Veera Sundar - Java, Web and Design

Moved to Chennai, India

Veera — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:35:01 +0000

It has been several days since I posted anything in this blog. Well, there was a reason for that – I quit Infosys and joined CSC. For that I had to move to Chennai and it took my last two weekends for the relocation and settling in. Didn’t get much time to put something together and write here.

I do not want to elaborate more on quitting Infosys. It was a decision that I had to take because of several reasons and I had moved out of Infosys on February 26, where I spent 3 quality years. My current position at CSC gives me ample opportunities to grow in the field where I actually want to be in.

On moving to Chennai, it gives me a feeling that I am back at my home. Chennai is not a new place to me. I spent 4 years here, doing my studies at a local college. Because of my previous job, I had to stay away from Chennai for the past 3 and half years and now I’m back. The ways that the city has changed in these 3 years were amazed me. But the main problems of the city – traffic, pollution, weather and water – are still here. I hope the city gets better and better in the coming days.

The IT highway in Chennai

Well, that’s it for now. Wait for more articles on web designing and development because that is what I’m gonna do hereafter in my new job!

Fighting SPAM

Veera — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:01:33 +0000

My blog was never in the radar of spammers, thanks to the simple wordpress plug-in WP Captcha Free. The plug-in was so good that it almost blocked all the spam comments. But sadly, it is not the same story anymore.

For the past two days, I’m seeing lots of spam comments, escaping the spam filter, which try to sell youknowwhat thing to my readers. Luckily I had enabled the comment moderation. So all the spam comments ended up in my comments spam folder. But I was clueless why my spam blocking plug-in didn’t work at the first place.

Instead of wondering why it happened, I tried to implement some alternative ways to fight spam.

In Wordpress discussion settings page, I added some key words that these spam comments usually contains to the comment blocklist. To tighten up the filter further I took the IP addresses and email IDs from these comments and added them too to the comment blocklist.
Closed the comments for the posts that are older than 14 days.
For the time being, installed the reCaptcha plug-in to block the spams. But this impacts my loyal readers, so I’ll be removing this plug-in as soon as the spam comments are reduced. Update: plug-in is now deactivated.

Now the number of spam comments are considerably reduced. But, I want to reduce them to zero. What do you do to keep the spams in control in your blog?

HTML5 Video in Internet Explorer

Veera — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:58:03 +0000

If at all there is one player who is running late in the web race, it is Internet Explorer. The web standards support is different in IE when compared with other modern browsers. When it comes to HTML5, IE lags further behind.

Developers are started experimenting HTML5 in their projects. Most of the modern browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, have already ported their browsers to support HTML5 features. But, Internet Explorer is yet to make a step in that direction. The HTML5 support in Internet Explorer 8 (the latest version of the browser) is very limited, which includes only bug fixes but not any new HTML5 feature.

But if you are stuck with Internet Explorer for any reason (if you are in a corporate network) but still want to experience the HTML5 features, you can make use of the Google Chrome Frame plug-in. It is an open source technology that brings the Google Chrome’s engine to Internet Explorer. So, you can enjoy all HTML5 features inside your Internet Explorer.

Similar to Chrome Frame, Cristian Adam is developing a plug-in for Internet Explorer. The Xiph.Org Ogg Codecs enables the HTML5 video support in Internet Explorer. You can download the codec installer (1.10 Mb) and install it in your system to test the feature. Since the plug-in is in the early stages of development, it only supports video playback. There are no navigation controls yet.

Btw, you can view HTML5 videos in Youtube by joining the beta program.

How to disable Google Buzz and delete buzz profile?

Veera — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:40:18 +0000

After the Google Buzz was released, there were several concerns raised regarding the privacy. Google has listened to the user’s feedback and introduced several options to enable and disable the privacy settings. One quick and easy way to turn off Buzz was to click on the Turn off Buzz link in your Gmail page’s footer section.

But in case you want to completely remove the Google Buzz and to delete all Buzz posts and profile, there’s a way to do that:

In your Gmail, open Settings.
Then, go to the Buzz tab.
There you’ll see an link Disable Google Buzz. Click on it. As it mentioned over there, this will disable Google Buzz in Gmail and delete your Google Profile and Buzz posts. It will also disconnect any connected sites and unfollow you from anyone you are following. So, be cautious before clicking this link.

The above method deletes your Google public profile too. I don’t know why it is made this way, but I want to keep my Google profile intact. Looks like I have to create my profile once again, after disabling Buzz.

iLike – Please Rob Me, World of Emotions and Twitter Analytics

Veera — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:41:18 +0000

Pre-script: iLike is the post series that I was planning to start lately. From this week onwards, on every weekend, I’ll be writing about the things that got my attention on that week. The iLike things that I’m going to write about will be mostly on the tech side. I’ll try my best to keep the focus on Java + Web + Design theme. But sometimes I might write about things that does not fit into this theme, too. In this week, I’m starting the iLike series with these three interesting things related to Twitter.

Please Rob Me:

No, not only me. It could be you also, if you are tweeting too much. Please Rob me is an interesting Twitter based application. These days, many people use Twitter service to update their current location. The application brings out the danger side of this behavior. Please Rob me monitors the public twitter statuses of people who are tweeting when they leave their home. It then lists those tweets in the site’s home page, as the opportunity(!) to rob. Seems funny, huh!? But the tweet could easily turn dangerous as it invites the local robbers to pay a visit to your home. So, think again when you tweet about your current location, here after. But first, do check if you are on the rob list.

World of Emotions:

World of Emotions (WEM) is another twitter based service that got my attention recently. Similar to the Please Rob Me, the WEM is also monitoring the public twitter statuses, but for other reasons. The service has several twitter bots (@wem_smile, @wem_glad, @wem_happy and @wem_love) which actively look for certain key words in your tweets. For example, the @wem_smile bot tracks the smiley words like ha.ha etc. And then it collects the similar tweets around the world to display them on a world map to collectively identify the emotion of the world. Plus, it retweets your tweet too!

Twitter Analytics:

With out a doubt, twitter messages represent the pulse of the web community at any given time. There are millions of tweets are already there in twitter database and the count is increasing rapidly every minute. This huge amount of data gives the wonderful opportunity for the data mining. If the tweets are analyzed properly, it could reveal interesting facts about several things. And that is exactly what Twitter Analytics team is currently doing. Recently, Kevin (@kevinweil) – a member of Twitter Analytics team, has published such analytics for the Super Bowl. And, this article from High Scalability discusses on how Twitter team uses technologies like Hadoop to prepare the Twitter system to analyze 100 billion tweets! If you are building a scalable systems, you might find this interesting.

So, that’s it for the week. I’ll come with more interesting things for the next week. Subscribe to this blog, if you want to receive the updates in your feed reader.

Geolocation in HTML5 – browser and device support

Veera — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:47:58 +0000

It is so exciting that when you visit a hotel search website and the site automatically shows you the hotels around your place. The site didn’t even ask your location, but how did it find you? The web browser would have communicated your location on behalf of you, thanks to the Geolocation feature of HTML5. All it takes for the site to find you is just a single line of code (OK, 3 lines!).

if(navigator.geolocation){
  navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(successCallBack, errorCallBack);
}

Geolocation was introduced with the HTML5, along with few other interesting features, and widely implemented by many modern browsers, such as Firefox 3.5+. Since HTML5 is still being in the acceptance stage, not many websites are making use of the Geolocation support yet. This is because only the latest browsers support the Geolocation. Here’s a short list of browsers and their support level to Geolocation.

Browsers supporting Geolocation

Firefox was the early adopter of Geolocation. It supports Geolocation from the version 3.5 and later releases.
Opera – the Geolocation support is not reached the mainstream release, yet. But there’s a Geolocation enabled Opera build which was released months back. If you wish, you can test it by donwloading the build. No news about the support in recent releases, though.
Google Chrome supports Gears API. Gears support Geolocation. So, Chrome supports Geolocation.
Safari browser’s desktop edition does not support Geolocation yet. But, the mobile version, Iphone Safari, support Geolocation.
Android browser supports Geolocation through Gears API.
Internet Explorer as of now there’s no support in current releases (IE8) and I couldn’t find any planned support in the upcoming releases also. If you know anything, please comment.

Well, nothing much changed from the time when I last posted about Geolocation support. The above report is as of February 2010. The data might change as the new versions of browsers getting released.

And, if you are curious, you can test yourself to know whether your browser supports Geolocation or not – HTML5 Geolocation demo. If your browser supports Geolocation, you might see something like this:

Remember Bhuvan?

Veera — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:35:29 +0000

Do you remember the Bhuvan, which got introduced few months back? It was the geoportal from Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) with the label “made in India“. The portal was launched during the 62^nd Independence day celebration of India. It was launched as a free service and hyped that it could become an alternative to Google Maps. In a way, it came close to Google Maps but when you consider the India’s map. After all, this is what Bhuvan’s objective, to provide the visualization portal for the Indian terrain.

When the service was launched, it created lots of buzz among the India’s web user community. Everyone, who knew the news, were trying to access and test the service at the same time. Due to this increased load, the Bhuvan portal was giving poor performance. Adding to that, the map data was not exhaustive, since the service was in the initial stage.

Recently, ISRO has made some changes to Bhuvan to improve the service.

In order to enhance the user experience and have a smooth entry to explore Bhuvan, we have now removed the login process. You can now access bhuvan without any need of login credentials. Just click the enter Bhuvan button on the home page(www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in) and you will be taken to the 3D globe page wherein you can explore all the Bhuvan functionalities.

So, now there is no need to login to access the service. But, you still need to download and install the Bhuvan plug-in (11 MB). The service is not accessible in Firefox. But it works perfectly in Internet Explorer, though. Anyway, there is no harm in giving it a try and testing the service.

Have you tried Bhuvan?

Can Twitter be used to tackle terror in India?

Veera — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:21:14 +0000

It’s been around 14 months since the Indians heard about any bomb blast news. But the silence was broken yesterday by a bomb blast at a German bakery shop in Pune. 9 people died and several others were injured because of the unfortunate incident. My hearty condolence and prayers to the affected people. The terror has proved once again that it has no courage. It’s a hard time for the Government officials and as people of India, we should support the officials to stand against the terror.

On hearing the news, a thought was bubbled up. Why can’t we use some kinda alert system, which is built on Twitter, to gather/track/report intels of suspected incidents. Twitter was well proved to be a reporting mechanism during the Mumbai terror attack time. But at that time, tweeple were reporting the incident after it had happened. If we could build some twitter alert system, which gathers information about suspected activities in sensitive areas and predict what’s going to happen, then this could save hundreds of lives.

A Twitter terror alert system?

Here’s the concept of my idea.

A Twitter based information gathering system which is capable of receiving tweets and analyze them for suspected events. More preference should be given to the tweets which are coming from sensitive areas (like, Mumbai and other metros). This is possible since Geolocation is not hard these days (HTML5 supports and all mobile devices are capable for Geolocation).
Common people, i.e. We, send tweets to the system when ever we see suspected activities in our area. This is not hard for the tweeple as we used to do it everyday.
The system should analyze the tweets and alert the Government officials if anything seems to go wrong.
To overcome the wrong/false messages sent to the system intentionally, the system should award points to each tweeter based on the correctness. If a tweeter has more correctness points, then obviously his/her tweet should be given more importance. In the same way, a tweeter is sending too many false messages, he/she could be blocked by the system.
If the Government is thinking that sharing these sensitive information in a public site like Twitter, then It can strike a deal with Twitter to setup a private twitter system exclusively for this alert usage itself in a secured server. People are allowed to send the information but the information will not be shared in the public (no public timeline). This saves the tweeter’s identity and it’s a good business model for Twitter itself.

Its just an idea. I know it’s not hard to implement because there are already several alert systems (Tsunami, Earthquake) in place. Its just take some time and effort from the interested people to implement the above system. And I’m sure if executed properly, the system will definitely be able to tackle the terror.

Off course it needs lots of brainstorming and discussion before the idea takes some proper shape. You are welcome to share your opinion.

What’s the buzz about Gmail Buzz?

Veera — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:12:14 +0000

If you are not aware of the news yet, then here’s the head line for you:

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. ~ Introducing Google Buzz

Yes. The Buzz just works out-of-the-box. That means when you are given the Buzz access you’ll find that there are already some people following you and you following some others too (Magic!).

Buzz chooses the people whom you contact often from you Gmail and add them as your followers or as the people you follow. And this information is available to public. Anyone who visits your Buzz profile can see the people you follow and your followers lists. Which implies that the public can see you email contact list, which is intended to be private. What!? Privacy?? Are you kidding?

What inspires the Gmail Buzz?

Here’s a short list of Gmail Buzz features and their possible inspiration sources:

Buzz Features = Status Updates (Facebook, Twitter) + Browse Friends updates (Facebook) + Follow/Unfollow/Followers (Twitter) + User Interface, Like + Comment options (Google Reader) + Inline images (Google Wave) + Group Messages (FriendFeed?) + @Notation (Twitter) + Noise (entire social networking sites )

Hmm. Seems like a mixture of various services? Did I miss anything in the above list?

Btw, you can turn off Buzz by clicking on the link which is there in the bottom of the Gmail page. Thanks @anandcv.

Switching to Thesis wordpress theme

Veera — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:20:15 +0000

Hello there! If you are reading this entry from a feed reader, please take a moment to visit my blog. Because the news is I changed my blog theme to Thesis 1.6 and want you to have a look at it.

For the folks who were following my blog in the last one year, the theme change is not a big deal to them. Because, I often change my blog theme and advertise it in my blog (do a quick search on theme and you’ll know!). But, for the last few months, I tried my best to not to change the theme again and again. I was successfull in that to some extend. I was using the self-made theme, with a blue background for more than 2 months.

I remembered all the feedback that came from my good readers regarding the previous theme changes. So when I chose to switch to Thesis, I told myself not to drastically alter the site layout. Instead, keep the layout and look-and-feel as much intact as possible and apply the Thesis theme over it. I guess I kept my promise there.

So, it is now time for you to voice your thoughts on this theme change. Well, not only theme change, if you expect any other feature that you want but missing in this blog, you can tell that too.

And, thank you for reading my blog!

Veera Sundar - Java, Web and Design

Moved to Chennai, India

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