder. This brings all YAF code to your BE and need some folder movements to make it work.
Move [App_*] folders to Root:
Move (Cut and paste) all [App_*] folders from BlogEngine.NET/Forum/ to BlogEngine.NET. App_Code and Bin folders are already available in BlogEngine.NET. So, just copy the contents.
YAF would have following folders that need to be moved: App_Browsers, App_Data.
Move Bin folder to Root:
Move (Cut and paste) Bin folder from BlogEngine.NET/Forum to BlogEngine.NET.
Create Database:
YAF needs a database to install itself. You can also use a SQL server express 2005 or 2008 to set up YAF. You may already have a database for BE installation (We are using the default XML storage for BE here to keep things simple). I would advise you to create a new one for YAF to keep things separate and clean. Right click 'App_Data' folder, select 'Add New Item'->'SQL Server Database' and to create a new SQL server DB.
Merge web.config files of existing website and YAF:
This is the most important and time consuming part of integration. YAF has created separate config files for appsettings, mail,db and URL rewriting. If you also have the same set up, then make the following changes in respective files itself. We are going to make all entries in one single web.config only.

Download MERGED web.config
You can download this merged web.config file straightaway and skip all the merging steps given below.

YAF and BE Merged Web Config.zip (6.02 kb)

OR if you want to do the hard work, here are the detailed steps for you:
Open the existing website's web.config file from BlogEngine.Net folder and make the following changes step by step:
1. Find following tag
  < configuration > < configSections >
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < configuration >
  < configSections >
  <section name="rewriter" type="Intelligencia.UrlRewriter.Configuration.RewriterConfigurationSectionHandler, Intelligencia.UrlRewriter" requirePermission="false"/>
  </ configSections >
  </ configuration >
2. Find following tag
  < connectionStrings >
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < connectionStrings >
  <add name="yafnet" connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|Database.mdf;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
  </ connectionStrings >
  
  Keep the name of tag as 'yafnet'.
  The connectionString in above tag should point to the database which you created in above steps. Change the name of DB (shown in red) with your DB instance name. I have kept the name as Database.
3. Find following tag
  < appSettings >
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < appSettings >
  <add key="YAF.ConfigPassword" value="SET A PASSWORD OF YOUR CHOICE"/>
  <add key="YAF.BoardID" value="1"/>
  <add key="YAF.EnableURLRewriting" value="true"/>
  <add key="YAF.UseSMTPSSL" value="false" />
  <add key="YAF.URLRewritingMode" value="Translit" />
  <add key="YAF.UseSMTPSSL" value="false" />
  <add key="YAF.DatabaseObjectQualifier" value="yaf_"/>
  <add key="YAF.DatabaseOwner" value="dbo"/>
  <add key="YAF.ConnectionStringName" value="yafnet" />
  <add key="YAF.UrlRewritingPrefix" value="yaf_" />
  <add key="YAF.ProviderExceptionXML" value="ProviderExceptions.xml"/>
  <add key="YAF.BoardRoot" value="" />
  <add key="YAF.FileRoot" value="~/Forum"/>
  <add key="YAF.AppRoot" value="~/Forum/" />
  <add key="YAF.ProviderKeyType" value="System.Guid"/>
  <add key="YAF.MobileUserAgents" value="iphone,ipad,midp,windows ce,windows phone,android,blackberry,opera mini,mobile,palm,portable,webos,htc,armv,lg/u,elaine,nokia,playstation,symbian,sonyericsson,mmp,hd_mini"/>
  <add key="YAF.ShowToolBar" value="true" />
  <add key="YAF.AllowLoginAndLogoff" value="true" />
  <add key="YAF.JQueryAlias" value="jQueryYAF" />
  </ appSettings >
  
  The passowrd that you specify here will be asked by YAF while setting up the databse schema.
  The application root i.e. folder where Forum code resides should be ~/Forum
4. Find following tag
  < configuration >
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < configuration >
  <rewriter >
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+?)? yaf_login?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx?g=login&$5" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+?)?yaf_info?\.aspx\?i=([0-9]+?)&url\=(.+)$" to="~/$1Default.aspx?g=info&i=$2&url=$3" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_topics([0-9]+)p([0-9]+)(_([-a-z0-9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/ $1Default.aspx?g=topics&f=$2&p=$3&$7" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)? yaf_topics([0-9]+)(_([-a-z0-9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx?g=topics&f=$2&$6" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_forum([0-9]+)(_([-a-z0-9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx? g=forum&c=$2&$6" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_postst([0-9]+)p([0-9]+)(_ ([-a-z0-9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx?g=posts&t=$2&p=$3&$7" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_postst([0-9]+)(_([-a-z0-9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx? g=posts&t=$2&$6" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_postsm([0-9]+)(_([-a-z0- 9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx?g=posts&m=$2&$6" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_profile([0-9]+)(_([-a-z0-9]+))?\.aspx(\?(.+))?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx?g=profile&u=$2&$6" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_([-0-9a-z_]+?)\.aspx\?(.+)?$" to="~/$1Default.aspx? g=$2&$3" processing="stop" />
     <rewrite url="^~/(.+)?yaf_([-0-9a-z_]+?)\.aspx$" to="~/ $1Default.aspx?g=$2" processing="stop" />
  </rewriter>
  </ configuration >
  NOTE: The above tags have been picked up straight from URLRewriter.config. You can also copy them from there for future releases.
5. Find following tag
  < httpHandlers>
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < httpHandlers>
  <add verb="GET" path="Resource.ashx" type="YAF.YafResourceHandler, YAF" />
  </ httpHandlers>
6. Find following tag
  < httpModules >
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < httpModules >
  <add name="YafTaskModule" type="YAF.Core.YafTaskModule, YAF.Core" />
  <add name="UrlRewriter" type="Intelligencia.UrlRewriter.RewriterHttpModule,Intelligencia.UrlRewriter"/>
  </ httpModules >
7. Find following tag
  < pages > < controls > :
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < pages >
  < controls >
     < add tagPrefix="YAF" namespace="YAF.Controls" assembly="YAF.Controls"/>
     <add tagPrefix="YAF" namespace="YAF.Controls.Statistics" assembly="YAF.Controls"/>
     <add tagPrefix="YAF" namespace="YAF.Classes"/>
     <add tagPrefix="YAF" namespace="YAF"/>
  </ controls >
  </ pages >
8. Find following tag
  < system.webServer > < modules > :
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < system.webServer >
  < modules >
  <remove name="YafTaskModule"/>
  <remove name="UrlRewriter"/>
  <add name="YafTaskModule" type="YAF.Core.YafTaskModule, YAF.Core" preCondition="managedHandler"/>
  <add name="UrlRewriter" type="Intelligencia.UrlRewriter.RewriterHttpModule,Intelligencia.UrlRewriter" preCondition="managedHandler"/>
  <remove name="session" />
  <add name="session" type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule" />
  </ modules >
  </ system.webServer >
9. Find following tag
  < system.webServer > < handlers > :
  and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
  < system.webServer >
  < handlers >
  < add name="YafHandler" preCondition="integratedMode" verb="GET" path="Resource.ashx" type="YAF.YafResourceHandler, YAF" />
  </ handlers >
  </ system.webServer >
10. Existing Asp.net membership and YAF:
  If you already have existing membership (user registration and login/log out functionality) enabled in your existing website, then you do not need any other settings now. You are done. But if you don't have any or want to switch to YAF's membership, you should add following tags for it:
  1. Find following tag
    < system.web >
    and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
    < system.web >
    < authentication mode="Forms" >
    < forms name=".YAFNET_Authentication" protection="All" timeout="43200" cookieless="UseCookies"/>
    </ authentication >
    </ system.web >
    NOTE: This tag may already exist in your web.config. If it is already there, REPLACE it with the above one.
  2. Find following tag
    < system.web >
    and add the following line (If it contains another tags, let them be there. Don't delete):
    < system.web >
    < roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="YafRoleProvider">
    <providers>
    <clear/>
    <add connectionStringName="yafnet" applicationName="YetAnotherForum" name="YafRoleProvider" type="YAF.Providers.Roles.YafRoleProvider"/>
    </providers >
    </roleManager >
    <membership defaultProvider="YafMembershipProvider" hashAlgorithmType="SHA1" >
    <providers >
    <clear/ >
    <add connectionStringName="yafnet" applicationName="YetAnotherForum" name="YafMembershipProvider" requiresUniqueEmail="true" useSalt="true" type="YAF.Providers.Membership.YafMembershipProvider"/ >
    </providers >
    </membership >
    <profile enabled="true" defaultProvider="YafProfileProvider" inherits="YAF.Utils.YafUserProfile" >
    <providers >
    <clear/ >
    <add connectionStringName="yafnet" applicationName="YetAnotherForum" name="YafProfileProvider" type="YAF.Providers.Profile.YafProfileProvider"/ >
    </providers >
    </profile >
    </ system.web >
    NOTE: These tags may already exist in your web.config. If they are already there, REPLACE them with the above ones.
Wow..we are done with merging the web.config files. The toughest battle has been won.
Disable or Delete config file in Forum:
Since we have merged the YAF configuration with existing website, we should delete the config files given in BlogEngine.NET/Forum. These files shouldbe either excluded from project or deleted:
app.config, mail.config, db.config, urlrewriter.config and web.config
Set up Forum as a control:
By default, YAF has its own ~/Forum/default.aspx and runs inside its own master page. If you are okay with this behavior, you can skip this step.
OR If you want, you can run the whole forum inside BlogEngine as a control. Open ~/Forum/default.aspx and replace the code with the following code:

< %@ Page Title="" Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="YAF" Assembly="YAF" Namespace="YAF" %>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="cphBody" Runat="Server">
<YAF:Forum runat="server" ID="forum" BoardID="1">
</YAF:Forum>
</asp:Content>
Run:
You should now run the YAF installation by launching the
~/Forum OR BlogEngine.NET/Forum
. This will open the ~/Forum/Default.aspx page and automaticaly divert you to ~/Forum/Install/Default.aspx if you are running it for the first time.

This will open up a wizard which will ask you for the configuration password (remember you entered it in web.config above - in our case it is, yaf). Enter the password and follow the wizard. Once the wizard completes, it will set up the database schema for running YAF.

That's it. Next time you open the ~/Forum OR BlogEngine.NET/Forum
link, you will see the YAF forum running.

Issues and Solutions

Profile provider. It looks like YAF does not want you to use your own Profile provider. It allows you to use your own membership and role provider but throws error if you use a profile provider other than YAF.
So, as a fix to this issue, you should use the profile provider tags mentioned above for YAF. Membership and Role provider can be changed to your choice (Your own or YAF).
If you get the following error:
Delegate registered to create instances of 'System.Web.HttpSessionStateBase' returned null.

Solution:
http://am22tech.com/s/22/Forum1/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=404
Error: Could not find a part of the path '..BlogEngine.NET\Forum\~\Boards\Themes\'.

Solution:
The YAF.BoardRoot in appsettings should have the null string as its value.

<add key="YAF.BoardRoot" value="" />
Error: Microsoft JScript runtime error: 'jQuery' is undefined
error on loading YAF Forum page?

Solution:
The Approot key in web.config should point to the following Forum directory

<add key="YAF.AppRoot" value="~/Forum" />
BE 2.6 error:
Microsoft JScript runtime error: 'WebForm_InitCallback' is undefined.

Solution: Try to turn off "compress webresource.axd" in admin/settings/advanced, sometimes it causes this js error to pop up. Then refresh browser cache (ctrl + F5).
Source: http://blogengine.codeplex.com/discussions/366559/
No style sheets applied in BE 2.6 admin area

Solution:
The solution that worked for me was to fetch the latest code base from the BlogEngine codeplex link. You can also do the same. You would need to first build the BE source code and then replace all the code (except the merged web.config) with the new one in our workspace.

Source: http://blogengine.codeplex.com/discussions/362817
Error :
Message=Session state can only be used when enableSessionState is set to true, either in a configuration file or in the Page directive. Please also make sure that System.Web.SessionStateModule or a custom session state module is included in the \\ section in the application configuration.

Solution
Make sure that the attributes enableSessionState and enableViewStateMac are set to true:
<pages enableSessionState="true" enableViewStateMac="true" enableEventValidation="true" controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5" clientIDMode="AutoID">

That is it. Good luck. If you face any issues, ask in comments and i will be glad to help you.

This article, titled [Guide] Integrate YAF Yet Another Forum with BlogEngineDotNet was originally published at AM22 Technologies under How To Guides,Technology,Useful tips.
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[Updated] Take Home Salary Calculator For India

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:39:00 +0200

Take Home Salary Calculator for India has been updated and now features an important feature of selecting the START date of the job. It has been a long awaited feature and i think it will make it easier for people to find the exact amount that they will get in their pocket.

The feature can be used in following scenarios:

You join a company anytime of any given financial year:
Lets assume that you are planning to join your new employed on 17 Sep, 2012 (i.e. mid way during the financila year). In this case, the most common issue that we face is the calculation of income taxes and the take home pay for the very first joining month (September 2012).

Some companies take the approach of clubbing the first/joining month's salary with the second month to keep things simple. But others pay salary for first month also.

In the latter case, the calculator now shows the amount that you would receive in the starting month along with the salary calculation for subsequent months.
You join a company on 1 April of any given financial year:
This scenario is pretty straight forward. You would just need to select the start date as 1 April and all other things remain same as mentioned in above point.

Take Home Salary Calculator For India

Do let us know your feedback/suggestions on this change and to improve the calculator.

This article, titled [Updated] Take Home Salary Calculator For India was originally published at AM22 Technologies under India,Money.
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How To Compare CTC For Maximum Take Home Salary [India]

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:55:00 +0200

It is pretty common these days for job hunters to get multiple job offer (CTC) letters from multiple companies. If you are one of them and looking out for a simple way to compare all the CTC letters with respect to maximum take home salary, here is a simple way of doing it with Take Home salary calculator for India.

Start with the first CTC letter and fill out all the details and get the details of taxes and take home pay. Now, select the 'Save As URL' option from the drop down box available on top of the calculator on same page.

Copy the URL and open it in another browser window. This URL basically contains all the input values that you have entered. The same calculation would be automatically available on new browser window too. You can even share it with your friends or save it anywhere for future reference.

Now, enter the values in the old OR the new window as per the second CTC letter and compute take home pay.

Once done, you can easily compare the take home pay from two different CTC letters in two browser windows/tabs.
Offcourse, you can repeat this for any number of CTC letters! Enjoy!

FYI: You can also generate PDF files for the take home calculation and compare it offline too from the same drop down box.

This article, titled How To Compare CTC For Maximum Take Home Salary [India] was originally published at AM22 Technologies under Gadget,How To Guides,India,Money,Useful tips.
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Use Audacity To Remove Noise From WMV [Windows Movie Maker] Videos

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:15:00 +0200

Windows movie maker is indeed one of the most popular and FREE video editing tool available with most of the windows versions.

If you also use it to make your videos and have been struggling to remove the background noises like the hmmm, hiss sounds that have got into your video even when you took all the precautions while recording, you can use Audacity (FREE audio editor) to remove the noise.

Here is how you can do it.

Download Audacity and install.
Import windows media file (generally in .WMV format) in Audacity. If this is the first time you are using Audacity, it will throw an error that it could not identify the type of file.

Solution:
You need to download an add-on codec which can help Audacity help read the WMV files. Go to- Edit->Preferences->Libraries.
choose ffMpeg and click 'Download' button. Once downloaded and installed, the ffmpeg section would show the version information as follows:
Now, close Audacity and re-open.
Go to File->Import->Audio
Select the .WMV file and click OK. Audacity will automatically import the Audio from the video file that you have selected.
Now, you would see the audio layers like this:
The removal of background or any other noise (unwanted audio) is a 2 (two) step process.
1. Select the Noise Profile: It is nothing but a sample of audio that you consider as noise. Audacity will record the noise and will remove it from the selected portion. Even a one second audio is good enough to create a noise profile sample.
  
  To create a Noise Profile:
  Select the portion and then click Effects->Noise Removal.
  
  Note:If you find the menu option of Noise Removal disabled, make sure that your audio is in 'STOP' mode. Sometimes, we are listening to audio and press ' Pause' button and then select the noise portion. Audacity wants you to completely STOP it before taking any action.
  
  A small pop-up will come up. Click the button 'Get Noise Profile'. It will record the noise profile and remember it in memory.
2. Remove the Noise from Audio: Just select the portion of Audio (press ctrl+A to select full audio) that you think contains the noise.
  
  Click on Effect->Noise Removal again. Select the second option 'Remove' now and click 'Ok' button. This will remove the noise from the selected portion. Listen to the modified audio and the noise should have gone now. Save the project to avoid any loss of work.
Save or export the modified audio file as .WAV file by using File->Export. You can save it in any audio format you like.
You can now use this sound file in your windows movie maker project easily.

I hope this helps you in removing the unwanted noise or background hiss. Enjoy!

This article, titled Use Audacity To Remove Noise From WMV [Windows Movie Maker] Videos was originally published at AM22 Technologies under Gadget,How To Guides,Useful tips.
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Take Home Salary Calculator For USA [Online]

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:01:00 +0200

Presenting one more take home salary calculator after the success of the version that catered specifically to India. The new one that we are presenting today is for USA.

Take Home Salary Calculator for USA is an extensive and intuitive calculator which helps you find the approx. amount of money that will reach your pocket after federal and state taxes.

The calculator is in its early stages and i will be adding more functions as the time passes. The current version helps you calculate your paycheck as per the pay frequency that you specify. You can easily compare the take home pay by changing the various values. The calculator immediately calculates and shows you the new values without even clicking any 'calculate' button. So, you make less number of clicks to see how you can maximize your take home pay.

The calculator currently calculates state taxes for some states to start with (Alabama, California etc.) . I will be adding more states in due time. Keep watching.

As far as saving and sharing the results are concerned, you can generate a URL after making the calculations and bookmark it or share with friends/prospective employees.
Support for generating the PDF is under development and will be available soon.
There is no download required and calculator is completely FREE to use online.
The calculator also has a tab for specifying withholding allowances to get tax benefits.

I hope you will like it and help us with your valuable sugegstions and features that you would like to see.

This article, titled Take Home Salary Calculator For USA [Online] was originally published at AM22 Technologies under Featured,How To Guides,Money.
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How To Use Google App Engine As CDN With Custom Domain

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:32:00 +0200

If you are reading this article, then you are most probably looking to speed up your website's page load speed by distributing the images on a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

I was also looking to achieve the same for my blog am22tech.com and found Google App. Engine as the best option.

The other option that you would find people talking about on internet is DropBox.com. I also evaluated DropBox but decided in favor of Google App. engine for 1 major reason i.e. Google is NOT blocked on corporate office networks whereas DropBox is!!
This essentially means that if you are hosting your images on dropBox and using it as CDN, anybody accessing your site from a firewalled office network would not be able to see them. This is true for any other type of files too i.e. CSS and javascript files.

Using Google App. Engine As Image CDN

There are couple of points that you need to understand before setting up Google App. Engine as CDN.

You need a Google ID for using Google App Engine. If you use Gmail or any other Google service, you already have it. Else register and i bet you will never regret joining Google network.
By default, application on Google App. Engine uses a default URL in the form of

YOUR_APP_ID.appspot.com

The green text is what you will decide for your application. Red text is fixed. I registered my app. with name am22images.

A more meaningful URL like

img.YOURSITE.COM

or anything else to represent your custom domain. We will talk about this feature later in the article.

This essentially means that Google allows you to use a sub-domain or a custom domain of your main site for using its infrastructure as a CDN.

I will use img.am22tech.com and show you how to map am22images.appspot.com to img.am22tech.com.

Lets start with the process of using Google App. Engine as a CDN for storing and delivering images for your website.

Set Up Google App. Engine As CDN with Eclipse

Download and Install Google App. Engine SDK. Don't worry, you don't need to do any coding. But you would need it for creating a simple App. and deploy(copy) your images.

Use the "Google App Engine SDK for Java" and "Download the Google Plugin for Eclipse" options for downloading the packages, unpack and install.
OR If you already have Eclipse on your machine, you can simply follow the instructions here to set up everything in one click (I did this as it is a simple and recommended option).
Go to Google App. Engine and log in with your Google ID. Create a new application with a unique name. Give it any name. If you want to use a custom domain/sub-domain for this application, you can map it later.
Open Eclipse and create a web application.
File->New project->'Web Application Project'.

Enter any name for the 'project' and 'package'. Deselect 'Use Google Web Toolit' option. Leave all other options default and click 'Finish'. All the folder structure will be created automatically for you by system. Locate the folder 'war' and add a new folder called 'img'.

Add all your images that you want to host on Google App. Engine in 'img' folder.
Select the project from Eclipse and click Deploy web application.

You will be required to log in with Google app. Engine once and specify your application ID. Rest all will be taken care by system automatically.
If you have reached this step, then you have already created an application that would be LIVE on
YOUR_APP_NAME.appspot.com. You can now see your images by directly going to this link:

YOUR_APP_ID.appspot.com /img/IMAGE_NAME_WITH_EXTENSION

For e.g. If you have an image with the name ABC.jpg, you should use the following URL:

YOUR_APP_ID.appspot.com /img/ABC.jpg

This URL can be used in your own website and the image will be delivered/opened as part of your web page. The only difference is that it will now be served on your web page by Google App. Engine instead of your own web host.

That's it. You have set up Google App. Engine as your CDN for serving images. You can similary set up folders for Javascript or CSS or any other type of file and use the URL in your own web site.

Setting up Google App. Engine to use custom Domain

Go to Google App Engine and click on 'Administration' -> 'Application Settings'. This menu would be visible on left hand side pane.
Scroll down on 'Application settings' and find 'Domain SetUp' Option. click 'Add Domain' button.

NOTE: If you have not used Google Applications earlier with your primary domain, you would need to sign up with it first. Don't worry, you don't need to change anything in your original site.

Open Google Applications and confirm domain ownership. Confirmation of your primary domain is a one time activity. If you are have already done it, Google will only ask you to create/change the mapping of your NEW sub-domain.
Else, you would be required to first confirm the ownership of primary domain and then come to mapping step.

In our case, We use Google applications for managing our Blog's email and hence already with it.
Add the primary domain in the add domain text box. E.g. We have specified am22tech.com. Click 'Add Domain'. Do NOT add the sub-domain that you want to map. Only primary domain is required.

You may be asked to log-in with Google Applications Admin user name and password. Log-in and you will reach the following screen. Check the 'Accept' check box and click 'Activate this service' button.
Click 'Add new URL' link. Enter the word 'img' in the text box. Click 'Add' button.

You will now reach the instructions page for setting up sub-domain with your domain registrar and point it to Google servers.

Here is what you should do now:
- Create a sub-domain/custom domain with your domain host: Most domain registrar would allow you to create sub-domain for your primary domain for free. We use Godaddy and they allow unlimited sub- domains! We used img.am22tech.com for pointing to images stored on Google App. Engine.
  
  Go to your DNS manager and create a new entry with the name as img pointing to Google server ghs.google.com.
  
  Save your changes. The example image here is shown from GoDaddy Domain manager control panel. The mapping between custom domain and the Google App. Engine server is defined by the 'C record' that you have just created.
Come back to Google page and click the 'I've completed these steps' button.
Once mapping has been saved and is activated on your web-host servers, you can immediately see it in action by launching the sub-domain from your internet browser.

Thats it. You can now access the same image link by using your custom domain as follows:

img.YOUR_DOMAIN.com /img/IMAGE_NAME_WITH_EXTENSION For e.g.

If you have an image with the name ABC.jpg, you should use the following URL:

img.YOUR_DOMAIN.com/img/ABC.jpg

Bandwidth limitations and cost of using Google App. Engine?

Google App. Engine allows you to use certain amount of space and bandwidth to be used free of cost. If your application uses more than thta, you need to buy that bandwidth and space. You can find out the exact costs on this link.

At the time of writing this article, the bandwidth is limited to 1GB per day with maximum free storage available upto 5GB. Thereafter, Google charges $0.12 per GB.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you get stuck anywhere in the comments.

Related: Set Up Custom Domain Email With Gmail And Google Applications

This article, titled How To Use Google App Engine As CDN With Custom Domain was originally published at AM22 Technologies under Headline,How To Guides,Technology,Useful tips.
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Is Google testing New Interface For Its Search Page?

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:39:00 +0200

I just stumbled upon the Google.co.in page and saw this drop down menu for other search options. I quickly checked it on other sites like Google.com ad other country specific sites but they were all looking as usual.

The Google's logo on top left conrer was showing up the menu as shown in the image after i clicked the drop down pointer visible just next to the logo.

The interesting point is that i could not see the change after 3-4 minutes. It now shows this view when i visit Google.co.in now:

Has anybody else also witnessed this behavior?

This article, titled Is Google testing New Interface For Its Search Page? was originally published at AM22 Technologies under News.
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Buy laptop Or A SmartPhone?

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:23:00 +0200

I was shopping for a memory card the other day and got the chance to speak to a guy who was looking for a laptop. His requirements were pretty simple: Watch high definition movies and surf internet. He was not going to do any coding or development apart from creating couple of excel or word documents or may be edit some images and videos.

It pointed me to think about the question of whether to buy a smartphone or a laptop for his requirement. This is because whatever he was trying to do with a laptop can easily be done with a smartphone too.

Today's smartphones are smart and are giving tough competition to laptops in the survival race.
Most laptops are trading in the range of $500 to $1000 (INR 20k to 50K in India) these days and if you compare the price with any of the good smartphone like iPhone 4S or Samasung Galaxy S2 Or Nexus, you won't be able to make any differentiation.

Off course, laptops carry a better and faster processor with the likes of intel i5 or i7 for doing things at a faster rate; your smartphones are not far away with dual core processors already selling at $500 mark.
All other features are almost same for a common user. You have memory, HD video recording, Image capture, video conferecing, internet access over mobile or Wi-Fi, messaging and much more in a smartphone. The world is slowly shrinking into a smaller space called mobile.

The other big advantage that i see in favor of a smartphone is its size and attachment to you. They are easy to carry and always find a place in your pocket.

On the other hand, laptops have a con when compared wuth mobiles. I have never seen a laptop which has a SIM card in it for making calls over mobile network. If it exists, do let me know and forgive me for my general knowledge!

Hence, keeping in mind the above points and his requirements, I suggested him to buy a good smartphone like iPhone or Galaxy S2. He was convinced but only had one inhibition about the screen size difference of laptop and the phone. He wanted to watch movies on it and would have loved to watch them on big screen.
My answer to this was technology. All modern smartphones today can easily be connected to TV or a big screen to project what you have on your mobile too. So, you will never miss the HD movie magic on big screen. So, his issue of big screen player was also solved and he finally decided in favor of buying a phone instead of spending money on a laptop.

If you also have the same requirements, you can also think of buying a SmartPhone or a tablet and avoid making an expense on a laptop. This will not only save money but also serve a dual purpose of a mobile and a laptop for you.

Let me know if this idea works for you or you think otherwise in the comments. As a matter of fact, I use my Samsung Galaxy S more than my laptop to do my daily tasks these days. My laptop is slowly loosing its relevance for me and i don;t carry it with everywhere now.

Related
Need based laptop buying guide

This article, titled Buy laptop Or A SmartPhone? was originally published at AM22 Technologies under Gadget.
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iPhone Vs IPhone 4S - Review And Substitutes

anil.gupta@am22tech.com — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:06:00 +0200

There are no two thoughts about Apple's quality and hence its dominance in the mobile market. But, given the competition and the quality products available from other vendors, it becomes absolutely sensible to compare before showing more loyality to Apple than the your own pocket!

If you are a proud owner of iPhone 4 and looking to buy 4S, i would say that giving a thorough look at the new offerings in 4S as compared to 4 would make sense. This is because, i don't see major changes as far as upgrade is concerned. If you are a first time buyer, you should offcourse go for it after giving a chance to similar offerring available in market.

iPhone 4S Apple's India link. iPhone 4 Apple's Indian site link.

Here are some of the key differences and commonalities that i think matter:

Screen size is same i.e. 3.5 inch diagonally. "Bada hai to behtar hai" (means 'Big is better")! I personally like big screens and was disappointed by seeing the 3.5 inch screen n 4S too.
Offcourse a 5+ inch screen would be too big to fit in my pocket but a decent 4 - 4.5 inch screen would have given a good experience and more screeen space for my fat fingers :)
Camera MP count has increased from 5MP to 8MP. But does MP count really matter while making Mobile purchase? Most of the time, it higher megapixel count would only add more detail to the image which may not matter if your only purpose is to share them on social network. If you plan to print large size posters out of those images, go for a hogher MP count, else 5MP is still a very good one.
Retina display: It was there in 4 and is same in 4S too. It helps with more clarity and higher pixel density to make things more clearer. No changes to the technology.
Video recording HD quality has been upgraded to 1080p from 720p earlier. This is a good addition for those who want more out of everything. As a matter of fact, both 720p and 1080p qualify for HD (High definition) video. 720p consuming less space than 1080p on your hard drive :).

YouTube supports both formats. A 720p HD video would easily cost 1 GB for a 3-4 minute video. And 1080p would cost even more for same time frame.
Memory size of 16,32 and 64Gb in 4S as compared to 8Gb in 4. One thing that always pushes me towards non apple products is the flexibility to change things on your own. For e.g. Memory is fixed in iPhone whereas you can change/add the SD card later on in other phones as per your needs.
4S is heavier in weight by 3 grams :) and price by about $200 in US and 15K in India. If you follow your heart, this does not matter. But in case you listen to your mind too like me, the green weight in pockte does make a BIG difference.
Processor is now Dual Core in 4S: A big addition. No doubts about it. But Samsung has already sold more than 5 million beauties with dual core and iPhone 4S is late.
Siri - Your personal assistant The most talked about feature in iPhone 4S is an application closely coupled with iPhone. It is possible that some other company may create a clone for it for Android or windows versions. At this point of time, it is not known but is certainly possible.

Also, Siri is made for US accent. Indian or south asian accent is NOT officially supported. But I have heard Apple saying that it learns over the time and may be able to catch up the desi accent too :)
Maximum Data Download Speeds (HSDPA) has improved in 4S: iPhone 4S supports 14.4 Mbps as compared to 7.2 Mbps. But to enjoy the downloads at this speed, you network also needs to be a cheetah.
You can certainly enjoy these speeds over Wi-Fi or broadband in high speed internet countries like Korea, USA and UK.

If you talk about India where the 3G network itself is a luxury, these speeds are just a number and can only be used to boast about them in front of friends. Even the fastest broadband or Wi-Fi connection will not be able to match this speed in India.

Some more thoughts

Talking about the substitutes for iPhone 4S, the best one for me would be Samsung Galaxy S2 which costs around $600 in US and around INR 29K in India. The price is much less than iPhone 4S which is priced at around INR 50k In India.
In USA, iPhone 4S prices are 16GB for $199; 32GB for $299; 64GB for $399, with a two-year contract. Man, they are dead cheap there as compared to India :(
I would keep Samsung Galaxy S on the same table as iPhone 4 though. Both phones are quite good as far as a normal user is concerned. Good for gaming, recording HD video (720p) with good memory and processors. They are certainly much cheaper in price when compared to their big brothers. iPhone 4S in US is floating at $99 with mobile contract vs Galaxy S at $300 unlocked. In India, the price for iPhone 4 is about INR 35K vs Galasy S at INR 16K.

Electronics have always followed this trend. They are expensive if you buy them hot. Wait for couple of months and they will chill down and prices will offcourse come down drastically when their hotter version is launched.

Verdict

Buying an iPhone 4S or 4 for that matter is pretty expensive given the PPP (purchasing power parity) and the availability of much cheaper and comparable phones. Also, iPhone 5 may also be coming soon in a time frame of about 9-10 months. You can check out the Samsung Galaxy Nexus too if you find Galaxy S2 not attractive.
You can take your call after evaluating your love for Apple and your wife's love for your pocket :)

Official page of Apple's US site for comparison.

This article, titled iPhone Vs IPhone 4S - Review And Substitutes was originally published at AM22 Technologies under Android,Gadget,Useful tips.
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