My Tech Rantings

3d printing strategies

2011-03-07T16:42:00.001-08:00

Rohit Rai (@milliondreams) has shared a Tweet with you: "makerbot: DIY hi-fi and low-fi strategies for 3D printing objects in the real world http://wp.me/p13QiJ-25w http://wp.me/p13QiJ-24Z" --http://twitter.com/makerbot/status/44880524094877696

I am using swype... And I am loving it.

2010-12-24T01:21:00.001-08:00

I downloaded swype last night... I was impressed at the first go.. And since then I just want to type!

What I type is not that important than the fun it is while typing... The predictions are pretty much flawless even when I type, or should say swype, wrong. I almost get a creepy feeling as if it is reaching out to my mind through my fingers and just reading what I want to write!

I have tried alternate keyboards earlier and removed them after a couple of tries... But swype is now going to be my default input method, unless gingerbread gives me something really, really good or the voice input starts working better once I get 3g here.

I had been waiting for the beta opening up again since I saw its demo a few months ago and when I saw it is open again, I didn't waste a second in downloading and installing it.

Get it on your android today and I assure you won't be disappointed. The limited beta is open. You have to register to get it at http://beta.swype.com

I have swyped this whole blog post with just two mistaken predictions! The url too was swyped!

Kojo Home

2010-12-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

Kojo Home

Kojo is a desktop based software-application that runs on Windows, Linux, and the Mac. It is a Learning Environment, with many different features - that help with the exploration, learning, and teaching of concepts in the areas of:

Computer Programming and Critical Thinking.
Math and Science.
Art and Creative Thinking.
Computer and Internet Literacy.

A very very impressive and interesting tool! Check it out...

Rock player - Universal media player for Andriod!

2010-09-02T00:04:00.001-07:00

Rock Player - Redirect Intelligence Corp

RockPlayer is an embedded platform, high performance, almost all format video player. With optimized for mobile devices, and highly optimized core players FFmpeg decoder, RockPlayer Android platform has become the highest performance of the most extensive format support for video player.

Sounds good :) Trying it out now!

Flood Lite - Apple’s Attention to Detail

2010-08-31T04:44:00.000-07:00

Flood Lite - Apple’s Attention to Detail

My girlfriend shared this link with me.

Very interesting thing... Something I am sure no one thought about while looking at the "sleep mode" light blink!

I generally put my Dell laptop to sleep while I go to sleep and in the dark room the small blinking or actually pulsating light gives a nice feel :) Do Mac users feel better looking at their laptop's sleep blink?

But I am sure this respect for minute details has served the company good till now. Also at the same time I wonder, is it really a invention worth a patent?

Fabric.js - A library to ease work with canvas

2010-08-30T08:59:00.001-07:00

Badass JavaScript

Fabric.js started as a foundation for design editor on printio.ru —interactive online store with ability to create your own designs. The idea was to create Javascript-based editor, which would make it easy to manipulate vector shapes and images on T-Shirts.

Google publishes guidelines for web apps

2010-07-16T19:18:00.001-07:00

Thinking in Web Apps - Installable Web Apps - Google Code

After announcement of plan to launch an app store for web apps on chrome, Google also wants the apps to be ready for the primetime, at the same time this may go along as the first and definitive guidelines for web apps.

Google Nexus One - Chapter I, A story of books, mobiles and the trackball

2010-06-17T22:19:00.000-07:00

Long long ago, in a far far away place, signed up for entry to the kingdom of online technology books . . . .

Well, this is not a fairy tale . . . not even a story . . . Its a narrative of my experience, so I'll narrate in first person and terms of todays world ;)

If you know informIt's safaribooksonline.com, you will agree it is one of the best resource for tech books online. For the uninitiated, check it out. I signed up for a individual account few years back, but till date I have never managed to read even one complete book there. I use it mostly for reference as and when required, but when I like a book I to the bookshop and buy that book.

Reason:
1. To read the books online I need to be in front of my laptop and online, that means I have a lot of distraction and many other things that I can do, like write on this blog or write some code ;)
2. Amongst many of my bad habits, I have an habit of lying in my bed and reading, and I can't imagine reading from my laptop in bed, I prefer smaller easier to handle things called Books!

So as a proud owner of iPod Touch, around a year back I tried to use m.safaribooksonline.com, the mobile version. To be very clear, I have been a iPhone developer, I love my iPod touch, I have all my songs on it, I have lots of audio books on it, I have games, I have a few applications, but somehow I could never adjust to browsing on it. The browser is good and all, but the experience of reading the book was never comfortable . . . I couldn't think of an exact reason then, but now I know!

1. Whenever I was lying in bed and reading a book on a browser it would change the layout from portrait to landscape to portrait with every movement of my hand or lying position . . . result being I had to lie down very straight with the iPod held steadily in one position... that takes away all the fun of reading in bed.
2. The touch and swipe scroll is good for use in applications and to quickly browse through but becomes difficult when reading books.
3. I was always scared of damaging the screen with rough usage while scrolling.

So, I stopped reading books on the iPod and used it exclusively for music and audio books. I tried using it for blogging, but that never worked out.

Last night, I just thought of trying it out on my Nexus One and I have completed reading the half of Grails in Action (Yes, you would be right to expect a grails blog soon).

What was different reading on nexus one you might ask. So here are the reasons.

1. Clarity and sharpness of the test was higher.
2. I could set the browser to always stay in landscape mode and read comfortably moving the mobile as I want.
3. The most important and useful thing was the trackball. It made scrolling really really easy, and to all my blackberry loving friends I concede. "Trackball is really useful and cannot be replaced by any other touch/trackpad interaction".

I have been a Google fanboy always (except for a few times, like launch of Buzz and Wave API limitations) and in this case I will go all out and say, Nexus One can easily be the iPhone killer everyone has been talking about. The only thing wrong with it is it's selling model and availability (or lack of it) outside US.

I copied my songs library to my Nexus One too and I like the audio quality, it may not be exactly what iPod has but a close match, many of us, not very particular about the perfect sound quality will easily get adjusted to it. So I think my affair with the iPod might soon be over. Will gift that of to a friend or cousin who are music fan, my new gadget is Nexus One!

Bonus:
Major part of this blog was dictated on Nexus One. Part of this blog was types on my Nexus One. Part of this blog was written on my laptop and posted from my laptop.

And I also wanted to tell you about this cool Compas application from Synaptic and Metal Detector app, but I guess I'll save it for my next blog!

What to write about?

2010-06-15T20:25:00.001-07:00

Working for over a couple of months with cordys process factory, I have been wondering what should be the one feature that deserves a first post on my blog?

Should it be the zero coding or should it be about thinking in terms of processes or the ease of consumption of web services or the true on cloud development and deployment or the ease it gives to use processes in Google apps?

Still wondering! Has anyone else tried. Cordys process factory yet?

To get a feel of what I am talking about visit www.cordysprocessfactory.com or you can subscribe through Google Apps market place if you are a google Apps user.

FT.com / Technology - Google ditches Windows on security concerns

2010-05-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

FT.com / Technology - Google ditches Windows on security concerns

So Google was paying a large amount of money for licenses to it's rival . . . Now it won't! But doing this it becomes the first large organisation to leave windows . . . Will anyone follow the suit?

What do you think?

Setup Subversion Server on your Windows machine

2010-05-26T03:58:00.000-07:00

Prerequisite: Install Apache HTTP Server.

1. Download SVN binaries from - http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html#windows [Setup-Subversion-1.5.6.msi]

2. Run the downloaded file

a. Click next on the welcome screen

b. Click next on the license screen

c. Select "Binding for Apache 2.2.x" on Apache binding screen

d. Select a location of your choice or accept the default and press next on the installation location screen

e. Press the Install button and then Finish button after the installation is completed

3. Create a directory to hold all your projects say d:\myprojects or d:\repository

4. Initialize the project repo using the svnadmin command

#svnadmin create d:\myprojects

5. Stop Apache Service

6. Copy subversion httpd modules mod_authz_svn.so and mod_dav_svn.so from \bin into \modules

7. Edit the file \conf\httpd.conf

8. Add the following lines at the end of module loading section (Tip: Search for "LoadModule" in the configuration file)

LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so

LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so

LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so

9. Add the following line to end of the configuration file

Include d:/svnconf/subversion.conf

10. Create a directory to hold our svn specific configuration, lets say d:\svnconf

11. Switch to the SVN bin directory

#cd D:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\bin"

12. Create user password files in this directory using htpasswd

#htpasswd -cm d:\svnconf\svn-auth-file rrohit

(replace rrohit by your own name and enter some password you'll like to use on the password prompt)

13. Create the ACL file d:\svnconf\svn-acl and add the following content to it

[myprojects:/]

* = rw

10. Create d:\svnconf\subversion.conf (Replace the content in bold as per your setup and copy the content below in the subversion.conf file)

DAV svn

SVNPath d:/myprojects

AuthType Basic

AuthName "Subversion Project repository"

AuthUserFile D:/svnconf/svn-auth-file

Require valid-user

AuthzSVNAccessFile d:/svnconf/svn-acl

11. Copy libapr-1.dll from /bin to /bin

12. Start apache service. Now you can access the subversion repository at http://localhost/myprojects

Now that you have your own Subversion server running, get Tortoise SVN for working with it. Grab this book if you want to understand all the details - Version Control with Subversion

Firefox 4: the HTML5 parser – inline SVG, speed and more ✩ Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog

2010-05-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Henri Sivonen, one of Mozilla’s Firefox developers, has written a guest post on hacks.mozilla.org about Firefox’s new HTML5 parser.

Firefox 4: the HTML5 parser – inline SVG, speed and more ✩ Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog

There are four main things that improve with the new HTML5 parser:

You can now use SVG and MathML inline in HTML5 pages, without XML namespaces.
Parsing is now done off Firefox’s main UI thread, improving overall browser responsiveness.
It’s improved the speed of innerHTML calls by about 20%.
With the landing of the new parser we’ve fixed dozens of long-standing parser related bugs.

All comments are now moderated!

2010-05-07T00:07:00.000-07:00

All the comments on this blog are now moderated.

The moderation is not meant to filter out comments, just to prevent spamming, specially from those those chinese guys writing irrelevant comments! Also I'll only be approving comment written in english only. All others go to my spam folder and if you go to spam more than 3 times, you'll be blocked from commenting!

Web Application Exploits and Defenses

2010-05-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

Web Application Exploits and Defenses [jarlsberg]

Check out this Web Application Security workshop and challenge setup by Google. Best resource to get started in web application security.

In Google's words -

Want to beat the hackers at their own game?

Learn how hackers find security vulnerabilities!
Learn how hackers exploit web applications!
Learn how to stop them!

This codelab shows how web application vulnerabilities can be exploited and how to defend against these attacks.

And the warning -
WARNING: Accessing or attacking a computer system without authorization is illegal in many jurisdictions. While doing this codelab, you are specifically granted authorization to attack the Jarlsberg application as directed. You may not attack Jarlsberg in ways other than described in this codelab, nor may you attack App Engine directly or any other Google service. You should use what you learn from the codelab to make your own applications more secure. You should not use it to attack any applications other than your own, and only do that with permission from the appropriate authorities (e.g., your company's security team).

The new look of ZDNet - I like it!

2010-05-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

Technology News, Analysis, Comments and Product Reviews for IT Professionals | ZDNet

Being a regular reader of ZDNet, I am very habituated to just notice the article content area and ignore the surroundings. So, I am not entirely sure when this change happened. But just now while reading articles on ZDNet I realized they have changed the layout and it is a very pleasing change.

The header area that I usually, never even looked at is now quite prominent and I am already using it for navigating the site.

The blog header banners, with authors pictures in it, that used to be "Huge" and dark and gloomy are now reduced in size with a pleasant blue gradient backdrop and a nice matching social toolbar below it.

The placement of various content has also changed and become more useful. Specially, the summary and topics section are more visible and easily reachable.

The only two things I didn't like were the Advertisement and the news letter subscription box.

The animated flash add on top right is a distraction while reading. Some may argue that the animation takes the readers attention and thats what advertisements are meant for. I say that I noticed that advertisement when I come on the page due it its animation, I didn't think it is any use to me so I didn't click, but the continuous animation is irritating. probably they can set certain specifications on how frequently the advertisement should animate or may be set it to animate only once or on window focus.

The advertisement placement makes business sense though. But I cannot understand why the news letter subscription box is "sooooo big" and placed at a place where ideally I will like to see, blog for sponsors/blog roll/ blog archive, that will generate quite a few reads and retain users for more time. I am already a ZDNet user and subscribed to all their mailing lists, why should so much real estate on my screen be given to a useless box!

It could have been small, 1/3rd its size placed where it is or even may be above the add as part of the extended banner.

But over all the new layout is very pleasing and useful! Good jobs folks!

Special mention - The complete comments in the message page itself was a very needed and very much welcome change! Saves a lot of time!

Jahia Community Edition

2010-04-20T07:11:00.000-07:00

Jahia Community Edition

Looks like and interesting alternative to liferay. Has anyone used it ever?

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.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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