Markandey's Blog

How to add custom aboutme page on blogger

2010-03-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

Hi There,
Here I am going to talk about a dirty hack to make custom about me page on blogger. Lets have a look what you are going to get after doing all this

.
So, Basically you are going to make an blog post which will contain "about me information" which you wanted to put on your blog. Then you will remove date entry(time stamp) / and comment option for this page so that it will not look like a post.
Note: Save your existing template before, doing anything. If you break anything , you can restore the template back.
STEP-1
Create a blog post with title "about me" and content whatever you want. Then go to Post option

STEP-2

Go to post option and click "Don't allow comment" and Set time-stamp to a very old date (may be much before your birth).

Step-3
To remove time-stamp from this post your have to wrap part of code which generates Time stamp in your template with this code.

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>



</b:if>

This is basically a way to tell that whatever "post does not allow comment" will not generate few things (which is time-stamp in our case).
Step-4
Go to layout section of your blog, and go to edit HTML. Choose "Expand Widget Templates" option.

Now select all the text from Text area and put in your favorite "Text Editor" . (FYI My favorite editor is Notepad++).

Now wrap following 2 block with code above

<h2 class='date-header'><span><data:post.dateHeader/></span></h2>

AND

<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>

Part-1

Part-2

Once you are done with this editing, go paste the entire thing back to blogger text-area and save the template.

Note: You should wrap the code very carefully, basic HTML knowledge is very essential for this. Every Div block starts and ends some where , so wrapping must be perfect.

You can link the URL of the page on "About Me Tab" Read My other post.

Thats it, Your are done!!!

Chrome Extension to analyse tweeter (Twitter User) Behavior

2010-03-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Recently I was looking on various sites that shows some statistics about tweeters (twitter user). They are great but they often focus on one thing, there is no single place where we can see all these analysis. So i closely analysed these websites to come-up with YQL hack to bring all of them on a single page. Mainly I focused myself on these websites.

http://twitterholic.com/
http://web.forret.com/tools/twitter-tq.asp
http://tweeps.info/
http://happytweets.com/
http://tweeteffect.com/

TweetChrome

[I am also trying to pull information from http://tweetstats.com]

Well if I would have hosted this functionality something like this (actually hosted ). No one will use it, because people are very lazy. So I have created a chrome extension here.

If you use chrome then you can simple see source code here.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Demo: http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pmdeehablhbendnpdligdgemdgkllmih

Source: http://www.purplegene.com/static/tweeps.html (do view source)

Playing with Javascript Closure, JSON, & YQL to Visualize upcoming Android Version Names

2010-02-13T00:55:00.000-08:00

Hi There,
As you know that First version of android was named "cupcake" and then it was "Donut" and current version is "Éclair".
People found a pattern in naming; they are alphabetical names of cake. Now many people on internet came up with the names up to the Z.
Here they are

Cupcake
Donut
Eclair Cake
Frosting
Gelato
Honey
Icing cake
Jelly
Kiwi
Lemon
Marshmellow
Noodle
Orange
Pudding
Quince
RockyRoad
Sundae
Taffee
upside-down-cake
Vanilla
Waffle
Xmas Cookies
Yogurt
Zebra Cake

I am completely unaware of some of these names; I really don’t know how they look like. So here i made a small YQL hack to get images with these names to visualize them.

DEMO

Here is the YQL Bing table query to images



function get_images_from_bing(query,callback){

var yql_url="http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20microsoft.bing.image%20where%20query%3D%22"+query+"%22&format=json&env=store%3A%2F%2Fdatatables.org%2Falltableswithkeys&callback=callbacks."+callback;

var div_ele=document.getElementById("myscrpts");

var scrpt=document.createElement("SCRIPT");

scrpt.src=yql_url;

div_ele.appendChild(scrpt);

}

Here I am using closure to get a call-back function which will render the my images.



function GetCallbackFunction(element){

/*

element will be accessible to inner returned function 

even after outer function has returned

*/

return function(data){

/*Get randomely from top 3 images*/

var index=get_random(3);

index=index%data.query.results.ImageResult.length;

element.src=data.query.results.ImageResult[index].MediaUrl;

};

}

What is "Inbox Zero problem"? How To solve it by Twitter-way?

2010-02-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

Inbox Zero problem is a usability problem, of which every mail system is infected with. Let me try to explain what it is?

Today, we get at least 40-50 mail every day, and our mail system marks every mail as unread when it arrives to your inbox. Now problem is, you are tempted to read all those mails to bring your inbox to zero unread count. This goes into a never ending loop often because by the time you will be able to finish each and every mail, you’ll get some new ones.

This is a problem many other social networking platforms are infected with, may be not with the unread message count but by some other ways.

This is the only problem twitter is not infected with, because its always flowing timeline of short messages and you need to just look for few recent items posted by people, because of 2 reasons

1. Those items are not specifically posted to you (not talking about @replies).

2. Tweets are very spontaneous status update from people; significance of (most) tweets expires after sometime.

This is how people on twitter able to manage more and more people. I personally follow more than 600 tweeps around the world. Now, there is a problem!! Different people tweet at different pace, and many tweeters are so frequent on twitter is that they literally flood my timeline and kick other's tweets (from people whom i care more) out of my visible timeline. This problem is solved by lists, I group important tweeps in a list. Concept of list itself came from people and twitter client like TweetDeck & Seesmic. Think lists like this, On twitter you have public timeline which is the fastest moving timeline, and you filtered some of them to bring in our "friends" timeline by following them. When things became messy you sorted them into few smaller lists.

Twitter evolved from people's behaviour, like @replies, retweeting and many more became the built-in feature of twitter because we tweeps started using it.

So none of my time line is actually having inbox zero problem.

Now let’s come back to e-mail system, every day in office i really get more than 100 emails including companywide mails, group mail , mails from an on-going thread of discussion (where I don’t have anything to do). Now what?? My mail client (outlook) is so cluttered with e-mail that finding the right email becomes very difficult. Ok , we have a solution “make rules to skip inbox for some known group & automated mails” BUT creating rule is not going to solve my problem because I am very lazy and don’t want to create rules even once in a six month (yes, that lazy i am). Last rule i created some 6 months back : P.

So what is the solution? Solution is simple; I call this solution "@actionItem". Which is like this, every mail which has some action item for me as individual then please include my name in a field called Action Item (like CC & To list). That’s It i will give priority to those mails first and then i will move to all other mails, and choose to skip if i don’t have much of time to spend. Inbox zero problem solved.

Twitter specific Terms :

Tweeps: people who use twitter.
Tweeters: twitter+ user
Tweet: Every small status update (post ) is called tweet.
ReTweeting: when you post oneones update again is called re-tweeting. often done in "RT @TweepName : blah balh format".
@replies : pronounced as 'at replies', are tweets which has your name mentioned, preceded with a '@' sign.

Here is Merlin Mann Slide

Inbox Zero: Action-Based Email

View more presentations from merlinmann.

Here is video of his lecture

I know what you read on dzone last summer

2010-01-30T15:12:00.000-08:00

You should know that depending upon how CSS is coloring your links; I can figure out that what are the links you visited already.
This is a nice hack, many people use it for knowing user interests e.g

What social networking site you use.
What banking site you use.
And many more what you can think of.

I have created a hack to show all popular links from dzone, I am sorting the links based what you have read already. Before you read further Check This, (will not work in IE8)

Here is how you can inspect CSS color of a link in your browser

document.write('<style>');

document.write('#linkID:visited {color: #FF0000;}");

document.write('</style>');



/* quickly add and remove the link from the DOM with enough time to save the visible computed color. */

document.body.appendChild(link);

var color = document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(link,null).getPropertyValue("color");

document.body.removeChild(link);



/* check to see if the link has been visited if the computed color is red */

if (color == "rgb(255, 0, 0)") { 



 /*visited do something*/



} else { 



 /*not visited, do something else*/



}

DEMO

Read More about How I brought All Dzone links on 1 page

Read More About How This CSS hack works?

Read Rest of My Hacks

Understanding C#.net Border-less Form, when you maximize it

2010-01-28T02:57:00.000-08:00

Hi There,
Have you ever created, a borderless window in C#.net?
There is problem with borderless window, if you maximize it, it goes FullScreen (goves even over the taskbar).

Here is an analyis of how to achieve maximized borderless window.

If you first set the border(anything other than FormBorderStyle.None) for the window and then set WindowState to maximize, You will get a standard maximized window, you can make it border-less there after.





private void btMaximize_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 this.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.FixedSingle;

 if (this.WindowState != FormWindowState.Maximized)
 {
  this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;
 }
 else
 {
  this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
  
 }

 this.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.None;
}

If you maximize a window after making it borderless it goes beyond the task-bar. You will get complete full-screen.




private void btFullscreen_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 this.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.None;
        if (this.WindowState != FormWindowState.Maximized)
 {
  
  this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;
 }
 else
 {
  this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
 }
 
}

Download Sample Code

Hacking Google maps AJAX API to use in C#.Net

2010-01-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

Hi,
As you know “Google Maps API” is available only for AJAX developers. Using it in C#.net is not possible. One of the great things about Google maps API is it gives you turn by turn direction almost anywhere on earth. I wanted to exploit this feature of turn by turn navigation on my mobile, that too offline, because when i go to remote places its highly probable that i will not be having connectivity on my phone. Or connectivity will be so poor that using maps is highly impractical.

So I have created a pair of application.
1. A Desktop app to retrieve turn by turn navigation data + static images.
2. A Mobile app to read this data and to give me turn by turn navigation on phone (offline).

Certainly this is something not allowed in TOU of Google, so i cannot release this app commercially.

How to Mix AJAX and C#.net??
1. I created a web page (html+JavaScript), which dumps the direction info data in DOM.
2.In C#.Net Form, I kept a web-browser control, which loads this page.
3.When page is loaded, using webBrowser1.Document.GetElementById stuff I extracted the direction info.
4.Then I downloaded Static Images using "Google Static Maps API", & hacked to get the latitude and longitude positions on the static images. see code for detail.

How I exported data on mobile??
1. Serialized whole object in an XML file, including direction info and static images.
2. De-serialized on mobile to get that data back.

Source Code
http://code.google.com/p/pocketnavigator/

Screen-shot Of Mobile Version.

Demo of Desktop App (6 minute).

Thanks, Feel free to ask question, & share on twitter + digg & blah blah.

How to Use TextToSpeech Feature of Google

2009-12-24T02:12:00.000-08:00

Here is how you can make your own TextToSpeech App, using Google's un-documented API.

Google Has an undocumented REST API to get TextToSpeech

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=your+text+goes+here
Here is the HTML Code. Do not miss to see the screen-cast.

<html>
<head>
<title>
Text To Speech Demo
</title>
<script>
function GetSpeech()
{
var framehtml="<iframe src=\"http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=";
framehtml+=escape(document.getElementById("mytext").value);
framehtml+="\" </iframe>";

document.getElementById("myframe").innerHTML=framehtml;
/*we are done!!!!!*/
/* we will test now*/
/*wow!!!!! its working :) */

}
</script>
</head>
<body>
Enter your text Here
<textarea id="mytext">
</textarea>
<button id="mybutton" onclick="GetSpeech();">
Click me to get the text
</button>
<div id="myframe">
</div>
</body>
</html>

Here is a screen-cast

Thanks Guys
Happy Christmas

Jump into 3D maps by calculating orientation

2009-12-20T05:25:00.001-08:00

Lets make a VirtualDrive MashUp today. As you know that Google maps API has Street view feature and Live maps has Bird’s Eye view feature. We will mix these 2 things in our mash-up.
Feature of This MashUp will be

To Take input as source and destination address.
Animate the street view & Bird’s Eye from source to destination.

To get this done you will need direction API to know the path between source and Destination. Eventually Google’s Direction API will do this for us. Direction API returns a PolyLine from source to destination. We will use GDirections.getPolyline() Function. Once you have all the points (Latitude and Longitude) along the path you are all set to go. But wait street-view and Bird’s Eye view are 3D Maps they also have something called orientation .
Bird’sEye View requires only one extra parameter "orientation" which can be

North
East
South or
West

Where as Google Street View is more complicated , its requires Yaw and Pitch (i am ignoring zoom level which applies to all kind of maps)

Since we will concentrate on driving , we will keep the pitch horizontal i.e. pitch will be zero.
Yaw can be calculated by using 2 points along the path. Yaw is the angle of your driving direction from North, in degrees.
Here is a JavaScript code to calculate Yaw with given 2 values of GLatLng.
(Note that Yaw & Bearing is closely related terms and they are having same value here.)

function GetBearing(GLatLng1, GLatLng2) {

var lat1 = GLatLng1.lat();
var lon1 = GLatLng1.lng();
var lat2 = GLatLng2.lat();
var lon2 = GLatLng2.lng();
lat1 = lat1.toRad();
lat2 = lat2.toRad();
var dLon = (lon2 - lon1).toRad();

var y = Math.sin(dLon) * Math.cos(lat2);
var x = Math.cos(lat1) * Math.sin(lat2) - Math.sin(lat1) * Math.cos(lat2) * Math.cos(dLon);
return Math.atan2(y, x).toBrng();
}

One feedback about street-view API though, function setLocationAndPOV is very mysterious and I could not make it work.
Individual Code snippets I picked from here

Now Jump To Demo

And Do ViewSource to see the code.

Google's "Chrome OS" is Bad Evolution

2009-11-21T22:50:00.000-08:00

I am a computer engineer. I will always love to see computing evolving in right direction.
Google Chrome OS is bad for evolution of computing.

Computing evolved with Desktop computing and then web apps. Browser Based apps are always slow and faulty, they can never be as robust as a desktop application can be.

After The invention of web services and REST API, I would love to see web enabled desktop Apps.

I love the concept of Portable Apps , When we mix concept of portable Apps and Cloud Based storage, we can achieve much better results. BUT Google will never let it happen, they are re-inventing all those age old things again in browser. I have posted a small video response on you tube.

Here it is.

Phonetic Translation For Hindi

2009-11-11T21:25:00.001-08:00

Hello!! I am an Indian, and for obvious reasons I have many friends on twitter who are also Indian and we communicate in Hindi very often. Wait!! We don't type Hindi on twitter, because Hindi typing requires a special keyboard (or at least special Input Method), which we typically don't keep with us. Its because we Indian officially work in English Language.

So if you are a foreigner and You see this phonetically typed Hindi, No way you can get it translated to your own language.

So For you I have created a small JavaScript hack so that you can translate Phonetic Hindi into your own language.

This is not for only who are foreigners, If you are Indian & still you have problem in understanding Hindi, here is Tool for you.

Demo

How to develop on your own??

This is a Mashup. I am using 3 different service.

1.Script Convertor

2.Google Translate API

3.YQL (a very useful platform for creating mashup)

To see the source code open the demo page and view source.

I have written only few lines of of JavaScript to do this.

Coding Bullshit Meter (Outlook Addin)

2009-11-08T03:23:00.000-08:00

I thought this will be fun. We developers often get some mail from corporate management, which are completely bullshit to us. How much bullshit it has?? Lets calculate? To calculate I have created a small outlook Add-in (plug-in) which will Display the bullshit percentage on the ToolBar when you select the mail item.

Some of the keywords its uses to calculate the bullshit is this

synergy,strategic fit,gap analysis,revisit,bandwidth,best practice,bottom line,hardball,out of the loop,benchmark,value added,proactive,win-win,think outside the box,fast track,result driven,empower,knowledge base,total quality,quality driven,touch base,mindset,client focus

This is the first time i am developing any kind of Add-In for any application. I used Visual Studio 2010 (beta) 2010 for developing.

You will get many problems, when you will develop an outlook plug-in. One of the biggest problem I faced was that "Event of 'Item selection change' was not firing".

this.Application.ActiveExplorer().SelectionChange

I finally come to know that you need to keep a reference of the ActiveExplorer all the time in the class.

Ok, this trick worked!!!

Download Source Code Here

I am not creating installer for this (or any kind of set-up). If at all you want to use this, please download the source code and compile on your machine. You might need Visual studio 2010 for this.

Simplest Way to Add code review using CodeCollaborator

2009-11-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

One of the simplest way to add code review is by doing a diff on 2 folders. Where Folder1 Contains the previous code and Folder2 contains updated code.

Unfortunately the documentation was lil messy and I was not able to do it.

Here is simplest simplest example.

Use command line client of Code Collaborator and type this command

ccollab adddiffs new Folder1 Folder2

Instead of new, you can write the review number which you have created at your server.

ccollab adddiffs 12345 Folder1 Folder2

I had problem about this, so posting here. May be this will help you as well.

Good thing is smatbears people are on twitter and they helped me.. Thanks guys.

Bungee with BungeeAmerica (on The Bridge to Nowhere)

2009-10-13T22:23:00.001-07:00

Yes, I am talking about my life time experience of bungee jumping which I did with company called Bungee America.

How to get reservation
--Call them (310-322-8892) and follow the procedure

Experience

Bungee Jumping is awesome, I jumped thrice. But jumping with bungee America is even cool, because you are 100% safe.
Before reaching to bungee spot, we hiked 5 miles in canyons(deep inside San Gabriell mountains). that was really cool. In-fact I hv never done any hiking like that before. Hiking on the trail, was really adventurous.
First we all reached Azusa, 6th street. From there we drove our car to last parking deep inside the San Gabriell mountains.
From Last Parking lot we all hiked to "Bridge To Nowhere", which is a 5 mile hike, and you will cross the river 6 times. So our shoes gone wet (we all were in Bermuda Pants). This hike takes almost 2 hours of time and very tiring, though there are no steep slope.
We all had our lunch with us, because there is nothing you will get there to eat.
When you will reach there everyone will be excited & when you will go for bungee, everyone will cheer you up. That is cool, because when you are going for something like that you need support of crowd.

Photos
Here you go FullScreen
(Photos are mapped here)
Note: Azusa is a place near to Los Angeles, CA

Small Lil Updates

2009-10-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

Not finding enough time to update my blog.
Here is something, (when u don't have anything to read from my blog.)

I loved this concept, You Tube Video http://bit.ly/VnHZH"
m going creative these days. So find some good snaps here http://www.flickr.com/photos/markandeysingh/sets/72157622551094180/show/

[Currently I am on a official trip, Here in San Diego,CA. Hectic Schedules]

Thanks

Keep reading my blog.

What a software engineer can learn from YSR’s death

2009-09-05T10:14:00.001-07:00

One of the reason media figured out for YSR death is “he ignored safety processes/guidelines, and he influenced the aviation staff to fly during bad weather condition”.

Now question is whose mistake??

Is it the mistake of CM to influence staff who takes care of safety guidelines? Or it’s the mistake of staff that he got influenced???

I believe it’s the mistake of staff.

Very often this happens in software industry as well, we are given some tight schedule and we are forced to finish it. How you act in such scenario?? Mostly we try to finish that within deadline and we skip essential steps e.g. we skip unit testing, we skip code reviews and all of above we tend to write quick and dirty code.

Before doing anything like that you should ask a question to you.

Which is more dangerous?

· Refusing to work on tight guideline?

· Or writing quick and dirty code, and skipping process guideline?

Act accordingly!!

I personally refuse to work on tight guideline many time, because I think that might annoy my Boss for a moment but when something will go seriously wrong after product delivery, it might annoy whole company.

[sad about the death of a mass leader]

YQL hack to get DZone popular articles on 1 page

2009-08-27T11:46:00.001-07:00

Problem with DZone feed is, it contains the link to DZone page. No way i can jump to article, skipping the DZone page. At the end of this article You will be getting a simple YQL based hack to get a DZone popular links on 1 page linked to original blog page.
Note: if you are not interested in how i got it Jump to Demo.
STEP-1
Using YQL first get the popular links. using feed table (use YQL console).
URL to popular link feed is http://feeds.dzone.com/dzone/frontpage
So my YQL query will be.
select * from feed where url='http://feeds.dzone.com/dzone/frontpage'

You will get the details of all popular articles linked to Dzone’s page (same as in feed).
I am just interested in links so my YQL will be (replace * by link).
select link from feed where url='http://feeds.dzone.com/dzone/frontpage'
STEP-2
With all those link retrieved in the step-1, get the HTML page out of it. get the title node using an XPath query .
First by simple DOM inspection i can figure out that title node is wrapped in a DIV element whose class name is ‘ldTitle’.
select * from html where url in (select link from feed where url='http://feeds.dzone.com/dzone/frontpage') and xpath='//div[@class="ldTitle"]/a'
Select format as XML and grab the REST URL
which will look like this

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20url%20in%20(select%20link%20from%20feed%20where%20url%3D'http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.dzone.com%2Fdzone%2Ffrontpage')%20and%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20xpath%3D'%2F%2Fdiv%5B%40class%3D%22ldTitle%22%5D%2Fa'&format=xml

STEP-3
Now Time to do some tweaking. if i get this data in XML i have to parse it. if i will get it in JSON, JavaScript will do all the parsing for me. That's why i love JSON.
Now if i get everything in JSON i have to regenerate DOM via a JavaScript code. I am lazy to do even that. So i want result formatted in JSON and DOM section as it is(i.e. in XML).
I can do this by putting a call-back as argument in above REST URL.
so my REST URL will be

My call back name is ‘loadlist’. so lets implement this call-back.
which is like this.

function loadlist(data)
{
var content_div=document.getElementById('content');
if(!data.query)
{

content_div.innerHTML="error.. failed to load"
}
else
{
var i=0;
var html="";
for(i=0;i<data.query.count;i++)
{
html= html+data.results[i]+"<br/>";
}
content_div.innerHTML=html;
}
}

To see the full source code, visit this page and view source code. I have implemented extra function ‘track’ for some purpose. .

DEMO

7 things I did on my blog, to make it a better place to read

2009-08-23T08:08:00.001-07:00

Readability & accessibility for a blog is very important. You need to give few good reasons to your reader to bring them on your blog site. Today, when technology is really advanced we need to re-look our blog website & think of few additional things. This blog has all those 7 things, which I am going to discuss. I consider my blog most accessible in all forms. Good theme for readability, easy to share, optimized for speed, accessible on mobile, user can choose to translate in his language & last but not the least user can choose to listen its content.

1. Choose better theme.
This is most basic thing. Clean and neat theme on a blog is very important. White background with black colour text is most appropriate theme. Do not put too much of flashy advertisements or flashy content, they not only distract & confuse your readers; they also slow down the loading time. This article might help you to choose better theme.

2. Make it easy to share & comment.
Blogging is a form of social media. It’s very important to have better interactivity with your readers. Comment form must be having various options; user should not be forced to login to put comment. Yes, if don't want any unwanted content to be posted by your readers, your can go for “comment approval” option.
These days’ people love to share blogs on various channels. Add buttons like addthis, dzone, tweetmeme(blogger, wordpress) digg(blogger, wordpress) etc to make it easy to share.

3. Optimize for speed.
Adding to much of buttons, poor theme and gadgets might slow down loading time of your blog site. Here are 3 things you can do to improve performance.

i. Put all unobtrusive scripts at the bottom of page.
As you know most of the gadgets and buttons are based on JavaScript. Adding too much of buttons and gadgets might slow down loading time of your blog.

Any JavaScript block, freezes the loading of rest of the content till complete JavaScript code is not loaded. So you can effectively bring readable content much early, by putting most of the JavaScript blocks at the bottom of the page. Question is how can you decide, what can be kept at the bottom of the page? Any script which only executes when entire webpage is loaded can be brought the bottom of the page. In more technical terms any unobtrusive code can be kept at the bottom of the page.

ii. Use CDN (for better loading time) .
One way to get free CDN is “Google’ App Engine”. Read this article.

iii. Run tests like Yslow or Page Speed.
YSlow and PageSpeed are a plug-ins for Firefox (on top of Firebug). These plug-ins can run a test on websites and can tell you what can be optimized. They will provide huge list, though you can not achieve all of them easily but if you even achieve 50% of them your website will be much faster than any webpage. If you really want to see most optimized web page see yahoo home page. They have lots of content on the website but still loading surprisingly low.

4. Automated podcast (sometime listening is better).
If you are kind of guy, who write long descriptive content, automated podcasting feature might help your reader to have an option to “listen” rather reading it. Odiogo gives free automated way to get podcast of your blog text. It has built-in text-2-speech feature, which will narrate your blog.

5. Automatically Translatable.
Automated translation might not help a lot, but can be really handy for foreign users. Use Google Translate widget on your blog so that user can easily translate.

6. Mobile readable.
Many people prefer to do blog reading on their mobile. There is an easy way to create mobile version of your website. You can use Mobify, to get mobile version of your blog. Getting mobile version is easy; you can get it in 3 easy steps.

7. Add some fun.
On my blog you can drag those sidebar gadgets, such kind of functionality can help reader to play with your blog.

Thanks for reading, Love to see your comments.

Top 11 Language Concepts That Every Developer Should Know

2009-08-09T15:32:00.001-07:00

There are a few fundamental things we have invented in programming languages,
which was invented at various point of time, particularly by one language and they were later adapted by many other languages.
I am going to list some of them, which have bigger impacts.

DataType
The first and foremost thing which we have ever invented is the data type. Computers were just a dumb machine, which could only understand the binary sequence. Binary sequence made no sense till it was grouped to form a DataType.
As you know a DataType, is something which groups the binary sequence together and represents some entity in mathematical word OR real word. All depends on its interpretation.
DataType is not just a grouping of binary sequence but also a set of operations which it posses. I mean a DataType definition just don't end with its binary grouping but also the operation which can be performed on those entities.
Later we have evolved these DataTypes into more complex form. We used mathematics to bring various complex data structures like List, Stack, Queue etc.
Today almost every programming language directly or indirectly have concept of data type.

Pointers
With the invention of computers, we've also invented the concept of loading and storing data from Hardware. Computers accesses memory by toggling special bit patterns in the wires (which was called data bus). This led to the invention of Pointers in our high level programming languages.
Pointers specially became popular in C programming language. Pointer is one of the most popular programming concepts ever invented. Other than C language, pointers are supported by languages like C++,C#, Fortran, Pascal. Few dialects of BASIC also supports pointer.

Structured Programming
Most of the programs in the early days were completely relying on GOTO statements, which was a real mess and was making programmers life real hell. Now that's where we have invented the "structured programming " another fundamental programming concept. Through this concept we have brought something called functions, and subsequently we realized the power of abstraction.

OOPs
I think OOPs (Object Oriented Programming) is one of the most popular and ever lasting fundamental concept we have invented in history of programming languages. OOps is an umbrella concept. We have brought many concepts under this.Concepts like Data hiding, Inheritance, abstraction, polymorphisms (static & dynamic) were just the beginning of OOps. OOps is available directly or indirectly in almost all modern languages. Languages like C++, java & c# have brought it a long way.

Regular Expression
Regular expressions provide a concise and flexible means for identifying patterns in string. This is used for searching and replacing special pattern in a string.If your favourite programming language is supporting Regular Expressions, and you are still thinking of learning,then this is the time to go and learn. Regular Expressions are now supported by many languages (almost all popular programming languages). Additionally Regular expression became standard language for many find and replace system utilities. Unix command (utility) Grep is one of the most popularly known Regular Expression based utility. Regular Expressions became so popular concept that many programming languages made it as the part of there language syntax (construct).Languages like Perl, Ruby and TCL embraced regular expression as their primary language construct.

SQL
With the invention of Relational database, where everything is stored in the form of Tables, SQL type of languages evolved. This was mainly developed for data query, data update, schema creation & schema modification. They became so popular that it was extended to make procedural SQL.
With the popularity of SQL, recently Google has brought GQL to abstract their Big Table ( a non relational data base). SQL like syntax is also borrowed by yahoo in YQL, to query data from anywhere on internet.

Managed Heap
Managed Heap OR Smart pointers, was another revolutionary concept which was invented as a hack of OOps concept (classes ) in C++. This was invented by Microsoft in a concept called COM. Smart Pointer, solved the problem of memory leak .
This concept was later adapted as default language semantic in programming languages like Java & C#. Later this was adapted by many programming languages like VB.net and Managed C++.

XPATH
XPath is another programming concept which was developed to access DOM tree, and became a preferred way to access the XML formatted data. This is another programming paradigm which you should be aware of, If by any chance you work with XML.

Duck Typing
The Term “Duck Typing” is invented by Python, though the concept of duck typing is old and was there in few languages earlier than Python.In duck typing, programmer is concerned with just those aspects of an object that are used, rather than with the type of the object itself.
Let's understand this. Let us say we have a real life object Shape, which knows how to draw itself (with a method draw). Now in OOps, We enforce this by creating an interface something like IDraw, any anything which can be drawn on the screen must be of type IDraw(i.e It should be inheriting IDraw). I Duck Typing, object can be drawn on the screen as long as object holds the draw method,irrespective of the type of object. DuckTyping removed the dependency of common interface definition, which are typically shared by client and server modules in OOps languages. Disadvantage of such thing is, programmer will not be able to know at the compile time, that the object is not having the draw method in it. But wait, python does not have compile time, its interpreted language, so all the problem can only be identified during the runtime.
One thing i am sure about DuckTyping is that it is very risky deal when you are building a big (cathedral like) software. But it is very good when you are writing very small quick and dirty lines of code.
Duck Typing is supported by Python, JavaScript(and similar languages) & C# (for your surprise, read this nice example).
Duck Typing helps a lot in JavaScript, in fact the concept of “JSON based AJAX” is completely based of duck typing.
Duck typing is a very controversial concept, many OOPs lovers hate this concept.

Closure
Some languages (e.g. JavaScript) allows you to define a function inside another function. Closure is the scope, which inner function is having. Coolest part of closure is, scope remains valid even after outer function have returned.
One of the nice example of closure is this (in JavaScript), Inner function dofading will still be having access to ‘Div_InClosureScope’ even after the Fade have returned.

function Fade(id)
{
var Div_InClosureScope= document.getElementById(id);
var level=0;
function dofading()
{
var hex=level.toString(16);
Div_InClosureScope.style.backgroundColor='#ff'+hex+hex+hex+hex;
if(level<15)
{
level++;
setTimeout(dofading,100);
}
}
setTimeout(dofading,10);
}

In more general term, closure is a special scope, provided to a special instance of a function. In OPPs the member function enjoys closure (data members are in closure scope). Programming language C does not have closure concept at all. Its a most simple and straight language.

Yield
I found this technique first in python.This was not something new, but can confuse most the programmers from c/c++ background. This technique somehow stores state of iterator (I will explain latter), and returns different result at different time, and this is something c/c++ programmers are not used to. Any C/C++ programmer assumes a function is a stateless machine, which can return only one result for given set of argument, no matter how many time you going call that function.

A Python function stack can be unwrapped( retuned) in 2 ways, by a return statement or by a yield statement. A return statement stops the execution of a function (same as in c/c++ ). On the other hand an yield statement halts the execution of a function and store the state, so that when it will be invoked later, execution will start from the same point.

Lets take an example of typical Fibonacci number generator.

#An endless generator
def fibonacci():
i = j = 1
while True:
r, i, j = i, j, i + j #respective assignment
yield r

for rabbits in fibonacci():
print rabbits,
if rabbits > 100: break

Output
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144

Python certainly support, C++ like return statement, but using yield is most efficient for this such generators. All those recursive way of writing Fibonacci number generators are really inefficient( though they look simple).
Yield statement is also supported by C#.net. Here is one of the nice post about yield in c#. Do not miss!

I love this article, "Life after loops". somehow, its connected to this blog post

We Code writers are better than Literary Writers

2009-08-01T01:52:00.001-07:00

We write to make it readable.
Yes, we spend 20% of our coding time to produce working code, and rest of 80% time in beautifying and indenting our code. We love to make our code more and more readable.

We don't beat around the bush.
We write very specific. We hate un-necessary details. We try to communicate the message (the solution) as early as possible.

We love to keep it simple.
We as a code writer, don't try to complicate things. We feel much better when we see our solution simple. That's why we say KISS (keep it simple, stupid!).

We don't repeat Information.
yes, we believe in DRY (don't repeat yourself) principle. we represent one information at only one place. Though many novice developers make mistake to represent information twice and thrice in their code. This brings a serious problem.

We don't count pages.
We developers, (true developer) feels very productive when we delete LOC( line of code). Most managers in our company think that LOC is true measure of our productivity, but we don't. We love to delete code, and our most productive time is spent in deleting Code.

We are open.
As an innovator, we try to present idea, even if we are scared that idea can be stolen. We don't think hiding an idea makes any kind of sense.

We are least bothered, when it comes to plagiarism.
Unlike literary writers, we are less concerned about plagiarism. We love if someone copy our code. We take it as a good news. in-fact the whole open source philosophy is based on it. We just request to mention our name in the code, but if they don't mention we don't bother.

Few Elegant solutions from Apple (present and future)

2009-07-30T08:54:00.001-07:00

Looking at the various patents and products from apple I believe they are most innovative people in the world (of computers& devices).

(Note:Click images to explore more)

iPod Shuffle's VoiceOver Solution
VoiceOver solution provides, a voice based menu to the iPod listeners. Solution looks quite great and you might end up thinking that iPod shuffle has TextToSpeech functionality. But answer is NO. iPod shuffle is still a device which can just play an audio file. The menu items come from the another audio-file which has been synced into your device thru PC. Today your PC is capable of TextToSpeech, iTunes will use this to get the small audio file, which will be the sound of SongName, Artist and etc. (textual information resides in your mp3 file).

Movement-Aware Interfaces for iPhones

Isn't It Great to make your icons bigger, when you are jumping or running while using your iPhone. I think YES, iPhone will use accelerometer to resize its menu and other UI elements.

USB device ejection touch sensor

How annoying is it to do several click on your PC, just to eject your USB device? Its solved!! Apple's USB devices will be having a small sensor to know that when you are going to hold your USB device and probably your intension is to plug-out.

Haptic Feedback for touch screen

Touch screen helped us to utilize the same physical space for different functions. awesome!! But reality is, user never sees what he is going to touch. This is not a problem in hardware keys, because they are embossed and they can be felt. Many other companies have brought the haptic feedback already, but that's actually a joke, they actually vibrates the phone's vibrator when you will tap(or touch). Here is a patent from apple which is going to materialize the haptic feedback in real sense.

Device Settings In smart Headsets

Don't your think EQ (equalizer) settings are more related to your output device than your iPod. YES, then Apple has made it simple, now there will be smart headsets which can store EQ settings.

2 Steps to make your (blogger based) blog translatable.

2009-07-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

Here are the 2 step to make you blog translatable, Like this.

STEP-1
Grab This code

STEP-2
Go to blogger, and "Edit Layout" Section, and choose "Edit HTML".
In Head Section just paste the above code, Save and exit.

Optionally You can also add a title less Gadget of type "HTML/JavaScript" and paste the above code. But it might not work all the time.

Please feel free to leave comment if its not working with you.

For the advanced Users:
I have created a Unobtrusive JavaScript code, Here
This requires Google Language API & jQuery.
First two script block above is to bring jQuery in your blog and then my script to produce a translate "combo box", which can be used to translate your blog.

Demo: Click Here
Source: Click Here

Quick and Dirty Way of Buffer Serialization in C#

2009-07-02T13:05:00.001-07:00

This article will tell you to get raw buffer from the c# structure. Basically C# is a TypeSafe language, it never lets you to access byte-stream of any managed object. But You can still make a raw buffer using Marshal.StructureToPtr Method . Today, In this article I will introduce you to new serialization format called QP-Encoding(Quoted-Printable Encoding). QP-Encoding is old encoding style, but known to very little people. Its very simple to understand.

Its a string formed from Raw buffer, whose every byte is represented by '=XX' way. In QP every byte is represented by =and followed by the 2 character of Hex which tells you the value of that byte. BUT if byte is printable it will be printed as it is.

For Example: a buffer whose byte sequence is 41,4A,4F,08 Then QP could be =41=4A=4F=08 but since 41 4A and 4F is printable character you can also write as ")JO=08" (as a better QP)

Using marshalling technique here you can transform any(almost any) c# managed object into QP string using following function

static public string SerializeBuffer(object obj, ref int size){

size = Marshal.SizeOf(obj.GetType());

IntPtr ptr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(size);

Marshal.StructureToPtr(obj, ptr, true);

byte[] byteArray = new byte[size];

string encode_qp = "";

for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i)

{

byte b = (byte)Marshal.ReadByte(ptr, i);

encode_qp += "=" + b.ToString("X2");

}

Marshal.FreeHGlobal(ptr);

return encode_qp;

}

This is How you can DeSerialize

static public void GetDeSerializedBuffer(ref object Obj, ref string QPData)
{

int size = Marshal.SizeOf(Obj.GetType());

IntPtr ptr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(size);

for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)

{

Marshal.WriteByte(ptr, i, ReadByteFromQPString(ref QPData));

}

Obj = Marshal.PtrToStructure(ptr, Obj.GetType());

Marshal.FreeHGlobal(ptr);

}

See Full Code Here

Few more awesome questions..

2009-06-29T12:48:00.001-07:00

Thanks for all your appreciation for my last post, Here is some more question, which are more funnier that previous list.

If white house is white, the blue house is blue, and the red house is red. Why green house is transparent?
Why all of the black boxes are painted bright orange?
If there is a substance exist, which can make Black Box indestructible, why not same thing is used to make whole aircraft?
Why black paint smells like a green paint?
Why there is flotation devices under plane seats instead of parachutes?
What's another word for thesaurus?
Why is it that when you transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, it's called cargo?
Why I get a phone call from Vodafone to say my bill was outstanding? (I always say thanks)
I understand money talks, but why it always say "goodbye" to me?
How can a burnt match thrown from a car start a forest fire when 2 boxes of matches, 10 fire lighters & lighter fuel can't light a BBQ?
What will happen if a abortion clinic will have a 12 months waiting time?
Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?
Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?
If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?

twimr04: Creativity, History & Programming

2009-06-27T11:06:00.001-07:00

Just to remind, twimr is a series of blog posts from me, where i put random stuff. These items are basically collected over couple of weeks, via a special hash tag #twimr. from twitter.

1. 13 Add-ons to Strengthen Firebug

2. This is great collection of Old Spy Gadgets Part-1 Part-2 Part-2

3 . This one is a cool animation using post-it notes. ( titled Deadline)

Here is the making of this video

4. Stunning Solar system (Stunning, graphics jus by using (jQuery) JavaScript)

5. Some people think that Twitter invented in 1935

6.Developers this is really nice collection of “Hidden Features Of Perl, PHP, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java...” [Incredibly Useful Lists]

7.This is something to do with environment, Build a Greener Charging Station