TechNayak

Ruby on Rails - Getting started

Ritesh — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:09:53 +0000

Every night now, for the past three days, I am sitting religiously in front of my 8 year old desktop running gutsy (both my laptops are’nt with me now ) trying to learn Ruby on Rails - ror in short. I must say, I have been completely fascinated by its possibilities and look forward to building some really cool and useful apps with it in the near future. I have also been trying to look for tutorials on ror and not finding much help online. A friend of mine pointed me to The Book for ror which I am trying to get my hands on. I have never been the type that learns a new language from a book; I like to get my hands dirty and try out things - thats the way I learn. So, based on my experience learning ror , Im penning down my getting started with ror.

What can ror do ? It makes developing web applications really, and I mean really simple. You give it a table structure and rails automatically builds a table, forms for insert, delete and display for the fields and also build MVC architecture by default. Controllers and views are built and all you have to do as a web developer is to add CSS to the generated files so that they look awesome. There is demo which shows how you can build a blogging engine using rails in under 15 minutes. Now isnt that cool !! Its a really cool hack that has made the job of writing everyday web applications really easy. Well two of my favorite applications online have been built using ror. Check them out .

Well for starters ruby is a programming language - older than java, very english like and mostly interpreted I guess. Rails is this wonderful platform like hack which does a lot of cool things and ruby sits on top of rails and you can build applications using them.

Installation : I found many places which listed installation instructions but this one worked best.
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/RailsOnUbuntu

This brings me to another wonderful piece of software that runs under 400kb, Gems. A apt styled package manager built to get ruby related software.
Once you are setup, I guess its time to learn the language and to learn ruby, I would definitely suggest why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby. Nothing beats this online book … sorry online masterpiece in explaining the aspects of the ruby language. Im still not done with this but I cant wait to read more of it.

Since ror is for web development, its obvious you need a webserver, so you can use the prepackaged WEBrick server ( good for small dev). For more serious programming use Mongrel, Apache or lighttpd. Instructions to configure Apache and Lighttpd for ror can be found here. Get MySql for the database and you will be done.

Lastly you need a very good article to get you started and this is the one that got me started out. Its not perfect considering its almost 2 years old but the errors that show up will help you learn much better. And thats it , we are done. Best of luck learning ror.

Tags: ruby, rails , ruby on rails, getting started, tutorials

Bangalore Events on Upcoming

Ritesh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:07:07 +0000

For quite some time now, I have been trying to locate a service where all upcoming events are listed. There aren’t that many around and searching surely doesn’t help. I looked at the local sites and also at public calendars on Google but to no avail, most of them are not updated and soon lose their mojo.

Then I read about upcoming getting a better interface - a random search on Bangalore and lo, tons of results on upcoming events. I really like the variety of events that are listed. I am not sure about the community that upcoming has in Bangalore or its popularity but looking at the events listed there, I think they are doing pretty well. Also if any of you are looking for public events in Bangalore, this is the place to look. Please do comment with other sites that list public events in Bangalore. Meanwhile

http://upcoming.yahoo.com

and here is the link to the events in Bangalore.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/search/?type=events&rt=1&q=&loc=bangalore

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Bangalore, events, public events, upcoming, yahoo

3rd Party Application Integration - Implications

Ritesh — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:02:13 +0000

Quite recently there have been many apps that have added the ability for third party applications to plug into the main app. Some examples include Myspace, facebook, iGoogle, Okut and currently Yahoo Search ( thanks to SearchMonkey). The intent is to improve the usefulness of the main application in turn make these otherwise undiscovered third party applications popular. The third party applications thrive on the popularity and traffic of the mother app. The popularity of third party apps have spawned an entire eco-system of app builders who target exactly these platforms and hope to cash in on the phenomenon. Social applications are green pastures for such application builders, who hope to reach a large audience by utilizing this community as a service.
Now most of these apps are pretty alright, but most of them just break and compromise the entire user experience. Facebook is currently the site that is facing the app overload problem. Too many apps clutter and spoil the entire facebook experience.

The other problem is that most mother applications are huge in their own right and drive a lot of traffic. In that case there should be some guarantee that the plugins also scale equally. This is a problem I have faced after integrating searchmonkey applications on Yahoo Search and also some apps in Facebook. Unanticipated loads on third party apps wreck the app and most of them dont scale and all they do is spoil the UX of the app as a consequence. My StumbleUpon addition to Yahoo Search just didnt work the first few days and I could only read a “This plugin is not available right now” message. In another instance, I integrated an app on my blog and the problem was that due to the right sidebar, my content wouldn’t load until the third party app loaded and when it didnt, the blog would serve up nothing. There is no way for the mother app to figure out whether the third party app is available and running. If it isnt available then dont publish it onto the clients interface, thereby retaining the users experience.

In fact, for any third party application, there must be some scalability requirements enforced and only when they meet such requirements should they be allowed to publish. An alternative would be for the mother app to build its own cloud and make sure that the 3rd party application uses that cloud so that its highly available ( Case in point Google’s App Engine - Use for widgets). Or, there must be some load test designed when the 3rd party app registers with the mother app ( ex : Automated load tests on sites like TopCoder ). An even more elegant way of figuring out scalability problems would be to statically analyze the submitted code to check for bottlenecks and other possible leaky parts of the code and then reach a decision whether to allow for the code to run or not. Until such rigorous checks and constraints are not enforced, third party apps will keep ruining our experience.

Tags: cloud, facebook appliation, third party applications, static analysis

Coming the full GCircle

Ritesh — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:35:52 +0000

Remember early 2004 and the release of Gmail ? The “ooh so exclusive, invite only” mailbox that was so cool. I remember. How hard I tried to get an invite and how I rejoiced when I layed my eyes on Gmail; How I tried to figure out why is the page not navigating or how is that my contacts are autofilling the to field but I cannot find them in the source. How, almost after 4 whole months of searching, I learnt the buzzword that would graduate me from mere novice to a professional in the web space. AJAX.

After that started the GCraze. Almost any entity that had a G before it was sought out to be the most watched property on the web. This craze still holds; the only difference is that the craze has moved from web developers to general public. Most G properties are running only because of the G in front, sort of like the Y! of the late 90s. Call it fate or just too much popularity, I think a lot of people are coming full circle.

Over the recent few days I have seen a lot of discontent among all the G users. I shall list most of the ones I remember, but you will get the idea

- Mail : probably the most sought after mail service in the recent past has its own share of problems. The first being slow connections. You must see Gmail running at our university, when 250 people share a 16Mbps connection, Gmail takes on a life of its own. Mails dont open, conversations are not updated and the chat feature is a pure disaster. The biggest problem I have with Gmail are the intrusive ads next to my mails.
- Orkut and Google Talk: Orkut was the social network for India, so claim many people. But if it wasn’t for the G tag, I would have liked to see how far Orkut would have gone. I know this having competed with Orkut for a year. The problem with social networks with no personal value add to it ( unlike del.icio.us or flickr) tends to grow boring and spam and other marketing material get the better of the network , you have no choice but to opt out. I consider Gtalk as a piece of art , a wonderful piece of software who got the design and the user experience part just right. But Orkut integration did one very awful thing, it increased my contacts on Gtalk from a mere 10 to about 200, which I really didnt want. Some say I missed a warning to the same, but now there is no undoing it. Lot of my friends are shifting back to Ymsgr and Windows messenger because they see more peaceful days there.

So thanks to these problems and more, there is a reverse migration to older properties who over time have become better and people are rediscovering their long lost loved ones. Google is doing all the right things with other properties though. I love the reader and just cant do without it and thanks to the sharing and the friends aspect of it, its almost like a new paradigm of use of RSS. Docs also is really cool, though I still like using Zoho, coz its home made and is just purely awesome. Thats about it I guess.

ps : Inspiration for this post comes from my valiant struggle for almost 2 whole hours to get Gmail to work only to see a “Your Account is experiencing Errors” or something. And then I try Yahoo Mail and its so wonderfully fast and awesome and guess what, hotmail works like a charm too. Also, my adsense account has served almost 100,000 ads and yet I haven’t made enough money to buy a decent meal Come on. 100,000 is six digits and they account for something, then why not pay me.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: google, gmail, google talk, gtalk, orkut

Web Sabbath - think most people need it

Ritesh — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:49:18 +0000

Google is giving us pond-skater minds | Andrew Sullivan - Times Online

Read this wonderful article and I realized, we are hooked to the internet!! Not a day goes by without us plugging in. The tools you work with clearly alter the way you do things and not necessarily in the right way. To give you an example, an electrician came to my place and couldn’t put a hole in a switch board because his drill bit was broken; an electrician from the pre-drill age would heat a sack needle to do the same. Did modern day tools spoil the electrician ? I would say, yes!

The same is the case with everyday programmers and web workers. I remember programming without search engines, an age where I peered through command lines and man pages to figure out why in gods name was the screen showing segmentation fault. Debugging was a very involved process, no modern day debuggers or code analyzers, just the program and console outputs. Though it sounds really painstaking ( and trust me, it was), it did make me a better programmer. I knew where not to screw up and also where things could fail. I see people start programming using IDE’s like Eclipse and Visual Studio and I really wonder whether they will ever have all the learnings that I had. Search engines and effective ones at that have paralyzed out ability to think, read and find information. Its affected us in adverse ways, so not comprehend able.

To become humans again, not impaled by search technology, I second the concept of a web sabbath. A day or two in a week, where we do not use modern day amenities like the mobile phone, Television , Internet or search. Such a day will help us to think, read, scour for knowledge the way we would have done ten years ago and hopefully that extra effort will make us think beyond technology and its limitations. I would like to hear from people who agree with me.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: google, web, sabbath, nosearch, websearch, technology

Firefox 3 - Review

Ritesh — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:39:06 +0000

So, I downloaded the latest installment of Firefox and tried it out. A brief about me, I have been a firefox user for a long time now and usually wait for newer versions of the browser to be shipped. The addons feature when launched was truly the best concept ever, then came the integrated search bar, spell check and a host of other wonderful features. I admit, I use firefox purely for its addons and nothing else (Actually the other reason is that my primitive designs really look good on firefox , IE and me dont really get along on the design playfield )
Well the 3rd installment really didn’t get me excited. Except for the full text like search on the address bar, I really didnt see any difference. The so called great features of FF3 viz offline support and apis for the same, social features etc are completely missing. So there is faster javascript and stuff, but for people in the third world countries ( at least in terms of bandwidth) like ours, pages take an eternity to load and a slight improvement in JS doesnt really do much until underlying infrastructure is changed.
The 3rd installment of FF has let me down. I still recommend people to use Flock. Their features and extensions on firefox are really great and do wonders for web users.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Email Checklist from Seth Godin

Ritesh — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:47:52 +0000

Great tips on sending an Email from Seth Godin himself- I realized a lot of my own follies.

Before you hit send on that next email, perhaps you should run down this list, just to be sure:

Is it going to just one person? (If yes, jump to #10)

Since it’s going to a group, have I thought about who is on my list?

Are they blind copied?

Did every person on the list really and truly opt in? Not like sort of, but really ask for it?

So that means that if I didn’t send it to them, they’d complain about not getting it?

See #5. If they wouldn’t complain, take them off!

That means, for example, that sending bulk email to a list of bloggers just cause they have blogs is not okay.

Aside: the definition of permission marketing: Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them. Nowhere does it say anything about you and your needs as a sender. Probably none of my business, but I’m just letting you know how I feel. (And how your prospects feel).

Is the email from a real person? If it is, will hitting reply get a note back to that person? (if not, change it please).

Have I corresponded with this person before?

Really? They’ve written back? (if no, reconsider email).

If it is a cold-call email, and I’m sure it’s welcome, and I’m sure it’s not spam, then don’t apologize. If I need to apologize, then yes, it’s spam, and I’ll get the brand-hurt I deserve.

Am I angry? (If so, save as draft and come back to the note in one hour).

Could I do this note better with a phone call?

Am I blind-ccing my boss? If so, what will happen if the recipient finds out?

Is there anything in this email I don’t want the attorney general, the media or my boss seeing? (If so, hit delete).

Is any portion of the email in all caps? (If so, consider changing it.)

Is it in black type at a normal size?

Do I have my contact info at the bottom? (If not, consider adding it).

Have I included the line, “Please save the planet. Don’t print this email”? (If so, please delete the line and consider a job as a forest ranger or flight attendant).

Could this email be shorter?

Is there anyone copied on this email who could be left off the list?

Have I attached any files that are very big? (If so, google something like ’send big files’ and consider your options.)

Have I attached any files that would work better in PDF format?

Are there any or other emoticons involved? (If so, reconsider).

Am I forwarding someone else’s mail? (If so, will they be happy when they find out?)

Am I forwarding something about religion (mine or someone else’s)? (If so, delete).

Am I forwarding something about a virus or worldwide charity effort or other potential hoax? (If so, visit snopes and check to see if it’s ‘actually true).

Did I hit ‘reply all’? If so, am I glad I did? Does every person on the list need to see it?

Am I quoting back the original text in a helpful way? (Sending an email that says, in its entirety, “yes,” is not helpful).

If this email is to someone like Seth, did I check to make sure I know the difference between its and it’s? Just wondering.

If this is a press release, am I really sure that the recipient is going to be delighted to get it? Or am I taking advantage of the asymmetrical nature of email–free to send, expensive investment of time to read or delete?

Are there any little animated creatures in the footer of this email? Adorable kittens? Endangered species of any kind?

Bonus: Is there a long legal disclaimer at the bottom of my email? Why?

Bonus: Does the subject line make it easy to understand what’s to come and likely it will get filed properly?

If I had to pay 42 cents to send this email, would I?

Do your bit for the environment

Ritesh — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:17:23 +0000

The World Environment day has again highlighted the energy crisis the world is facing and its almost certain that the next biggest market is energy. Technology for efficient consumption of energy, be it electrical or fuel driven, will be at the peak of global demand. Many companies are getting into the energy space in the hopes of cashing in on this phenomenon. Though we may not live to see the true implications of the energy crisis, its almost guaranteed that future generations will find it really hard to survive the energy crisis. There are some things that we as individuals can do to help preserve the environment - here are a few that are not all that hard to follow

Follow yearly maintenance schedules to ensure that your furnace and air conditioner run efficiently.
Unplug rarely used appliances such as a TV located in the spare bedroom.
Dry your clothes on a laundry line instead of using a clothes dryer
Replace all incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights (CFL). CFL’s last up to 10 to 15 times longer and are 75 percent more efficient than incandescent bulbs.
Turn off lights when leaving a room.
Switch off your monitor or close the lid of your laptop when not in use. Remember always to shut down the PC before going home from Office.
Set up your monitor to go to sleep when idle for more than 10 minutes.
Reduce the brightness in your monitor.
Do not unnecessarily leave electrical items like your phone, camera on continuous charging.
Ventilate your room and use fans and Air conditioners sparingly.
Always check the emission of your vehicle, remember to tune your engine optimallyto cut emission levels.
Share a carpool or drive with a friend to work or college.
Don’t waste paper, use a computer wherever necessary.

I also found out that I emit 3.056 Tonnes of Carbon dioxide every year :-( This is my environment day post

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Best Code quality metric

Ritesh — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:10:35 +0000

In the complex world of project metrics and estimation, there is one highly used metric that truly depicts quality. I shall let the picture explain. Thank you OSNews for the pic

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Finally I get my hands on the MacBook Air

Ritesh — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:43:42 +0000

Well, I finally got my hands on a mac book air and I must say, its unbelievable. The form factor is just amazing, the overall thickness of the laptop is quite comparable to my ipod. Yes, you heard it right, MY IPOD. Thats how thin the lap top is. Pictures and videos of the Macbook Air do not do justice to its brilliance.

Its got 2Gb of RAM, a 1.6 /1.8 Gig processor and 80GB harddisk. Hard to believe all that fits in the macbook air. Just head over to the nearest iStore and check it out. Its selling at a modest 100k in India

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In.com - portal opens for beta testing

Ritesh — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:02:42 +0000

In.com, an initiative of Web18 of India is trying to create a one stop portal for people on the internet. The service looks really promising and will find fast acceptance in India, given the explosive growth of internet users in the country.
The site provides a easy to use, intuitive interface to a digg like billboard of news stories in different categories. You can also rate articles pushing them higher up in the list just like digg. You can also surf podcasts, audio feeds, video feeds and even adds feeds of your own. There is also audio and featured artists, categorized videos, online games and a classified service with search. You even get a cool mailid based on your username, thanks to the domain in.com, your mail address becomes really simple to remember.
The only thing this site needs is some social features like one touch sharing with friends, PM’s, communities and it could give a stiff competition to the existing networks. India needs its own MSN and AOL and efforts like these definitely show promise in achieving that goal. Will keep my eyes open for more news and info on this portal

I was lucky enough to snag cool mail id is ritesh @ you know the rest

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Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) - Transport and other facilities

Ritesh — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:17:31 +0000

The BIAL - Bangalore International Airport will be open for business from the 23rd of may 2008. The airport promises to be a great place with lots of facilities. BMTC will run 600 + volvo buses daily from various corners of Bangalore. The buses run with a frequency of 15 minutes, which is great and set prices will ensure you wont have trouble from Bangalore’s infamous autorickshaws and taxis. The other great initiative is the taxis that will be chartered out of the airport on set price.

The revolt to the new airport being established is plenty and the fact that its 40 kms away from the city makes travel to the airport an overhead for short haul flights. Take a look at the guide for travelling to the airport

Travel Guide to the Bangalore International Airport

and also the transportation map of the pick up points, route and the proposed time for travel.

Transportation Map.pdf

The jewel in the crown could have been booking for transports on these buses so that there aren’t any seating hassles, but hopefully they will get to it once the airport is fully operational. Best of luck BIAL.

Bollywood gets blogging

Ritesh — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:21:12 +0000

The impact of the internet is so profound and enriching that people want to express themselves through the various ways. Bollywood stars are also not far behind ; the latest craze being Amitabh Bachchan’s blog. Besides the fact that I am a big fan of Mr Bachchan, I think, the blog idea is wonderful. Its a gateway to connect to your fans in a completely non intrusive way. Its way better than the chain mail fan club.
I hear that there are many other stars going blog crazy. Will scour around the place to find more, especially the ones where the ladies write

Well this is where Amitabh blogs

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock is a great browsing experience

Ritesh — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:58:35 +0000

I am really amazed at what flock has done to the browser experience. I have always been a flock fan and the recent additions to the browser are just great. Almost all the userful and popular online applications are integrated into the browser. If you take my case ( take a look at my flock settings in the image below), you will see that my favorites is automatically del.icio.us. I can write a blog post to any of my three wordpress blogs, or my blogger account. I can integrate flickr and upload photos from flock directly. Beats having to deal with the flickr upload page ( which is currently great, but previously was a pain). Twitter updates directly from the browser. Plus the myworld page follows my friends on facebook, twitter, flickr, blogger etc. It shows latest updates on photos from friends, blogs, comments on my blog, latest twitters by friends etc Its great!! I can also drop images, links and other interesting media like videos, audio etc to my friends on facebook which is a great way of sharing.

I can integrate gmail or yahoo mail and send pages, links, images are email to people with just a single right click button. The web clipboard which is also a godsend is wonderful when you are puling images, links and other paraphernalia from the net for your blog. For me the flock experience is perfect as it takes browsing to a whole new level. For all firefox users, try flock, you wont be dissapointed.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Microsoft Worldwide Telescope - Review

Ritesh — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:47:16 +0000

I just finished trying out the Microsoft WorldWide telescope and it just simply blows your mind away. Its awesome as it takes interactive applications to a new level. The application has images from a lot of telescopes which include the likes of the Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra. For a person interested in astronomy, its a dream come true. The application provides bookmarks to places worth seeing and the best part is the guided tours which does a very good job with the resources at hand.
The software is a must use for all teachers and schools who have a really great way of explaining the wonders of deep space. The tours are a really innovative feature as its always fascinating to watch and learn than to just browse around aimlessly not knowing what you are looking at ( which is what Google Mars was like, never really got the point of looking at the surface of Mars). Anyway, for scientists, astronomers, academicians, schools , universities, the worldwide telescope is a must have.

The best part is you can connect to an actual telescope and get pre-collected images from those telescopes based on your navigation. Its virtually a real experience. Reminds me more of the iLabs project where universities gave remote control of expensive laboratory experiments to people across the world.
Microsofts Worldwide Telescope

The possible end to outsourcing

Ritesh — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:44:29 +0000

The last 20 years have been more than fruitful for Bangalore and India in general as the preferred destination for outsourcing, but the tide may soon ebb. The cost advantage that India presented to the west isn’t there anymore. True globalization of the Indian work force has meant multinational and international companies are recruiting in India, offering international salaries and providing immigration opportunities. The impact of this globalization is the increase in salaries that Indian companies have to match to find skilled labor. The increased opportunities also mean very alarmingly high attrition rate amongst tier 2 and lower companies. In business processing outsourcing and ITES sector the attrition rate is almost twice that of Software. The rise in salaries especially in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad have created high income inequalities amongst the lower and the middle class. The increased money and spending power has also raised costs of living. Its estimated that about 5000 people are entering Bangalore everyday in search of opportunities, but that’s easy math when you consider the population of India; This inflow of people have put severe infrastructure constraints in these cities. Clogged roads and sky high infrastructure costs are common in these cities. Companies are finding it hard to find breathing space in the city and the instability in the government means there is no end point to the woes faced by the IT companies.

For a new company trying to establish a presence in Bangalore, the costs of infrastructure are extremely high and the sheer amount of companies plus the income inequality created by the increased wages will assure that only high salaries will ensure loyal employees. That’s not even guaranteed. There is a resource crunch, high infrastructure costs and productivity numbers are beginning to decline. The cost advantage is clearly lost. Indian companies are setting shop in tier cities like Tumkur, Pune etc where the infrastructure costs are significantly lower and the local talent pool is still unadulterated by the outsourcing boom. This still isn’t the solution as the reason why cities like Bangalore saw the boom was due to high concentration of engineering workforce and also the output of engineers in the southern region thanks to the 1000 odd engineering colleges in the region. The setting up of companies here will only guarantee reduced costs and not skilled labor, which means poor quality software.

This situation isn’t new, it happened at route128 and also in the valley. This was the prime reason for outsourcing and now it seems we have come full circle. Falling dollar prices, recent slowdown in the US economy and the opportunities presented by countries in South East Asia, China and Russia which are currently centers of low costs means India faces severe competition. India’s economy is riding on the success of outsourcing exports and the currency has become costlier. Outsourcing has become a victim of its own success and only time will tell what fate lies ahead for India.

I recently wrote an essay on the software bottleneck and the reasons behind some of measures to resolve the bottleneck which include outsourcing, open source etc. If you were interested in the reading material above, be sure to read the essay.

Xobni for Outlook

Ritesh — Fri, 09 May 2008 06:39:10 +0000

Xobni is my pick of the plugins for Outlook. It manages your emails and does wonderful things. Just try it out with outlook and see the difference, I suggest people with full mailboxes to use this plugin to get organized easily. Click the link below to get Xobni

Xobni: Email organization, search, and navigation for your Outlook inbox

Yahoo Glue Search

Ritesh — Fri, 09 May 2008 06:33:20 +0000

Yahoo India search has a new feature which is very impressive, the glue search page. Its a portal search page which displays results like a portal on the topic. I didnt see a world wide release though, but on the India page its there. Portal serach is a concept which people have been trying to work on for a long time. Ofcourse portals can only be given for relevent search results which have information sources of different types. Try it at

http://in.search.yahoo.com

try these example searches

http://in.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A8pWBjyekyJIoDUA2Qy6HAx.?p=shaurya&ei=UTF-8&iscqry=&fr=sfp&rd=r1

http://in.search.yahoo.com/search?p=Mysore&fr=sfp&ei=UTF-8&rd=r1

http://in.search.yahoo.com/search?p=IPL&fr=sfp&ei=UTF-8&rd=r1

Convergence

Ritesh — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:19:58 +0000

Convergence refers to the coming together of markets, technologies or concepts to benefit out of each other. This coming together when complete diminishes the lines between these two entities and it becomes really difficult to relate to each of them independently. The wikipedia definition states :

Technological convergence refers to a trend where some technologies having distinct functionalities evolve to technologies that overlap, i.e. multiple products come together to form one product, with the advantages of each initial component.

I recently wrote an essay on digital convergence for a course im taking. The essay talks about how telephony and computing converged to become the phenomenon we know as the internet. The essay talks in detail the history of both these fields and highlights significant landmarks and events that laid the foundation to this ocnvergence. Its an interesting read for anybody wanting to learn about the history of the internet.

Click here to download my essay on Convergence

Using XMLRPC interface to Wordpress and Blogger

Ritesh — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:57:53 +0000

Im testing the XML-RPC interface to blog sites in order to buld a plugin to post blogs really fast. If this post is published on the blog then , it means Im one step away from finishing my plugin. Yaay!!

If you have developed a web application and want users to post to their blogs using your application, this is the way to do it. Its really simple. Here’s the library I tried. Its really simple and works well for Blogger, but in Wordpress, the title of the post doesn’t appear. For wordpress, you can use the MetaWeblogAPI for XML_RPC. Just download the XML-RPC implementation in php from here and follow the instructions in this article. That should just about do it , dont you think ?

Oh and this thing took me less than 20 minutes to do