Monday, February 26, 2007

Open source is key to reaching 500 million Indian children

An interesting article by Mark Rais on role of open source in making education available to the large youth population of india. And a greta initiative by CII-Shiksha.

To support more than 650,000 villages and one half billion youths who need education, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) created a nonprofit organization called Shiksha India in 2001. One of Shiksha's primary initiatives was the creation of a collaborative online Web portal, which the president of India launched in a formal ceremony last month. The new e-learning and collaboration portal uses open source technology such as Moodle, Drupal, and MediaWiki.

In my opinion the reason behind its success can be attributed to mainly: its free of cost availabilty which is big issue in regard to country like India, where population(half billion) which need attention is much higher and money involved if proprietary softwares are being used. And other important aspect which article mentions is in the ability to customize and provide products in local languages (including Hindi and Tamil) along with chosing most suited among vast available resources.
Another important issue which can be solved with open source is large scale piracy, currently software piracy laws are not so strict in india but still piracy is a getting a major issue.
"The bad side is that with so much available, a newcomer to OSS is bound to get confused about what to use." He says this is often exacerbated due to some projects being fixated on proving that their product is best.
Other than that at present, their are linux distributons like Ubuntu, which is quite user friendly and its available in many flavours. Also earlier there has also been efforts in shifting towards linux and other open source mediums like :
LIC opts for Linux
Taking Free Software to the Farmers and Fields of India
Kerala logs Microsoft out

Linux.com : Open source is key to reaching 500 million Indian children
Program Details for Shiksha India

Sunday, February 25, 2007

OpenID ??

today i read this article which explains what openid is ??

Lately OpenID has been hitting the front page of digg, del.icio.us, and many other large websites.
Read More>>
OpenID - What is it, and why everyone is talking about it
you can also go through..
Authenticated Distributed Search (OpenSearch, OpenID)
Add OpenSearch to your site in five minutes

Additional link(offtopic and old article but i came across this well written article and couldn't resist posting it.. ):
What Every Webmaster and Web Developer MUST Know About Ruby on Rails and AJAX It’s not a tutorial, it’s not a “how-to” but he explains very well just what the heck all this.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Web Development Tools

Great listing of web developers powertools by Brennan Stehling.
I'll starts with extension for firefox that comes very handy while web devlopment.

  • Web Developer : Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
  • Firebug: Allows you to edit debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
  • ColorZilla: Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
  • Live HTTP Headers
The list Web Development Tools for the Power Developer contains :

Validators

Javascript

Websites

Read More>> (also containing ASP.NET, Proxy tools)
And w3schools, a great place for finding tutorials realted to web development.

Updated(29 April 2007) : Tools for web-designers.

Related Post :

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Improving interactivity with Javascript

HTML controls other than conventional Push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, select boxes, and text inputs, can power up forms, webdev using javascript to increase interactivity and easy (for users). List of such controls includes : slider, Date picker, Smart text boxes, Advanced tooltips, Auto validation etc.

Read more friendly bit >> Improving interactivity with Javascript
In addition, I find image maps also very handy when it comes to intereactivity when used properly with tooltips...as i used them in Paint Chat.

Bonus link[ :) ] DailyBlogTips > Web 2.0 Webdesign Tutorials
Related post :

Friday, February 16, 2007

Top 10 Web Tools For College Students

"I have been in college almost three years now and have been using many different Web tools that saved me time, helped me learn more and, most importantly, did not cost a penny. Here are 10 tools that I recommend for every college student..."
Great list of websites by NextPath to help you in college life...site has also linked to review of these wesites by famous websites such as PC magazine, Techcrunch, Lifehack...
List includes Wikipedia , Del.icio.us, Google Docs, Tada List

read more

Thursday, February 15, 2007

GPRS on Mobile

Yesterday I activated GPRS on my mobile (nokia 6030) ...its quite cheap( 10paise/10kb)
So I tried different pages which works for mobile

  • Yahoo Searh
  • Flickr : http://m.flickr.com
  • W3schools.com: http://w3scholls.com/wap.wml
  • Google Mpas: http://www.google.com/gmm
Some more websites which works on mobile can be found here : Mobile Compatibe Wesites

So I thougth i should have a mobile webpage too.. so i searched for it and found this great tutorial on w3schools: WAP/WML tutorial. It has also got a demo page which works with explorer only but it contains simple and good examples explaining basic features of wml along with preview on how it looks on mobile.
The WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) protocol is the leading standard for information services on wireless terminals like digital mobile phones. WML stands for Wireless Markup Language. It is a mark-up language inherited from HTML, but WML is based on XML, so it is much stricter than HTML.
Tutorial was pretty easy..so i create my own pae which works on mobile. You can access it at:
http://www.aburad.com/m.wml, though it contain my pic, blog address and some content only(I will add some more content). WML supports wbmp(which is black & white) image format,( you can convert image to wbmp using http://www.online-utility.org/. It als o supports jpg format. One more thing while designing your pages for mobile, you can opera to see how it looks as it supports wml files. Or check it at online wap emulator: WapTiger
Some more links : Wap Tutorials(haven't tried yet).

Related Post :Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Happy Valentine's Day

I found this on xkcd.com

Mathematical operators for Love . useless..
Valentine - Karnaugh a Karnaugh map for love :)
Valentine Heart

The Dilbert Principle

Did you know about Dilbert Principle..

The Dilbert Principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing.
Now i understand it all :) ..
The Dilbert Principle is a takeoff on the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle addresses the practice of hierarchical organizations (such as corporations and government agencies) to use promotions as a way to reward employees who demonstrate competence in their current position.
what do you think ??
Related links :
Dilbert, IITs & Linux

Monday, February 12, 2007

Firebug : web development evolved

I found firebug very useful while developing my Paint Chat (which is not a big code as such but still), so here it goes in admiration of firebug:

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
Firebug is firefox addon that helps you in webdevelopment with
its powerful feature such as javascript debugger, Inspect and edit HTML, Tweak CSS to perfection, Monitor network activity, Explore the DOM and many more. Feature I like most is its quickly diagnosing problem, it allows you set break points and checking intermediate values of variable for javascript thus making a great javascript debugger. Many times you are stuck at where did the code went wrong so in way its a lot useful in saving time.



I also like is its inspecting html and modifying html and css on fly and see the results with helpful tooltips. It also help in positioning of divs, images with its nice feature of visuallizing css metrics with ruler and box model coloring(HTML inspecting).

It other great feature is its interface which is comes with browser window split in two halves one for your website and one is extension interface (though it also can be detached from it). I am also a fan of Web developer toolbar extension but what it lacks is a java debugger and this great interface but both are a must of a web developer.

Related Post :

Firebug - Web Development Evolved

9 Things The Non-Tech Savvy Do That Annoy Geeks

Earlier also i made a similar post :I'm A Programmer, Not A Computer Guy, Now its the time again

When you ’re a tech nerd working or living with the not so tech savvy, there are a few things they tend to do that make you bite your tongue, and resist the urge to take over what they’re doing and get it done yourself. They may be trivial, but they are all oh so wrong.
Read More on Digg>>

Some of them are so true.
NO, I DON’T want to fix your cousin’s brother’s uncle’s 10 year old computer.
If you’re a tech-savvy person, especially if it’s what you do as a job, people seem to think that you enjoy, and are happy to fix their computer.

Some more on list :
  • Everything Must Be Double Clicked.
  • Microsoft Word is the application for everything.
Read more on digg for interseting comments
Original URL : http://www.spiraloz.com/?p=143 but i think sit is down for time being..(digg effect !!)
Related Post: I'm A Programmer, Not A Computer Guy

Sunday, February 11, 2007

A thousand on del.icio.us & Stumble

Today i crossed 1000 bookmarsk on del.icio.us and stumble
On del.icio.us :
On Stumble:

My del.icio.us page
My StumblePage
My collection of del.icio.us tags
Firefox Extension created by me : My Del.icio.us Toolbar
Related Post :
Del.icio.us Searcher

Play with html using javascript

Javascipt can be very fruitful and flexible when it comes to modifying webapges dynamically (though client side). Javascript can be helpful in creating response to browser events like mouseup, mouseover etc, veryfying of form values prior to submitting them, changing style and value of html elements dynamically.
Examples i disscuss here are being user by me in developing Paint Chat !! So here I go..
You can write javascript functions and code in section as:

<script type="text/javascript">function test(){
alert("test javascript");}</script>

Action on events:

Example of events can be mouseclick, keystroke, submitting form etc.
With onload()
 <body onload="init()">
Now init() function will be called when this html page is being loaded.
For links, javascript function can be evoked when clicking, mouseover over links like
 <a href="javascript:replay()">Refresh ! </a>
Now function replay() will be called when Refresh! is clicked. For input text box
<input type="text" size="30" id="search" onchange="suggest()">; 
Now whenever content of textbox changes the function suggest() will be called. It can be useful when feature like google suggest has to be implemented or so.

On submitting forms:
<form method="post" action="some.php" onsubmit="return checkForm()">
So whenever this form is being submitted checkForm() function will be called and can be helpful in verifying values of form elements.

onMouseOver and onMouseOut:
<a href="http://www.buard.blogspot.com" onmouseover="fade()">
<img src="image.gif"> </a>
Now when mouse is over image fade() function will be called and can be used for animate and styling purposes.

Registering of events

A simple way can be:
Conside the html code : <div id="sample"> ..... some... html..text.. </div>
Now using javascript you can register event for this div by:
 var div_sample = document.getElementById('sample');
div_sample.onmousedown=sampleMouseDown ;
Now whenever mouseover ocours over this div html element sampleMouseDown() function will be called. Events can also be registered using addEventListener() . Find more information baout it here:Advanced event registration models

Modify Style and values for html elements

Within some javascript function, you can first get the element object by getElementByID() getElementsByName() for example conside the javascript code:
document.getElementById("colorcode").innerHTML = "#000000";
document.getElementById("bgtest").style.backgroundColor= "green";
The first line find the html element with id colorcode and then set its value to "#000000" using innerHTML. In second line, it sets the background of html element with id "bgtest" to green.

Some other tweaks which were useful :
  • Calling some function repeatedly with some time interval, consider javascript code:
var intervalID = setInterval(drawCurve, 100);
So the drawCurve() function will be called repeatedly after 100ms. You can cancel this process( removing repeatedly calling) by clearInterval(intervalID);

  • You can use setTimeout(drawCurve,100) function to delay drawCurve() execution for a specified time period(100ms).
  • Calling a php function inside javascript:
var testImg = new Image();
testImg.src = "form.php?name=form_value";
Now here in form.php you can fetch value of variable name using $_GET and can perform appropriate action.

Some links:Related Posts:

Microsoft Clippy, RIP: 1997 - 2007

Microsoft finally axed the most annoying aspect of Office has decided to leave "Clippy" behind in Office 2007.

One of comments from Digg:

"Clippy, it looks like you're going to your grave. Do you need help with this?"
Read More>>

He is dead !! Rest in peace clippy

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Rubiks Cube with flashy lights and voice

from Engadget

New "Rubik's Revolution," a supposed "sequel" to the original Rubik's Cube. The new cube keeps that 3 x 3 configuration and the iconic colored sides, but adds in electronic games including Light Speed, Rapid Recharge, Pattern Panic, Cube Catcher, Code Cracker and Multiplayer Madness.
Read More>>

Related Posts:

Friday, February 09, 2007

Paint Chat !!


Now chat using a paint brush !!.

I had made this app which uses paint brush to express yourself and share with others. This uses HTML:Canvas for drawing graphics using javascript, so no sluggish java applet and flash. It uses XMLHttprequest to synchronize paint screen with server. You can share this url with your friends to have a chat with paint brush and use Refresh !! to update your paint screen with that of your friend.
Read about Paint chat.
Try It out : Paint Chat

Updated: I have added feature for filling up whole background with color and also the transparency feature.

Related Post:
Shout-Box

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Twisty Puzzles

I'm a fan of Rubik's Cube...though i'm not very fast but i can solve it in around 90 sec or so..
i stumbledupon this page having collection(pics) of wide variety of derivatives of rubik cube and similar puzzles.Then i searched for more such links..and i found this Huge Rubik's Cube Collection.














Visit:
Magic Polyhedra and Other Sequential Movement Puzzles,
Knuttz.net: Rubik's Cube Collection

Related Links:
Solving Rubiks Cube
Timer Designed By me

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Online Music & Photo Editing

Techcrunch covered web2.0 startups relating to photo editing and Social music. Some of them really cool like pandora, last-fm for music which i use very often. I also have used picnik. So here are links for more such web applications.

Social Music Overview
Online Photo Editing Overview
Related Post:
Living with web-based software
Web2.0 Applications
Online Music

2000 Blogger list


Tino Buntic is trying to compile a list 2000 bloggers with linked mugshots. I'm in there somewhere too. You can try and get on the list too....

Read more>>

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Some useful command line tricks

SEOmoz.org has listing of linux commnad that may be useful in web development but they are uerful otherwise too.
Some of them are here:

  • ln -s /some/destination name_of_link
  • ctrl+z and bg
  • scp : scp user@example.com:~/dir /destination
Read More : Web Developers: 13 Command Line Tricks
Some other Miscellaneous Tricks:
  • ls -lSr List files (sorted by size)
  • df -h Show available disk space in human-readable format
  • du -sh /some/dir Show how much space /some/dir is taking up
  • Related Posts:
    Ten Cool Coreutils Commands
    Searching with find
    Best Linux One Liners

    Sunday, February 04, 2007

    Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

    I found this awesome video through digg . It explains how web has evolved making it more interactive, flexible and useful through videos, photos, map, search and much more...
    Web is becoming more powerful with technologies like Ajax, XML etc
    It was created by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.




    Youtube Link

    Friday, February 02, 2007

    Google OneBox Results

    Google has quietly added a new OneBox feature that highlights articles from Wikipedia. read about it here : Micro Persuasion : Wikipedia Added to Google OneBox
    So here is more about Google OneBox results. I found good info about it on Google Operating System : Google OneBox Results. There are several kinds of OneBox results, for example :

    • Music Search
    • Stock quotes. If you enter a ticker symbol, you'll get live quotes and information from Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and other sites.


    Read about more such OneBox Results here >> Google OneBox Results