gbinghan[dev-blog]

List of Brainwave Headbands

2013-05-14T23:04:00.001+08:00

Melon

Melon - $79 on Kickstarter

Webpage: http://www.usemelon.com/
Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/806146824/melon-a-headband-and-mobile-app-to-measure-your-fo

Muse

Muse - $199

Webpage: http://www.interaxon.ca/muse/

PayDollar Test Credit Cards

2013-05-14T10:31:00.000+08:00

Was looking for Test Credit cards to test integration with AsiaPay/PayDollar via Google but couldn't find any. But manage to find one in the PHP sample source code.

Card number: 4918914107195005
CCV: 123
Expiry Date: 07 2015
Card Holder: Test Card

Extras.

For first timer like me, I find PayDollar website & documentation slightly messy, and sometimes, the links on the site are broken.

Integration Guide

Home Page, v3.21

Sample Source Codes

Can be found in

Merchant Administration page > Support > Developer Corner

The direct links are as follow:

Client Post: PHP
Direct Client Side: PHP
Direct Server Side: PHP

GitHub Wiki - Anchor link for page headers

2012-12-10T12:20:00.001+08:00

Example "Table of Content" on "markdown-here"

Was trying to do a table of content in Github Wiki just now and realize there aren't much guide on that. After searching for a while, I found this comment on Github that shows how to do it.

1. Add anchor for the header that you want to link to

# <a name="heading1"/> Heading 1

2. Add the link to the anchor

[link to heading 1](#wiki-heading1)

Example usage:

Amazon AMI install MongoDB Driver

2012-08-19T23:46:00.000+08:00

Did an installation of MongoDB driver for PHP on my Amazon EC2 AMI just now. And thought of noting the steps down.

Prerequisites

Make sure the following packages are installed.

$ sudo yum install gcc
$ sudo yum install make

$ sudo yum install httpd mod_ssl
$ sudo yum install php
$ sudo yum install php-devel php-pear
$ sudo yum install pcre-devel

Install MongoDB driver for Amazon Linux

Installing Mongo driver.

$ sudo pecl install mongo

Enable the driver

$ sudo vi /etc/php.d/mongo.ini
$ extension=mongo.so
$ sudo  /sbin/service httpd restart

Testing

The simplest way to check whether the installation is successful is via phpinfo().

<?php
  phpinfo();
?>

And you should see the following section:

Or test the connection using the code snippet below :)

<?php
 // connect
 $m = new Mongo("mongodb://mongodb-user:mongodb-password@ds031087.mongolab.com:31087/sample-test-mongodb");
 
 // select a database
 $db = $m->{"sample-test-mongodb"};
 
 // select a collection (analogous to a relational database's table)
 $collection = $db->cartoons;
 
 // add a record
 $obj = array( "title" => "Calvin and Hobbes", "author" => "Bill Watterson" );
 // $collection->insert($obj);
 
 // add another record, with a different "shape"
 $obj = array( "title" => "XKCD", "online" => true );
 // $collection->insert($obj);
 
 // find everything in the collection
 $cursor = $collection->find();
 
 // iterate through the results
 foreach ($cursor as $obj) {
     echo $obj["title"] . "\n";
 }
?>

And you should see following output in browser:

Its quite simple, but hope this help beginners out there :)

Encoding issue with Chinese characters

2012-07-05T17:54:00.000+08:00

Was having issue with encoding on PHP (server side) to be printed out on via Javascript (client side).

The problem

The Chinese characters were fine when output directly from PHP, became garbled after encoded and decoded on using javascript.

printf('document.write(unescape("%s"));', rawurlencode($data));

Solution

After Googled for a while I realize the best solution, I think, is to convert the foreign characters to unicode numeric entities. Example:

Numeric Code	HTML Entity Code	Result
256	&#256	Ā

Solution for PHP

For PHP there's a simple solution: mb_encode_numericentity(). Luckily the convmap for conversion (excluding HTML character) are in the comment. (As pointed in http://stackoverflow.com/a/3116893)

function convertToNumericEntities($string) {
    $convmap = array(0x80, 0x10ffff, 0, 0xffffff);
    return mb_encode_numericentity($string, $convmap, "UTF-8");
}

Solution TinyMCE

If you are using TinyMCE, this can be solved by enabling "numeric" for entity_encoding.

tinyMCE.init({
        ...
        entity_encoding : "numeric"
});

More info http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/Configuration:entity_encoding

References:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/3116893
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mb-encode-numericentity.php#29839
http://www.tinymce.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=63319
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4691477/php-converting-unicode-strings-to-ansi-strings

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL

2012-06-24T16:16:00.001+08:00

Was coding in NetBeans just now and stumbled upon this error:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL

I'm very sure there is no syntax error on that line. But chrome just wouldn't stop complaining about it.
After debugging for a while, I realize its the extra unidentified character (space/eol) that is causing the error.

Deleting that solves the problem :)

Macbook Pro - Signals the Transitions of Computing Devices

2012-06-12T21:50:00.001+08:00

Just read a post on the new Retina MPB to buy or not to buy,

...we just happen to be at the beginning of a transition of the Mac into its next phase. In some ways, this is a mid-life crisis.

and Robert Scoble's Facebook post on touch screen devices.

Looking at my life and that of my coworkers I'm seeing less and less of a reason to stick with a traditional laptop.

I'm also very certain that this is the transition period for computing devices. Transitions from traditional laptops to ultra-portable high performance touchscreen devices.

High Performance Computing Notebook

Looking at the new MBP :

Ultra-portable - 0.71", 2kg
512GB flash storage

You can almost anything on-the-go with this new notebook - compile source codes, render HD videos, or even play games. It would be hard to imagine any would still get an iMac, unless you are going for serious 3D/HD graphics rendering with 16GB RAM and SSDs.

Looking at the trend, I couldn't agree more with MG Siegler that its just a matter of time before Macbook Air will be merged back in the Macbook Pro branch.

I also imagined Apple dropping the “Air” appendage and resurrecting the “MacBook” brand once again in the name of simplicity. But that clearly isn't happening either. At least not yet.
- MG Siegler

Touch Screen Computing Notebook

On the other side of the spectrum, we can clearly see that Microsoft is pushing hard for touchscreen based devices. Windows 8 engineered for this purpose. Got a couple of chances to hand-on with the non-office tablets with Windows 8 on it. Its very responsive and the flow of content display is just natural.

Imagine you can dock your tablet and it instantly turns into a workstation, and when you undock it changes back to the presentation mode. You can carry it around, scribble notes on it on the go, or just show slides to your friends/client instantly. That is how things work in the near future.

The Future

Everyone wants ONE device that you can do ALL task on it. And its undoubtedly clear that the shift has already started. I'm sure all these changes will converge at some point in the near future.

Setting up Repo on Amazon EC2 for Git Push

2012-05-28T00:54:00.002+08:00

Was trying to setup an instance on Amazon which I can do a git push to update the /var/www/html folder. Decided to share the steps here, so that other beginners like me can benefit too!

Prerequisites

Setting up Amazone Instance

This article basically covers all the steps need to fire-up an instance and set the Security Group and SSH.

Install LAMP + phpMyAdmin

Install LAMP stack is easy, but install phpMyAdmin is slightly tricky. Luckily this github gist explained the steps very well.

The only missing part that you might want to take note is the part to change the user of the html directory.

sudo chown -R ec2-user /var/www/html/

Setting up Git

Setting Up Git Repo to work with /var/www/html folder

At first I tried this solution from stackoverflow post. The method is:

Copying .git folder to /var/www/html/ folder.
Then use a post-update script to update the git repo.

The idea looks logical, and easy to understand, but I just couldn't get it to work.

Then I found this article, by Abhijit Menon-Sen, that magically reduces the steps to just 1 git command. So basically what you need to do is just 3 steps

On your EC2 server

1. Create a bare repository.

$ mkdir <your-repo-name>.git
$ cd <your-repo-name>.git
$ git init --bare
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/ec2-user/<your-repo-name>.git/

2. Use GIT_WORK_TREE

$ mkdir /var/www/html
$ cat > hooks/post-receive
#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE=/var/www/html git checkout -f
$ chmod +x hooks/post-receive

On your local computer.

3. Setup SSH (this is missing from the guide). If not, you might get git push fail in the next step.

ssh-add /<path-to-your-ec2-ssh-key>.pem

4. Add Git remote and push for the first time.

$ git remote add production ssh://<your-amazon-server-address>/home/ec2-user/<your-repo-name>.git
$ git push production +master:refs/heads/master

Tips: You can setup for different environment, e.g. "testing", "beta", the same way. Just change the remote name, and push! :)

5. Subsequently, for every changes, you just need:

$ git push origin // update your github-repo
$ git push production

Done!

It took me the whole night just to get this done. Hope this can save your time.

References:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279169/deploy-a-project-using-git-push
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4632749/how-to-push-to-git-on-ec2

Installing Redis: jemalloc/jemalloc.h: No such file or directory

2012-05-01T22:27:00.002+08:00

Was trying to install Redis on my EC2 test server just now and bump into this error.

zmalloc.h:51:31: error: jemalloc/jemalloc.h: No such file or directory

I was very sure that jemalloc was installed.

After searching for a while, I found the solution from redis-db Google Group.

Apparently, running

make distclean

solves the problem. It remove all compilation artifacts, and dependencies.

Reintialize TinyMCE after jQuery Load

2012-04-25T13:21:00.004+08:00

Bump into the problem of reintializing TinyMCE textbox after replacing the DOM with jQuery load.

The Problem

After saving a form on a page (with multiple forms), I did a jQuery.load() to replace the DOM of the particular section.
Then I run the initialization function to reinitialize all DOMs, including TinyMCE.
I realized TinyMCE contents is not saved after this.

Solution: Initial attempt

After Google-ed for a while, I found this solution from StackOverflow.

tinymce.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', true, 'editor_id');

So, to use it, it would be...

_init = function() {

 /* Some other initialization code here */
 tinymce.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', true, 'editor_id');

tinyMCE.init({
  /* TinyMCE options */
 });
}

Oh, wait...

Some issues:

My 'editor_id' is dynamic...
I have multiple textboxes

Solution: Second attempt.

Easy. Just use jQuery.each() to loop through all the textbox and remove TinyMCE control from each of them.

_init = function() {
 jQuery('textarea').each(function() {
  try {
   tinymce.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', true, jQuery(this).attr('id'));
  } catch(e) {
  }
 })
 tinyMCE.init({
  /* TinyMCE options */
 });
}

Oh, wait... again...

Some more issues:

Due to asynchronous nature of Javascript, tinyMCE.init() will be executed befure jQuery.each() finishes.

Final Solution

Chain the functions together with jQuery.promise().

jQuery('textarea').each(function() {
 try {
  tinymce.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', true, jQuery(this).attr('id'));
 } catch(e) {
 }
  
}).promise().done( function() {
 tinyMCE.init({
  /* TinyMCE options */
 });
});

[Guide] Samsung Galaxy S2 ICS

2012-04-21T14:37:00.000+08:00

For those of you who are like me - too impatient to wait for Samsung Singapore to release ICS update for i9100 Galaxy S2, can follow the following steps to flash to ICS (and in addition, flash to CM9).

Ice Cream Sandwich

Android I9100XWLP7 4.0.3 (United Kingdom / Ireland)

1. Download ICS firmware
http://www.hotfile.com/dl/153177481/9861a3a/I9100XWLP7_I9100XEULP5_XEU.zip.html

2. Boot into Download Mode

Turn off phone.
Vol Down + Home + Power

3. Odin Flash Guide
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1075278
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1406664

ICS is cool, but... the official ROM is still laggy. So I decided to take further steps to mod it to CyanogenMod.
So if you are like me, want a smooth UX, follow the following optional steps :)

Root

3. CF-root by Chainfire.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1103399

4. Remove Yellow Triangle during startup, using TriangleAway from Chainfire.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1494114&highlight=remove+yellow+triangle

CyanogenMod

CyanogenMod Trebuchet. Sweet! :)

5. Download CM Builds
http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?type=nightly&device=galaxys2

6. Boot into ClockworkMod Recovery

Turn off phone.
Vol Up + Home + Power

7. CM9 Flash Guide
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_II:_Full_Update_Guide

Version Info :)

EXTRA Goodies :p

Install Chrome for Android, which only available on Android 4+

1. Install from Market :)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.chrome&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5hbmRyb2lkLmNocm9tZSJd

Chrome to Phone! :]

If you are not in US, follow the follow steps:
1. Download the .APK
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=756013

2. Install on Chrome
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/chrome%20to%20phone

Why Hotmail SmartScreen Should do Better

2012-03-30T14:06:00.000+08:00

Got this spam mail that looks as if its from my other email account (Yahoo Mail).

Further inspect on the header reveals that the mail is from hotmail_631448ecb4add0e [at] hotmail.com. And the mail server is actually from the IP 179.89.131.27.

Why Hotmail SmartScreen not doing its job

SmartScreen should have filtered the email content, based on EITHER one of the following criteria, that can be implemented by checking just the email header.

1. The email content is obviously spam content. Nuff said.

2. The sender is obviously from a "anonymous" email that pretends to be another email.

3. The IP (179.89.131.27) of the mail server is OBVIOUSLY hosted on a spam source. This can be easily detected by cross-check with one of the spam database out there. For example http://www.dnsbl.info/.

These are simple methods to provide minimal layers protection for Hotmail users.

(Notice I haven't even go into advanced SPAM fighting techniques like using DMARC)

Takeaway

SmartScreen team should learn from Gmail, and Facebook. Gmail did VERY well in filtering spam mails, and automatically categories emails for users.

Bootstrap Tools

2012-03-07T10:27:00.002+08:00

Biggest Mistakes

The biggest mistakes for new (or inexperienced) developers, like me, is to jump straight into coding a website.
There are so many bootstrap tools (or so caller boilerplates) out there for you to start, without falling into the pitfalls of bad (really bad) designs. I'm speaking from my personal experience, with Lunchsparks.

Along the way of "designing" and coding, both at the same time, I poorly designed the elements in the website, from layouts (grids, containers, tables) to buttons (color, states).

The Tools

These are two tools that I came across recently, which I think its awesome! These tools encapsulated the almost (if not all) the elements for designing a great (responsive) website.

Bootstrap, from Twitter

Bootstrap, from Twitter
A very clear demo site that demonstrate what the tools (javascripts, and css) does. Recommended for new learners.

HTML5 Boilerplates

HTML5 Boilerplates
By Paul Irish. A very cool Googler that I follow on social networks and blogs.

Others

Here are some other tools that I came across, prior to the above tools.
http://goldengridsystem.com/

Epilogue

Shall blog more about my experience with adapting to these tools next time, after I port and adapt my project to these tools!

References:
http://e27.sg/2012/03/06/reducing-time-to-market-with-bootstrap/

[CodeIgniter] MySQL NOW()

2012-03-03T17:39:00.001+08:00

Was trying to do insert/update using CodeIgniter Active Record helpers, and realize the usual way of inserting doesn't work, because the helper functions actually escaped the values to prevent SQL injection.

So we can't do the just group all the data together the easy way.

$data['field1'] = $data1;
$data['field1'] = $data2
$data['created_date'] = 'NOW()';
$this -> db -> insert($this -> tables['some_table'], $data);

There are two possible ways to go around this.

1. Use CodeIgniter $db -> set() function, with the additional FALSE parameter to prevent data from being escaped.

$this -> db -> set('created_date', 'NOW()', FALSE);
$this -> db -> insert($this -> tables['some_table'], $data);

2. Use PHP data function to generate datetime string. The only thing to note with this method is, in most cases, the PHP server time and the MySQL time is different.

$data['created_date'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time();
$this -> db -> insert($this -> tables['some_table'], $data);

References:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/database/active_record.html

[Template] Javascript Functions

2012-01-21T23:40:00.001+08:00

Been dealing with Javascript functions lately, I find that these are the most-frequently-used input parameters for all a typical function:

data
url (optional)
callback (optional)

A good JS function should readily accept these parameters. And a typical Javascript function call would be like:


somefunction( {data: value, data2: value2 }, [url], [callback()] );

We know that in PHP we can use the following method to write a "optional" second (or third) input parameter.

function somefunction( $data, $callback = FALSE);

This way, if the second argument is not supplied, $callback will be automatically assigned to FALSE. Its a good practice to set a default value for a variable.

After Googling around, I found that Javascript is event better at handling such case. We can take in as many optional input parameters, in no specific order. But the trade-off is, we need a check for the input parameter type.

Stackoverflow has this excellent post on the template for checking input argument type.

function getData ([id, parameters, callback]) {
  var id = arguments[0], parameters, callback;

  if (arguments.length == 2) { // only two arguments supplied
    if (Object.prototype.toString.call(arguments[1]) == "[object Function]") {
      callback = arguments[1]; // if is a function, set as 'callback'
    } else {
      parameters = arguments[1]; // if not a function, set as 'parameters'
    }
  } else if (arguments.length == 3) { // three arguments supplied
    parameters = arguments[1];
    callback = arguments[2];
  }
  
  // do something here...
  // ...
  // and finally, on complete run the callback function
  callback();
}

This is... the function template which is usually used in jQuery too!

Extras

Actually callback function can be easily done in jQuery. Not the correct way though.

jQuery.some_other_jQuery_functions().each(function(){ 
  // The functions to execute after the first function finish executing.
});

If you are new to Javascript frameworks, heres a good comparison of the performance of the popular frameworks. http://blog.creonfx.com/javascript/mootools-vs-jquery-vs-prototype-vs-yui-vs-dojo-comparison-revised

References:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1529077/handling-optional-parameters-in-javascript

CSS text-overflow

2012-01-11T16:46:00.000+08:00

Notice: This is a beginner post (that some of you might think is a waste of time)

CSS3 has tons of awesome improvement, which a lot of them I don't know or notice. Today, I discovered "text-overflow" style, which is super handy for hiding overflowing text.

I discovered while browsing the source for Gmail.com. (Actually I was looking a the scrollbar for the side panel wondering how it works and accidentally stumble upon this :p ).

Notice the the longer text "Acquaintances" changes to "Acquaintan" when the width of the parent container shrinks.

The style behind this is

overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
white-space: nowrap;

You might wonder why I'm so excited about this? Because in the past, I used to do a lot of text-length-checking on the server side before outputting the text, reducing the number of characters and append "...".

Now this can be done easily on the browser part using just CSS!

No more inefficient coding with the boated codes!

[ROM] Galaxy S2 i9100DXKL3 Firmware

2012-01-05T12:31:00.001+08:00

New (Dec 2011) official firmware (South East Asia) for Samsung Galaxy S2.

PDA: i9100DXKL3
PHONE: I9100DXKL1
CSC: I9100OLCKL2

Build Info: Thu Dec 15 18:59:02 KST 2011

Firmware Download :
GT-I9100_XSP_I9100DXKL3_I9100OLCKL2_I9100DXKL1.zip

FAQ:

Q: How to check the current firmware version of my phone?

There are several ways:
1. Key in *#1234# in the dialer. You'll get the PDA, Phone, and CSC version of your firmware, or
2. Download Z-Device Test from Android Market.

DirectAdmin Upgrading CSF Firewall

2011-12-19T11:37:00.000+08:00

(This post is meant for DirectAdmin beginners, like me.)

Finally got the chance to play with one of the production server - to upgrade the CSF Firewall.

For this, I have to SSH to the server because upgrading CSF needs root access.

Due to restrictions in "DirectAdmin you must login to the root shell" to upgrade csf using
csf -u

So I SSH-ed to the server and ran the command "csf -u". But this time, I get the following error.

-bash: csf: command not found

Okay, the path to CSF is not correct, so just need to

cd /usr/sbin/

Then gain root access,

su -

That's it, can upgrade CSF using the command "csf -u" automatically!

:)

Convert SimpleXMLElement to Array

2011-12-19T00:31:00.000+08:00

Ok, I know this is simple, but it took me a while to realize this simple method to convert SimpleXMLElement to an array. (I even tempted to write a function to parse and convert the XML tree).

Its simple actually, to just just the default PHP functions

$xml = <tag>content</tag>

print_r(json_decode(json_encode($xml), TRUE));

Samsung Galaxy S2 variants

2011-12-16T23:07:00.001+08:00

During trip back at Malaysia, I realize the Galaxy S2 variant there is i9100T. Which makes me wonder what are the difference.

[UPDATE, Jan 19] CyanogenMod wiki has a better list of SGS2 variants with support status comments.

After Googling around, I came to conclusion that all the variants have:

SAME hardware Specifications

and the DIFFERENCES are:

The I9100 supports 3G 900/2100Mhz and the I9100T supports 3G 850/2100Mhz
The difference in SAR value, as shown in Samsung Website.

GT-I9100P - 0.362 W/kg
GT-I9100 - 0.338 W/kg
GT-I9100M - 0.338 W/kg
GT-I9100T - 0.285 W/kg
GT-I9100G - 0.247 W/kg (different processor - OMAP SoC)

Quote from Samsung Website:

This phone meets European Union (EU) requirements concerning exposure to radio waves. Your mobile phone is a radio transmitter and receiver. It is designed and manufactured so as not to exceed the limits for exposure to radio-frequency (RF) energy, as recommended by the EU Council. These limits are part of comprehensive guidelines and establish permitted levels of RF energy for the general population. The guidelines were developed by independent scientific organizations through the periodic and thorough evaluation of scientific studies. The limits include a substantial safety margin designed to ensure the safety of all persons, regardless of age and health.

The exposure standard for mobile phones employs a unit of measurement known as SAR (Specific Absorption Rate). The SAR limit recommended by the EU Council is 2.0 W/kg.*

SAR tests are conducted using standard operating positions with the phone transmitting at its highest certified power level in all tested frequency bands. Although the SAR is determined at the highest certified power level, the actual SAR level of the phone while operating can be well below the maximum value. This is because the phone is designed to operate at multiple power levels so as to use only the power required to reach the network. In general, the closer you are to a base station, the lower the power output of the phone.

Before a new model phone is available for sale to the public, compliance with the European R&TTE Directive must be shown. This directive includes as one of its essential requirements the protection of the health and safety of the user and any other person.

References,
http://community.vodafone.com.au/t5/iPhone-and-Android/Samsung-Galaxy-S-II-T-Version/td-p/13787
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1129291
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_II:_FAQ

Notes from BlackBerry DevCon Asia 2011 #BBDevCon

2011-12-15T19:11:00.000+08:00

Event: BlackBerry DevCon Asia 2011

Date: 2011-12-08

Updates: The speakers mentioned that the slides are available online. But I'm still not able to find 'em anywhere.

Topic:
DEV846 – Advanced Web Rendering: webGL, Canvas and Gaming

Speakers:

Charles Wei, Technical Director, Torch Mobile (Beijing) Co. Ltd.
Robin Cao [robin.cao[at]torchmobile.com.sg], Senior Software Engineer, Torch Mobile (Beijing)

Tips and Tricks
- Avoid creating non-power of two images
- Avoid reading back from canvas

GLSL Shader
- WebGL - Matrices to represent states

Libraries
Three.js, PhiloGL,
Khronos wiki, learningWebGL.com

Topic:
DEV825 – Powering Immediacy: Putting Push Data to Work for You

Speaker:
Pratik Sapra, Application Development Consultant, Research In Motion

BlackBerry Push

- push thru BB internet service

- 8kb data

- dedicated port

- push service plus/ push service essential

- mode :

- point to point,

- multicast,

- broadcast.

push request - PAP standard

Server Side Application

Standalone approach

- http post

- http basic authorization.

Push Service SDK approach

Device side Application

- BB OS 5.0+

- Legacy API ( for 5.0- )

Tips n Tricks

- Sync subscribers peroidically

- creat overhead by pushing to unsubscribed users

- Two way to check

- status query or resuot notification

- subscription query

Topic:
DEV809 – Web Apps: Design and Build Great Looking UI and User Experiences

Speaker(s):

Robin Cao, Senior Software Engineer with Torch Mobile (Beijing)
Charles Wei, Technical Director with Torch Mobile (Beijing) Co. Ltd.

- Cloud based services and mash-up

Good Design

- Adaptive Design

- Handheld meta

- Meta viewport

- Responsive and Feedback

- Device detection

- User agent :

- Server side: Http heqder

- Client side : js (navigator.userAgent)

Orientation

- windows.orientationchange = function() {}

- windows.orientation;

- Media query

- connectivity detection

- HTML5 - AppCache

Bad Design

- Frames and scrolling

- Mouse-move and hover event

- Fix position

- Fixed size

Js Framework

- Sencha

- jQuery

- Dojo

- Alice (RIM) - For animations, flip, bounce, etc.

Fat-Free Framework - Blank Page Error

2011-11-30T20:04:00.000+08:00

Was trying getting started with Fat-Free just now, but found that the page wasn't loading at all, or more accurately, a blank page was shown.

I added a dummy echo before the template echo,

echo "Hello World!";
 echo Template::serve('welcome.htm');

and found that the echo is printed, but not everything else in the welcome.htm

After debugging, I found out that its caused by

{{ Web::minify('ui/',array('style.css'),FALSE) }}

The page displays correctly, without css style, after removing that line, and clear the cache.

To solve this, its relatively easy.

Just need to enable

php_sockets

in you PHP extension.

Then clear the /cache folder.

Hope that save the your time for some of you out there as well! :)

[i9000] Flashing CyanogenMod for Beginners

2011-11-25T22:04:00.001+08:00

UPDATE (2011-11-27): After flashed to CyanogenMod and tested for a few days, I think that CyanogenMod is GREAT, i9000 users should just flash to it since Samsung firmware support for i9000 isn't that great, and slow. :)

The guide can be found from wiki.cyanogenmod.com. But its not complete with all the downloadables, there are few missing steps.

1. Installing the ClockworkMod Recovery

Prerequisites:
Before you begin, follow Step 1 & Step 2 from CyanogenMod to get the drivers installed.

Downloadables & Installation Guide

Heimdall Firmware Packages - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1196179
(As of now, XXJVT is the latest version)

2. Root your Phone

There are few options to root your phone.

~~Gingerbreak by ChainFire.~~
CF-Root by ChainFire (works for XXJVT)

I used CF-Root and it worked.

Just a small note, if Odin cannot detect the phone, you can always reinstall the driver by running Kies device troubleshoot.

3. Flashing CyanogenMod

Finally, follow the Flashing CyanogenMod - Method via Recovery guide to flash to CyanogenMod.

Small note, you might get into "bootloop", but no worries, its simple to restore by following this guide.

Hope that helps the CyanogenMod beginners (like me) to get started.

References:
[1] http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S:_Full_Update_Guide
[2] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1196179

DirectAdmin Cron

2011-11-25T14:26:00.001+08:00

If your hosting provider blocked you from running PHP files from command line (for security reason).

cd /home/<user>/domains/<domain.com>/cron_scripts/; /usr/local/bin/php script.php

Then the alternative would be using lynx, and access the files via url :)

lynx -dump http://www.<domain>.com/path/script.php > /dev/null 2>&1

RE: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

2011-10-28T10:55:00.000+08:00

Source: theunderstatement.com/

A very good summary about Android environment. Very well summed-up and visualized the two rival ecosystem.

Root of problems - Hardware Manufacturers

Android suppose to be an open source project.By the default nature of an open-source, it is bound to lure all the hackers around the world to get their hands dirty on the project. Yet hardware manufacturers tries very hard to be in control of both the hardware and the software (firmware).

".. there’s no incentive for smartphone manufacturers to update the OS: because manufacturers don’t make any money after the hardware sale... The hacker community (e.g. CyanogenMod, et cetera) has frequently managed to get these phones to run the newer operating systems, so it isn’t a hardware issue."

Despite realizing that they can't make money after hardware sale, and they are resource tight to keep up with the pace of the OS development, they still want to be in control. They even demanded takedown of the roms ^[1], which the hackers used to baked their custom rom (firmware).

This IMO is the biggest mistake of all the vendors. They should be grateful there are these fan-boys out there that help improve the products and user experience. If not for these fan-boys, many would have left Android for other OS, such as iOS.

And to some extend, Google itself also demanded takedown of CyanogenMod ^[2], despite their tremendous effort in help keeping the Android devices up-to-date, and perform better, with the lag-fixes, memory management fixes, and performance tweak.

Openness of Open-source.

Nuff said, if I'm part of the mass non-it-savvy consumers, I would been stick to iPhone long time ago. But, because I enjoy hacking my own products. That's why I sticked to AOSP.

References: