Senior Web Developer

How to use Drupal Cache in module programming?

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Reduce the number of requests to make or the times a calculation is made ia way to improve the performance of a feature and is necesary.

Different ways to cache

We are going to talk about two different cache techniques that can be used in Drupal, first the use of static data and then the Drupal Cache.

Scopes

In most web platforms there are different scopes for variables and data beyond the variable and class scopes. There are normally 4 different scopes: Request, Session, Application and Server.

Request Scope

The request scope variables are the ones that remain since a client request was issued until the request ends.
This is the normal level we have in PHP when we use static variables, patterns like Singleton and any other attempt by code to keep a data alive in memory.

Session variables

In PHP you can save data on the user’s session variable and these data are only for that user in that session and they will remain alive during the complete time of that session.
This is very handy to keep user information that may be required to keep continuty to the user’s experience in the site.

Server variables

PHP is not able to keep data at server level by default like other platforms can, but that doesn’t means it can’t be achieved.
In PHP you can emulate server variables saving data in the database (that works only for that server), saving the data in files or using memory dictionaries like Redit, APC, Memcache or alike (if they are restricted to that server only).
The server variables are identified because they only belong to the server that is running on, not necesary exclusive of the application, for which it could be used to share data between applications on the same server.
The data use to be volatil by definition and therefore is lost when the server is restarted.

Application variables

These are very similar to server variables and they are not supported by PHP by default either, but they can be implemented in the same way that server variables are.
The conceptual difference of these variables is that they are not shared between applications, but on the other side they are shared between servers that are running the same application.

Why do I need to make cache of data?

Each time we do a data request or some data calculations that require resources.
The requests to a database require memory, CPU and in most cases disk operations as well.
The processing of files or complex calculus also could have a big weight in performance.
This may not be a big issue once, but when we are serving a site with high traffic this could impact the server’s performance and the response time.
Reducing the number of requests and/or calculus that are made we multiply the improvement in performance and response time.
From there we get that if we coiuld reduce the amout of code files or templates to 10% on 90% of the requests we could see a drastically improvement of the site performance, or in it’s defect, not doing so would mean having the site slow or not able to server the amount of requests of a decent trafic.
Of course, everything has a cost, keeping more data on cache would usually means that we need more memory to keep them available, which could be limited by the server’s RAM that we have.
For this reason we must have careful and concience of the resources or we could start having a problem of availablebily of cache, forcing the server to use swap memory/virtual memory on disk, making the server go slower and heavier.

Static data

Now that we know the different levels for the variables let’s see static data.
Using the functionality “static” in PHP we can keep data in a persistent way during the code execution (request variables), allowing us to save on requests or calculus that are required several times during the code execution of the request.
In Drupal 7 you can use the function drupal_static to keep those data. The function drupal_static receives the name or key of the data, the default value and an indication if is must clean the existing data.
In that sense this function can be seeing like a similar functionality of the set Drupal variable_get/set set of functions.

Use of static data exclusive for a function, in Drupal 7:

<?php
function my_funcion() {
  // The function name it is used as the key
  $data_list = &drupal_static(__FUNCTION__);

  // If the data has not being requested/calculated yet we do it now
  if (!isset($data_list) {
    // Obtain the data from the database and make calculations
  }
  // The second time that this function is called the data will be alredy define and they will not be requested again

  // Use $data_list
}
?>

<?php
function one_funcion() {
  $data_list = &drupal_static("shared data");
  // Use $data_list and modify it in the variable
}

function another_funcion() {
  $data_list = &drupal_static("shared data");
  // Use $data_list and modify it in the variable
}
?>

Use of static data exclusive for a function, in Drupal 6:

<?php
function my_funcion() {
  static $data_list;

  // If the data has not being defined yet then we defined
  if (!isset($data_list) {
    // Obtain and calculate data
  }
  // The second time that the function is called the data will be defined and no need to get them or calculate them again

  // Use the data form $data_list and save modifications to the variable
}
?>

In Drupal 6 we need to do some adjustments because the static function only applies to the function (or class) where is defined and can’t be shared.
To achieve this we have 2 options, use a global variable or create another function as static container from which we obtain the reference to the static variable.

<?php
function one_funcion() {
  global $data_list
  // Use $data_list and modify it in the variable
}

function another_funcion() {
  global $data_list
  // Use $data_list and modify it in the variable
}
?>

Drupal’s Cache

Drupal has a series of functions to use the generic cache system that is implemented.
By default Drupal’s cache is implemented in the database, but this can be modified so that it uses another implementation like APC, Memcache, Redit, file system, etc.
In a future article I’ll explain how to configure different type of cache in Drupal.
The advantage of Drupal cache is that the code is agnostic of the implementation of the cache, when you program the code you don’t need to know which kind of cache are you using.
If we need to do a series of heavy calculations over some data and these data will stay constant in the site for certain time, we can do something like the following example to avoid calculating it on every request:

<?php
function calculate_heavy_data() {
  $data_calculated = drupal_static(__FUNCTION__); // Drupal 7 version
  //static $data_calculated; // Drupal 6 version

  if (!isset($data_calculated)) {
    if ($cache = cache_get("heavy_data")) {
      $data_calculated = $cache->data;
    } else {
      // Do all the necesary calculations of the data and place them
again in $data_calculated
      cache_set("heavy_data", $data_calculated, "cache");
    }
  }
  return $data_calculated;
}
?>

This way the data will not be calculated on each request nor serveral times on one request.

The use of cache is recommended, but without abuse and having in mind estimations of how this can impact the memory and improvement on performance, but this could be the difference between a heavy and slow site or a fast and fully available site.

What is Markdown?

Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Markdown is a light markup language, it is a simple way to write content and give style to it, and it is one of the ways to write content in Jekyll.

Markdown is simple to write and read, is a format that is easy to convert to other formats like HTML, PDF, etc.
The simplicity of Markdown restricts that the content style could get complicated, allowing for a simple style.

Note: In Jekyll content files requires a YAML header and can contain HTML tags and liquid tags.

Text formatting in Markdown

In Markdown you can format the text using the following features:

Text with Emphasis

It will add enphasis to the text when enclosing between asterisc “*” or underlined “_”.

*emphasis*, or _emphasis_ (normally would be output as italic)
**strong enphasis**, or __strong emphasis__ (normally would be output as strong)

Titles or headlines

The headlines are defined by preceding the text with a hash “#”, in a way that the least number of hashes the higher the priority.

# First level
## Second level
### Third level
...
###### Sixth level

But besides the first 2 levels can be defined with a line of “equal sign” = characters or “substraction sign” -.

First level
============

Second Level
-------------

Lists

The lists are defined by an asterisc “*” in the begning of each line or a minus sign “-“ and a space for non numbered lists (bullets) or a number with a dot and a space for numbered lists.

* Red
* Yellow
* Green
* Blue

1. First element
2. Second element
3. Third element

Code

When you need to define code in the text you use the “`” character for code in the same line or 3 consecutive characters for multiple lines.

This code `hello` is on the same line.

```
Code in several lines
  that respects tabs
and spaces
```

In Jekyll you can also use pygments to do syntax highlight.

{% highlight sql %}
SELECT * FROM TABLE
{% endhighlight %}

Quotes

The quoted text is preceded with the greater than “>” sign before each line.

> This is a quoted line that will be converted to "blockquote

Links

The links are defined by enclosing the text in square brackets next to the link URL enclosed in parenthesis and optionally the link title between quotes next to the URL.

[This is a link](http://www.thesite.com "Title goes here")

Images

The images are define similar to the links, but preceded with an exclamation sign “!”.

![Alternate text here](http://www.thesite.com/myimage.png "Title of the image here")

This way we get a simple, clean and styled code.

Posts and Drafts in Jekyll

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

In this third part I’ll explain how to work with posts and drafts in Jekyll.

Front-matter

Any file that contains a YAML block in the begining of the file will be processed by Jekyll in a special way. This applies to posts and HTML, XML files or any other file. An example of a front-matter block is the following:

---
layout: post
title: This is a cool post
---

What is between the 3 horizontal lines --- is considered a YAML block. This information will be used in Jekyll and will be available during the file and the documents related to this one, besides the will have Liquid tags available. If you want to use the Liquid tags and data, but no need to set anything in the YAML block you still can define an empty YAML block to make Jekyll process the file.

Posts and drafts

The posts are the content we put usually in the _posts directory and are wrote in languages like Markdown or other options, but I’ll explain the Markdown only because it’s simplicity and clean clode.

Posts

Posts are named by standar in the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.FORMAT

Where YEAR is a 4 digits number, MONTH and DAY are two digits numbers and FORMAT is the extension in which is writted the content, for example:

2014-01-28-hello-world.md
2013-12-24-christmass-with-rudolph.textile

The posts must start with a Front-matter YAML block.

Drafts

Drafts are actually post files that reside on the _drafts directory and they don’t have a date because they haven’t being published. These files are ignored by default by Jekyll (you could still force Jekyll to include them), this allows you to keep separated the published documents and the drafts, do they don’t get pushed to your production site. When you decide to publish them you just have to move them from _drafts to _posts and assign them a publication date in the file name.

The post

An example of a post (or draft) is the following:

---
title: Hello world
layout: post
---
In the first lines we can place the excerpt separated from the content
by 1 empty line (2 consecutive carry returns).

## A subtitle
And a lot more content after

In this example we define a title for the post and the layout to be used, in this case is _layouts/post.html. The first lines before the first 2 consecutive carry returns are populated in the variable excerpt.

In the next series I’ll explain about Markdown and how to compile Jekyll to generate the site.

How to work with Jekyll?

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Now that we understand why Jekyll could be a good option I can explain how I achieve it.

Jekyll’s installation and configuration

I will not repeat the installation as is pretty straigh forward and you can find more information in the official site, for instructions you can check the guide and you can check my site’s complete code in GitHub.

Directory Structure

I prefer to separate the code from configuration and result so I moved the configuration file _config.yml to the root directory and the code source to /src and the destination to /build, this way I can have my code better organized.

For this to actually be considered by Jekyll I had to mofify the _config.yml in the following way:

source:       ./src
destination:  ./build
layouts:      ./_layouts
plugins:      ./src/_plugins

Now I ended up with the code structured as follows:

/
|- _layout.yaml
|- /src
|  |- .htaccess
|  |- index.html
|  |- robots.txt
|  |- humans.txt
|  |- 404error.html
|  |- rss.xml
|  |- sitemap.xml
|  |- /_assets
|  |  |- /css
|  |  |- /js
|  |- /_data
|  |- /_drafts
|  |- /_posts
|  |- /_layouts
|  |- /_includes
|  |- /_components
|  |- /_locales
|  |- /_plugins
|  |- /images
|  |- /es
|  |  |- index.html
|  |  |- rss.xml
|  |  |- /_drafts
|  |  |- /_posts
|- /build

Nota: Some of these files and directories will be explained later in the series.

Benefits of this structure:

The configuration remains in the root directory next to that I need and I don’t want to be exported to the destination.
All the code remains in a directory /src and the generated files in a directory /build.
Inside the directory of each additional language different than the default I have a directory for posts and drafts (later I’ll explain how to work with multiple languages).
The JavaScript and CSS files will be preprocessed for SASS, concated, minified and compressed, (later I’ll explain how to achive this).
The components are separated from the site, for example the Foundation files.

Soon the next part of this series for more details.

Why use Jekyll in my blog?

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Jekyll is an static site generator designed for blogs. Why is Jekyll better that any dinamic CMS like Drupal or Wordpress?

Why Jekyll?

I really don’t think there is one better than the other, I simply think they are different solution to the same problem and depends on the need of each problem to define which one to use. As a matter of fact, I would not recomend Jekyll to anyone, Jekyll normally require some technical knowledge to use it and lacks from a graphic interface. Because of this, if the site’s content is going to be managed by non technical users is probably not the option to use.

Being said that, possible the top advantage is that as generates static content it requires less resources during site execution and could even work completly on a CDN or cheap or free hosting options, which suppose a great advantage on performance and operative cost.

For any additional feature that the site requires that needs more dinamicity you could combine Jekyll with options like Node.js or any application in any other language or platform.

Besides these, Jekyll is build on Ruby and can easily be extended through plugins.

Personally, the decision to migrate my blog to Jekyll is based on 3 reasons: - Performance of my blog: I want my blog to be as fast as possible and nothing beats static files. - Experimentation and learning: My blog is and always has being a sandbox where I experiment in the real world with technologies that I want to learn. - Low maintenance: Once Jekyll is configured, the maintenance is literally minimum and I can focus on writing more often.

The complete code of my blog can be found in GitHub.

How to index extra data in Drupal 6 and 7

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0500

It is very easy to add words to be indexed with a node or entity in Drupal in order for the node to also be found when those words are used for search or even to alter the importance of some words.

Before dropping lines of code I think is important to understand a little bit of how this works, which lead us to talk about search engines. Search engines has two big parts:

The indexer: this is probably the most important part of it and where most magical things occurs (and by magical I mean mathematical).
The search engine: this is what happens when do the actual search and if this parts works well is because the hard work was already took care in the indexer, plus a good architecture to store the data for fast retrieval.

In the case of core search functionality, Solr, Sphinx and most search engines when used with Drupal, they don't actually store the data, they get the content so that the words can be analyzed.

After analyzing the data words are extracted and each word is considered with a score based on things like frequency (how many times appears in the text) and importance based on what HTML code wraps it.

For example, lets say you have the following:

A word two times in a paragraph
A word between a strong tag
A word between a heading 2 tag (H2)
A word between a heading 1 (H1) tag

In this case the scores are as following:

The word in the paragraph will just get 1 point per appearance so 2 points
The strong wrapped word gets 3 points
The H2 wrapped word gets 18
The H1 wrapped word gets 21

In this way when a search using some words it will show up first the nodes that contains those words with a high score.

Tip: Remember to give importance to what you want to have importance (use strong, heading and other tags to define what is important in your content), this applies to search as well as for SEO.

That way the user that is making the search will probably get results that are relevant to what is looking for.

The complete list of the default indexing that happens on Drupal and it's scores is the following:

H1: 25 points
H2: 18 points
H3: 15 points
H4: 12 points
H5: 9 points
H6: 6 points
U, B, I, EM and STRONG: 3 points
A: 10 points

So whatever words are wrapped by those tags they will accumulate those scores and it will have more score as many times as it appears or by using combination of wrappers.

Now that we have a glimpse of how it works, here is how to manipulate it.

Lets say you want to add a set of keywords or that you want to add the author full name to the list of words in the index and also assign a high score to them.

This is simple and this happens in the indexing time, not in search time (at search time all scores are already there since the indexing time).

During the indexing process in Drupal, it does 2 things (amount many others):

Calls the view node operation in the node to retrieve what usually gets rendered in the page and uses that HTML for indexing
Calls the "update index" operation in the hook_nodeapi (Drupal 6) or hook_node_update_index (Drupal 7) to append the result to the HTML that will be indexed.

So, you have 2 places where to manipulate this, the first one in the view node you can say what and how it should that text be, it will be indexed, but also will be outputted that same way to the user.

But if you want to add index information without adding content to be displayed you can use the update index.

Here is an example:

<?php
// Drupal 6
function mymodule_nodeapi(&$node, $op, $a3 = NULL, $a4 = NULL) {
  if ($op == "update index") {
    $author_id = $node->uid;
    // retrieve author full name from profile somehow and set into $author_full_name
    return "<h2>" . $author_full_name . "</h2>";
  }
}
?>

<?php
// Drupal 7
function mymodule_node_update_index($node) {
  $author_id = $node->uid;
  // retrieve author full name from profile somehow and set into $author_full_name
  return "<h2>" . $author_full_name . "</h2>";
}
?>

With this code the indexer will consider the author's full name into the words with relevance for that node, making it show when someones enter the author's name or last name (or better if both) in the search.

With very few lines of code you are able to add more words to the index of the nodes.

See What I Mean By Kevin Cheng, Rosenfeld Media

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:00:00 -0500

See What I Mean

How To Use Comics to Communicate Ideas

This book is a clear guide to help you mock up your ideas and concepts for better reaching to your colleagues or clients. You don’t need to be a caricaturist to use drawing as a tool to explain what you really mean.

In this book the author guides you to a process of understanding the concepts of cartoon and how to apply this concepts in your advantage.

The book is not intended to make the next Stan Lee out of you (although will not limit you), but instead to loose your fear to the pencil and help you use drawings as a way to put down your ideas and more easily share or discuss these ones.
“A picture says more than a thousand words” and once you start reading you will start seeing how this is so true.

In the first part of the book you will be gracefully guided through the drawing process, enough to what you will need.
Then you will be introduced into the concepts of timing and environment and many other concepts of comics that will enable you to actually tell a full story in a very few frames.
Later you will be explained how to plan story and to focus on what will impact and actually tell what needs to be told.
Getting to the end of the book you will put things together and polish what you have being learning.

When you finish the book you will probably won’t be able to just quick your job and get hired in DC Comics, but you will be enough prepared to tell your ideas or stories in a whole new way, using more visual and therefore more appealing way to reach your audience, adding a new tool to your toolbox.

You can get the book here

Drupal Bootstrap Video Session

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Description

This is a session exposed for our team when we expose generally and theoretically about what is and what can be done with the Drupal Bootstrap.

The Drupal Bootstrap is indeed the base of the Drupal architecture and can be used in very interesting ways. Besides, understanding how the Bootstrap works offers some basic knowledge that everyone working with Drupal should know.

Download presentation

Multiple Skype accounts on Mac OS or Windows at the same time

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

I use a personal Skype account and another Skype account for the company I work for, and then I have the problem of how can I have both accounts opened.

Multiple Skype Instances on Windows XP/Vista

In Windows this is easy, you just need to call the Skype.exe with the parameter /secondary, which you can do by creating a new shortcut on the Programs Menu 1. Locate the Skype program (C:/Program Files(x86)/Skype/Phone/Skype.exe or C:/Program Files(x86)/Skype/Phone/Skype.exe or something similar) 1. Right click on the Skype.exe program 1. Select “Create shortcut” 1. Then move this shortcut wherever you want (like the Desktop or the Start Menu) 1. Right click on the shortcut, select “Properties” 1. On the field “Target” add at the end /secondary like this for example ("C:/Program Files(x86)/Skype/Phone/Skype.exe" /secondary) 1. Hit OK and you are done, you can open the primary and the secondary instances of Skype, having two accounts opened at the same time

Multiple Skype instances on Mac OS

On Mac is a little more complicate because the Mac executable doesn’t supports the secondary option.
The best option I have found is using a different account to start the program and I’ve solved a couple little problems that comes with it. 1. Create a new user (one time only): 1. Go to System Preferences -> System -> Users & Groups 1. Unlock the window if required 1. Hit the + sign 1. Choose standard type and fill the form, you can use the same password that you already use (remember the account name, you will use it on the next steps)

Start Skype using the other account (every time that you want to use your secondary instance)
- Open the terminal (Open spotlight and type terminal)
- Change user, to do that type the following on the terminal replace otheruser with the user name of the account you created
```
su otheruser
```
- It will ask you for the other user password
- Open Skype, to do it, enter the following on the terminal:
```
/Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype&
```
Note: this is a little secret, you do can close the terminal, it will warn you that the program will be closed, but it actually will not, you can go ahead and close the terminal.
One last tip, is that you should create a shared directory to store the files that someone sends you using Skype, otherwise, you will not be able to get them unless you switch to that user (I realized this after some one send me a file the first time)
1. Open Finder
2. In the menu select Go -> Go to folder...
3. Enter: /Users/Shared and hit Go
4. On the menu select File -> New Folder and create a new folder, you can name it Skype
5. On your secondary instance of Skype select in the menu Preferences -> General
6. Locate the option “Save files in:” and select the shared directory that you created, now all the files you download they will be saved there, you can also add that folder in your favorites and have it access quickly

How to import other camera videos into iMovie app for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I just bought the 4th generation iPod Touch (this also applies to iPad and iPhone) and I wanted to use iMovie app to create videos using my previous videos taken with my other camera, but this seems to not be possible, well, let me explain you how to achieve this.

First of all, the problem of iMovie app not letting you choose videos not taken with the same iPod Touch (or iPhone or iPad) is a restriction based on the format of the video, so if we convert them into the right format they will be available for you to be used on iMovie app to create your own movies.
I’ll explain two ways of getting there, one from the device itself (iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad) and one from your computer, which in my case it’s a PC, but the process could be achieved from any other computer.

From the same device (iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad)

You could use another video editing app that allows you to take a video from any of your videos and then work with it and export it to your camera roll.
I tried this with ReelDirector app, which is by the way a good app to edit your own videos like iMovie.

First, you will need to convert your video to iphone/ipod/ipad compatible format to be able to export it to your photos on your device, for this you could use a free application like Handbreak, which it has pressets for most common devices.
Locate the converted video into one of your videos libraries that you sync with your device, check to sync videos and sync.
Create a new project in ReelDirector and add the video you imported, in the case of ReelDirector it will keep your audio as it was original and maybe that format will not allow you to import the video to iMovie so you probably would have to remove the video’s audio
Save, Render and Export the video to your camera roll.
Now you are ready to use this video on your project on iMovie (without the original audio)

From your computer using a video converter

You will need a good video converter that allows you to choose in a custom way not only the video format, but also the audio format, in my case I used Adobe Media Encoder

Add the video that you want to convert
Hit “settings” to open the export settings
In the format select choose “QuickTime”
In the video tab choose Video Codec = “H.264”
In the audio tab choose Audio Codec = “AAC”, Sample Rate = 44100 Hz and Channels = “Mono”
Export your video, now it has the formatting that will allow iMovie to use it.
Put your video in one of your picture libraries that will sync with your device, and then use iMovie and select your video, would probably be in the top of the list because of the creation time/date

I personally prefer the second option, it’s a good way to use those videos you took with your camera or any other device and being able to use them on iMovie to create your nice movie.

Enjoy and let me know if you find any other tool, maybe a freeone that allows other people to convert the videos.

How to set the index length in the Drupal Database Schema

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500

I believe that you must be really picky when you define a database in a project, that is one of the spots where you could be taking your project to success or failure in terms of performance.

Drupal 6 and up has a very convenience way define your tables without using syntax for a specific database server, but, this sometimes could be a little limited when trying to set specific details like the index length, so, I’ll explain to you how to achieve this specific feature.
There are cases that you may for example have a char field in your database and you want to have an index on that field, but you don’t need an index of all the text, you could improve the searches by adding only the first part of this text in the index reducing the size of this index.

To achieve that in MySql you would do something like this:

CREATE TABLE my_table (
  an_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  other_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  name varchar(30) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (an_id),
  UNIQUE KEY unique_key_name (an_id, name),
  KEY limited_length_text_index (name(10)) -- This would limit to index only first 10 chars
)

But, to tell Drupal’s database schema to do that you need to be a little tricky, and you do something like this:

<?php
$schema['my_table'] = array(
  'fields' => array(
    'an_id' => array(
      'type' => 'serial',
      'unsigned' => TRUE,
      'not null' => TRUE,
    ), 
    'other_id' => array(
      'type' => 'int', 
      'unsigned' => TRUE,
      'not null' => TRUE,
    ),                                                                                                                                                        
    'name' => array(
      'type' => 'char',
      'not null' => TRUE,
      'length' => 30,
    ),
  ),
  'indexes' => array(
    /* This would limit to index only first 10 chars */
    'limited_length_text_index' => array(array('name', 10)),
  ),
  'unique keys' => array(
    'unique_key_name' => array('an_id', 'name'),
  ),
  'primary key' => array('an_id'),
);
?>

I hope this little tip help you to create better databases for your projects or modules.

Intel's ads are great

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500

I love the Intel ads, mostly that one about rock stars, perhaps because since I got into the university I found so munch respect for some people and we always talk about X guy that invented this or that acomplish that, in some way we want to achieve things like that, like getting into Blizzard to work on games like Starcraft, I mean, those are our rock stars.

Video

All apps must be compatible with iPhone OS 3.0

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Apple is enforcing every iPhone/iPod Touch developer to ensure that their applications are compatible with the new iPhone OS 3.0 (which right now is in beta 5 version).

We are getting closer to the moment of the official release and Apple wants to make sure that every application that is right now in the App Store or new apps will work with the new iPhone OS 3.0.
It’s supose that they should work just like that, but some of them could need a tweek and they want to be sure.
Apple has began to review the actual apps and added as part of the aproval process for new apps, to make sure they work well in the new OS 3.0, and any application that doesn’t meets this requirement will be removed from the App Store or denied (if is new).
It’s a good way to ensure that all the users will get good quality apps and that they will not get issues when they upgrade their iPhone/iPod Touch devices to the new OS 3.0 this summer.

Free Read/Write NTFS on Mac OS

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Since I’m running Mac OS X on my HP laptop, I was running into the problem of how to read/write to my Windows NTFS partitions.

I knew there are some paid products and I start to look for them, then I realize that there is a free and good option to achieve this.
Amit Singh, a developer from Google created a Mac OS version of FUSE (File System in User Space).
MacFuse is an open source project that enables Mac OS X to mount ssh, ntfs and so on.
MacFuse by default is only able to read NTFS, but there is another project that uses MacFuse to write to this file system, this project is NTFS-3G.
NTFS-3G will also install MacFuse, so all you need to do is install NTFS-3G and you will be able to read and write to NTFS disk and partitions from your Mac OS.

Updated: MacFuse is no longer being developed and is not supported in the last versions of MacOS, instead of using MacFuse you can now use it’s successor Fuse for OS X which is based on the code from MacFuse but is supported and it works with the last versions of OS X like Lion.

Google synchronize calendar and contacts with your iPhone/iPod Touch

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Google has created a exchange interface to enable you to synchronize your calendar events and your contacts from Gmail with your iPhone/iPod Touch. Check it out here Mobile Sync

Warning: On your first sync your iPhone/iPod Touch will erase your information, so make sure you back up your information on your Outlook or similar.

This will enable to synchronize your contacts and calendar whitout having to plug your iPhone/iPod Touch to your computer and you don’t need additional applications. In my case, I used to use the NemusSync (jailbreak app that sync the calendar in the iPhone/iPod Touch) and use the iTunes to sync the contacts with google, but this opens a lot new better and reliable way to sync. Also note that you should not set the account to sync your mail (you just keep using the way you used to sync with gmail, this is only for contacts and calendar, for now). Remember to back up your data first.

How to use the iPod Touch as an VoIP phone with Skype, gTalk or live

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Updated: Since one of the iPhone OS 3.x.x they made the Macally iVoiceIII not compatible, this is actually not true, if you just turned on your iPod Touch it will work for about 20 seconds, so this is a software fix from them to disallow it. As far as my investigation goes, this only happens on iPod Touch 1st generation, some people has reported that the Macally iVoicePro does do work with iPod Touch 1st generation.

When I first bought my iPod Touch I had the idea of use it with my Skype account to call to Costa Rica without having to be in my laptop, so I bought a mic for the iPod to do so.

The only problem back then was that the mic was created for the iPod video or classic, but was not tested for the iPod Touch and to make it work needed some work, the guys that made it work posted some videos on YouTube about how to disasembly the mic to hack it and then to make it work using some jailbreak applications, but I was not willing to do that back then.
The good news is that after Apple have made some software updates you don’t need to hack the mic nor jailbreak your iPod Touch to achieve this.

So, all you need is mic that is arround $30 (Macally iVoiceIII Microphone for iPod) in internet and the app Nimbuzz which is free and you can get it on the app store.

Once you have your mic with you and you installed the app you can enter and configure your Skype, gTalk or Live (Microsoft) account, plug the mic and call any of the contacts you have there (or phone numbers if you have Skype credits) and voila!!… oh, and don’t forguet to plug your headphones if you have the 1st generation iPod Touch (like I do).

My new blog

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Today I’m setting up my new blog.

I plan to have a lot of intersting information on several topics here.

Nestor