My Tech Rantings

Taking the dive!!!

2009-07-17T15:02:00.001-07:00

Has been a long time since I updated this space . . . Has been a very hectic schedule for past motnh or so . . .

Finally it is done! I have taken the dive, and am learning to swim. No not swimming in water, swimming in the business world. Today was my first day out of Pramati and SocialTwist. After 2 years of association with the place like that the most difficult part is coming over it. I can always say that Pramati is one of the best employers and best place to work at. But as everyone around me always knew, this day had to come and I had to do it . . . Start pursuing my own dreams!!! I am starting as a consultant from today and soon will anounce my product plans. Will definitely miss Pramati.

Though I have figured out the whole consulting model I am venturing in, I haven't yet put it formally on paper. Didn't have the need to, till now, except for explaining a few close friends. I have seen the intelligent entreprenuers know very well, what they want, so all I have to discuss with them is what I have to offer from their list. Have been interacting with a few clients and will update again when I finalize the deal materializes.

Many people have been asking what model I'll be working on, and so I'll be updating you all soon on that.

Today, with this new post, I am also trying this new blog writer Qumana, form the initial looks it seems that it might very well become my default blog writer . . . But who knows?

Powered by Qumana

Fight in the Search arena - All contestants look like pygmy in front of Google's Dinosuar

2009-06-25T03:41:00.000-07:00

I was just wondering what's the status of Bing, Microsoft's brand new search engine (which I admit I liked, but fell back to using Google) and from one of the links I got a link to StatCounter page with the comparison data.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

Far from beating Google, Bing again fell back in the race going below Yahoo! Google remains the huge unchallenged Sumo wrestler.

Simple interface or interaction enhancements definitely won't be able to dethrone Google Search, It has to be a ground breaking innovation. I think Wolfram Alpha stands a chance to displace Google in the research niche, but for the general search Google seems will remain the undisputed leader for quite sometime. . .

SocialTwist is hiring . . .

2009-06-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

We are hiring for the SocialTwist team. Being on this team and with the company for over 2 years now, I can say Pramati is one of the best employers and SocialTwist is the best team here to work with.

Check out the openings here - http://careers.socialtwist.com/web20dev

So, if you have a love for innovation and are looking for interesting challenges you are looking at the right place!

Your product will have a very high visibility and you can gain some easy points over those friends of yours slogging in "Enterprise software development" and doing the boring routine work . . .

Posted screencasts to MindBytes

2009-05-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

Just found this interesting site http://www.mindbites.com/

MindBites allows you to upload video tutorials and charge for them per view. I have uploaded the 2 screencasts namely, "Begining with UI and jQuery for Liferay Portlets" and "Magic of Liferay UI Taglib".

Many people have complained about bad quality of the videos on YouTube. Check this site out and do see the Original High Resolution format and am sure you will be impressed with the quality.

Magic of Liferay UI Taglib | How-to videos at MindBites

Begining with UI and jQuery for Liferay Portlets | How-to videos at MindBites

They are running a contest. Please vote for the videos if you like them.

Netbeans PortalPack 3.0.1 Released

2009-05-13T00:06:00.000-07:00

I have been trying this in beta for sometime now. It is now released and ready for production usage.
All who have been using PortalPack should go ahead and upograde to 3.0.1 cause it brings in real good features like support for Liferay Hook Plugins anf Theme editing.

I am thinking of making the next set of Screencasts just based on the top features of PortalPack plugins. Stay tuned . . .

Award of Excellence for the year!

2009-04-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

Have missed blogging for quite a few days for various reasons, but this was to big a thing for me not to share with you all :) This is an award given annually to 10 people in Pramati and to get it being amongst the best of the best people is sooooo exciting :) Made my day! and made me forget for a moment all the troubles in life and cherish the moment :)

Isn't this Microsoft's monopolistic behavior?

2009-03-31T20:45:00.001-07:00

The cheapest of these flavors will be Starter and this is being touted by Microsoft as the best OS for low-cost systems. Problem with Starter is that is has one serious limitation - you can only run a maximum of three applications at any one time.

Microsoft gambles that "Starter" edition dissatisfaction will boost revenues | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Reading this reminded me of Windows Vista Starter Edition which came for "Emerging markets only". Though I never saw it, it also had similar artificial limit. Refer to this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_editions

I wonder, if this is not monopolistic behavior, what is? I won't crib if I have restrictions in a trialware I got for free. But here, I'll basically buying trialware from Microsoft. This arrogant nature of Microsoft will take it nowhere and I guess and also hope and pray for the good of software and its user that the Windows 7 Starter edition is DOA and I never get to see it with anyone.

Though, with it's strong arm techniques, Microsoft will manage to force vendors bundle it, but I say, don't buy it!!! I personally use Vista Ultimate Editions and like it till now. Probably, I'll buy Windows 7 Ultimate when its released but in no case will I even try the "Starter" edition.

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Do the users really don't know what's good for them?

2009-03-23T02:26:00.001-07:00

You could mark the conversation as unread, but this makes all the messages in that conversation unread. And the next time you open the conversation you have to remember which messages you already read and which ones you didn't get to yet. Since we at Google send and receive a lot of email, we found this pretty annoying. So we decided to fix it.Now if you're reading a conversation that had unread messages when you opened it and you mark it unread, Gmail will only mark those messages that were unread when you opened the conversation in the first place. It's a small change, but it's the little things that can make a UI feel right or wrong, and we hope this makes Gmail a little bit more right.

Official Gmail Blog: A small (but helpful) change to 'mark as unread'

That is a welcome change for me :) Specially useful since I am registered on so many mailing lists. Can't keep a track of what I have to reply and what to skip. That happens when you do Usability tests and incorporate the changes suggested.

And this happens when you don't, and also ignore what the user has to say -
The feedback on Facebook's new look, which emphasizes a stream of Twitter-like status updates, is almost universally, howlingly negative. Why isn't CEO Mark Zuckerberg listening to users? Because he doesn't have to, he's told employees. A tipster tells us that Zuckerberg sent an email to Facebook staff reacting to criticism of the changes: "He said something like 'the most disruptive companies don't listen to their customers.'" Another tipster who has seen the email says Zuckerberg implied that companies were "stupid" for "listening to their customers." The anti-customer diktat has many Facebook employees up in arms, we hear.

Even Facebook Employees Hate the Redesign

I think Zuckerberg is being arrogant and is desperate after his failed attempt to buy in Twitter. Anyone remember Bill Gates saying to the AOL chief - "Either you do business with us or we throw you out of business!", am I right about the quote? Can't find references on the internet . . .

But Zuckeberg seems to be saying the samething to Twitter. But may I dare say - Facebook is not MS and Twitter is not AOL. I love twitter and am a regular at facebook. Infact, most of my personal contacts are in touch with facebook. And the new UI is nowhere TWITTER guys!!!

When the last time they changed the UI under Profile 2.0, contrary to many, I liked it. But when I visited the new home page... I say "IT SUCKS!!!!"
I thought facebook will listen to users and reverty it... But it seems to be stubborn about it!

I am lost on the home page... I visit my proifile, check out things as much as I can and log out. Probably will phase out facebook usage with time? Who all feel the same? Which Social network you'll go to?

I have all personal contacts on Orkut and professional on LinkedIn. Probably I'll totally move to these two. Though I loved Facebook much more than Orkut - Sorry GOogle on that one, I am ur fanboy!

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2009-03-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

So here I am giving w.bloggar a try . . . I added my blogger.com account in the start wizard and also told it to ping technorati whenever I post... But i would definetely want to be able to ping multiple services when I publish.

Let us see if images work!

I took a screenshot of the interface and pasted it in the editor. I can't type in now... It is very slow

Trying out Sun Weblog Publisher in OpenOffice Writer 3.0.1

2009-03-03T11:45:00.001-08:00

I installed the plugin downloaded from http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/swp and then went to Tools > Options > Internet > Weblog

And am all set to publish :) Let me try this out now! If you are reading this post and can see the screencasts above, it means I succeeded!

Javascript Wolfenstein 3D

2009-03-01T11:21:00.001-08:00

Yet an excellent demo of what can be done with canvas in javascript. After comet/Ajaxpush and Processing implementation by John Resig, and few Canvas 3D and traingulated 3D and Google Maps and now dead Lively I thought I had seen everything in Javascript. But this brought back memories of those good old time. My favorite game ever. Wolfenstien 3D!!!

read more | digg story

Liferay 5.2, Portal Pack 3.0 released

2009-02-11T08:28:00.001-08:00

Missed these two most important announcements in past few days.

Liferay announced release of Liferay 5.2 and Sun announced the release of PortalPack 3.0 which was in beta.

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New "Liferay Portlets with Netbeans, PortalPack and Me" Screencasts are live

2009-02-04T10:56:00.001-08:00

I have uploaded the new screencasts for "Liferay Portlets with Netbeans, PortalPack and Me". This series of 4 screencasts deals with forms in portlets, Javascript event handling, ActionURL, passing data between frontend and backend.

05. Making forms and adding event handlers [liferay_netbeans_05.mp4] - This video demonstrates making forms in Liferay portlet using standard input tags and also using liferay-ui taglib. Further it demonstrates how to add javascript event handlers.

06. Working with forms and passing data (Part 01) [liferay_netbeans_06.mp4] - This video demonstrates creating a simple easy portlet with form. It is the first part of tutorial which demonstrates creating and submitting forms.

07. Working with forms and passing data (Part 02) [liferay_netbeans_07.mp4] - This video demonstrates passing data from the form to the backend portlet and retrieving it in the Portlet Action Handler

08. Working with forms and passing data (Part 03) [liferay_netbeans_08.mp4] - This demonstrates passing data from the Portlet Action Handler to the rendered UI and retrieving and acting on it in the UI.

I have already updated the High Res versions at Screencast and Lulu and those who had bought it previously will get the updated file access for free. with that i would also like to state that those who buy it now will continue to get the updated and new screencasts without paying additional charges even after the prices are increased, which I will after I get the complete set of screencasts up. So, another reason to be an early adopter.

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A jQuery plugin that lets you interact with an SVG canvas

2009-02-03T03:24:00.001-08:00

Today, I found this interesting jQuery plugin that allows you to create SVG graphics using jQuery. It also allows you to animate the graphics and add event handlers to them.
Check out the documentation and demos at - http://keith-wood.name/svg.html

I am not sure how they work in IE, cause I don't use it.

Still, I don't think tere is anything comparable to Dojo Graphics (GFX) Library in jQuery, or any other javascript library.

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Learning from the book

2009-02-01T10:33:00.001-08:00

Though I am an avid reader, I have always believed in experience more than in training or bookish learning. I always insisted on trying things out rather than just reading stuff somewhere. First as a student then as a teacher and trainer I have always focused more on practicals than on the theory behind things. I always told everyone that trying to do something and failing will teach you hundred more aspects about the thing than just reading it.

Being in this industry for over 6 years now, with most of my time in web and associated tech. I have seen zillions of websites, browsed through some hated a few and simply fell in love with some here and there. As a person in web products who likes to be associated with all aspects of the product I many a times find myself reviewing UI designs. I am not a UI person but being with people expert at it I have also grasped quite a few things. Today when I see at a UI I can say a good design from bad and I can always point out wht is wrong in what I am seeing. Most of the times I'll also be able to suggest the solution.

What I hadn't done till date was do a UI design from the scratch. I design interactions and other things but the actual UI designing is the UI guys job. Untill I decided to redo the UI of my blog, which I had tried in past but those were just small modifications from the existing blogger themes. Sometime back I started making a total new original interface. I set out fully confident (over confident) to put up something impressive and I was sure that it is a child's play.

And then I did the first and most grave mistake. I took my laptop fired up Netbeans created a HTML page and starting the designing. I know all the UI guys are laughing out loud there. I am acutally laughing at myself.

I am at the second chapter of "The principles of Beautiful Web Design" by Jason Breaid from SitePoint and in past on hour of readin I have already learnt what I couldn't in past 6 yrs of experience and observation. I always knew why waaas somedesign bad, but never new how to make a good design.

I always thought a good site was made by briliant use of HTML and CSS with the good graphics completing the scene. But now I realize that it doesn't have to do anything with that. Beautiful websites and there layouts come on paper or even before that in the minds of the designer. They come fro mthe understanding of the basics, the very principles that lay the foundation of designing. And this is probably you can't ever learn form experience. This is something that is either thought in the training or can be read in a book.

Today I can program or can at least understand programs written in any programming language. I have got that from experience. But the very concept of understanding what programming is and what it means to program a computer and what are the basics of the programming, I learnt way past in school in 8th standard, form my computers teacher, Shaikh Sir, who thought us Logo and BASIC.

Coming back to the book. Now that I have completd reading all the 5 chapters viz. Layout and Composition, Color, Texture, Typography and Imagery, I can say it is an essential for anyone who is starting with web designing. Jason has very brilliantly explained all the aspects of the design process and the concepts of layouts and colors and types. The chapter on typography is specially intresting. The book gives you what you need to start with without going to much into technicalities of the thing. And explaining with examples in the book Jason very beatifully guides your mind to get the correct design in case you are on with some project currently. I have already drawn a few sketches for my new blog design and will start with blocks in Illustrator.

You'll say I am contradicting my own statements about learning from book and experience. I'll say I am learning. OSHO once said, "If I am not contradicting myself I am not learning, The whole complete thing will always be contradicting".

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Liferay Portlets Screencast - What is in there?

2009-01-25T10:16:00.001-08:00

I have been getting a few queries asking for description of what's on the screencasts? I have the description of every video on Youtube but for the sake of convenience I am putting the description here too.

This is for the set of first four videos made available on lulu.com/screencast.com. There is the fifth video also available on youtube and second set will soon be available on lulu.com/screencast.com for the high quality high res fans :) I'll give seperate description of those screencasts when they are made available for download.

01. Adding Liferay Portal Server to Netbeans (liferay_netbeans_01.mp4)
Liferay Portlet Development with Netbeans 6.5 and PortalPack, Chapter 1 shows how to add Liferay Portal Server to Netbeans 6.5 PortalPack. And starting the server from Netbeans.

02. Creating your first Liferay Portlet (liferay_netbeans_02.mp4)
This video demonstrates how your can easily create a potlet using Netbeans 6.5 and PortalPack 3.0 beta and deploy it to Liferay. I'll also show how to add the portlet to a Liferay page.

03. Begining with UI and jQuery for Liferay Portlets (liferay_netbeans_03.mp4)
Liferay Portal provides jQuery as the default javascript library. This tutorial demonstrates how to build Standard tabbed page for your portlet using the jQuery library's tabs() method.

04. Magic of Liferay UI Taglib (liferay_netbeans_03.mp4)
This video shows howto use the Liferay UI Tag Library to make a tabs. It also demonstrates Netbeans support for Taglibs, which ease the development process

I'll soon make a high quality sample available for download. That will help anyone interested in the high quality version in deciding.

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Liferay Portlets with Netbeans, Portal Pack and Me [Screencasts]

2009-01-24T15:05:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned I have started some serious development with Liferay recently and I am using Netbeans 6.5 and Portal Pack 3.0 beta for development. During my learning I am realizing that there is either a lack or absence of documentation, or the training proposals available are too costly for enthusiasts and newbies.

So while learning myself, I am making an effort to provide a package for total dummies to get started with Liferay portlet development using Netbeans and Portal Pack. I might not show you the perfect way to do things, but defientely will show you way that works. I have uploaded the screencast (see below) on Youtube, but it somehow messed their quality and resolution. You can view them for free at Youtube in the low quality [Embeded below].

You can view them in high quality by purchasing using Paypal for $2.00. I'll send an invitation to view the videos at Screencast.com

You can directly download the videos for yourself from lulu.com at a price of $5.00

If you like these, find them helpful, Please buy them to support the efforts I have put in these and help me bring more useful content.

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Netbeans PortalPack 3.0 Beta for Liferay

2009-01-22T06:45:00.001-08:00

Recently, Netbeans Portal Pack 3.0 beta was released and it claims to have some advanced features to support Liferay Portal Server 5.1.1. Along the same time I have also started putting in some more serious efforts to developing the portlets to power my upcoming project at minshuu.com [More updates on it in time to come]

Well, as all of you know I am an IDE fan and have special love for Netbeans. So I decided I'll use it as the IDE for development of the new portlets. Tough the installation is easy and the setup straight forward, I could find a proper document explaining the development procedures. So, here are my findings and what I learnt.

Lets get through the installation and configuration first -

Download and Install Netbeans 6.5 from netbeans.org [I prefer and recomend downloading the compelete pack, around 200 MB]
When you start the IDE, it will show some updates are available. It is recomended that you install these before going further
Download the Portal Pack 3.0 Beta from http://portalpack.netbeans.org/ [Again the complete/all pakage is recomended]
Unzip the downloaded file
Go to Netbeans IDE and open Tools > Plugins > Downloaded and then Add the downloaded plugins, clicking on Add Plugins and then selecting the unzipped plugins
Install the added plugins, clicking on Install
To configure the liferay server for deployment and development, download Liferay + Glassfish V3 bundle from liferay.com
Unzip the downloaded file to a directory and your liferay portal is ready to use
In Netbeans IDE, go to the Services Tab in the Left panel alongside the Projects and Files Tab and right click on Servers node and click Add Server. . .
In the Choose Server dialog select Liferay Portal Server 5.1.x and click next
With Glassfish as the server type browse to the folder where you just extracted Liferay for the Glassfish Home, rest of the values will automatically be picked up
In the next wizard step, enable Directory Deployment, this will ease the development by directly deploying your development directory to the portal
Click Finish to complete the configuration. Now Netbeans is ready to serve as your Portlet development IDE

For an older, but still relevant howto with screenshots please refer to - http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com/2008/08/liferay-development-with-netbeans.html
In the next article I'll explain how to develop portlets using Netbeans 6.5 and Portal Pack 3.0 beta for Liferay.

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How can I ignore invalid SSL certificates in HTMLUnit

2009-01-09T23:58:00.001-08:00

Recently working with HTMLUnit I found myself struggling with the base Apache HTTP client not accepting the HTTPS site's SSL certificate. This was causing an exception reporting -
PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

So first I tried the standard way to give a custom https protocol handler to HTTPClient unsing the following code -

Protocol easyhttps = new Protocol("https", new EasySSLProtocolSocketFactory(), 443);
Protocol.registerPrtocol("https", easyhttps);

But still the problem prevailed. So after looking around a bit I found that the HTMLUnit WebClient object has a method setUseInsecureSSL which should do the trick. And on putting it in, it did work!

try {
wc.setUseInsecureSSL(true);
} catch (GeneralSecurityException ex) {
logger.error("Failed setting ignore SSL on HTMLUnit Web Client", ex);
}

This is meant to be used only if you are sure that you don't need a valid SSL certificate there, else try to solve the issue at the application you are testing.

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Learning Dojo, a new book by Script Uncle from Packt Publishing

2009-01-04T09:24:00.001-08:00

Hey Guys!!! Happy new year :) I hope, wish and pray that the new year bring you lots of joy and happiness and success in all your endeavors.

Packt Publishing, the publishing house that has brought us real useful and practical books like "Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation", "Alfresco Developer Guide" and "Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets" and who gave us "Learning jQuery", "Learning EXT JS" have recently published the book "Learning Dojo" by Peter Svensson, whom many of the javascript developers would recognise as Script Uncle.

The book deals in detail from introducing a newbie to Dojo to explains things like Layouts and forms and Dijits and finally concludes with a set of Real World examples. I interviewed Peter, and according to him any newbie with basic Javascript knowledge can take up the book and learn Dojo, while I think that it will very well suite experienced Dojo programmers too, specially the the last, Real-World Dojo chapter. I have to transcript Peter's interview and will put it here soon.

But as a new year gift from me, Peter and Jude, a nice guy at Packt publishing, here is a free chapter for you all to read - http://www.packtpub.com/files/learning-dojo-sample-chapter-6-layout.pdf

Go ahead give it a read and if you are doing anything with Dojo do go over to Packt Publishing and grab your copy of "Learning Dojo".

For JQuery guys, I have refereced "Learning JQuery" a few times and it has been a real help.

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Ramesh Loganathan, Blogging from Hyderabad

2008-12-08T19:50:00.001-08:00

Read it a few days back, but missed to reblog :(
The next edition of annual tech update- Hysea technology Day- is scheduled for Dec' 13th (Saturday) at Taj Deccan. The theme this year is- IP creation opportunities for the services industry. Hysea Technology day 2008, is being held on 13th Dec i.e. the coming Saturday and the nominations for Hysea Products Showcase & Awards 2008 are due on 28th Dec. Read more at Ramesh's blog and Hysea.in

Ramesh Loganathan, Blogging from Hyderabad

And that is the Student Product Idea contest that Progress Software is sponsoring.

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nativeclient - Google Code

2008-12-08T19:42:00.001-08:00

When I heard rumors about Google OS yesterday I was sure the hype is being made to anounce something new from Google and like most of the people out htere I too believed it would be a Linux Based OS, or Android for PCs.

But, according to Google it is their Open Source project, another step towards World, oops Web Domination. Native Client is a browser plugin that allows you to include Native x86 code in your web pages. No, not writing Javascript to execute Native code. No, no, no... Not even anything like flash or silverlight. Somewhat like Java may be . . . It allows writing and including Native programs written in C++ with some restrictions to be run in a browser as part of the web page.

Google Code Project page for Native Client shows these screenshots running Quake and XaoS in the browser. So we may see a native client based web processor running in the browser, but this is right now just a research project. It runs in Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Google recomend Firefox 3, and noteworthy is IE is left out!

Native Client is an open-source research technology for running x86 native code in web applications, with the goal of maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web apps. We've released this project at an early, research stage to get feedback from the security and broader open-source communities. We believe that Native Client technology will someday help web developers to create richer and more dynamic browser-based applications.

nativeclient - Google Code

Do read the paper describing the Native Client's architecture and the double sandbox feature that allows only secured code to run. and if you are interested in the technology, join the developer group here.

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Google Friend Connect: Add social features to your site

2008-12-07T22:57:00.001-08:00

Google Friend Connect is available to alll website owners. Go ahead and give it a try friends. It allows you to connect using your AOL,Yahoo, Google or Plaxo and other Open Social IDs. And when you addd Friend Connect to your site it automatically becomes a Open Social Container!!!

Google Friend Connect means more people engaging more deeply with your website -- and with each other. Set up a new site * Enrich your siteChoose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets by Google and the OpenSocial developer community. * Attract more visitorsYour users can easily invite friends from social networks and contact lists to visit and join your site. * No programming whatsoeverJust copy and paste a few snippets of code into your site, and Friend Connect does the rest.

Google Friend Connect: Add social features to your site

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Google Friend Connect: Add social features to your site

2008-12-07T22:36:00.001-08:00

Google Friend Connect means more people engaging more deeply with your website -- and with each other. Set up a new site * Enrich your siteChoose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets by Google and the OpenSocial developer community. * Attract more visitorsYour users can easily invite friends from social networks and contact lists to visit and join your site. * No programming whatsoeverJust copy and paste a few snippets of code into your site, and Friend Connect does the rest.

Google Friend Connect: Add social features to your site

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The WOMM 2.0 Contest by ISB

2008-12-05T04:33:00.001-08:00

ISB is organising the WOMM 2.0 Contest and it is sponsored by SocialTwist.

Check this out people, Some cool cash prizes to be won!

"67% of all consumer decisions are primarily influenced by word of mouth (McKinsey) and 90% of customers identify word of mouth as the best, most reliable and trustworthy source about ideas and information on products and services (NOP World)”

http://www.isb.edu/WOMM2.0Contest/

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