Sunday, 4th May, 2008
Category:
Python
Pygments is a python syntax highlighter library in python, which converts a raw code into colored highlighted syntax. I use this library for syntax highlighting for the posts on this blog. The library is very easy to use. Documentation and downloads are at
Pygments home page.
The website also has
Demo page which demonstrate the power of pygments library for highlighting syntax in several languages.
The following xml code is highlighted using pygments:
<addressbook>
<contact>
<name>Amaltas</name>
<phone>12345678</phone>
<address>123 abc street</address>
<email>amaltas@amaltas.org</email>
</contact>
<contact>
<name>Annie</name>
<phone>87654321</phone>
<address>890 xyz street</address>
<email></email>
</contact>
</addressbook>
Wednesday, 30th April, 2008
Category:
Internet
,
Google
,
Compute Cloud
,
Amazon
,
Software
So, you want to develop a killer Internet application. You have a great idea, and ready to work on it. One thing that puzzles every web application developer is the choice of platform, host and the technology.
If you haven't thought about scaling issues, you will be in a serious trouble and may require to rewrite the whole application. I past one year or so we have witnessed enormous developments in the web development tools and frameworks space. Frameworks like Django (this blog is written in django), Javascript libraries like YUI, Prototype, Scriptaculous, hosting platforms like Amazon EC2 and Google Appengine gives us great options in terms of what we can do and how we can transform our ideas. All the great technologies has given a new meaning to web 2.0.
I personally like Google Appengine because I like Python web programming and worked on couple of python frameworks. Google Appengine also gives seamless integration with Google accounts this is a big win win if your application requires user login and sign ups. On the other hand, Amazon EC2 gives you a server in the cloud, you have to take care of everything from imaging the machine, installing the webserver and configuring various components. This can be advantage for some individuals and companies, because it brings lot of flexibility and in real sense this is the true cloud computing, where you can just write any application which requires parallel processing and run on several machines at Amazon datacenter.
If your application is simply a database backed web application, Google Appengine can be a good choice, though its datastore technology will not give you full benefit of RDBMS database. Applications like Digg, Slashdot, delicious are good examples of high traffic sites which can be perfectly hosted with Google Appengine.
I am planning to move my blog from the shared hosting to Google Appengine. One benefit would be Google indexing, it would be so easy for Google crawler to index my site from one of its neighbour machine. :)
Wednesday, 30th April, 2008
Category:
Google
,
Apple
,
iPhone
,
Mobile
,
Software
Mobile software development is next big thing. More and more applications are moving from desktop to browser, and now to mobile phones.
Last month I was in Mountain View, and my room mate happened to be a Mobile software developer. Almost every Google mobile product you have used has his big contribution. I had very good conversations with him about Mobile software development, opportunities and challenges.
After coming back to India, I started exploring more about mobile software development. Mobile software is no longer about Windows mobile vs. Symbian, now we have many mobile platforms, like iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile.
Before you begin Mobile software development, your choice of platform is very important. Your future in mobile technologies depends on the future of the mobile platform you choose.
iPhone Vs. Android
iPhone can you give you huge user base, on the other hand Android gives you open source advantage.
iPhone brings with it huge user base, but its sdk is in Objective C. So, you must know or must be willing to learn Objective C. Apple Developer center has lot of resources on iPhone development, I will list them at the end of this post.
If you are good at Java or like Java platform, then Android might interest you. Other advantage with Android is that its open source and obviously Google's support for Android is a big win. There is rich documentation available on Android Google site.
The two platform also differs in the way you can distribute your software. iPhone applications can only be distributed through Apple distribution channel, which can be a limiting factor depending on your application and business needs. On the other hand Android being open source, you are free to release and distribute your Android application just like any other open source application.
Here are the list of resources for iPhone and Android software development.
iPhone developer resources
All the resources listed below are available at
Apple iPhone developer site:
Android developer resources
Various documentation and sdk download is available at
Android developer site.
Saturday, 26th April, 2008
Category:
Science
So you don’t believe in astrology. Many people like you and me reject some theories, or only partially believe in them. There can be two reasons for disbelief; one comes after reasoning and observation, like all empirical sciences, and the other from lack of knowledge or incapacity of the human mind to grasp the subject matter of the theory. Sometimes a belief is also determined by a collective behaviour of a generation. It is not that we are right and the earlier generations were wrong, but it is the conditioning that is created by a particular generation that makes a certain belief a norm of the society.
Astrology is one such subject where people always differ in their beliefs and opinions. If your disbelief in Astrology is purely based on lack of knowledge, or general opinion, I will try to explain it scientifically and write in more detail in my next post. Consider this as an introduction.
Astrology has several school of thoughts; the most important are the Western Astrology based on the Sun, and the Indian Astrology based on the Moon. This is the reason why the Western calendar is based on the Sun and the Eastern on the Moon. Out of several contributions India made to the world in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, literature and science, Astrology is the biggest. It is worth mentioning that the Indian rishis (saints) discovered facts about the universe and the solar system, which NASA and other space agencies have only now recently discovered.
Astrology to our belief is just limited to the science of predicting future or a person’s characterstics, which is not completely true. Instead, astrology is concerned with the movement of planets in the solar system and its gravitational impact on other planets and moons. When I first learnt about astrology, I too considered it as a superstition and rejected it prima facie. But only after doing some research, did I get some understanding of it.
Indian astrology is all about the planet’s gravity and its impact on the Earth. Do you know what causes high tides and low tides in the sea? It is caused by the moon coming closer or going further away from the Earth during its orbit. You agree with it right ?? You must!! It was in your school books. So we can conclude that the Moon can impact the Earth’s ecosystem through gravitational force.
We all know that the sea water contains salt, and the human body constitutes of 70% water. This follows that if the Moon can bring changes in ocean waves, it can also bring changes in our body and mind. According to Astrology, it is the Moon which governs our mind and thought process. The time, latitude and longitude of the location at which a person is born determines the angle of the Moon and its impact on him. Unlike Western Astrology which is based on the Sun and divides the population in 12 groups (i.e. 12 Sun Signs), Indian Astrology defines infinite possibilities. Two persons born on the same time can differ in every respect because of different birth locations. It also considers the fact that the Moon and the planets are always moving and can have different impacts on people born at the same time.
Do you know the origin of the word ‘Lunatic’? Every word added to our language has a history or a reason behind it. The term ‘Lunatic’ is associated with lunar (moon) movements and gravity. Research has proved that people’s (especially lunatics’) behaviour changes during a full moon and a no moon day.
Just like the Moon, other planets also impact life on earth. Scientists have also started believing this. It is the combination of all the planets’ gravity that impact our body and mind, and governs our action and thought processes. It is this planetery movement, that makes someone a poet, an artist, or a musician. Science cannot answer why one is more intelligent than the other, but Astrology can explain it.
Indian Astrology is about planets and its impact on human beings. It doesn’t matter if people start worshipping Venus considering it as a Demi-God, or forecasting the future. Infact, Astrology does not even have any association with religion.
To understand it, we must try to understand it scientifically and not as a superstition.
Friday, 25th April, 2008
Category:
Apple
,
iPhone
With the release of the fourth beta version of iPhone SDK, iPhone adds OpenGL ES support to iPhone Simulator. This is a great addition to the already existing iPhone SDK features.
Using OpenGL you can quickly build and test your mobile applications and handheld games using OpenGL ES on iPhone simulator.
What is OpenGL?
OpenGL® ES is a royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems - including consoles, phones, appliances and vehicles
Friday, 25th April, 2008
Category:
Social Network
Zoho office online suite
Zoho office online suite
Slates
Slates
My Lists
My Lists
Slide Share
Slide Share
Todo list
Todo list
Ayos iShare
Ayos iShare
Facebook files
Facebook files
My Documents
My Documents
Google Calendar
Google Calendar
Meeting Room
Meeting Room
Friday, 25th April, 2008
Category:
Yahoo
,
Social Network
Yahoo announced a bold strategy to open its properties into a big social network. According to Yahoo's CTO Ari Balogh
We are rewiring Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social throughout and provide hooks to developers
Yahoo open strategy will give a central profile to users, and will connect all the products of Yahoo like mail, messenger, sports. Yahoo open strategy will allow developers to create applications on the top of Yahoo products using open social.Whats interesting is that uers can add third party applications on any Yahoo page including the Home page.
This means all Yahoo products will transition into a big social network. Not social network exactly.. according to Balogh,
We are not creating another social network. We will rewire the entire experience to make it social. We don’t think of social as a destination but as a dimension
I am happy with this announcement, it will make social networking and third party application development more meaningful compared to the cluttered facebook.com.
Wednesday, 23rd April, 2008
Category:
Food & Health
Peta (People for ethical treatment of animals) has announced first prize for the person/organization who
come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.
Monday, 21st April, 2008
Category:
Python
List of third party python libraries which I used in my python apps.
Imaging
IDE
Database
Templating
Web Development
Web Server
XML Processing
Misc.
Monday, 21st April, 2008
Category:
Apple
,
iPhone
The
iPhone pwnage tool is available for windows now. This was much awaited tool for windows user, and you no longer need to hunt for
mac book to pwn your
iPhone.
The pwn tool which is in beta, is called WinPwn.
Using this tool you can jailbreak the
iPhone, and not just jailbreak but also load any ipsw file on your iPhone. Now what is ipsw file ? Don't try this if you don't know about it. An ipsw file is an
iPhone operating system. This means you are not limited to
Apple provided OS.
Also, Winpwn flash the iphone with custom bootloader, so iPhone cannot check if its loading the official ipsw file.
Using Winpwn you can also try the beta of iPhone 2.0.
Winpwn can be downloaded here
Monday, 21st April, 2008
Category:
Internet
,
Google
,
browser
Google released a new firefox addon
Send To Phone, using which you can highlight a text on any web page and send it as a text message to any mobile phone.
You can download the extension
here. Once downloaded and installed, restart the firefox browser.
How to use
After installation a
icon will appear on the upper right hand corner of the browser window. Select the text on a web page you wish to send as text message, and click on the
icon.
Fill in the number you wish to send the message to and select appropriate carrier. Click 'Send Message', and bingo the selected text is sent as SMS message to the recipient.
This facility is available only for US subscribers.
Detailed FAQs are available here
Sunday, 20th April, 2008
Category:
Random Websites
I am starting a new category,
Random Websites, and I will start with a post on this funny site for submitting your
secret confessions. Yes as the name suggests, you can submit your secrets on this site anonymously.
I have not yet posted any confessions yet, but I read other's confessions and the one I liked is
I write code all day which could have been my confession too. :)
Anyways I give 5 out of 10 to this site, nice concept and simple design, but lacks some features (I leave this as an exercise for you).
So, read others confessions and add your own.
Cheers!!
Sunday, 20th April, 2008
Category:
Apple
,
Developers
,
iPhone
,
mac
Blood, sweat, and cheers :)
Apple is accepting entries for
Apple design awards 2008. If you have developed a best-of-breed application on iphone and mac, here is the chance to get your hard work rewarded with the latest
Apple hardware, along with the respect, admiration and envy of your peers from around the world.
The various categories for
Apple design awards are:
- iPhone developer showcase
- Best iPhone Web Application
- Best Mac OS X Leopard Application
- Best New Mac OS X Leopard Game
- Best Mac OS X Leopard User Experience
- Best Mac OS X Leopard Graphics and Media Application
- Best Mac OS X Leopard Student Product
Enter today, and let your work speak for itself.
Submit your entry now
Sunday, 20th April, 2008
Category:
Storage
,
Compute Cloud
,
Amazon
There has been a ongoing request for persistent
storage for
Amazon's EC2 (Elastic compute cloud). And a good news is that
Amazon is working on a major upcoming feature - persistent
storage for EC2.
The new feature will provide reliable and persistent
storage volume for all EC2 instances. The persistent
storage volume would act as a raw, unformatted hard drive, which can be formatted and configured based on the needs of the application.
Using
Amazon EC2 persistent storage, customers will be able to create volumes ranging from 1GB to 1TB, and will be able to attach multiple volumes to a single instance. Isn't it cool! a much awaited request from every EC2 customer.
Like EC2, persistent
storage will also come with its own set of APIs, to create & delete volumes, to create and delete snapshot. Yes EC2 persistent storage will enable you to automatically create snapshots of your volumes.
If you are interested in participating in EC2 persistent storage,
sign up here
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