Puzzle GIS – Maps in your IDE

Puzzle is a Java Geographic Information Systems (GIS) development platform built on top of the NetBeans Platform. The main goal of Puzzle GIS is to create a free, production ready and competitive tool as a valid alternative to commercial software.

OpenMap Twitter Application

OpenMap Twitter application is an application started in China, with the aim to create a desktop application that integrates OpenMap and Twitter.

Analyzer

Analyzer is Java application for batch file analysis, created at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.The application was developed for XML data but it has no limitations in usage for other types, so it can generally work with any type of document. In addition, Analyzer provides download support which means that analyzing methods can ask for additional documents from the web.

AIOTrade

AIOTrade is a free, open-source stock technical analysis platform.The tool’s pluggable architecture is ideal for extensions such as indicators and charts. AIOTrade is a 100% Java stand-alone application built on the NetBeans Platform. The source code is organized as a NetBeans module-suite project.

FeedReader

A sample application on the NetBeans Platform, by Rich Unger, used by beginners to the NetBeans Platform while learning about development workflow and API usage. The application is bundled with NetBeans IDE and is found in the Samples category in the New Project wizard.

TimeKeeper

TimeKeeper is a time recording, accounting, and reporting application designed for the special needs of consultants and programmers in distributed environments. It supports projects of any structure with an unlimited amount of involved companies and project members.

CashForward

CashForward provides intuitive ways to track household cash flow and to create and compare spending plans. Although built to offer ease of use for first-time budgeters, CashForward will offer longtime money management software users an intuitive and simple interface for handling family finances.

BlueMarine

BlueMarine is an open-source application for digital photo workflow. The blueMarine project provides you with an all-in-one tool for managing your photos, from the shoot up to archiving and beyond. BlueMarine is expandable, platform-independent, and includes specific support for different photographers’ communities, as well as the latest technologies.

Ekspos Image Viewer

Ekspos is a platform independent Java image viewer from Kiyut Software Indonesia.It supports most popular image format: JPEG, PNG, and GIF, where an additional image format can be added through a Java ImageIO plugin. It consists of 2 parts: a shell browser and a viewer. The Shell browser allows you to navigate your image collection and you’ll be able to browse images in tree, detail, list, icon and thumbnail view. The viewer provide a progressive view of images with zoom and pan capability.

JFugue Music NotePad

The JFugue Music NotePad is an open-source project aiming to provide a simple stand-alone application for composing music and generating MIDI files visually. The underlying functionality provided by this application comes from its reliance on the JFugue API, a simple yet powerful set of classes for playing and saving MIDI files. The user interface that is built on top of this API is based on the NetBeans Platform.

MP3 Manager

MP3 Manager is a music player created by Kai Toedter on top of the NetBeans Platform. It is a showcase of many of the NetBeans Platform features. Intentionally Kai did not focus on business logic, that’s why he chose to create a very simple application, a little MP3 Manager. Another purpose of this application is that new NetBeans Platform developers can take a look at some example implementations of common use cases.

Stock Trader Game

When you begin playing the game, you’re given a limited amount of money and the goal is to buy low and sell high in order to build your fortune. News stories affect the price of stock and are published at the beginning of each trading day.

ThinkingRock

ThinkingRock is a free, platform-independent Java application for collecting and processing your thoughts. This simple and easy-to-use tool follows the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology from the best-selling book by David Allen.

Java HotSpot Client Compiler Visualizer

Java HotSpot Client Compiler Visualizer is a tool which displays the graphs of the client compiler. It records intermediate states of the graph during the compilation of a method. The user can then navigate through the graph and apply rule-based filters that change the appearance of the graph.The tool calculates an approximation of the control flow to cluster the nodes of the graph into blocks. Using a visual representation of the data structures speeds up debugging and helps understand the code of the compiler.

Java VisualVM

Java VisualVM is a light-weight visual tool that combines a variety of existing JDK software tools for application profiling and monitoring. Use it to monitor a Java application’s memory consumption and threads, profile performance and memory allocation, analyze thread dumps, heap dumps, core dumps, and much more.

Last, but not the least, Netbeans IDE

NetBeans IDE is a free, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. You get all the tools you need to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with the Java language, C/C++, and even dynamic languages such as PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and Ruby.

Related Articles

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• Log4j Tutorial : How to send log messages to different log files?

The Simple Servlet Class

package com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc;

import java.io.IOException;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

/**
 * A good-for-nothing servlet which is just writing few messages to the logger
 * object. Since we've configured in the log4j.properties file to include the
 * userName, taken from MDC, every message will be appended with the user name
 * that is set from the AuthenticationFilter
 *
 * @author veerasundar.com/blog
 */
public class Log4jMdcDemo extends HttpServlet {

	private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(Log4jMdcDemo.class);

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	public Log4jMdcDemo() {
	}

	/**
	 * @see HttpServlet#doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
	 *      response)
	 */
	protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
			HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
		doService(request, response);
	}

	/**
	 * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
	 *      response)
	 */
	protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
			HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
		doService(request, response);
	}

	protected void doService(HttpServletRequest request,
			HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

		logger.info("This is  demo for the Log4j MDC concept");
		logger.info("From Veerasundar.com/blog");
		logger.debug("Just some sample messages");
	}
}

A Filter to put the user name in MDC for every request call

package com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;

import org.apache.log4j.MDC;

/**
 * An example authentication filter which is used to intercept all the requests
 * for fetching the user name from it and put the user name to the Log4j Mapped
 * Diagnostic Context (MDC), so that the user name could be used for
 * differentiating log messages.
 *
 * @author veerasundar.com/blog
 *
 */
public class AuthenticationFilter implements Filter {

	@Override
	public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response,
			FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {

		try {
			/*
			 * This code puts the value "userName" to the Mapped Diagnostic
			 * context. Since MDc is a static class, we can directly access it
			 * with out creating a new object from it. Here, instead of hard
			 * coding the user name, the value can be retrieved from a HTTP
			 * Request object.
			 */
			MDC.put("userName", "veera");

			chain.doFilter(request, response);

		} finally {
			MDC.remove("userName");
		}

	}

	@Override
	public void init(FilterConfig arg0) throws ServletException {
	}

	@Override
	public void destroy() {
	}

}

Web.xml file to glue together Servlet and Filter

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4"
	xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
	<servlet>
		<description>
		</description>
		<display-name>Log4jMdcDemo</display-name>
		<servlet-name>Log4jMdcDemo</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc.Log4jMdcDemo</servlet-class>
	</servlet>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Log4jMdcDemo</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/Log4jMdcDemo</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

	<filter>
		<filter-name>AuthFilter</filter-name>
		<filter-class>com.veerasundar.code.log4jmdc.AuthenticationFilter</filter-class>
	</filter>

	<filter-mapping>
		<filter-name>AuthFilter</filter-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</filter-mapping>

</web-app>

Log4j.properties file which uses the data present in MDC

# sample log4j.properties file, explaining log4j MDC concept
# author: veerasundar.com/blog

log4j.appender.consoleAppender = org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.consoleAppender.layout = org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout

#note the %X{userName} - this is how you fetch data from Mapped Diagnostic Context (MDC)
log4j.appender.consoleAppender.layout.ConversionPattern = %-4r [%t] %5p %c %x - %m - %X{userName}%n

log4j.rootLogger = DEBUG, consoleAppender

I hope that code explains the concept of MDC. Do let me know if you have any questions/suggestions in the comments.

Related Articles

• Log4j MDC (Mapped Diagnostic Context) : What and Why
• How to create a new log file for each time the application runs?
• Log4j Tutorial: Additivity – what and why?
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• Log4j Tutorial : How to send the log messages to a File

Here’s what you need to do : come up with a creative use of Firefox logo with the Light and share your pictures/videos in Flickr with the tag Firefox5.

And the reward? the submissions will be featured on a special Firefox 5 celebration site and the best ones will be rewarded with Firefox valuables.

Alternatively, you can wear a twibbon and join a Facebook group, if you do not wish to take part in the creative contest!

So, why waiting? Lets get started to celebrate 5 years of Firefox!

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That said, now I’ll start with MDC or Mapped Diagnostic Context. Don’t get scared with this name! MDC is not that tough. It’s a simple yet useful concept. Before I explain what is MDC, lets assume that we are going to develop a simple web application with one servlet ‘MyServlet’ servicing requests from multiple clients. And, this servlet uses log4j framework for logging. A file appender has been defined for this servlet, so all the log messages will be logged into a text file.

With the above said configuration, all the log messages from MyServlet will go into a single log file. And when this servlet is serving more than one clients at the same time, the log statements will be mixed and there’s  no way to differentiate which log statement is belongs to which client’s processing. This’ll make it difficult to trace and debug if any processing error occured in MyServlet life cycle.

How to differentiate log statements with respective to each clients?

To avoid the log statements mix-in, we could add a user name (or some other data which will be unique to each client) to our log statements. To do this, we have to make sure that we pass this user name data explicitley to each and every log statements, which is a tedious and repetitive work. But, no need to worry! Log4j has an excellent way to overcome this. It’s called as MDC or Mapped Diagnostic Context.

So, What is Log4j MDC (Mapped Diagnostic Context)

To put is simple, the MDC is a map which stores the context data of the particular thread where the context is running. To explain it, come back to our simple application – every client request will be served by different thread of the MyServlet. So, if you use log4j for logging, then each thread can have it’s own MDC which is  global to the entire thread. Any code which is part of that thread can easily access the values that are present in thread’s MDC.

So, how do we make MDC to differentiate logging statements from multiple clients? Simple : Before starting any business process in your code, get the user name (for our Servlet, we can get it from request object) and put that into MDC. Now the user name will be available to the further processing. In your log4j.properties while defining the ‘conversionPattern’, add a pattern %X{key} to retrievce the values that are present in the MDC. The key will be ‘userName’ in our example. It’s like getting a value from a Session object.

In my next post, I’ll give the source code for the same example that I used in this post. So, keep Watching!

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• How to create a new log file for each time the application runs?

———————————-

Dear Applicant
This is inform you that your Resume has been short listed from Naukri.com and after our hrd had been short list you in the company ,so read carefully the attachment file .

Thank you
Sonali puri
WIPRO INFOTECH INDIA

———————————-

And here are the two offer letters (images!?) that I’d received (click on the image to read it clear).

And some funny things that I noticed in this SPAM/fraud email:

• It says that my profile got selected, with out me applying for it. Looks like the so-called-recruiter is desperate to hire people!
• Who in the world sends the offer letter as JPEG images!? The sender of the email must be proficient in MS Paint.
• If you read the offer letter (or image, whatever it is!), you could easily spot lots of grammatical errors. The only point behind this email was to make the person pay the money and all the sentences in that letter revolved around this point.
• It asks me to deposit RS 7850 to some bank account. I really want to know what’s the math behind the amount RS 7850. Why not a 6000 or 7000!? Why exactly is it 7850!?
• The Wipro logo in the attached images. Just by looking at the logo you can know that this is a fraudulent email. It seems like the sender didn’t get a good Wipro at better resolution in the net.
• The letter has several email addresses but none of which belongs to the @wipro.com address space. Funny, isn’t it? And the sendes claims he/she works at Wipro as a HR!!

How the sender of this email thinks that there’ll be anyone who’ll fall for his/her tricks? Are we so dumb, not to identify this kinda emails? Better luck next time, Guys!

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Ever since I started this blog, I used to get feedback from my readers through comments and Emails. Some are positive, some are negative and some asking me to clarify some doubts in my posts and some personal stuffs too. As of today, this blog has a total count of 637 comments for 150 posts, which is not bad count for a Java blog, I think.

A blog’s success lies in the community that the blog creats and the interaction between it’s community. On the later part, my blog is doing quite well, providing the readers the option to voice your opinion through comments. I’ve seen in some of the blogs where the authors delibarately rejects any comments, even a valid one, just for keeping the page rank up. But, I’ve never done any such things in this blog, because your opinion is as important as of mine. I thank all my readers for giving valuable feedback through comments and Emails.

Now I’ve started focusing on the first part of creating community. Google has a widget named Friend Connect, for helping the blog authors to build a community for their blog. I’ve added this widget to my blog, which you can see in the top right section of the sidebar. So, when you join this site, you’re automatically subscribing to the feed of this blog and apart from that your gravatar will be shown on the FriendConnect widget of this blog.

Consider this post as an open invite to join my community. And, if you like, few other ways to get in touch: Twitter | RSS Feed

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From Firefox 3.6 onwards, Mozilla adds the ability to link Web Open Font Format (WOFF) from your CSS files. The WOFF is mostly similar to the OpenType/TrueType fonts, except that its in compressed format. So, it reduces the download time.

How to link Web Open Font Format in your pages?

If you want to use Web Open Font Format, the way to link is similar to linking other downloadable font format. You mention it in @font-face tag. Below is the sample code for linking Web Open Font Format:

@font-face {
  font-family: MyFont;
  src: url(my-font.woff) format("woff");
}

body{
  font-family:MyFont,Arial;
}

WOFF is going to be supported from Firefox 3.6 onwards. In the meantime, you can test it in Firefox Nightly builds, if you want to see how it works.

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Recently a big change has happened in Indian Broadband sector. All major wireless internet providers have introduced new wireless broadband schemes. Tata has brought Photon+, Airtel has Airtel Broadband and Reliance introduced Broadband Plus. All are wireless broadband connections with USB modem.

I was not sure whether it was a coincident or not that ever since Reliance Broadband plus came into picture, my already-slower existing Netconnect went slower than the usual speed. May be it could be the strategy from Reliance to force the old connection users to the Broadband plus.

Whatever it is, I decided to switch to broadband. The increased speed was one reason. And, Reliance gave an RS 250/month offer to all user who upgrade their 1x connection to broadband. So, if your plan costs you 850/month, you only needs to pay 600. And this offers is valid for one year. So the total money comes around RS 3000. But the USB modem costs only RS 3500. So, you almost get your money back (with a catch of 1 year waiting time, anyway!). Pretty good deal, though.

So, I switched to Reliance Broadband plus and have been using it for the past two weeks. I’m very pleased with the speed it gives. The signal strength is pretty good in my locality, so I’m almost getting the higher bandwidth speed at all the times. The upload speed is also very good, even though I don’t upload much. The Reliance dialer has a slick UI, which is not at all connected anyway with the speed/performance. But, I like to mention about the UI here.

If you are in India and want to get a wireless broadband connection, I’ll recommend Reliance Broadband Plus to you.

If you are using any other broadband connection (such as Photon+, etc), feel free to comment on their performance. I’ll be happy to hear about them too.

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When I asked for a best PHP framework, I got mixed views on various PHP frameworks, such as CakePHP, Zend, Symfony, etc. But, later I chose CodeIgniter mainly because of it’s very detailed documentation. I was new to PHP then, so the detailed documentation of CodeIgniter helped me to get started quickly with PHP development.

So, enough of CI praising. Just wanted to say that I again started with my PHP side project. Needless to say, I’m building this app using CodeIgniter framework and I’m enjoying the every bit of the development. Will be announcing about my project, soon once it’s in some shape. And, i’ll be restarting the CodeIgniter post series, too. So, keep watching this blog!

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• Wave, surely, is an innovative concept: Yes, it is. Email + Communicator + Wiki will give you the Google Wave. It excites me to see what happened to to my wave, who edited it and when they edited my wave – all these information are tracked by Wave and displayed to the wave users.
• Use it as Gmail or Google Chat: Wave is more fun when you have friends to wave with, as said by Google Wave team. Yes! without your online friends, Wave is nothing but Gmail. You create a wave, add your friend, who is offline and save it, like sending your email in Gmail. But, if your friend is online, then Wave becomes an Google Chat application. Your friend can reply instantly to your wave messages now,
• When you have bigger to list, Wave is just a chaos: Yes! Wave become unmanageable when you are adding too many people to your Wave to list. This is because anyone can edit anywhere in the Wave message and you need to read the entire message again and again in order to read what has changed. Just takes too much of time! And in such scenarios, its difficult to follow the conversations too.
• I wish Wave had a better way to show the unread message in a Wave: Currently Wave is displaying a green color border line in the unread message in your wave. But, at first sight, its difficult to get that this is unread message. Instead of just a line, I would prefer some kind of background color changes (or any noticeable formatting) to the unread messages. This will reduce my searching time for the unread message in a Wave.

And, please note that this post is not to blame Google Wave application. The Wave team surely did a great job in bringing up such a concept and the application. I understand that Wave is still under construction and I think that any feedback on Google Wave will definitely improve the quality and usability of Wave.

You are welcomed to share your views on Wave!

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